What is wrong with Stephen Harper's environmental budget? In a phrase, there is no plan focused on solutions.
Hydro, ground heating, and wind power work and are renewal sources of energy - abundant in Canada. They produce a lot more energy than the amount used to construct the infrastructure for them. Combined these sources of energy would substantially reduce Canada's dependence on polluting non-renewable energy. The Harper budget should have declared tax incentives for environmentally friendly energy projects.
Unfortunately, Harper Tories have been unconcerned about the need for any such incentives because, until a month ago, they held the position that the problem did not exist. This month they eliminated the government climate policy group, a directorate consisting of a handful of experts responsible for: co-ordinating climate-change efforts among various departments, implementing new policy, and analyzing its potential impact.
Harper supporters have been in environmental denial for so long there simply is no intellectual infrastructure in their party that understands the problem and they are firing those that could help.
Mr. Harper is not focused on the development of available alternate energy sources. Rather, he is trying to consolidate power and is doing so at the expense of the true environmental planning. As "departmental sources suggested the structural shift is motivated by a political desire: stripping power from a group of civil servants and consolidating it in the Prime Minister's Office." (CTV News)
