Peter Kent signaled this week that he expects to be demoted or dismissed by Stephen Harper. Rick Smith, the Executive Director of the Broadbent Institute, suggests that Kent's tenure as Minister of the Environment can't come to an end soon enough:
Since the advent of Canada’s first federal Environment Minister in 1971, there have been many bumps-on-a-log, do-nothings, and disappointments. Many governments of the past have ignored the nation’s environmental protection needs, resulting in years of stalled progress. But only Mr. Kent has stepped up to the plate, Orwell-style, to re-make the Ministry of the Environment into a green rubber stamp for destructive, ill-considered, industrial behaviour, all while glibly blaming “foreign interests” for meddling with Canada’s overwhelmingly foreign-owned oil and gas sector. Only Mr. Kent has actually spearheaded the wholesale abolition of key elements of Canada’s already threadbare federal environmental protection architecture.
Smith then goes on to list what he believes were Kent's greatest hits (to the environment):
1. Turning the environmental assessment process into a sideshow .
2. Walking away from the Kyoto climate change agreement .
3. Giving the hook to the Federal Fisheries Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act .
4. Telling the National Round Table of the Environment and Economy (NRTEE) where it could take its advice .
5. Deny, deny, deny that the tar sands have any more environmental impact than your dog .
Kent, of course, did not develop his own policy. He was merely a willing puppet:
Mr. Kent was simply the messenger for a government that is convinced, deep in its bones, that – contrary to any evidence and common sense – environmental protection and economic growth are incompatible.
And, for that reason, he is an embarrassment to a profession he once claimed to practice.
12 comments:
So, Harper throws another one under the bus.
Funny, that commentary and list provided. After all, Petey Kent was only doing exactly what his master wanted, nothing less; nothing more. The next environment minister will do/ not do the exact same things-- only to please master. Only difference is that this one will look more fresh & whole lot prettier (Michelle Rempel--Many do like blondes on the big tv screen) when propogandizing Master Harper's anti-environment stance.
So, now we'll get Michele what's-her-face, to carry on the CON path-of-destruction. Snake-oil sales people ad nauseum....great.
Like Kelly Leitch, the former doctor who sold her medical integrity to become a Harper puppet, Kent sold his journalistic soul to become a shill for the neoconservative agenda, Owen. I am always fascinated by the facility with which the Haperites dispose of any semblance of integrity, but Ii often wonder what their internal dialogue is. What mental and moral gymnastics did they practise to justify their betrayals to both themselves and their country.
The obvious answer would be that they didn't have any moral fiber to begin with, of course, but I have a nigglingly suspicion that that cannot be the total explanation for all of the turncoats currently pushing the Harper agenda.
What is truly amazing, ck, is not how these people look on television but how they can look at themselves in the mirror and not feel a sense of shame.
The Harper government is full of snake oil salesmen and women, Linda.
What is truly disturbing is the number of Canadians who don't know -- or who don't care -- that they're being conned.
Perhaps it has something to do with Macauley's maxim about power, Lorne.
It almost always corrodes even the strongest moral fibre.
As Ck points out, this is a strange story because Kent was simply following orders and yet he believes he will be thrown under the preverbal bus anyway. It makes you wonders what these ministers really think. Do they go in with the knowledge that they are no more than tools to be sacrificed on the alter of a mad, Machiavellian leader? Or do they come to that realization over time? It seems that in politics there is an inexhaustible supply of patsies who will do the bidding of a nasty leader and pay the price fo their reputation and integrity as long as they get a nice pension etc. But will one of these fools eventually turn against the process or will they all go quietly into the night?
That's the ultimate question, Kirby. Somebody like Brent Rathgeber is a realist. He knows that the party will line up against him in the next election -- just as it did when it threw everything it had at Garth Turner and replaced him with Lisa Raitt.
It may have something to do with being able to sleep at night
Martin Short foresaw the like of Peter Kent years ago
http://youtu.be/FOLBQxk72NY
Nathan Thurm, Peter Kent. Short knows the type, Mound. They both are no-nothings.
Thanks for the clip.
.. ah, yes.. Peter Kent .. the great boreal wolf slayer ..
The federal courts insisted for 5 bitter years that the Harper Government and Kent himself as Minister of The Environment adhere to their legislated government mandate towards threatened species.. stop fighting, litigating via arcane appeals and delays.. and act to protect the boreal caribou from the destruction of their habitat.
Yes .. Peter Kent and his so called 'westerner' and 'Albertan' and so called 'Canadian' Prime Minister, and the rabid dog PMO's solution for the caribou was strychnine poisoned baits air dropped .. or shooting the boreal wolves from aircraft (not F-35's yet !)
Examining Kent, Harper, Joe Oliver of Natural Resources and Keith Ashfield of Department of Fisheries & Oceans and we see the perfect soulless idiot quartet of practiced, glib, camouflaged deceivers and environmental destructivists ..
These four sociopaths for certain have nothing to do with being Canadian .. are all operating on bizarre and harmful agendas .. and if they ever land on a postage stamp in Canada it should be as the Four Vicious Stooges of Petroleum Poisoning..
Well deserved legacy .. creeps ..
Completely Un-Canadian
"Practiced, glib camouflaged deceivers." That's what all those years in front of the camera amounted to, salamander.
The Harper Government is all about spin.
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