Manitoba throne speech is full of hot air

The provincial throne speech seems pretty much like reheated leftovers from the provincial campaign. The big highlight according to the Freep’s coverage is the commitment to water protection and environmental measures. While the money for wastewater upgrades in Winnipeg is a good thing, the pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions led to Doer’s dumbest comment of the day.

The throne speech also includes a promised legislated commitment to meet Manitoba’s Kyoto treaty targets. But Doer said to prove to Manitobans he means business and to show progress, he also used the throne speech to pledge Manitoba will cut greenhouse gas emissions to be below 2000 levels by 2010.

“A lot of people are running around saying I can do this by 2050,” said Doer. “Well I won’t be premier in 2050. We want to get targets where people can hold us accountable.”

First off, I don’t really care when you’re going to be Premier. Your priority should be making decisions based on the long term impact they will have on Manitobans, not the impact they’ll have on your campaign literature in the next election.

With that being said, what the hell kind of commitment is this anyway? You want people to hold you accountable to getting greenhouse gas emissions back to where they were BEFORE you took government in the first place?? So the Doer Legacy is going to be that, despite wasting a lot of hot air on the subject, he had no discernible impact on greenhouse gas emissions during a decade in power?

I feel I should be closing with some amusing play on the phrase “tilting at windmills” here, but I can’t quite get it to work (feel free to make suggestions in the comments). It’s not so much that the NDP is fighting against imaginary enemies, but more that they’re only pretending to fight against the real (to some extent) enemy of climate change.