AHEAD of the HEARD
It was a bad day for devious and malicious environmental groups last Feb. 9: their political stealth campaign against GM plant technology was thwarted by a house of commons vote. Conservative and Liberal MPs voted down Bill C-474 which was a treacherous attempt to stop and perhaps setback the development of more and better Genetically Modified (GM) plant technology in Canada. The idea of the bill was to require that any new GM plants would need to be investigated for marketing problems prior to their approval; the scheme being that if an export market almost anywhere would not accept GM crops, then they would not be approved for growing by farmers. Add to that the usual appeals and lawsuits and new GM technology would be tied up for years - which, of course, was the environmental groups’ plan in the first place.
If this type of regulatory process had been in place over the past 12 years, there would, in all likelihood, not be GM canola, corn, soybeans, and sugar beets grown in Canada. That would have seen Canadian growers deprived of hundreds of millions of dollars of much needed income. Green groups could not care less about the livelihood of hard-working Canadian farmers, but one would think that Canadian members of parliament would support any legal crop that increases yield, reduces input costs and puts more money in farmers’ family pockets. Well most MPs understand that and support Canadian agriculture, but not the federal New Democratic Party and their Bloc Quebecois allies and soul mates.
It was an NDP member of parliament, Alex Atamanenko, with the support of his party, that introduced the legislation in parliament. It causes one to ponder what on earth would cause a political party that once had a significant number of rural MPs to support and promote legislation that is so detrimental to the economic well-being of Canadian farmers across this country. Clearly the NDP has come to the conclusion that their political future (assuming there is any) lies with catering to their base in the urban cities of Canada.
They aspire to be seen as defenders of the environment and damn the consequences or the truth. It all has to do with the NDP and their blood feud with the Green Party, particularly in BC. The NDP has believed for years that they have lost closely fought ridings because of voters voting for Green Party candidates. They are convinced that those voting Green are just lapsed NDP voters and if it wasn’t for that upstart party they would hold many more seats in the commons. They self-righteously pronounce that the NDP is the original and true party of the environment and that the Green Party copies their policies and splits the vote. Hence, one can sense the hatred the NDP has for the Greens and can understand their need to appear greener than the Green Party.
One can see their greener than green attitude with the NDP opposition to oilsands development, which they refer to, in the correct green buzzwords, as the “tar sands”. Ironically, the oilsands have created thousands of highly-paid union jobs, of the same unions that prop up the NDP. Unfortunately, union members themselves don’t usually vote as their union bosses tell them, perhaps that’s why the NDP feels they have more hope attracting green voters or at least hope to get them to return to the NDP.
To prove their Green credentials, one of the NDP’s publicity-seeking stunts was Bill C-474. One can almost feel that this scheme was hatched in conjunction with the usual suspect environmental groups, like Greenpeace and their ilk. These groups, as expected, supported this proposed legislation with all the political lobby and pressure they could muster. It’s all part of their grand green political design. When these duplicitous groups can’t convince the public of their malicious green schemes through common sense or science, they resort first to the courts to force change, when that doesn’t work they try to use sympathetic bureaucrats, and if that doesn’t work they will resort to manipulating dumb and/or conniving politicians. Apparently NDP and Bloc Quebecois politicians fit both latter descriptions.
And so the anti-GM Bill was invented with the NDP acting as a willing godfather to further their much desired image as the real ”Green” party to those urban voters who have strayed away from the NDP flock to vote for those dastardly other Green Party wolves. Fortunately other party politicians saw through this bit of duplicity and sent this idiotic piece of legislation to a much deserved oblivion.
I figure the NDP didn’t really care what the fate of the Bill was from the very beginning; they achieved what they wanted, vast amounts of free publicity for their green image which they will no doubt try to flog to their base voters in the big cities during the next election.