I couldn’t help myself, had to peek at the news. A headline said that
Trudeau had installed Steven Guilbeault in charge of the climate
portfolio, so I rubber-necked on over to see the car wreck. Of more
interest, frankly, was where the man he was replacing, Jonathan
Wilkinson, was going. Wilkinson, a two-decade green-tech exec, had shown
zero interest in the world’s primary and utterly dominant energy system
while in the Environment/Climate Change seat, and had brought the
trademark Trudeau thoughtless zeal to the portfolio – that is,
converting UN verbiage directly into Canadian policy. No thought was
required for the portfolio, as we saw when Trudeau jumped into a
conference call this past spring to announce that Canada’s “old” target
of a 30 percent emissions reduction by 2030 would now fall by “40-45
percent” in the same timeframe. (Wilkinson explained the double-down
thusly: “Canada’s Strengthened Climate Plan [the old one] put us on
track to not just meet but to exceed our 2030 emissions goal – but we
were clearly aware that more must be done.” The stupidity inherent
therein is impressive even by political standards; the feds had no clear
path as to how to get to even the first target (picking an end goal is
not a plan). Given the stakes – Canada’s economic future – and the
foolishness of these meanderings, I wondered where Wilkinson would land,
presumably some culturally imperative wasteland like the Department of
Culture or some such political nursing home.
Hoo boy, was I wrong again. Just as last week I whined about how
badly I’d missed the speed of the looming energy crisis, I misjudged
Trudeau’s infatuation with putting climate activists in places of
maximal destructive impact. Wilkinson, as you all know, now heads up the
Natural Resources department. We now have the Skipper and Gilligan in
charge of Natural Resources and Environment/Climate Change, trying to
get off the island by building a submarine out of coconuts after
declaring the Professor irrelevant. You may wish to head for the exit,
although more on that in a second.
Putting Guilbeault on the climate emergency file makes sense; in
order to lead the fight against zombies, one must believe in them.
Guilbeault’s Greenpeace indoctrination checks that box like a nuclear
warhead; it makes him the perfect person to lead the crusade. Greenpeace
training involves bringing down things that don’t meet their approval,
then offering academic doctrine as the solution. There is no doubt he
will excel at it.
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Full Column - EXCELLENT as usual.