How green is Canada’s Green Party?

For Canada to meet its Kyoto targets, Alberta’s oil sands are the single biggest issue. In the next decade, the world’s largest industrial project is supposed to triple in size, deliver a large part of our oil and provide huge revenues for government coffers. But if the present growth rate continues, forget Kyoto. An ancient boreal landscape the size of Florida will be obliterated and carbon emissions will soar.

Enter the Green Party, showered with publicity recently due to the election of a new leader, Elizabeth May, former head of Canada’s Sierra Club chapter. To find out what to expect from the party, one could read its “Platform 2006,” expecting to find concrete, decisive plans to minimize the oil sands’ threat to the nation’s emissions targets. Platform 2006, however, doesn’t even mention the oil sands. Not once. The Green Party election platform completely fails to address Canada’s number one environmental issue.

HOUR Magazine