From the climate hypocrisy files, which already bulged right out of the cabinet during the election as climate warriors whooshed about the land trailing CO2, we pull a note from a reader about how last year the federal government dropped $5.4 million on Long Beach Airport. And if you don’t know where it is, well, the Prime Minister sure does, because it’s not the one in California. It’s the one on the west coast of Vancouver Island between scenic Ucluelet and breathtaking Tofino, to which the Prime Minister routinely flies in a big jet airplane to surf while hectoring us about our carbon footprints including immediately after the election.
One tires of cataloging the hypocrisy of the rich and famous on this as on so many files. But it matters here for more important reasons than jealousy. Very simply, they tell us it’s possible to live with far less fossil fuels but cannot themselves manage to do it.
The west coast of Vancouver Island is certainly worth seeing. (And true story: the Executive Director of CDN slept on Long Beach during part of one remarkable “misspent youth” summer.) We don’t begrudge anyone the beauty of nature including the ocean and its waves. Provided they extend the same courtesy to us.
If by contrast they insist that we must all live within our carbon means, we ask pointedly whether eastern Ontario and western Quebec do not offer scenery as spectacular as any to be found in BC or indeed the planet. It is not easy to hang ten on the Rideau, we concede. But we must all make sacrifices, at least if Mr. Trudeau is to be believed. And surely even for a man as visibly devoted to physical sport as our alpha male Prime Minister there are activities near Ottawa that call forth all one’s powers of strength, balance and endurance.
Like surfing a giant wave of hypocrisy and tax money. Very popular right in the nation’s capital.
Seriously, though, why won't any reporter ask Trudeau, Singh, and May if they will commit to reducing their party's, and the governments's, air miles by 3% per year until 2030? If it's the crisis they say it is, shouldn't they be pitching in?