Dear editor,
I’d like to send John Duncan my dry-cleaning bill; I spilled coffee all over my pants after I saw his ad “John supports the environment.” Canada has become an environmental laughing stock under the Harper Conservatives, blocking global efforts to fight climate change and winning more fossil awards than are in the Royal BC Museum.
But particularly amusing was his touting of the “ecoTRUST fund to finance green initiatives” that he boasted was “created” in the 2011 budget. This program has a long history that illustrates the Conservative desire to appear to care about the environment.
It starts in 1998 when the Liberal government created EnerGuide, a very popular program to help people retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient. Despite its popularity, opposition leader Stephen Harper hated it, and he killed it after he was elected in 2006.
In 2007, Harper changed his mind and created EcoEnergy, which was the same as EnerGuide except for the name, so Harper could appear to be taking action on a green issue. EcoEnergy proved to be just as popular as EnerGuide, but we all know Harper is fickle and last year, he killed EcoEnergy just like he killed EnerGuide.
And now, with an election happening, he changed his mind again and created ecoTRUST, which does the same as EnerGuide, which he killed, and EcoEnergy, which he created and killed.
So forgive me if I’m unwilling to give Duncan and Harper credit for recreating a program they’ve already killed twice.
I will say this, though — their commitment to recycling old programs and pretending they’re new is quite impressive.
Kevin Langlands,
Courtenay