Flit

Delacourt: why she's the worst

Wondering why Susan Delacourt was voted the worst working print journalist in Canada today? All you have to do is read her story on an alleged global warming flip-flop today. It's truly a piece of work.

Delacourt comes up with 3 previous quotes from the PM that she seems to feel contradict his statement yesterday that global warming required "real and substantive action". They are:

1) "As we implement our clean-air agenda, the focus is a little different than the other parties. They focus only on so-called greenhouse gases and ignored smog entirely." (2006)

2) "The science is still evolving." (2004)

3) "It's a scientific hypothesis, a controversial one and one that I think there is some preliminary evidence for. ... This may be a lot of fun for a few scientific and environmental elites in Ottawa, but ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what this (Kyoto accord) will do to their economy and lifestyle, when the benefits are negligible." (2002)

None of these statements, it should be obvious, amount to a previous disagreement by Harper with global warming theory. From the last quote, one can conclude that his position has actually been admirably consistent over the last several years: that regardless of whether one believes in the dangers posed by global warming (and frankly, at this point you'd have to be something of an idiot not to), the commitments the previous Liberal government made to this file at the Kyoto conference were impossible for Canada to reach, and would inevitably have to be renegotiated or disavowed. As well, everything in the three statements Delacourt quotes from Harper today is the straight out truth, as was his statement on the matter yesterday.

Look, this kind of drive-by assassination through selective quoting and deliberate misinterpretation should have been beneath any reputable newspaper. Not the Star today, however. It's also fair to say that Delacourt never gave the same treatment of ex-PM Paul Martin, the preferred electoral choice of her paper, who was only rarely capable of holding a consistent position for more than about five minutes or so.

Word

The PM:
“The Liberals and the Bloc tell me: 'rebalance' the [Afghan] mission. What does that mean? I mean, what the hell does that mean?”