I note this from the Twitter feed of President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Canada, Mr. David L. Cohen.
“Today I met virtually with Canadian climate leaders, @gmbutts, @cathmcKenna, and @MarkJCarney, for an engaging discussion on how Canada and the United States can work together to achieve our shared goals toward a greener, cleaner future.”
It’s quite encouraging to see the White House-appointed emissary to our frigid northern expanse, making a deep effort to acquaint himself with so broad, so comprehensive and so diverse a spectrum of Canadian public opinion on the great issues of global warming, carbon taxes, and the doom machinery of the oil and gas industry.
He covered all the bases with this trio, walked through the alphabet all the way from A to B, with Gerald Butts, Catherine McKenna, and Mark Carney. What does it matter if none of them is currently in government?
Ask any Canadian in any coffee shop, even a Starbucks in downtown Vancouver, what they think of this trinity of environmentalist moderates, and he — or it could be she — will tell you they cover the entire range of the solid green band of the color spectrum. Mr. Cohen didn’t miss a shade of green.
How green is my Zoom call? Well, Catherine McKenna is double green, as green as the leaves on some tropical rainforest tree when the light of day drains into twilight. There are emeralds less green, and certainly less traveled.
Gerald Butts, a former adviser to both Dalton McGuinty and Justin Trudeau, is Canada’s Plato of green. Mr. B. is greener than an Irish heart on Paddy’s Day, when some ancient fiddler summons the mournful melody of Oh Danny Boy at the funeral of a beloved cat.
Carney — the “designated-driver” of the Liberal party once Trudeau tires of the exertions that come with its leadership — is global green, greener than Long John Silver’s parrot, greener than cabbages harvested at moonrise from Elizabeth May’s backyard vegetable patch on Earth Day.
Speaking of which, why, Mr. Ambassador, was Ms. May not on your Zoom call? Here in Canada, she is the very Boadicea of global warming. Was it a technical problem? Or, perhaps Saanich doesn’t have Zoom, from well-documented fears of radiation harms, something like cellphones.
When all four got past the “good to see you’s” and the virtual high-fives over the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline — Biden’s first executive action as president, and a bold stroke for energy self-sufficiency in North America.
Bring on the windmills and charge up the Teslas — I wonder if talk turned to Alberta. What did Gerry and Cathy and Mark have to offer in terms of speeding up the destruction of that bleak province’s satanic oil and gas industry?
Did you try out some thoughts about bringing Premier Jason Kenney before the International Court of Justice? This is an avenue well worth the exploration, and you could drag in Premier Andrew Furey of Newfoundland for his coddling of offshore rigs.
Look up some of David Suzuki’s musings on “politicians as climate criminals.” Suzuki, who is himself by the way, fluorescently green, is a bit of a pioneer on how the venerable doctrine of the Rule of Law is best understood as it coincides with his opinions and the exciting concept that criminality and disagreement with him, are one and the same thing.
He is a veritable Blackstone of environmental law.
(Note: Mr. Cohen, this was a serious slip on the part of your staff. Cathy and Gerry and Mark are all very good in their way. But, you don’t go to the Vatican to meet the Swiss Guards when you could have an audience with Christ’s Vicar Himself. I suggest you call David immediately and suggest a one-on-one as a makeup gesture and an apology. Of Greenness, Mr. Suzuki is the very shamrock and lime fruit. End of Note.)
Back to Alberta. Did you figure out a way to make things worse for the oilsands? Was thought given to completely razing Fort McMurray, and reconfiguring it as a world dumpsite for dead Tesla batteries? The Musk Mausoleum.
Or, along the lines of what some have suggested as a COVID measure, introducing a provision that the owners of pickup trucks and SUVs be denied hospital admission for any and every injury and complaint.
Obviously, I do not know what you four, in the delicate ether of Zoom, actually talked about. But I am certain Mr. Cohen that the call was, as Bertie Wooster frequently remarked — I think he got the phrase from Jeeves — a “feast of reason and a flow of [green] soul.”
Congratulations, Sir, on being so quickly and thoroughly in touch with major Canadian sentiment on global warming and the noxious existence of Alberta, oil, and Premier Kenney.
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