New Democrats with 'wide-eyed disgust'; parliament's honest brokers for the environment

I suppose I might start with this article, which stated the following:

"Sitting in the middle of the debate wearing looks of wide-eyed disgust are the New Democrats. And while this praise doesn't come easily to me, there's not much doubt they're the honest brokers of the debate. They've pushed for speedy action on the government's bill and have proposed a series of amendments to expedite it along."

I suppose we could all attempt to imagine a parliament in which the best attempt to move forward on a issue with a minority government is to put forward non-binding motions and bills demanding the government enact Kyoto. That would have been as far as it would have gone, and while parliamentary confrontation and opposition is not all that bad, it would seem that on this issue calling for some dialog is not only necessary, but more likely to succeed.

We now see the Conservatives are in a position where they have two options:

Which one will it be?

You see Liberals? This is how you negotiate. This happens to also be a great way to embarrass your opponents (something I'm surprised you have yet to do, as it seems to be your sole objective in parliament).

However, I will say it first. The committee to amend this has to thank all of the opposition parties for co-operating and agreeing on the amendments. Without which the act might have still made it through with dangerous Conservative relics still included. I suppose everyone would now need to forgive and forget the fact that the Liberals attempted to stall this committee by blocking in enough speakers to put the process after the budget. they were successful by the way, and because of the Bloc's support for the budget, we are now facing this in dangerous timing to the budget and several potential non-confidence motions. The Liberals were quite content to see this amendment process fail for the purposes of keeping some exclusive branding on the environmental issue-- how short-sighted. Dion lost a lot of credibility with that kind of reckless sabotage.

Elizabeth May checked in on this process, first taking the opportunity to claim that Jack Layton did things according to political expediency, and did not care for the issues or getting results. She then continued to say that the process gave far too much legitimacy and attention to a dangerous bill. Indeed the bill was quite dangerous, but I can't believe that this is the politician who campaigns against cynicism in politics! To her credit, she said that she would like to be proven wrong. Mrs. May, can we expect a few less jabs at Jack now? Are you going to stop slobbering for patronage with the Liberals to give the nod to the NDP? I hope you will, but I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't. After all courtesy to even those who threaten your political career is a principled decision to make.

So what now? Will Dion try and re-brand this as a Liberal enterprise? Can he? Can he afford not to? I'm thinking specifically of all the articles which documented the Liberals stalling the process, and all the quotes that surrounded his caucus saying that they were reluctant to participate in the process.

Ultimately, even as a partisan, I'm hesitant to ruin the "multi-partisan" nature of this action. Though, I can already see the spin doctors working away, figuring how they can rewrite history. Certainly, May will set the pace: no credit will go to the NDP, no nods, nada. Frankly, none is needed or expected. I'm glad that this will get results on climate change. The other parties are welcome to ignore the trust invested by the NDP in parliament, my hope is that the Canadian electorate will not be so easy to ignore.