McGuinty’s forest plan to save the world… and industry

The news of McGuinty’s recent foray into saving the world from Global Warming and/or Climate Change has reached Europe but they do not hear his superficial public relations exercises as often as we do:

“It’s our responsibility as global citizens to get this right, and to act now,” McGuinty said.

Wow! I am starting to feel better already!

All I see from this recent announcement is a hidden delay in any future commitment to protect the boreal forest with a token appeal to the aboriginal population tossed into the mix. I find it despicable that he would use the recent environmental fad as his main talking point:

The Ontario government says protecting this region is key to its plan to fight climate change. The forests and peat lands in the Far North store about 97 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide and absorb around 12.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the government said.

If I owned the boreal forest, I would aim to protect it for its own sake not for the sake of protecting the world from climate change. That is why I think this is just smoke and mirrors again from a Liberal government. It sounds to me like new logging and mining contracts are in the works and the government has to lessen the blow:

Mining generated about $11 billion in Ontario in 2007, and McGuinty said he was confident the consultations on the new protected area of the forest won’t cause any damage to the growing sector.

“We don’t want to compromise that, but we do want to ensure that our mining efforts in the province of Ontario are respectful of Ontarians, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike.”

I think Gord is right:

The troubling part of the story as I first heard it is that it will take 10+ years to map out what area is to be declared off-limits. For the industries this is bad because it throws an incredible amount of uncertainty into their future planning.
—SNIP—
The idea is good. And admittedly discernment is needed to determine which areas to preserve. But 10 years is too long. Too long to wait, too much uncertainty.

Yes, that delay is troubling. However, the cynic in me says those ten years are long enough to sneak in government favoritism before these hypothetical future restrictions come into effect — sneak in contracts that would not bode well with the landowners nor with the public.