Harper's Canada Says Fuck You To The World and Kisses the Bush Administration's Ass

Mike De Souza of CanWest is doing a very thorough job of covering the Bali talks.

Today this piece of his contains the following nuggets. All emphasis mine.

"...sources close to the negotiations suggested that the U.S. and Canada worked in tandem in two separate committees to prevent the summit from recognizing that developed countries would need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Conservation groups at the summit suggested that Canadian Environment Minister John Baird was deliberately wrecking the discussions after he skipped a key meeting organized the previous night to resolve a negotiating deadlock.

Baird was personally invited to attend the meeting by the summit's president on Thursday, which was supposed to be the second-last day of the conference. But he failed to show up for the marathon negotiating session, which finished after three o'clock the next morning.

"What does it say about how seriously Mr. Baird is taking these negotiations?" asked Equiterre spokesperson Steven Guilbeault. "Imagine, you're a junior bureaucrat (from Canada), and you have in front of you the equivalent of a U.S. minister or a Chinese minister or a Japanese minister. I mean, there's a huge gap in terms of the authority, in terms of how autonomous the decisions you make can be, without having to go back and consult the delegation."

Government officials, however, said Baird read over a draft text of the issues and decided to give instructions about unresolved issues to key negotiators who were sent on his behalf to the special meeting of 40 ministers. He then went to a meeting of representatives from the so-called Umbrella group countries, which include Japan, Ukraine, New Zealand and Australia, because he felt that this smaller gathering was more important, federal officials said.

"The minister's job is to provide direction, inspire leadership, and get things done," said Prime Minister Stephen Harper's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas. He declined further comment.

"CanWest News Service has confirmed that Baird also left the final phase of crucial negotiations and retreated to his hotel room at least once on Friday. Sources say Canadian negotiators were left to create obstacles to stop Kyoto Protocol countries from recognizing the importance of binding targets.

The negotiating stalemate arose after Baird spoke to Harper to discuss Canada's strategy."

Baird talks to Harper and then "gets things done" by obstructing the conference even more completely.

Even without a majority government Harper has managed to change the country beyond recognition.

Let's hope the damage to our reputation gets bad enough that a Canadian passport will no longer be attractive to Mossad agents. At least something good should come of our stupidity in electing these dimwitted motherfuckers.