It’s Getting Hot In Here

Although I was unable to make the journey to Nairobi this year, I did have the incredible pleasure of watching the clip of Rona Ambrose doing the notorious ‘its hot in here’ dance. I am sure anyone who witnessed that either directly or indirectly is wondering if, following Stephen Harpers cabinet shuffle, new environment minister John Baird will have similar moves.

Stephen Harper did some rearranging last Thursday, the most high profile change being the switch of former Environment Minister Rona Ambrose to intergovernmental affairs and replacing her with the often-controversial John Baird. Some of Baird’s provincial career highlights including proposals that all welfare recipients should have to undergo mandatory drug testing with a threat of being cut off of the funding if tests were positive, as well as having to pass a literacy test before receiving social support. Federally (a member of parliament since Jan. 2006) Baird also notoriously announced cuts to 66 federal programmes, which included Status to Women and literacy programmes on the same day that the federal government announced its 13.2 billion dollar surplus.

The shuffle is allegedly in preparation for an impending federal election, and based on the widely acknowledged failure of Ms. Ambrose to successfully ’sell’ the Conservative’s Clean Air Act, few were surprised by her replacement. Stephane Dion, new leader of the federal Liberal party has repeated that the shuffle is solely aesthetic and that you cannot expect anyone to convince Global partners of a bad proposal.

All history aside, Baird has stepped up from previous conservative positions by admitting that unusual weather that even he has noticed is ‘a huge concern‘. Baird has remained silent on his position on the Kyoto protocol, but used ample amounts of a speech-writers time criticizing the previous 13 years of Liberal environmental policy.

Anything is possible in politics, but borrowed from a good friend Ben, it is kind of like rearranging the chairs on the titanic…..