Turner's ouster: was it linked to Clean Air Act?

Was is just a coincidence that the expulsion of Halton MP Garth Turner from the federal Conservative caucus came the day before Environment Minister Rosa Ambrose introduced the Clean Air Act, the long-promised replacement for the much-maligned efforts of previous Liberal governments to combat greenhouse gases?

After all, Turner had long been critical of what turned out to be key features of the proposed Tory legislation, among them abandonment of just about everything the previous Liberal governments had tried to do and the indefinite postponement of any actual reduction in the overall production of the gases believed to be responsible for world-wide climate changes.

Although the official version given out of the reason for his expulsion was the MP's frequent breaches of caucus confidentiality via his Web site "blogs," no examples of such breaches were offered and Turner denies their existence.

Undoubtedly, every Canadian political party would prefer to have all their members thinking the same way on every subject, and the fact is that most of them do. Acase in point is the occasional rewards David Tilson has been given for his unwavering loyalty as Conservative MP for Dufferin-Caledon, a recent example being a jaunt to Europe earlier this month, where he was part of a Canadian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, held in Berlin and Strasbourg, and as such sat in on several inter-sessional committee meetings.

The ouster of Turner, who happens to own several Caledon businesses, raises some interesting questions, among them, how essential is it in our parliamentary system to have "caucus confidentiality"?

In the traditional form of parliamentary government, cabinet secrecy and the related concept of cabinet unanimity have been a given. Government must be seen to speak with a single voice, and a cabinet minister who decides he or she must dissent has no choice but to resign and sit as an ordinary member.

In the real world, both secrecy and unanimity have been difficult to obtain.

Any member of a parliamentary or legislative caucus is potentially faced with a conflict between the wishes of the leadership and those expressed by his or her constituents.

Classically, legislation that would benefit some parts of the country or province but not the member's own constituency pose a real dilemma, which in some cases is resolved only by the member not speaking publicly on the subject and/or not being present during a vote.

That's clearly not the case in the United States, where members of both the Senate and House of Representatives will almost routinely speak out against a policy adopted by the party's leadership or the administration.

In Canada, some members of Parliament and Ontario legislators have occasionally spoken out against some aspect of their party's platform, but few if any have had a problem with the concept of caucus confidentiality, much less faced ouster for violating it. Senior reporters covering Parliament Hill and Queen's Park say they have no difficulty finding out what happened at a party caucus by simply approaching a politician with whom they have established mutual trust and reassuring him or her that anything said won't be attributed.

As for the Clean Air Act, we suspect there had indeed been some discussion of the government's plans in caucus, and that the discussion led to Turner becoming deeply distressed at the prospect of it becoming law.

The MP knew full well that most of his constituents wanted to see firm and fast action aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Rightly or wrongly, the proposed legislation is being portrayed by environmentalists (but not the business community) as merely postponing indefinitely any meaningful action and ensuring that our fastest-growing source of greenhouse gases.

Perhaps the worst part of the Harper government's proposal is the idea that after years of discussions with the provinces and polluters, the next three years should be spent in more such talks.

Surely if the government is seriously concerned about the greenhouse-gases problem it would have at least proposed something more imaginative, such as having the government's own Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. develop a nuclear reactor capable of supplying the heat needed to liquefy tar sands without burning massive amounts of fossil fuels.

It will be interesting, indeed, to see whether the three opposition parties that oppose the Act's major thrusts can find a way of approving parts of the legislation that everyone agrees are needed and likely well overdue.