Disappointed with our government once again

I am astonished with our government. In a time when climate change and greenhouse gas emissions are of critical importance to the well being and safety of the entire world, Canada is doing its utmost to prevent any serious action from being taken.

The CBC news story is here

No targets. No commitments. Business as usual.

Although I am confident that history will be the ultimate judge, it saddens me that we will continue to make the problems worse, harder to solve, while extending the time needed to get the atmosphere back into balance.

Let's see some real leadership for a change.

New poll shows Greens edging ahead of NDP

This is an update to an earlier graph I did. The first two data points represent the national popular vote, by party, in the 2004 and 2006 general elections. The last point shows the voter preference as measured by the most recent Globe and Mail / CTV poll done by Strategic Counsel, which shows Liberal and Conservative support tied at 32%, the Greens in third place at 13%, NDP fourth at 12% and finally the Bloc at 11%.

Of course, the margin of error in the poll is about 3%, so the three parties are statistically speaking at the same level. However, Green support has been above Bloc support for some time now, and continues to trend up.

What is the significance of this? Well, it means that the Green Party is about to be in the House of Commons. As I commented earlier this year, all of the other parties are reluctant to trigger an election, since their numbers are down. Based on the graph above, the Liberals might be the only other party who would benefit from an election at this point, and that is a recent spike in the numbers, and so bears further watching.

Have a look at Jim Harris' blog for some of the implications of this trend.