Stephen Harper’s “crazy” timeline on oil and gas regulation

Eight years of unfulfilled promises made by five environment ministers — and Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself. All gone in one “crazy” moment.

On Tuesday, Harper said it’s “crazy” to consider regulating the oil and gas sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — backtracking on the government’s stated position since 2006. His comments were a dominant theme during Question Period today.

With so many empty Conservative words to work with, we created a “crazy” timeline of the Harper government’s contradictions and broken promises on oil and gas regulation: 

Of course, some observers found Harper’s latest statement a little crazy in its own right:

In QP today, the PM broke his promise to regulate emissions in the oil & gas sector http://t.co/3KfZw7N9Tq

— Megan Leslie, MP (@MeganLeslieMP) December 9, 2014

So, @PMHarper, if oil/gas regulations don’t work at $65 a barrel, at what price are they “uncrazy”? $80? $100?

— David Akin (@davidakin) December 9, 2014

So, @pmharper has just made it clear that a) Canada’s oil sands are within $1/bbl of disaster and b) not compatible w GHG policies. #cdnpoli

— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) December 9, 2014

Harper even went so far as to claim “nobody in the world is regulating their oil and gas sector.”

But as the Canadian Press points out, Environment Canada’s own documents describe the United States as having imposed “significant” limits on its oil and gas sector in 2012. So, in fact, some countries do regulate their oil and gas sectors.

Another report shows the government may have quietly stepped away from planning oil and gas regulations in 2013.

How crazy is that?

(Sources: Harper, Ambrose, Baird, Prentice, Kent, Throne Speech, Aglukkaq and Harper again).

Photo: Dori. Used under Creative Commons SA 3.0 license.