IN THE Byzantine world of Parliament Hill politics, it is wise to assume that all deliberate decisions are made for a strategic purpose.
It would explain why Bill C-33, amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act that lay the groundwork for creating a government-mandated and subsidized biofuel industry in Canada, is considered by the Conservative government a piece of farm legislation rather than environmental legislation.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz rather than environment minister John Baird sponsored it in the House of Commons.
Once approved in principle by MPs, it was referred for study to the Commons agriculture committee rather than environment. The agriculture committee is giving it perfunctory study and will send it back to the Commons next week for final approval without really probing whether this is good environmental policy or even good agricultural policy.
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The advantage to the government of designating the ethanol policy as a farm issue is that it can be sold as a good news agriculture and rural story, a factor in record high grain and oilseed prices, a creator of a domestic market for grains that otherwise would be exported, a creator of economic growth.
Rural-sympathetic MPs on the agriculture committee were bombarded by pleas from sectors benefiting from the biofuel phenomenon to move the legislation quickly because without government support, investment in biofuel infrastructure will falter.
MPs responded, egged on by agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, by hearing limited witnesses and giving credence only to those who said this is the salvation of rural Canada.
Critics faced a regular Conservative suggestion that if they did not support biofuel, they were opposed to grain farmers finally getting a decent price.
So the biofuel bill goes back to the Commons for approval with some serious questions unanswered, supported by MPs seemingly not interested in the answers.
Their argument is simple: biofuel development helps raise prices, grain farmers like it and it is good for the environment.
If the bill had been referred to the environment committee, the analysis of its credentials would have been far more tough, the assumptions of biofuel development as an environmental boon closely questioned.
With all the carbon used to plant, fertilize, harvest, transport and process grain-based ethanol, is it an environmental plus?
There are arguments on both sides, including credible skeptics, but the agriculture committee MPs paid them little heed.
Is spending $1.5 billion of public money the most cost-effective way to make the modest environmental gains that biofuel offers or to create the rural jobs the industry promises?
At the agriculture committee, these questions were not seriously considered.
Instead, Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen called supporting biofuel development a “no-brainer” and MPs enthusiastically agreed.
University of Lethbridge economist Kurt Klein was not nearly as well received when he complained that the Canadian government is negligent by launching a major and costly public policy without a serious and detailed cost-benefit analysis.
No matter what side of the ethanol debate you’re on, surely that makes sense.
