McGuinty Breaks Another Environmental Promise

From The Star:

The Ontario government has quietly reneged on a national commitment to reduce the level of mercury in air pollution, the Toronto Star has learned.

Sources say the Liberal government's recent decision to break a 2003 cornerstone campaign promise and keep open the province's pollution-spewing coal-fired generating plants well past 2009 is behind the policy U-turn.

I have to admit this one disappoints me. Although the McGuinty Government has done some good on the Environmental front (Green Belt Legislation, for example), they made too many promises that were pie-in-the-sky and unkeepable, and these are catching up with them one-by-one.

Doesn't seem to be costing them in the polls, but sad nevertheless.

Update, 11:41 AM: Turns out the dude at Accidental Deliberations has written on the same topic this morning:

For now the end result is expected to be only a delay in the announcement, but Ontario's decision to back away from what was to have been a national commitment will do nothing but offer political cover for other governments who in turn repudiate either the mercury-emissions goal or other agreed environmental standards. And with the most powerful Lib government left in the country refusing to live up to even its existing environmental commitments, it'll be all the tougher for the federal party to plausibly claim interest in the environment as one of its core values, rather than a convenient campaign plank to be ignored after election time.

Which is, unfortunately, quite true.