OTTAWA -- Opposition MPs and environmentalists are baffled and outraged by warnings from a Conservatives MP that aggressive action to fight climate change and air pollution could lead to an increase in domestic violence and suicides.
The remarks were made Thursday by Tory member of Parliament Jeff Watson at a parliamentary committee studying the minority government's proposed "clean air" legislation.
"With short-term transition toward medium- and long-term targets, there's potential for a lot of dislocation, which is a term for some very painful costs along the way: job loss, anxiety, depression, bankruptcy, domestic violence, costs to employment insurance or retraining, loss of charitable dollars in communities for people who used to have high paying jobs but don't anymore and the social services that are funded by those, and in rare instances, suicide," said Watson, the MP for the Windsor, Ont. riding of Essex .
This is the same Jeff Watson whose ex-campaign manager was recently acquitted of uttering death threats against him in the midst of a fairly tawdry sex scandal. I am not sure how these two events are linked, but they're a good way of bringing the terms "Tory fear-mongering" and "Tory sex scandal" into the same post.
In any case, Martin is being challenged by several other Tories for the nomination in Windsor/Essex, and apparently his challengers (Jeff Lappan, Craig Ball) are fairly hopeless cases. It is therefore incumbent upon all good Liberals to point out that Jeff Martin is not the sharpest knife in the drawer either, and encourage their Conservative brethren out in Windsor to take a flyer on a second string wing-nut when nomination time rolls around.
