CONCEPTION BAY SOUTH, NL-One day after promoting a strategy to make Canada a “green energy superpower,” Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff found himself defending what many consider to be the country’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.
At a morning campaign stop at a local coffee shop, Ignatieff rejected suggestions from a patron that the oilsands industry must be shut down.
“Whether we need them or not we got them and they employ Canadians,” Ignatieff said.
“We can’t get out of fossil fuels tomorrow. Look at all those cars out there. What do you think they’re going to run on?”Neil Aylward, a local worker at a geothermal energy company, responded that other forms of energy exist that cause less pollution.
A recent report by WWF International concluded that the planet could save $5.5 trillion a year by 2050 by charting a path toward making energy consumption 100 per cent renewable.
But Ignatieff said it will take longer to make that transition.
“Let’s be in the real world here, we’re going to be in the fossil fuel future for a least a couple of generations,” he told reporters after speaking to a few other customers about other issues.
Ignatieff also said he believed that the population hasn’t really started paying attention to the election, but that as soon as they do, he was confident they would recognize the difference between the Liberal platform and the policies of the Conservatives.
He said he would directly appeal to Quebecers who want to choose to replace Prime Minister Stephen Harper to vote Liberal as the best vehicle for change.
