Clean Air Act Committee - Liberals citing the Climate Action Network

Just going over the unofficial/unedited transcripts from the C-30 Committee from last week a bit more. Nothing particularly exciting in their first meeting (December 14, 2006) - just a lot of discussion about committee format, etc., with plenty of partisan jockeying for position. In the second meeting (Jan 29), they spent more time trying to set out a schedule for the committee meetings, which quickly became a larger discussion on the overall purpose of the committee. The Liberals, in particular, were pressing the Conservatives for more details on how C-30 is meant to fit into an overall climate change plan. Lots of political back-and-forth again, of course.
The most interesting event from my point of view to come out of these discussions/descents into posturing was the Liberals' use of a critique of Bill C-30 put out by the Climate Action Network the week before (January 22nd). To quote John Godfrey (NOTE - again, these are unofficial transcripts and therefore may contain errors):

There are a number of issues which have been identified by the non-governmental organizations very effectively in a submission to us and it would seem to me that the template that the NGOs have laid out have identified correctly the major concerns which we all felt in the month of October, when we had a problem collectively, that is to say the three opposition parties and the NGO community speaking unanimously....I'm not saying that we will endorse every single thing that the NGOs have said in terms of targets or anything else. What I will say is I think they have correctly identified the challenges we had with the original draft of the bill, way back when, which all of us agreed with.

Link to the CANet backgrounder
For a copy of the transcripts, write to CC30@parl.gc.ca

My comments:
For me this underscores the effectiveness of (a) the use of a broad coalition such as CANet by the environmental NGOs and (b) the type of detailed legislative critique that CANet and its members have been putting out. For example, the CANet backgrounder specifically calls for the inclusion of long term GHG reductions targets in C-30, based on a target of 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. This is the kind of serious target that neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals have been willing to commit to yet (I don't see Harper's 50% of 2006 levels in 2050 as a serious target) . To have the Liberals setting out CANet's position as a standard in this committee is very satisfying to see.