Glover was busy telling any member of the media who would listen on Tuesday that she was premier, that she won the PC leadership race. Except she didn’t. The official count given by the party had her 363 votes shy of winning the leadership — which is a much closer result than most pundits suggest. This wreaks of desperation supported by innuendo and rumours of missing ballot boxes and incorrect spreadsheets.
Trudeau calls for carbon tax: At the UN climate conference in Glasgow, Justin Trudeau urged all countries to agree to a global price on carbon, CBC reports, and took credit for imposing such a tax on Canada: “It’s always been hard to do this. We know citizens want more action on climate, but are always worried that they’re going to be the ones paying for the brunt of it.”
Trudeau’s plea did not make international headlines, which were dominated by Joe Biden attacking the leaders of China and Russia for their absence, but CBC reports that Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, praised him.
Von der Leyen, the senior-most leader of the European Union, praised Canada’s leadership on the carbon tax file, saying it follows the EU’s emissions trading system, a cap-and-trade system that was first imposed on some industries on the continent in 2005. She also stood behind Trudeau’s call for some sort of carbon-pricing regime that applies to the global economy. “It’s been proven — it helped us decouple growth from greenhouse gas emissions. So you can prosper while cutting emissions,” she said, while touting the reductions seen across the power industry in Europe, where carbon emissions are down some 45 per cent since the trading system was first implemented.
Positive reviews: In the Post, John Ivison has a column saying Trudeau is right about the carbon tax. In the Globe, Gary Mason has a column saying Trudeau was smart to make Steven Guilbault environment minister because of climate change.
Cohen to Ottawa: The United States is sending an ambassador to Ottawa after two years, and it is not Shelly Glover. David Cohen was confirmed on Tuesday, CBC’s Alexader Panetta reports. Politico has a profile of the Philadelphia telecom executive (and political fundraiser), who sounds like an energetic person.
In an interview published earlier this month, Cohen gave Penn Today a glimpse of how he stays motivated. “People used to say to me that I don’t know how to say no, that I say yes to everything,” Cohen told the university publication. “And for two or three years, I asked my assistant to keep a list of everything I said no to. After a couple years, there were about 500 items on the list. So I argue, I do know how to say no, but I don’t say no to anything that’s important. I’ve long lived by the Ben Franklin line, that if you want something done, go find the busiest person and ask them to do it.”