First panic, then no big deal.

I thought I was joking last night when I said maybe *Canada’s New Government* hit the wrong quick-dial button when they sent the environmental speech to the Liberal offices last night, but that’s the reason they’re giving this AM:

The blunder occurred because of a wrong fax number that was printed in a government directory, said Baird’s spokesperson, Mike Van Soelen.

Nice. Even more interesting was the government’s reaction once they found out what they had done :

It was an embarrassing slip-up and sent the government into panic-mode reaction… What the government could not explain is why it reacted with panic as it did when the speech leaked out, especially since it was Baird’s office that warned the Liberals the information was subject to the laws surrounding secrecy of the markets and securities. Then, once it was out, government officials quickly phoned the media to say it was no big deal.

It’s called ‘let’s try to put on our best face possible on a major screw-up”. This is a group used to tightly controlling information to the media and trying to highly script announcements. So, this gaffe probably sent the spin doctors into hysterics. Once they realized what had happened and how silly it made them all look, they then tried to pretend it was just another speech - “no big deal”. Anything to look in control still.

I wont comment too much yet on the actual substance of the speech til we get official numbers, but it looks like according to the report that the Conservatives are using 2006 benchmarks for their pollution targets, not 1990 as dictated by the Kyoto treaty. So, this plan will be significantly weaker then the Kyoto protocol demands - not a huge shock coming from this bunch who were forecasting economic apocalypse if we tried to keep to the Kyoto standard.