The 2008 election campaign is over. Post chaos analyses continue with journalists quick to point out who lost (and occasionally feeble attempts to identify who won.) They all missed the boat!!

The Canadian people lost!. The first obvious loss was $300 million spent in an election to achieve so little. But the bigger fiasco was the ease with which the most significant issue was side tracked from energy / environment to the economy. Economically that issue was simple. It had little to do with Wall Street or even the Bush administration mismanagement. Canada was doing fine with budget surpluses year after year as buffers against financial uncertainties. There was no danger of deficits until the 'new' government decided to drop first 1% then a second 1% from the GST against the advice of almost every economist in the country except the one in power. That political decision, with no economic logic, is chickens coming home to roost.

Jeffery Simpson (Hot Air, 1908) detailed the failure of every environmental plan of successive governments, conservative or liberal, over the past two decades. The latest plan put forward by the opposition was a ball fumbled on the one yard line. Atax on fossil fuel (carbon) could have caught the imagination of Canadians if only it had been put in the context of supporting development of alternative energy sources. A global warming tax could have been used to gradually reduce our dependence on fossil fuels for electrical generation as well as limiting vehicle and industrial emissions.

Environmentally improved transportation fuels will eventually get a boost from cellulosic biodiesel production from waste wood and biomass plantations. Finnish technology currently provides an example of what can be achieved through forest technology. Canada has the advantage of vast areas of forest land and will eventually lead the world, but policy incentives to encourage such development will be needed to facilitate such effort. It is interesting that a small country such as Norway is leading in development of the ultimate transportation fuel. Electricity generated by surplus (inconsistent) wind power is impossible to store, but can be used to produce a storable product such as hydrogen, a non-polluting energy source.

Globally there are vast areas of marginal, i.e. low productivity lands, deserts, overgrazed savannahs, worn out agricultural soils, etc. A major move is being made to convert such lands to energy production. For example British and Indian companies are exploring the possibility of purchasing huge areas in the third world for production of high oil content nuts from a little known tree species, (Jatropha curcas). Canadian foreign policy could encourage investment in such marginally productive lands in tropical countries which may well provide future oil in lieu of the fossil fuels we now depend on from Saudi Arabia and other mid-east countries.

Unquestionably, development of new energy industries is going to cost money, but hardly the levels that first world industries poured into extraction of oil over the past century in the mid-east. Canadian policies, in the form of tax exemptions and subsidies, channeled through CIDA programs could support the development of alternative fuel sources which may well result in non-polluting energy imports to meet a portion of Canada's needs. At the same time collection of oil bearing nuts attacks another even greater global problem, poverty alleviation, inasmuch as this technology is labour intensive, providing livelihood for the rural poor on the fringes of society. Canadian leadership would be popular politically as well as economically beneficial.

In recent years, to the surprise of Canadian political leaders, Canadians stood up and demanded action to solve global environmental problems. Numerous politically popular initiatives involving cooperative corporate and government investment could have been investigated to provide social, environmental and economic returns. Such lost opportunities represent failures by both major political parties in this election. However, whatever losses the Canadian people sustained by such political ineptitude could yet be overcome if we are prepared to stand up and make our legislators pay attention to what we feel are our real concerns.