Carpe Trudeau

Where the old murals have been gone since May,
new graffiti spontaneously appears,
but something's missing.

This past week I reconnected with a federal colleague that I had not spoken to for a bit better than two years. He works on climate change in the newly renamed federal Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change. 

Speaking of change, things for him are now transformed beyond reckoning.

Despite rampant rumours that Stephane Dion would get the job, I correctly guessed that the new federal minister would be a girl. 

When Catherine McKenna's name and background information came out, the people I work with looked at her date of birth and concluded they'd wasted their lives.

My federal colleague reported that he'd already met her, not officially, not part of a Transition Team mass hand shake, but in front of the environment offices at Place Vincent Massey in Gatineau, where the brand new minister stood on the sidewalk and greeted staffers as they came to work.

After a decade of working for a government unconcerned with protecting the environment or fighting climate change, my federal colleague now has the opportunity to support a government that seems hell bent on both.

The dreariest aspect of the so-far fairy-tale-calibre first few days of Justin Trudeau's tenure as Prime Minister is how many media hacks have to hone in immediately on the "this can't last long" story line.

I'm going to enjoy this while I can. I was at the Conference of the Parties last year in Lima, where the world's expectations of Canada were too low to measure. 

I will be going to the Conference of the Parties again this year in Paris. 

It'll be different.

There we go.

This week's moral: "Honeymoons can save the world."

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen