This is her here today:  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7236803591204042715 and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Cullis-Suzuki

Don't know if you guys in the States know of her father, but her dad, David Suzuki, is the patron saint of the environmentalist movement here in Canada. 

So check this out.  Put aside what you think about the environmental debate and whether you think your car is a major destroyer of the environment for a second.  David has this foundation and they make sure that the Kyoto Agreement is impletmented by the UN to reduce greenhouse gases.  Well, the United States doesn't abide by the Kyoto Agreement but Canada does.  So...every couple of years I have to have an emissions test done on my car--to ultimately be in conformity with the Kyoto Agreement (which by the way does not apply across Canada).  If it doesn't pass the test, I have to either fix it for at least $400 or I can buy an extension every couple of weeks until I come up with the money to fix it.  Also, if I get caught driving without a proper sticker, the popo can penalize me.  One time I was caught and I had to pay $150.  That was about 5-6 years ago.

Now does this make sense?  So here is my car polluting the atmosphere and yet I'm allowed to continually extend putting off fixing the damn thing and driving around with bad emissions.  Most people fix the problem because after a while it can get pretty expensive.  But that's the point.  On the one hand the government in Canada will allow you to drive around a piece of crap, blowing smoke, yada, yada, yada....as long as you can pay for it!  Is this really environmentally conscious?

Second, if your car is over 20 years old?  You don't need emissions testing.  Most cars see the junkyard before that time. But hey, if your car does happen to make it to that point, you can drive it around and pollute the atmosphere!

Third, why don't they make emissions testing every year or every few months?  Seriously, by the time the two year emissions testing comes up and you have to fix your car, who knows how long you have been driving around polluting the environment so badly?  Eight months?  Nine months?  A year?  A year and a half?

Fourthly, I blame the damned Americans.  I live on the border to Detroit.  Americans come to Canada.  Americans don't abide by Kyoto.  So WHY THE HELL do Americans get to drive in MY country, polluting MY environment with their polluting cars?  You know why?  Because Canadians NEED Americans and they need the American greenback and so they can come over here and not abide by our laws, but poor little Brandon here HAS TO or else I pay stiffly.  Yeah.  Right up the butt.  No.  I don't blame the Americans.  I was just joking.  But it CERTAINLY is hypocritical of our provincial government to, on the one hand allow bad polluting cars to come over from the States (which by the way, the last time I looked, which was just yesterday, I didn't notice that there was a brick wall between Windsor and Detroit, so I can't be too sure that pollution from cars in Detroit aren't reaching me. Pollution knows no boundaries.  It doesn't have to clear customs) and yet tell its own citizens that they must abide by a "Drive Clean" program.  The bottomline is that my provincial government isn't really all that concerned about the environment.  All they care about is one thing:  $$$  This my friends is bad governing.

Post Edited (BBBCanada) : 7/19/2008 10:46:33 AM (GMT-5)