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Essentially Ms. McKenna’s simplistic slogan tries to pass off as a truism, a self-evident axiom, an impossible-to-achieve, equal and mutual correspondence between two of the most intricately dynamic, various systems known to peoplekind. What a dream that is.

As explanatory or descriptive of the dynamics of a modern industrial nation, it is simplistic mush.

As explanatory or descriptive of the dynamics of a modern industrial nation, it is simplistic mush

This should be no surprise. The simplistic is the natural idiom of the current government. Ms. McKenna shares with Mr. Trudeau a fondness for slogan rhetoric, delivered in a staccato of progressive thought-bubbles, stale haikus on what Canada is or is not all about, and the unimpeachable verities and virtues of sacerdotal diversity.

Reality can’t be captured in a yoga-mat motto. Far from hand in hand, the economy and the environment are always going to be in strong tension, sometimes in actual fraught opposition.

For example, consider the question: Should one build a small waste-disposal plant, get 15 jobs for a small town, or save the rare puff-breasted, beakless codswallop? Both cannot be accommodated. It’s either jobs or the squawk-challenged codswallop.

Photo by David Bloom/Postmedia News

One social ambition has to be purchased at the cost, partial or total, of another. This is, as we learned from Lucretius, the nature of things.

However, it is in the political and ideological domain where the assertion that the economy and the environment go hand in hand is seen to be utterly fallacious, not just wrong, but precisely the negative of the reality.