Article content continued

It is a very dumb and offensive law. But it is also a very clear law, which makes no special allowance for objective facts or global crises. So I’ve no idea why everyone is yelling at Elections Canada. “What Elections Canada is doing is wrong, is harmful to this election and is dangerous to Canadian democracy,” environmental lawyer Dianne Saxe fumed at The Conversation. On Twitter, former prime minister and attorney-general Kim Campbell blithely accused Elections Canada of “misstating the law,” and chalked it up to “incompetence.”

People proposed all sorts of absurd scenarios to illustrate the ridiculousness of the situation. “Suppose a politician decided smoking is good for you,” Green Party leader Elizabeth May tweeted. “Would doctors have to register as third parties in an election to stress (the) importance of kicking the habit?”

Quite possibly yes. Which is crazy. And I would say the same if climate change skeptic groups had been first out of the gate complaining: Why should No Carbon Tax Ever And We Really Really Mean It (NCTEAWRRMI), a non-partisan advocacy group that I just made up, suddenly have to change the terms of its outreach to Canadians just because there’s an election on? It’s the same question people are asking now about organizations like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or Climate Action Now.