Jim Balsillie at the Vancouver Globe conference

Fittingly, on the eve of Earth Hour, Vancouver hosted the 2014 Globe Series conference which featured such liberal luminaries as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and former BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie.

Peter Foster reports:

... on Wednesday, Mr. Balsillie brought some of sustainability’s cloudcuckooland notions down to Vancouver’s Globe, which is itself traditionally a combination of eco guiltfest and sustainability huckstering. ... 

... the former co-head of Blackberry Ltd., gave an example of how green policy could be good for business.... Just look at how well South Korea’s Samsung had done out of Ontario’s Green Energy Act.

... Balsillie's bizarre suggestions wouldn’t be quite so frightening if the Conservatives had not last year appointed Mr. Balsillie to chair Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a boondoggle created by the Liberals to invest in clean tech. ... The Conservatives’ choice of Mr. Balsillie appeared a little strange, even by the standards of Byzantium on the Rideau. He is not only a dyed-in the-wool liberal, but founder of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, CIGI, a think tank that supports UN dreams of global governance. ...

One would think that Balsillie, whose governance of BlackBerry led that company into oblivion, would show less enthusiasm for global governance. On the other hand that's one of those things that helps define him as a "died-in-the-wool liberal".

Thanks for attending, Peter, so that I didn't have to (I went to the International Auto Show next door instead).