Sudbury Steve May

Taxpayers Association Practices Politics of Division in Greater Sudbury

2012-01-25T20:30:00.000-05:00

I’ve been observing with growing interest the emerging campaign to influence public opinion in Greater Sudbury. Mostly, this campaign is being waged through traditional and social media sources. While there has been a lot of focus on specific issues in our community, the goal of the campaign appears to be much broader in scope: to win over the hearts and minds of Sudburians to what can only be described as a right-wing neo-liberal cause in advance of the next municipal election in 2014.

This campaign is being waged by what appears to be a small group who are at the head of a new not-for-profit organization in our community, the Greater Sudbury Taxpayers Association (GSTA). The GSTA recently incorporated last fall, after a number of headline-grabbing pronouncements on issues which the GSTA executive deemed to be of importance to Sudburians.

Up until yesterday, the GSTA appeared content to rail against a number of individual municipal councillors (those that appear not to share their neo-liberals values) and against municipal staff. Yesterday, the GSTA broadened their attacks by dredging up a three-year old issue involving United Steel Workers Local 6500 related to tipping fees waived by our former municipal council after arsonists burned down the former Steelworker’s Hall in 2008. The story was covered in both the Northern Life (“Union should repay tipping fees: taxpayers’ association”, published online January 24 2012) and the CBC (“Pay back tipping fees, taxpayer group tells union”, published online January 24 2012).

USW Local 6500 and Tipping Fees

On the surface, the tipping fee issue appears to be a strange avenue for attack by the GSTA. However, as part of an orchestrated campaign to influence public opinion in our community, this latest salvo by the GSTA makes a lot of sense.

Council’s decision to waive tipping fees for USW Local 6500 back in 2008 raised some eyebrows in the community at the time, as it was estimated that Local 6500 would have been on the hook for approximately $100,000 to dispose of debris from the demolished Steelworker’s Hall. By voting to waive those fees, our municipal Council decided to forego this revenue. I recall reading comments from anonymous posters at the Sudbury Star’s UR Sudbury website that Local 6500 would not have been on the hook for these fees in any case, as it was assumed that the Steelworker’s insurance policy would have covered these costs. I don’t recall whether there was ever a definitive answer to the question about insurance coverage, which may be why this issue continues to have some resonance in the community (if anyone can point me in the direction of a definitive answer regarding Local 6500’s insurance coverage, I’ll gladly update this blogpost).

Later this week, USW Local 6500 will be officially opening their new home on Brady Street. The former Steelworkers Hall was considered to be a focal point in our community for decades, and its loss due to arson was tragic not just for current and former Steelworkers, but for our larger community. It is hoped that the new Hall can reoccupy some of that lost sense of place.

So it’s likely not a coincidence that the GSTA chose this week to publicly call for Local 6500 to repay waived tipping fees, in a cynical attempt to tarnish what otherwise might be a feel-good moment for the union. Keep in mind that the City of Greater Sudbury has never asked that this matter be revisited, and that this issue has been completely off of the public radar shortly after it was resolved through a vote of Council. In fairness, it did resurface during the 2010 municipal election, as those bent on unseating former Greater Sudbury Mayor John Rodriguez were eager to use this decision of Council in an attempt to paint the former Mayor as being in the pockets of the Union. But no motions have been brought forward at Council to request repayment of waived tipping fees.

It would appear, then, that this issue is coming out of nowhere and being advanced by the GSTA for its own purposes.

A good question to ask then is what purpose is served by dredging up this old issue?

A Polarizing Media Campaign

The GSTA, through an aggressive media campaign, which involves press releases and press conferences, has inserted itself into conversations about a number of local municipal issues. These issues have mainly been the sorts of things which one would expect a taxpayer’s association to express concerns about: municipal spending and accountability. However, the GSTA often pursues a very provocative tone in its discourse, one which appears to be designed to foment anger, rather than to inspire collaboration. Indeed, the GSTA has already become a force for polarization in our community. Yesterday’s attack on USW Local 6500 will only up the ante.

Greater Sudbury has not been a stranger to municipal controversies since the creation of the amalgamated City back in 2001. Since the GSTA’s own recent creation in the fall of 2011, it has called for the resignation of Greater Sudbury’s CAO Doug Nadorozny over his perceived role in what the GSTA refers to as the “fraud case” involving a former vendor of transit tickets. The GSTA has also been outspoken on something called “the Healthy Communities Initiative”, which they (and others) have compared to being an unaccountable slush fund available for the use of municipal Councillors for re-election purposes. The GSTA and its supporters have also been publicly critical of Councillor Terry Kett (Ward 11) over the municipal budget, and of Councillor Ron Dupuis (Ward 5) over the process of naming of Workers’ Memorial Park (which in part has been another issue involving USW Local 6500, given that USW head Leo Gerard’s name was the one to be attached to the Park).

What appears to be a partial list of press releases is available to the public on the GSTA’s website (although nothing has yet been posted about yesterday’s tipping fee announcement).

The GSTA lists its organizational objectives on its website.

-maximize the value of every tax dollar spent;
-keep tax increases at or below the rate of inflation;
-ensure the focus on City council is on core services;
-promote transparency in all aspects of Municipal Governance;
-promote the positive aspects of a smaller municipal government.

On the surface, there may not appear to be a lot which would be considered problematic with these objectives. Once you start digging a little deeper, it quickly becomes apparent that these objectives are largely in keeping with an ultra-right wing neo-liberal agenda.

The Neo-Liberal Agenda

I’ve been using the term “neo-liberal” a lot more often in my blog over the past several months, but perhaps its best to explain the idea a little more fulsomely here. Neo-liberalism is an economic theory which suggests that economic problems can best be solved by removing barriers which restrain businesses operating in the market (such as environmental regulations), and promoting the need for investment as the highest priority. You may be familiar with the term “trickle-down economics” (made popular in the 1980s by U.S. President Ronald Reagan), and I believe that’s a good starting point in understanding what neo-liberalism is about, which is the notion that everybody’s lives are improved as a result of rich investors creating growth.

To a point, and with a few significant caveats, I believe the theory generally works. The first significant caveat, however, is that the system can only work with the right type of local investment, that being places which employ workers who provide goods and services needed within communities. Unfortunately, with globalization, what neo-liberals have accomplished has been to outsource jobs from existing communities, in pursuit of maximizing profits. This has left once-stable communities twisting in the wind of the global economic cyclone, and has attributed to a hollowing out of North America’s manufacturing sector (something we here in Ontario are very familiar with).

The second caveat is that the entire economic system on which neo-liberalism depends requires growth. That hasn’t been much of a problem in the past, save for a few recessionary hiccups, but it’s certainly going to be a problem in the future with resource depletion. Constant economic growth is not sustainable on a planet of finite resources, and I believe that we are already running into some of these natural barriers to growth.

The third caveat has to do with how much of the investment success has really trickled downwards. Clearly, our economy has continued to expand, as evidenced by rising GDP. The average person appears to be better off today than an average person was several decades ago, at least in terms of personal income (when you add debt levels into the equation, though, it might come out as a wash). What is clear, however, is that while its arguable whether or not everyone has gained from a neo-liberal economic approach, what can not be denied is that a very small percentage of individuals have gained significantly more than the majority of us. These rich elites, branded the “1%” in 2011 by the Occupy Movement, have seen a seriously disproportionate amount of created wealth accrue to them. So while the average person might arguably be marginally better off today than 20 years ago, given the explosion of wealth which has been created in that time period, the distribution of that wealth has largely been consolidated in the hands of a very few.

However, even though I concede that some wealth may have trickled down to the 99%, the fact remains that neo-liberalism as an economic ideology poses a clear and present danger to the vast majority of society, including the middle class. Neo-liberals, in the form of an ultra-right wing political agenda encompassing political movements and established political parties, promote the interests of the rich at the expense of the rest of us. Neo-liberal political organizations practice a particularly repugnant form of politics, given their propensity to subvert our democratic institutions in the pursuit of their agenda.

The success of neo-liberals in politics, though, is apparent. In the United States, with the rise of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and the astroturf movement known as the Tea Party, neo-liberals have seized control of the Republican Party. Here in Canada, Preston Manning’s western-based protest party, the Reform Party, eventually annexed what remained of the Progressive Conservative Party. Although Republicans in the U.S. and PC’s in Canada have tended to historically occupy the right of the political spectrum, today’s “conservative” parties don’t bear much resemblance to the Republican Party of Richard Nixon (which gave the United States the Environmental Protection Agency) or even the PC Party of Brian Mulroney (who introduced regulations on industrial emitters to fight acid rain).

The impact of neo-liberals, however, has not been limited to just the Republicans in the U.S. and Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party in Canada. Indeed, massive deregulation of financial institutes occurred under Democratic President Bill Clinton in the United States, and Liberals Jean Chretien and his Minister of Finance Paul Martin downloaded significant federal responsibilities to the provinces at the direction of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For more about the role which the IMF has played in promoting the neo-liberal agenda, I sincerely urge you to read Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine”, which is a real eye opener (to put it mildly).

Here in Canada, neo-liberals are now firmly entrenched at the federal level, and with a false majority delivered to the Conservative Party through an archaic electoral system which distorts the will of voters, Stephen Harper has essentially free reign to apply the neo-liberal agenda with impunity for the next few years. And now, here in Greater Sudbury, the same forces appear to be at work.

Core Public Services

Organizations referring to themselves as “taxpayers associations” have been on the rise throughout Canada in the past few decades. What most of these organizations have in common is a desire for smaller governments and a return to what they believe to be “basic services”. The Greater Sudbury Taxpayers Association is no exception. Of course, one of the first noticeable issues with this approach is the identification of what, exactly, in a municipal context, constitutes basic, or “core services”?

Taxpayers associations like to define core services as those services which benefit businesses and land owners in a municipality, with maybe a little lip service paid to the perceived interests of renters. Generally speaking, the propositions advanced by taxpayers associations actually impede the quality of life aspirations of a majority of City residents, especially those who are less well off from an economic standpoint. However, the middle class is often impacted too, although that’s not always as apparent initially, as the mantra of lower taxes has a certain appeal to all hard-working individuals. In the long run, howeer, where taxes are cut, so cuts to public services often follow, and often those cuts can directly impact quality of life experiences for middle class families. Indeed, neo-liberal successes at all levels of government have relied on co-opting the middle class to vote against its own interests.

The definition of “core services” tends to include such things as road maintenance, waste disposal, and policing. There is recognition of the need for some minimum level of bureaucracy. Essentially, though, neo-liberals believe that the market is best suited to handle the delivery of most other services which have in the 20th century accrued to the public realm. Of course, it’s clear that for some forms of service delivery, such as those related to homelessness, the market simply isn’t the right vehicle. For neo-liberals, that’s where the role of charity comes into play.

The Cost of Service Delivery

Now, that leaves a pretty broad list of services currently being delivered by our municipal government, on the table to be potentially handed to the private sector or axed all together. In Greater Sudbury, the sale of Pioneer Manor, a municipally-run home for the aged, has recently been brought up as a service which would be better removed from the public realm. In Toronto, public libraries, educational facilities (such as zoos), children’s programs, immigrant settlement services, bike lanes, and (of course) environmental initiatives have all been under attack by neo-liberal politicians.

One of the biggest targets of neo-liberals are the municipal public sector unions which often deliver our public services. Neo-liberals argue that unionized employees are impediments to cost-efficient service delivery. Just as private corporations have outsourced manufacturing jobs to the lowest bidder (usually one located on another continent) in order to maximize their profits (and at the expense of the economic health of their domestic employees, who overwhelmingly lost their jobs), neo-liberals would like to see public service delivery put into the hands of private enterprise.

This approach to outsourcing public services has been implemented in many parts of the world, and has certainly made inroads here in Canada (think about who picks up your curbside waste for example – in Greater Sudbury, it’s not a municipal employee). This outsourcing can save money, but it does come at a cost; sometimes, that cost is in the form of reduced service delivery capacity, or higher user fees where private corporations have decided to further maximize their profits in monopoly situations. Certainly the loss of good paying jobs and employment security for some residents is an inherent cost.

But those sorts of costs tend not to trouble neo-liberals, who are far more focussed on their narrow interpretation of the “bottom line” (and I say “narrow” because neo-liberals are infamous for failing to include externalities into their equations – things such as environmental costs and social costs, such as those related to healthcare. Indeed, the holy grail of neo-liberal economic indicators, Gross Domestic Product, actually puts a positive economic value on such things as oil spills, due to the jobs created to clean up the spill! Its no wonder than neo-liberal governments, such as George W. Bush’s in the U.S. and Stephen Harper’s here in Canada, tend to be the worst managers of the economy and run up the highest deficits).

Rather than looking for a healthy balance in terms of costs and service delivery, neo-liberals are motivated by increasing private sector profits. Rather than wanting to build better communities for the benefit of all citizens, neo-liberals want to dismember existing structures and redistribute wealth from the hands of the many (the public) and into the hands of the few (the private sector). The history of the past 30 years is rife with examples of these actions. Once a service or good exits the public realm, it’s almost impossible to return it. And that’s why neo-liberals are dangerous when they are handed the reigns of power.

The Small Government Manifesto

Here in Greater Sudbury, we are witnessing the opening moves of an orchestrated campaign by neo-liberal elements and their supporters to gain influence with decision-makers, and likely to replace existing decision-makers. Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford has only been able to achieve his successes due to the presence of his allies on municipal council. As a result, Torontonians will be experiencing cuts to services (such as transit), and a loss of public sector jobs. And its true that these cuts may lead to smaller tax increases for property owners, but at what overall cost to the community?

Look, I’m absolutely not an advocate of big government, as I believe that big government usually ends up being yet another kind of impediment to democracy. But I do believe that our governments have a strong role to play in creating the circumstances which lead to an enhanced quality of life for all residents, and not just those amongst us who may be paying the most in taxes. I believe that each government should find the best size and approach to meet its own specific circumstances. A slash and burn approach of the sort advocated by neo-liberals is the sort of one-size-fits-all solution that we can no longer afford to make.

Our tax dollars are scarce resources, and the elected officials whom we entrust to spend them should do so with careful consideration, and with the express interests of the community in its entirety at the heart of any decision. Decisions regarding revenue expenditures at the local level are only going to become more important as the world moves away from the clearly failing economic experiment known as globalization. The neo-liberal approach, which requires growth at all costs, is no longer sustainable. As a result, our collective future is going to become much more locally-focussed. And that’s why neo-liberal efforts which seek to slash and burn public services in the name of “small government” and a focus on “core services” represent a clear and present danger to communities such as Greater Sudbury.

Again, to be clear, I am not at all suggesting that a big government approach is the answer. What I am suggesting is that it is important that our local democratic institutions become as healthy and robust as necessary to suit local circumstances, with an eye towards responsible and accountable decision-making, for the benefit of the community. We are living in a time of increasingly scarce resources. As a result, we can no longer continue to afford to subsidize the special interests of the rich elites at the expense of the rest of us.

In Whose Interests?

While some of the concerns raised by the Greater Sudbury Taxpayers Federation are important issues which deserve a public debate, many in this community have already begun to question in whose interests this association is speaking, given their apparent desire to foment change by issuing divisive press releases, rather than actually working with decision-makers, municipal staff and other community stakeholders to find a collaborative solution. It’s hard not to compare the tactics of the GSTA to those we see at work in the Republican Presidential nomination process, where it has become more important to engage in personal attacks than to discuss the issues. Certainly the GSTA appears to have an axe to grind with USW Local 6500, and are eager to point out what they perceive to be ties between the union and elected officials in our community, such as former Mayor John Rodriguez. In that context, the union-baiting press release regarding tipping fees certainly makes a lot more sense.

When I first heard about the formation of the GSTA, I was initially optimistic that this association would be acting in the interests of the community, and working towards creating real and sustainable change. But instead, what this organization appears to be is a group of largely unknown individuals with a very specific right-wing agenda, purporting to speak on behalf of not just its members, but indeed of all taxpayers in the City. And instead of engaging in a collaborative process to work towards real change, the GSTA seems to have chosen to engage in the politics of division.

I’m certain that USW Local 6500 is now aware of what’s going on in our community. It’s time that more of us question in whose interests the Greater Sudbury Taxpayers Association is speaking. Although I share a number of their concerns, I can tell you as a citizen of the City of Greater Sudbury who pays taxes, they are not speaking in my interest.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the views of the Green Party of Canada)

It’s Official: The Harper Regime has Declared War on the Environment

2012-01-09T18:43:00.000-05:00

Earlier today, Federal Natural Resources Ministers Joe Oliver released an open letter to Canadians through the Globe & Mail (“An open letter from Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver”, January 9, 2012) regarding the proposed Enbridge Northern Gate Pipeline. In his letter, Oliver directly equates those involved in environmental causes as being “radicals”. Needless to say, Oliver’s letter in the G&M, and comments made by Stephen Harper on Friday of last week about environmentalists funded by “foreign money” hijacking the Canadian Environmental Assessment process for the Northern Gate Pipeline have created a bit of a media firestorm.

Up until recently, the primary controversies around the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) processes have had to do with the anticipated timing for wrapping up the review. With over 4,000 public delegates expected to speak on the proposed pipeline, which will see tar sands bitumen flow from Edmonton, Alberta, to Kitimat, British Columbia, those involved with the Environmental Assessment (EA) have indicated that the process likely won’t come to a conclusion until late 2013. This late date for a decision hasn’t sat well with Stephen Harper and his Conservative government, which had previously hinted its concerns to EA administrators.

However, with these lastest remarks about “foreign interference” and by equating Canadians who are concerned about our environment with “radicals”, it seems that the phony war which the Conservatives have been fighting against the environment has finally become official, with these comments intended to separate Canadians into two camps: one which is in favour of runaway development and exploitation of the tar sands, trade and job creation; and other which is occupied by ideologically-motivated radicals and extremists on the take from foreign governments bent on destroying Canada’s oil industry and impoverishing Canadians.

The Politicization of the Environment

Let’s take a closer look at what’s been going on with Northern Gateway. First of all, the CEAA process is not a political process. While the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is an Act of parliament, it sets out a process which is followed by an appointed hearing body, free of political interference. I was originally concerned about the potential for political interference with the Northern Gate EA process when I first heard Harper and other cabinet Ministers complain about timing. Normally, these processes take as long as they need to in order to facilitate true public discussion and the review of technical documents. While timelines are built into the process, they are often flexible enough to accommodate the specific complexities of any matter under review.

The fact is, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline will cross through a number of jurisdictions, including two provinces, federal lands, and lands claimed by a number of First Nations. It will traverse forests and rivers where vibrant wildlife and fisheries exist. And, when bitumen arrives at Kitimat, it will be loaded onto ocean-going tankers, bound for Asia or elsewhere. These tankers must traverse the narrow confines of B.C.’s rugged coast, long known as a graveyard for ships, due to its shallow waters and frequent bad weather (including fog).

Simply put, the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal is about as complicated as a proposal subject to the CEAA can get, both from a jurisdictional and an implementation point of view. And that’s not even mentioning the significant contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions which processing some of the world’s dirtiest oil will add to the atmosphere. In large part, it’s those emissions which have captured the attention of the rest of the world, and which has led to Harper declaration of war.

All About Climate Change

Canada has become an environmental laggard under successive Liberal and Conservative governments which have continually put the interests of the oil industries ahead of Canadians, and quite frankly, ahead of the rest of the world. Although Canada ratified the Kyoto Treaty with a promise to reduce our emissions, our federal government balked at playing a leading role as facilitator to take up the Kyoto challenge. Instead, the federal government left it up to the Provinces to tackle reducing emissions, with my home province of Ontario carrying out the bulk of that work by promising to close coal-fired generating plants.

Of course, Ontario’s contribution to reducing emissions has likely been more significant that the provincial government would like to admit. Indeed, due to an oil-inspired rising Canadian dollar, hundreds of thousands of well-paying manufacturing jobs have left the province. Matt Price in the Huffington Post refers to upwards of 600,000 jobs being lost, mostly in Ontario, as manufacturing companies have found that their exports simply can no longer compete in a global market with a sky-high Canadian dollar (“Canadian Jobs Lost to the Tar Sands”, The Huffington Post, January 5 2012).

And make no mistake, the rising Canadian dollar has had everything to do with increasing the capacity for oil production in Alberta, which has been a national priority of both Liberal and Conservative governments. Canada has done more than simply not acting to rein-in greenhouse gas emissions: we have made increasing our emissions a national policy to be celebrated. And now, under the Harper regime, Canada has upped the ante even further.

Before Christmas, to Canada’s international shame, Federal Environment Minister Peter Kent announced that Canada would be withdrawing from the Kyoto Accord. This announcement came hot on the heels of the United Nations conference on climate change, held in Durban, where it appears that Canadian government delegates negotiated for a new Kyoto commitment period in bad faith, negotiating while knowing that the government was getting ready to withdraw from the treaty. This kind of overt sabotage at Durban wasn’t a new role for Canada, however.

Indeed, since Stephen Harper came to power in 2006, Canadian negotiators have been fiercely travelling throughout the world trying to sabotage international and bi-national agreements on climate change, including the recent challenge to the European Union’s initiative to tax petroleum produced from dirty oil at a higher rate than petroleum produced from conventional sources, due to the higher carbon emissions associated with dirty oil.

After U.S. President Barack Obama made the decision to stall the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (the approval of which Prime Minister Stephen Harper had notoriously suggested would be a “no brainer” for Obama), the Harper regime has been very keen to move forward with the Chinese-backed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. You see, without pipelines to move bitumen out of Alberta for processing, there will be no need to ramp up further production in the tar sands. The creation of pipelines is essential for the oil industry to expand its production before stricter environmental standards can be imposed on it by a new government which might adopt a “go slow” approach. This is why there has been such a rush on to move forward with pipeline construction.

Whose Interests are Being Served?

Look, tar sands bitumen isn’t going anywhere. It’s only because the oil elites want to make as much profit as they can in the shortest amount of time possible that there is now a push on for pipeline construction. The oil industry sees that the writing has been on the wall for some time now, as the international community is destined to get its act together and finally get serious about climate change. The tar sands, of course, when in full production, will be a significant global contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In the future, developing tar sands bitumen will be less profitable, due to carbon taxes or the need for industry to purchase carbon offsets. We’re not there yet, but we will be there in another decade. Just as industries which used polluting sulphur dioxide could see that they needed to clean up their acts when a new regulatory system was being proposed in the 1980s, the oil industry today understands that changes are afoot. That they are fighting those changes tooth and nail, rather than working with governments to improve the health and well-being of citizens indicates to me, anyway, what their priorities really are.

However, it’s one thing to say that the interests of the oil industries have been to put their own profits ahead of human well-being. But what of the Canadian government? Shouldn’t our government be looking out for the health and welfare of Canadians and our social, economic and natural environments in which we inhabit? Well, I always thought that was the role of our government, but clearly the Harper regime in Ottawa is putting the interests of oil industry profits ahead of the social, economic and environmental well-beings of Canadians. And they are doing it in such a way that they are actually eroding our democratic rights in the process.

And here’s where the latest front appears to be opening up. Based on Minister Joe Oliver’s open letter, we may end up with changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act which deliberately shuts out opportunities for participation in the EA process by Canadians who may share a different set of priorities than does our government. Clearly, the Harper regime has stated in the past few days that international trade and opening up the tar sands to multi-national oil companies for runaway development is more of a priority than protecting and thoughtfully managing Canada’s non-renewable resources, the exploitation of which will lead to the creation of more greenhouse gases and a bigger contribution on the part of Canada to global climate change.

For those who think that we would be putting jobs at risk by not allowing runaway development of Alberta’s tar sands, I invite you to further explore the anticipated impacts of a global rise in temperature of just 2 degrees Celsius. Take a look at how such a rise in temperature will impact jobs and the economy. When the Harper regime talks about “jobs” what they really mean are oil industry profits, because if they were really interested in jobs, they would be doing a lot more to preserve existing jobs and laying the groundwork for a low-carbon economy.

The Declaration of War

EthicalOil.org, which seems to be supply the Harper regime with its speaking points about Northern Gateway, has already suggested that anybody associated with an environmental organization which has received funding from “foreign” sources should not be allowed to publicly participate in the Environmental Assessment process. Remember that list of 4,000 speakers? It’s that list which is being targeted by Harper for being too long and therefore delaying a decision. And many of the speakers on that list are, in fact, from local environmental organizations, some of which may have received funding from non-Canadians.

The fact that non-Canadian organizations have been assisting Canadian environmental organizations with funding has turned into a circus for the neo-liberal oil interests over the past few months. They have claimed that “foreign interests” are dominating the Canadian environmental agenda, and have outright questioned the patriotism of Canadians who may be concerned about climate change and curbing rampant tar sands expansion. In 2011, Canadian grandmothers and university students, some of whom are from my home town of Sudbury, Ontario, were blasted by EthicalOil mouthpiece and Sun Media columnist Ezra Levant as being anti-Canadian “extremists” for their participation in a fence-scaling exercise in civil disobedience. Levant’s own criticisms were then parroted by a number of cabinet ministers (see my earlier blog: “Who are the Real Extremists?“, October 4, 2011).

EthicalOil.org is engaging in hypocrisy of an extreme sort through their calls to ban Canadian environmentalists from the Environmental Assessment process simply because an organization to which they belong may have received a financial contribution from a non-Canadian. Many environmentalists are volunteers and receive no compensation for the work in which they engage in. Those that do receive compensation tend to champion the values and the interests of their organization, just as anybody speaking on behalf of any organization might. And that’s the point which makes EthicalOil’s position so incredibly hypocritical.

The Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal will directly benefit multi-national oil companies through higher profits. Billions of dollars will be made by opening up the tar sands to runaway exploitation. These dollars will end up in the pockets of some of the richest foreign corporate executives in the world. Yet EthicalOil.org isn’t leading the charge to shut those multinational corporations out of the EA process. Why is that?

In their black-and-white world, EthicalOil likes to distinguish between job creators on the one hand and job killers on the other. Multinational corporations are the job creating heros in their narrative, and environmentalists out to kill Canadian jobs are the villains. Increasingly, it appears that this narrative is being adopted by our government, especially with the recent and disturbing statements about environmentalists being job-killing radicals. What has yet to be determined is whether our government will change the Environmental Assessment process to shut out legitimate points of view being heard.

Exploding the Myths

The fact is, we live in a global society, and what happens here in Canada will have an impact on the rest of the world, especially as it relates to anthropogenic climate change. That Canada has wilfully committed to a course of action whereby we are determined to be the biggest per capita polluter in the world is reason enough for others to be concerned about the actions of industries operating here, particularly related to the exploitation of non-renewable resources. And the actions of our government to facilitate pollution should not be immune from international scrutiny simply because the oil industry is viewed as a “job creator”. As a result, we can expect to hear more about environmental tariffs being imposed on Canadian export goods as a result of our emissions intensive policies. And that’s further bad news for Ontario’s manufacturing sector, even though Ontario is actively striving to reduce energy derived from non-renewable resources.

Again, we here in Ontario know firsthand that the tar sands are not the ballyhooed job creator that EthicalOil and the Harper regime would have us believe. We’ve seen manufacturing jobs leave the province due to a high dollar, driven up by oil industry revenues. With the price of oil expected to continue to climb over the next decade, we can expect that uncontrolled tar sands development will only drive the value of the dollar up further, leading to an unsustainable situation in Eastern Canada with regards to job loss. There’s a very good reason why the Conservative Party of Canada’s real base of power is in the Alberta heartland. That Conservatives in other parts of Canada fail to see the damage which Harper’s out-of-control oil policy is inflicting on regional economies is maddeningly frustrating to me.

Some Good News (for a change)

There may be some good news coming out of these new attacks on the environment and the patriotism of Canadians who might simply be concerned about the pace of development of our non-renewable resources. If there is any good news at all, it’s that I expect this latest gambit will backfire on the Conservatives over the next few years. By committing to this kind of hyper-partisan rhetoric, there is no longer a way for the Harper regime to back down from their position. They’ve drawn the lines in the sand now between themselves and the oil elites on the one side, and Canadians who may be concerned about the environment on the other. Make no mistake: along with officially declaring war on the environment, the Harper regime has also declared war on moderate Canadians. Ultimately, this approach will backfire as it continues to become increasingly clear to Canadians that environmental issues (and particularly climate change) can no longer be ignored by Ottawa.

That the Harper regime might have completely destroyed long-established environmental legislation and assessment processes in the interim will be something which future, responsible governments will have to address when Harper is finally deposed. The destruction to our economy and our environment which the Harper regime’s short-sighted and greedy war will cause will not be so easily undone.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the views of the Green Party of Canada)

At a Crossroads: One Green's Hopes for The Liberal Party of Canada (Part 2 of 2)

2012-01-06T21:24:00.003-05:00

(continued from Part 1...)

Candidate Appointments / Protections

Liberals are also considering doing away with the Leader’s ability to appoint candidates to run in specific ridings, rather than leaving it to local members to nominate their own candidates (which is what usually happens). I once lived in a riding where the Liberal leader decided to appoint a candidate, one who had lost his seat in the previous election in a different riding. This parachute candidate from a riding in a different city was left to carry the Liberal’s banner in my riding, much to the chagrin of the local Liberal riding association, and to other local Liberals who were considering contesting the nomination. In this case, the perception of having a lack of legitimacy really hurt the parachute candidate, and many in his own party actively campaigned against him, leading to an unsuccessful showing on election day. I certainly did not vote for him.

It’s high time that Liberals get rid of the leader’s ability to appoint candidates. Now, I understand that this appointment provision exists ostensibly so “star” candidates who might otherwise not seek a local nomination (at risk of losing, especially to another popular local with a strong organization on the ground) can get the nod more easily, and that it’s used as a mechanism to attract candidates who are perceived as having more heft. However, it is often used for patronage situations as well. Either way, why not allow local grassroots members to have the (almost) final say in who they are going to try to elect to represent their community’s interests?

I say “almost” final, because the Liberal leader would still continue to have the ultimate say over whether a nominated candidate can run on behalf of the Party by signing (or not signing) nomination papers. That’s a more appropriate use of a leader’s powers.

If Liberals decide to rid their leader of the power to appoint candidates and circumvent local nomination processes, they will be moving towards a circumstance which the Green Party of Canada has long followed.

At the riding level as well, Liberals are considering getting rid of provisions which protect incumbent MP’s from facing nomination battles in their own ridings. These protections may prove to be a little more controversial for Liberals, because the theory here is that a sitting MP already has an electoral advantage over any rivals, and further, why should an MP have to battle for a job they’re already occupying? Riding-level nomination battles are also distractions from taking on candidates from other parties.

That being said, though, some other political parties allow for challenges at the riding level, and sometimes challengers are successful in getting the nod from local members in preference to sitting parliamentarians. In Ontario this past year, we saw just that situation arise when long-serving Progressive Conservative MPP Norm Sterling was ousted by local PC members in favour of Jack MacLaren, former President of the radical right-wing libertarian Ontario Landowners Association. Former Ontario Premier Ernie Eves was vocal in his opposition to the decision of local members to oust Sterling in favour of a “tea party-style” candidate. But MacLaren did go on to win the riding of Carleton-Mississippi Mills in the October provincial election.

The Green Party too does not shelter its candidates from nomination challenges at local levels. For Greens, this is an elementary position. If a political party really believes in the value of democracy, clearly it can’t shelter candidates for purely partisan political reasons, no matter the quality of those candidates. What happened with the PC’s in the riding of Carleton-Mississippi Mills is illustrative of local democracy in action, despite the scorn heaped upon the process by Eves and others. Look, I’ve always been a big fan of Norm Sterling, and I clearly don’t have much respect at all for the Ontario Landowners’ Association, but the fact is that local members in C-MM didn’t want Sterling to represent them any longer, and dumped him in favour of a preferred candidate, likely one whose ideology may be more in keeping with their own. They also took a big political risk in doing so, by deposing a known quantity in Sterling and replacing him with someone who many perceived as less-electable. What’s important here is that the Party members in C-MM had the chance to seize control of local democratic processes, and I believed that the interests of democracy triumphed over politics in C-MM.

This kind of exercise in local democracy played out in the Green Party recently as well. When Green Party Leader Elizabeth May decided to run in the riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, her nomination as candidate was opposed by another party member. As a result, Greens in SGI had to vote for May to represent them. Now, that happens all the time in most ridings, but when it’s the Leader of the Party, it’s very rare for the Leader to be challenged. And currently, in the Liberal Party, the leader has the power to make sure that such a situation never arises, by appointing themselves as candidate!

Politically, appointing candidates and sheltering them from nomination challenges may be a smart political play for a Party, but in terms of democracy, it’s just not right. The LPC should end these practices.

Electoral Reform

Liberals will also be considering national electoral reform at next week’s convention, which is very interesting, given the sorts of internal electoral reform that they are considering implementing inside of the Party (primaries with open votes from non-members; removal of appointment provisions for MP’s; allowing for challenges of sitting MP’s at the riding level). Internally, Liberals will be asked to consider sweeping changes to the way in which member’s democratically engage within the Party. Nationally, the Liberals are taking a much less ambitious approach to electoral reform.

The only resolution on the ballot for national electoral reform calls for moving towards a preferential balloting system. On the one hand, preferential balloting would lead to a substantive change in the way in which MP’s are elected, but on the other hand, the Liberals appear to be engaged in a cynical political ploy rather than tackling the issue of true democratic reform head-on.

A preferential ballot would see a voter’s choices ranked first, second, third, and so on. After counting all of the first place finishes, if a candidate did not receive 50% of the vote, those counting the ballots will then count all of the second place finishes as well, and add the two scores together. This process continues until a single candidate emerges with 50% of the votes. Under this process, it’s possible that a candidate could be elected MP without a plurality of first place votes.

Interestingly, Liberals acknowledge their own cynicism in the preface of the Resolution itself. The Resolution speaks to both the NDP and Green Party’s support of Proportional Representation, in order to contrast their political rival’s position to the less-ambitious reform of instituting a preferential ballot. Strangely, the Resolution indicates that NDP and Greens would stand to benefit from a proportional representation system, which appears to be a stretch since the NDP has now found itself in the role of the Official Opposition.

Also, as Liberals believe that they occupy the middle of the left/right political spectrum, there is some belief that Liberal candidates would be the primary beneficiaries of second place voting choices of both Conservative and NDP voters.

Either way, the modest electoral reforms brought about by a preferential ballot clearly don’t go far enough towards real electoral reform, in my opinion. The election of representatives to our parliaments should be a true reflection of the will of all voters. While a preferential ballot is clearly better than the system we have in place right now, it will do little for Canadians who continue to support others points of view. Rather than electing the parliamentarians which we want, we’ll end up electing the parliamentarians which we don’t want, but who are mildly more acceptable to a majority of voters.

Only proportional representation fully captures the will of voters, and will lead to a parliament which is a true expression of that will. Hopefully, the Liberal Party will come to understand this self-evident truth before the next federal election, and join the Green’s in our call for true electoral reform. As an aside, many may remember a telling question put to Party Leaders during the 2008 English language televised Leaders’ debate. The question was about what the most important issue was for each leader. When it was Elizabeth May’s turn, I think that most people expected her to talk about the need to combat the climate crisis as being the number one issue. She didn’t say that (although ultimately her answer, if implemented, would have been a great assist with taking real action on climate change). May talked about the need for electoral reform to better improve democracy within our country. Some said later that her response was self-serving for her Party, as Greens clearly would benefit from a system of proportional representation. However, so too would all Canadians, as through proportional representation, Canada would end up with a parliament which is a true reflection of the will of voters. When you look at the parliament which emerged after the 2011 election, with the Conservative Party having received a majority of seats without receiving a majority of the votes, it’s clear to any casual observer that our current electoral system isn’t serving Canadians well. And that’s likely one of the reasons why so many Canadians choose to stay at home rather than cast a ballot at election time.

But let me be clear: I hope that the Liberals do decide to adopt the preferential ballot resolution (and then take the ability of their leader to decide policy out the leader’s hands), because I would love for the Liberals to campaign on the basis of a preferential ballot electoral system in the next election. And I say that because I, as a Green, would very much like to test the Liberal’s hypothesis that their Party would be the recipient of a majority of those second-place votes.

Co-operation with Other parties

Finally, Liberals won’t be voting on any resolutions which speak to the need about co-operating more fulsomely with other political parties, but I can guarantee that Liberal delegates nonetheless will be doing a lot of talking about working with other parties.

Recently, NDP leadership contender Nathan Cullen proposed to his Party that it’s time Liberals, New Democrats and Greens considered implementing a system where members of each Party could jointly at the riding level choose to get together and nominate a single candidate to oppose sitting Conservative MP’s in the next election. I’m not sure that this is the best approach (although I haven’t made my mind up, and I am intrigued by the idea), but at least Cullen is thinking ahead to the future, and he, along with members in all of those parties, realize that greater cooperation may be necessary to beat the Conservatives in the next election.

Clearly, the Conservatives have begun the process of stacking the electoral deck of cards in their own favour. The Conservative Party of Canada isn’t letting anything stand in their way of turning Canadian democracy on its head. We’ve already seen the CPC break its own fixed election date law by cynically calling an early election in 2008 (which deprived Blair Wilson, Canada’s first Green MP, to sit in the House as a Green, and which led to the Broadcast Consortium’s original decision to exclude Green Party Leader Elizabeth May from participating in the televised Leader’s debates, on the grounds that the Greens had no MP’s sitting in the House). The CPC then went on to break election financing laws through the “in-and-out” scandal. Now, with a false majority situation in the House, the Conservatives have begun to phase out public subsidies to political party, which means that parties will increasingly be beholden to monied special interests and elites for electoral success. There are already calls being made within the CPC to allow corporations to donate to political parties in order to off-set the loss of public subsidy.

Some also believe that the addition of new ridings in Ontario, Alberta and B.C. will also increase the chances of electoral success for the Conservative Party in the next election. While that may likely be the result, the fact is that these new ridings will be created in locations which have lately become under-represented, due to population growth. And I’m not willing to concede that a majority of these new ridings will actually elect Conservatives in the next election, although I do acknowledge that it’s possible.

I believe that Liberals, New Democrats and Greens need to start paying better attention to this emergent threat to Canada’s well-being: the transformational nature of the Harper Conservative regime. The Harper regime represents a clear and present danger to Canadian society and democracy within this nation. It is not representative of a values system which is embraced by a majority of Canadians, although it is currently operating with impunity, imposing its own values on the face of our society.

It is easier to tear down than to build up, and we have already begun to see how the Conservatives are starting to tear down cherished and valued Canadian democratic institutions, such as parliament itself, and the rule of law in our society. That may seem like an unsupportable statement to some, but I urge all to take a very close look at the insidious way in which the CPC has chosen to operate both within government and outside of it.

To combat this latest crisis in democracy, which has been clearly brought on by the neo-liberal Conservative Party, despite my own concerns about what I consider to be misguided and in some cases dangerous policy positions taken by the Liberals and NDP, I believe that the moment has nevertheless come for the opposition parties to begin working with one another for the time being to face a common and greater threat to our national interests, and for the good of Canada.

Next week, when Liberals get together for lunches and dinners and at hospitality suites, I hope that they will be having those discussions too. The Liberal Party of Canada finds itself in a unique position at the moment, as it debates resolutions which may transform the Party and lead the Party to take a different direction in the future. Liberals have an opportunity to once again demonstrate real leadership in Canada should they choose to walk through the door which some Liberals themselves are trying to open. Liberals must begin to articulate what their shared values really are, and to implement those values throughout their organization. Further, candidates and their Leader must embrace and defend those values at all costs (even political costs) in order to stake claims to legitimacy. As a final aside, I sincerely hope that NDP leadership contenders decide to go down a similar road, as in my opinion, the NDP long ago sacrificed its own values on the alter of electoral expediency, and has become a party of spin over substance. That too must change if we are to address the bigger threat to Canada, that being the neo-liberal transformation of our beloved nation.

If instead Liberals choose to remain mired in the past as a middle-of-the-road political animal, rather than as a conscientious values-based organization which offers a real alternative to Canadians, then I urge disaffected Liberals currently within that Party to take some time to reflect on whether the Liberal Party is headed in a direction which is consistent with your own values. There is no shame in moving away from an organization which is no longer representative of your values. If Liberals find themselves in this situation, I suggest that they give us Greens a look, because I know that they will find themselves in good company.

Either way, there is too much at stake right now to maintain the status quo. Action is needed.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

At a Crossroads: One Green's Hopes for The Liberal Party of Canada (Part 1 of 2)

2012-01-06T20:51:00.003-05:00

Next week, the Liberal Party of Canada will be hosting its biennial policy convention in Ottawa. At this convention, Liberals will be making a number of decisions regarding the Party’s future direction. Along with electing a new Party President (prediction: it’ll be Sheila Copps), Liberals will be voting on a number of electoral reform initiatives which seek to open the Party and, in some cases, radically change the way in which leaders and riding candidates are elected, and what sort of power they might have within the Party.

These proposals have been put forward in an effort to spark the debate amongst Liberals about how best to reinvigorate Canada’s oldest political party (and I’m not just referring to the fact that the Liberal Party of Canada has been around since 1867 – I’m also referring to the current demographic composition of the Party). Politicians, pundits and grassroots party members all seem to agree that it’s high time for the Liberal Party to get its act together.

This past summer, I wrote about a possible way for the LPC to reinvent itself (“A Door Exists for the Liberal Party. Will Liberals Step Through It?”). In that blogpost, I discussed the Liberal’s on-again, off-again relationship with combating the climate crisis, and suggested (essentially) that the Liberal Party should become more like the Green Party. Interestingly, with the sorts of resolutions which will be discussed at next week’s convention, the Liberal Party of Canada might find itself on the way to doing just that.

Before we take a close look at some of the proposals which will be on the table for Liberal delegates at next week’s convention, it’s time for a little disclosure. I’ve actually had the pleasure of attending an LPC policy convention in Ottawa in the past, when I was a member of the Liberal’s Willowdale riding association, back when Jim Peterson held that riding, and was Minister of International Trade. The LPC was riding high back then, and it was certainly interesting to be an observer in the trenches at the height of the Chretien-Martin war within the Party. I had a great time at the convention. It was only after leaving Willowdale and relocating to Sudbury that my association with the LPC came to an end, after an incredibly dismaying meeting with the local Liberal riding organization which pretty much told me point-blank, “We don’t want your help, but we do want your money.”

It was only after Elizabeth May won the leadership of the Green Party that I joined the Sudbury Greens. What led me to both join and stay with the Green Party for the past 5 years now has been the Green Party’s bold articulation of policy in a document known as Vision Green, which is based on policy approved by grassroots Party members. I write about this not to promote the Green Party, but because I’ll be coming back to the concept of member-approved policy in a little bit.

So, despite being Chief Executive Officer of the Sudbury Federal Green Party Association, I guess it’s fair to say that I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Liberal Party of Canada. My Doctor says that there’s nothing that she can do about it, and hopefully it’ll go away with changes to my diet and exercise.

The Green Party of Canada, of course, has drawn supporters from all other parties, so you needn’t be so very surprised that I was once involved with another political party. Here in Sudbury, I know of Greens who once belonged to the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives. It’s not unusual for people to take a close and critical look at the organizations to which they belong, and to assess whether or not they can continue to support those organizations, especially when an organization appears to be heading in a direction which might conflict with one’s personal values. In politics, however, those in the public eye are too often vilified for having the audacity to “change their minds” about a particular issue, or to be critical of their own parties. And that’s one of the reasons why, in my opinion, Canadian politics has found itself in the sad state that it’s in today.

And clearly that’s one of the reasons that I continue to remain involved with the Green Party. Admittedly, this is my own opinion, but I have been one of my Party’s biggest critics over the past several years, with regards to the direction which the membership has taken on a number of policy initiatives, and, at times, with the actions of Party Leader Elizabeth May. I can tell you, however, from personal experience that I have never been chastised by anybody in the Party’s administrative apparatus or governing Council, or by May herself (which might simply be reflective of the level of importance that staff and decision-makers within the Party ascribe to my rants). And that’s because the Green Party really is unlike any other political party. We tolerate and encourage discussion, and dissenting points of view are respected. Goodness knows if you put three Greens in a room, you’ll end up with 6 or more different ideas about any specific issue! Yet, somehow we manage to make it work through a consensus-driven approach to decision-making.

And the Liberal Party of Canada might soon find itself in a similar circumstance.

Primaries

First, let’s take a look at the most media-hyped resolution that the Liberals will be discussing, and that’s the idea of opening up nomination processes for the Party Leader to non-members. While joining the Liberal Party isn’t particularly cost-prohibitive for prospective members, it does come with the baggage of having to self-identify as a Liberal. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.

Well, with the concept of Primaries, someone wouldn’t have to become a member in order to take part in decision-making. As I understand the concept, both LPC members and others would be able to cast their ballot for a leadership contender. Non-members would simply have to sign a pledge which affirms that they share “liberal” values, and that they are not members of another federal political party.

This is somewhat similar to what we recently saw happen in Iowa earlier this week, when Iowans turned out to vote for a Republican presidential nominee of their choice. Most of those who participated in the selection were registered Republican voters, but many weren’t; they were either Democrats, members of other parties, or “Independents” (those not affiliated with any political party).

Liberals will need to come to terms with whether opening up their electoral process to non-members makes sense for the Party. There certainly would be trade-offs to consider. In the “pro-primary” column, one could certainly suggest that a primary would likely attract new blood (potential voters and supporters) to the Liberal Party, by involving people traditionally outside of the nomination process in Party decision-making. While most who cast a ballot probably wouldn’t stick around, the fact is that some will, and the Party will certainly benefit by increasing the size of their list of contacts to hit up for donations. Those points alone might be enough to sell the idea of primaries to a Party which is growing increasingly concerned about its number of members and the amount of cash which the Party has been raising.

There’s also been the suggestion that a Primary process might engage the mainstream media to a more significant extent than a more traditional approach to selecting a leader. Personally, I’m not sure that I buy that argument, as Liberal leadership conventions have always generated a lot of media hype. However, watching the NDP’s leadership selection process has been like watching ice melt, and so far, the NDP aren’t generating a significant level of interest amongst Canadians. That may yet change (the NDP had better hope that it changes) the closer we get to the day in which leadership ballots are counted.

And now that the Liberals are the third place party, there may be less media emphasis on the outcome of a traditional leadership convention. Again, I’m not certain that would be the case, given the way in which the LPC selects its leader through a delegated convention process. Let me be clear about this: watching TV coverage of live action from a convention floor, including speeches of leadership contenders to delegates is infinitely more interesting than watching reports on membership ballots being counted at 40 different locations. Contrast media coverage of the LPC leadership convention of 2006 which elected (surprise!) Stephane Dion to coverage of the 2009 Ontario provincial PC election which saw Tim Hudak elected after counting a number of preferential ballots (*yawn*).

Some Liberals are also concerned that, despite signing pledges about liberal values, partisans from other parties might turn out with enough numbers to potentially sabotage the leader selection process. Clearly, that’s more of an issue at the riding level, and Liberals could find mechanisms which would assist in curtailing those kinds of partisan opportunities.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the Primary process for either the election of leaders or, as some have suggested, riding-level candidates. Maybe I’m just hung up on the notion that membership should have its privileges, and one of those privileges is to be a part of the decision-making process regarding representation. I’m not sure that a candidate elected by non-members, whether it be the leader or (especially) at the riding level can claim to have the same level of legitimacy as a party representative as one elected entirely by party members can. And in politics, having acknowledged legitimacy is incredibly important.

In Sudbury, one need look no further than to the recent provincial election, in which many NDP supporters refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of a nominated candidate, due to the fact that both he and his supporters were deemed to be too new to the Party by the old guard, who then shied away from assisting with the campaign. The NDP will deny this, of course, and certainly the NDP’s chosen candidate ended up running a decent campaign which almost toppled a provincial cabinet minister. But, nevertheless, from what I’ve heard, there was a perception by some members that the candidate wasn’t “NDP-enough” (or, as I’ve heard it, “enough of a dip”). And that perceived lack of legitimacy hurt the campaign. If the Liberals flirt with a primary process, they risk opening that same door x 308.

If Liberals do decide to support a primary process, they will find themselves in a unique situation in Canadian politics, and I have to admit, it will be an interesting situation to watch unfold. Maybe they’re on to something here after all, even if I’m not a fan. Certainly, give the Liberals credit where it’s due: this is the sort of bold new idea which the LPC should be debating right now.

The Leader’s Authority

The outcome of this resolution is the one which I’ll be watching most closely. Right now, the expressed political will of the membership of the Liberal Party of Canada can be over-ridden by a decision of the Leader of the Party. You see, along with all of these electoral reform resolutions being discussed at next week’s biennial convention, Liberals will also be voting on policy initiatives, which have worked their way through a process initiated at the riding level. At the convention, Liberals will determine whether they are ready to adopt some of these new policies (I see that one has to do with the legalization of marijuana, for example).

Right now, however, in the Liberal Party, a decision of the leader can simply render the Party’s policy process moot. This also happens in the Conservative and New Democratic parties (although it’s probably fairer to characterize the NDP’s situation as being one of neglectful omission, rather than an actual decision being made by a party leader). It does not happen with the Green Party of Canada; our leader is beholden to the Party membership to support membership-approved policy, no matter whether the leader agrees with it or not.

Now, it’s true, this kind of approach can create some difficulties for a leader, who may have to find themselves explaining why they are in favour of a certain initiative which they might not actually believe in. But guess what? These sorts of political pretzels are offered up for our consumption all the time, and especially when backbench MP’s are whipped by Party brass to vote in a certain way. Sometimes, MP’s will stay away from the House when they may be forced to cast a conflicted vote. Other times, they’ll vote with their conscience, and suffer the wrath of their Party (as two Northwestern Ontario NDP MP’s recently did when they failed to vote as they were told to do by NDP interim Leader Nycole Turmel and her Party’s Whip).

Now, some might say that there’s a difference between backbenchers and a party’s leader. I suppose that’s right, but the distinctions have a lot more to do with Canada’s media obsession with leadership. In the Green Party, for instance, the Party’s constitution does draw a distinction between the Leader of the Party on the one hand and every single other member on the other hand. Yes, there is a member-elected Council which oversees Party operations, and there is a leader-appointed Shadow Cabinet which monitors policy initiatives (and is usually comprised of riding candidates), but when it comes to the development of policy, all members are created equal, including the Leader. In fact, in the Green Party, the role of the Leader is defined simply as being a “party spokesperson”, who, as Leader, has but a few administrative and political powers in appointment processes (appointments to Shadow Cabinet; signing candidate nomination papers). But when it comes to policy, the leader is beholden to the membership.

And now the Liberal Party of Canada will be debating whether or not it will be appropriate to constrain their own leader in the same way.

There are pros and cons to this approach again, but for me, taking away the leader’s ability to determine the policy direction of the party is a sensible and progressive move for Liberals to make. Yes, it’s true, such an approach needs to be balanced by having flexible mechanisms in place to allow the leader some latitude to speak out on current issues which may have ill-defined or no membership-approved policy directions (example: Canada’s participation in NATO-led intervention in Libya; I doubt any party’s members had adopted a policy about that, prior to taking a position on it). Finding this balance may prove to be a challenge for a Liberal leader. Greens, at least, besides having a multitude of member-approved policies on which a leader can draw on, also have the advantage of an expressed set of values which can be relied upon by the leader to inform a decision.

I keep hearing about “liberal values”, but I don’t know that they’ve ever been codified in the same way that Green values have. If Liberals do indeed move forward with adopting this resolution to constrain their leader on policy matters, they may wish to explore the concept of exactly what the Party’s values are. As an active member of the Green Party, I can tell you that it’s refreshing to belong to a political party which operates in a values-based paradigm. And that’s again unique amongst Canada’s political parties.

Certainly if the LPC wants to demonstrate that it’s going to take listening to its members seriously, adopting a resolution which constrains the leader’s ability to determine the Party’s policies will go a long way. I mean, I have to say, as a former Liberal, I simply never understood what the point of going through an entire membership-driven policy approval process was when the leader of the Party can simply say “no” to any approved policy.

I realize I trot this example out every time I want to make this point, but it’s a point worth making. Back in 2009 at the Liberal’s convention, LPC membership reaffirmed a commitment to championing their carbon tax policy. Former Liberal Leader Stephane Dion made the carbon tax one of the centre pieces of the Liberal Party platform and campaign in the 2008 election, and many pundits believe that it may have been the biggest loser in terms of issues which contributed to the Liberal’s electoral losses. Be that as it may (and I think there’s some merit to that analysis, btw), the fact is the membership of the Party in 2009 reconfirmed its commitment to the policy – only to see newly elected leader Michael Ignatieff indicate on the same day that he would unequivocally not support a carbon tax. So much for the wisdom of the members. And why should one member’s opinion about policy outweigh the cumulative opinion of the membership, just because the one member is leader? Sorry, but that’s a completely elitist approach to democracy. The LPC would be much better served by following the Green Party’s progressive model.

(continued in Part 2...)

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

2012 Crystal Ball Blog, Part 4: The End of the World

2012-01-05T17:48:00.002-05:00

I caught last night’s edition of TVO’s “The Agenda with Steve Paikin”. The topic under discussion was the End of the World, and the panel was fantastic. Paikin kicked things off with references to the global hype around the Mayan calendar’s seemingly abrupt end on December 12, 2012. None of the panellists were prepared to offer their agreement regarding the proposed date of the end of times.

All of this got me thinking that I seemed to have missed out on prognosticating about December 21st, 2012, and the end of the world, when I was writing my earlier Crystal Ball Gazing blogposts. Cue palm-to-forehead.

Look, the end of days is of significant interest to me. I mean, who can’t help but be fascinated by the end of the world? Apocalyptic prophecy today continues to inform so many decisions which are being made at the highest levels of government, it’s hard for a political junkie like me to ignore. Smiley-face.

I mean, if you’re going to get into the game of political predictions, it seems entirely appropriate this year to make the call for December 21, 2012. After all, any amateur can predict the winner of the Stanley Cup (which I did in Part 3 of my recent series, and which I’m already starting to regret, given that the Dallas Stars are currently sitting two points out a playoff spot in the West right now), but it would take a real Nostradamus (or a better-than-the-real-Nostradamus) to call the exact date of the end of everything.

Given my past successes with predictions, really, I have little to lose by making the call about the end of the Mayan calendar. So, in this the fourth (and final) instalment of my Crystal Ball Gazing blog series, I’m giving you my frank forecast for December 21, 2012. Can I get a drum roll please?

(…Drum Roll…)

Cloudy, with a chance of showers.

(opinions expressed in this blog post are my own and should not be considered to be in keeping with those of the Green Party of Canada)

2012 Crystal Ball Blog, Part 3: International Predictions

2011-12-31T20:21:00.001-05:00

In Part 1 of my Crystal Ball gazing blog post, I took a look at domestic politics in Canada and made some not-so bold predictions. In Part 2, I discussed a few over-arching ideas related to the economy and democracy, and my predictions tended to be a little more trend-based. Now, in Part 3, I’ll return to making some specific international predictions for 2012.

The Biggest Stories

As 2011 draws to a close, all of the sounds of war are being heard off in the distance. Earlier this week, Iran threatened to block oil exports by closing the Stratis of Hormuz, the strategic waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, if international sanctions were to be brought against Iran. The U.S. responded by insisting that the Straits would remain open. Public opinion in the United States (and elsewhere) has been mobilizing for war with Iran, based in part on a recently released United Nations report which indicates that Iran is increasing its capacity to build a nuclear bomb. The government of Israel, in particular, has put its people on high alert that war may be coming.

Earlier this month, the Iranians cyber attacked a U.S. drone overflying their territory, which led to the complete takeover of the drone, and its soft landing within Iran. The U.S. government continues to insist that the drone malfunctioned. President Obama was left with no option but to publicly ask the Iranians to return the U.S. spy drone. The Iranians did not respond positively to his overture.

The British embassy in Tehran was recently violated by protesters, and the UK turfed the Iranian ambassador to London as a result.

In late December, a U.S. Court found that Iran was behind the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, having financed Al Qaeda terrorists. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen (as it clearly conflicts with the U.S. government’s narrative as outlined in the 9/11 Commission Report, released in 2004), but almost certainly these findings could easily be used as a justification for war against Iran.

War in Iran

All in all, there’s not a whole lot of international goodwill towards Iran out there right now. Last year, I predicted that despite ominous signs of war with Iran, 2011 would bring nothing new. This year, I am predicting that we will see war with Iran, in the form of an American-led coalition of the willing, which will include the UK and several other NATO members (yes, Canada will be one of them), but initially not Israel or Turkey. Israel and Turkey, however, will almost certainly be drawn into the conflict, as Iran’s military assets will not be completely overwhelmed in a single American strike.

War fever will grip the United States in the coming months, and the war itself is almost certainly going to come before U.S. Republicans name their Presidential nominee. President Barack Obama stands to gain considerable political points by making war on Iran, especially at a time when his harshest critics remain unable to speak with a single voice. War with Iran will also change the channel on any bad news about the American economy, which will also be an advantage for Obama.

The war itself will probably last for about a month, and during that time we can expect to see massive U.S. air strikes on military targets, with attendant collateral damage. While the air force will reap the brunt of the credit for the success of these strikes, it will be CIA agents remotely operating unmanned drones who will do the lions share of the work. Marine-based cruise missiles will also rain down upon Iran, crippling its air defences. Co-ordinated cyber attacks (some of which may originate from Israel) will also throw the Iranian government into complete disarray during the opening days of the attack.

Commandos from U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Afghanistan, will seize control of key Iranian assets, particularly those which may lead to the discovery of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Unlike with Iraq, the public will be shown proof positive that the Iranians were up to something, and that story will emerge within the first few weeks of the war.

Despite almost complete American air superiority, there will surely be Iranian retaliation, and it won’t be limited to American strategic assets. Expect the Iranians to target Israeli cities with their missiles. Saudi Arabia might also end up on the receiving end of an Iranian counter-attack. Depending on Turkey’s involvement in Syria (more on that later), it too may come under Iranian missile attack. The attacks themselves may not cause much physical damage, but the political damage may be appalling, especially if Israel decides to use its own military forces against Iran. Israeli involvement on the side of the Americans would certainly enrage muslims throughout the world, and especially in North Africa, where relations with the West are fragile, due to recent regime change.

The end-game for the Americans will be regime change in Iran. The U.S. has been working with Iran's democratic opposition for some time now, and replacing the beaten mullahs with a moderate government might prove easier to do in Iran than it did in Iraq, although it’s hard to determine how accepting of a new government Iranians will be after being bombed. Nevertheless, there has always existed a significant element within Iran which has opposed its hardline Islamic government. And the people of Iran are much more homogenous in terms of religion, language and culture than the people of Iraq, which might lead to less dissent in Iran.

Regime change alone, though, will not signal the end of the war, but it will be enough to give Barack Obama the Presidential victory at the end of the year. That another long and expensive occupation looms on the horizon will be lost on American voters, who have long relished the chance to finally get back at Iran after the hostage crisis of 1979.

One would presume that war with Iran, especially one which threatens shipping through the Straits of Hormuz, would bring higher oil prices, and could potentially lead to an economic crisis. While that is a possibility, confidence in middle eastern oil remains high, with Libyan oil production again coming back on stream, and with Saudi Arabia insisting that it can increase its own production to make up for what is lost from Iran. While there may be a modest spike in prices at the pump, a slumping international economy may be the best predictor of oil prices throughout 2012, which is to say that prices should remain relatively steady, and be largely unaffected by a short, sharp war.

The Rest of the Middle East

Syria is already in the midst of a civil war, although only a few have begun calling it that at the end of 2011. Nevertheless, that’s what it is. Expect Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to continue to suppress protesters through the use of violence. Protesters will continue to hope for international intervention a la Libya, but the West will dither and offer only sanctions. The Arab League will fail to act, and the violent oppression will continue until the anti-government ring leaders are rounded up and the rebellion is brought to a bloody close. Democrats in Syria will not be celebrating any Tahrir Square-style victory at the close of 2012. Many will flee to Turkey to escape Assad's wrath.

There are a couple of wild cards in the Syrian conflict, though: Turkey and Iraq, and the Kurds. Let’s turn to Iraq for a moment.

Iraq and Turkey

With the official U.S. withdrawal of its military from Iraq, sectarian violence has returned. It seems unlikely that the government of Nouri al-Maliki will be able to hold his nation together. Already, Kurdistan has almost broken away into some form of semi-autonomous region beyond the control of Baghdad. As sunni battles shi’ite, Iraq is heading for some form of civil war.

As the Kurds continue to operate with impunity in Northern Iraq, we can expect to see further activity within those parts of Turkey where the Kurds have laid claim. Last year, Turkish forces traversed the Iraqi border, in pursuit of Kurdish armed militias, in late December Turkish war planes bombed Kurdish civilians in Iraq. It is quite likely that a disintegrating Iraq might prove too much for Turkey, and the military occupation of Iraq’s Kurdish north by Turkish forces may be the result.

Turkey may also be forced to intervene militarily in Syria, especially if the humanitarian crisis becomes too acute as a result of civil war. Don’t expect Turkey to take sides, though. But it may decide to occupy Syrian territory in order to protect Syrian citizens from Assad.

If war between the U.S. and Iran comes, and Turkish troops are occupying Iraqi Kurdistan or parts of Syria, expect NATO bases in Turkey to be on Iran’s list of targets.

All in all, 2012 is going to be a very violent year in the Middle East.

The United States of America

Politically, the biggest story of the year will be Barack Obama’s return to the White House for a second term. The second biggest story may very well be just who the heck the Republicans will nominate to lose to him.

Look, I’m not a big fan of Obama’s, and even if I were, I can’t ignore that he’s not the most popular politician in the United States at the moment. And it’s not that I see his popularity growing over the next 12 months (unless there is to be a war against Iran). It’s just that…those Republicans all seem so incredibly unelectable (including Mitt Romney) that Americans won’t have much choice but to return a lacklustre Obama.

If Donald Trump decides to make an independent, Ross Perrot-style run for the White House (which I predict he won’t), Obama’s triumph might prove to be one of the biggest in U.S. electoral history. Now, if New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg decides to make an Independent run for some reason, that would truly make things interesting. Again, though, I don’t expect that Bloomberg will run.

So, the big question is, who will the Republicans finally nominate to lose to Obama? My bet is that it will end up being Mitt Romney, who will be viewed as a bit of a compromise candidate for Republican stalwarts, but really he is the only one there who has even the remotest hope of going up against Obama. All of the other candidate suffer from one critical ailment or another, politically speaking.

I also expect the Democrats to make modest gains in the House of Reps and the Senate as well, but not enough to take back the House.

UK Coalition

The United Kingdom’s Coaltion government of Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats will crumble late in 2012, as Liberal-Democratic Leader Nick Clegg pulls the plug on an increasingly anti-European government. The Euro Crisis will end up leading to the demise of yet another government. An election to be held in 2013 will return the Conservatives with a majority government, and bring Labour back to the role of Official Opposition. The Liberal-Democrats under Clegg will find themselves in electoral free-fall, much as most junior coalition partner parties do.

Afghanistan

Hamid Karzai’s government will be under threat from two fronts. The first will be from within, due to corruption, and the other will be from without and in the form of the Taliban. With U.S. and NATO troops beating a hasty retreat, Afghanistan will likely find itself back in the familiar territory of civil war. I expect Karzai to hang on to power throughout 2012, but the territory in which he can exert that power is likely to shrink.

North Korea

With the passing of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il, the keys to the kingdom have made their way to his son, Kim Jong-Un. At least that’s the story being peddled by Pyongyang. North Korea-watchers have almost unanimously concluded that it’s the military which will be holding North Korea together, with Kim as a figurehead, needed for propaganda, but not much else.

Interestingly, I suspect that as a result, Korea will be quiet over the next year, as shifting within the North’s power structure will prove to be the focus for the regime, rather than antagonizing its neighbours.

Australia

Last year, I predicted that Julia Gillard’s coalition government would crack and fall. That didn’t happen. So I’m extending that prediction over into 2012, and believe that the Labour-led coalition will fall and be replaced by…a Labour-led minority government which will seek to govern as if it had a majority, much as our minority governments seem to be doing here in Canada. The election will be a referendum on Labour’s carbon tax, which the people of Australia will vote to get rid of, but due to an out-dated first-past-the-post electoral system, they’ll end up keeping.

Russia

Despite growing pro-democracy rallies ahead of next year’s general election, Vladimir Putin and his United Russia Party will be returned with a very strong majority, and Putin will be the once and future President of Russia. Accusations of ballot-box stuffing and other forms of electoral corruption will be front and centre, leading to more protests. Expect the Russian authorities to begin a crackdown on pro-democracy organizers in the run-up to the election, and protesters will likely face violence at the hands of police after the election is held.

Keystone XL Pipeline

An interesting election issue will emerge in the United States, that being the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Barack Obama may end up having to cancel outright in the early part of 2012, due to a Republican rider introduced on a budget bill which calls for a final decision to be made on Keystone before the election.

You will recall that the Keystone XL pipeline, a project proposed by TransCanada to bring crude from the Alberta tar sands to refineries in Texas, required U.S. federal approval, which was expected to be made by Obama in the fall of 2011. Instead of making a decision, and after significant protests by environmentalists in Washington D.C., and landowners in Nebraska, Obama decided to put the pipeline on hold, until a new route through Nebraska away from the sensitive Ogallala aquifer could be found (and proven safe through a time-consuming environmental assessment process).

Environmentalists concerned about climate change hailed this non-decision as a significant victory. I believe that was an over-reaction on the part of climate crisis champions. Indeed, while Obama expressed environmental concerns with the pipeline, those concerns were not related to climate change. The political environment in the U.S. right now is not conducive to making decisions based on fighting climate change. By kicking a decision back to after 2012, Obama, if returned to office, would be able to approve Keystone XL and not worry about alienating environmental supporters before an election (simply by instead alienating them after the election).

But with the Republican rider included on a budget bill, Obama’s hand may be forced. I’ve read recently that the White House is trying to find some wiggle room around the rider, as I’m sure Obama wants to continue to postpone a decision until after the election. Having to kill Keystone now will provide Republican challengers with more ammunition that Obama favours the environment over jobs, and is therefore out of touch with voters.

However, I believe that if Obama can’t find a way to continue to postpone Keystone, he will almost certainly kill it. By killing it in January or February, it’s quite likely that the issue may be largely forgotten by the time of an election, especially if the election is fought on non-economic issues, which could happen with a little diversion as a result of a war with Iran, even with its attendant spike in oil prices. Better to risk Republican wrath on this issue than to have his environmental base abandon him before the election. Even though Obama is the only champion that environmentalists have right now in the U.S., it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that even a weak challenger could rise to oppose Obama in the upcoming election. It's been suggested that in 2000, Green Party Leader Ralph Nadar was credited with taking just enough votes away from Al Gore to sink his bid for presidency (which ignores the fact that Al Gore never "owned" those votes in the first place, but still, this scenario spooks Democrats. As an aside, one of my googlegangers, Arizona State Representative, Republican Steve May, was caught in a scandal in 2010 because he was helping homeless people register as Green Party candidates in the State election. Apparently, he did this in order to split the Democratic vote, and thus give himself better odds of winning. Admit it - you sometimes Google yourself too).

Obama will want to avoid a circumstance which could see a challenger emerge on his policy flank. So if Keystone has to die, it will die.

Climate Change

Interestingly, as I write this part of my blog about climate change, I note that I’m not going to say anything at all about the science of climate change, and instead I’m approaching climate change squarely from the point of view of public opinion. For me, the facts around climate change have long been well established; it’s the battle for public opinion which continues to be fought, in terms of public acceptance, but more importantly in terms of international action. Of course, local action is also important.

In 2012, we will continue to see public opinion on the issue of anthropogenic climate change build towards 2008 levels of acceptance, and indeed, public opinion polls at the end of 2012 may show the highest level of belief in climate change ever. The concept of climate change took a pretty big hit at the end of 2008, with co-ordinated efforts aimed to derailing climate talks in Copenhagen and reaching an agreement on the extension of the Kyoto Accord. The release of the so-called “ClimateGate” emails, and even more importantly, the spin afforded to their release in the right-wing mainstream media, along with a failure in Copenhagen, weakened the public’s resolve in accepting the science of climate change.

The campaign to subvert scientific fact continues to be waged at all levels today, and not just by those who are fighting against action in the interests of the corporate elites. Interestingly, libertarian elements have come to see combating the climate crisis as a way of further eroding rights and freedoms, especially in the United States, but as well in Canada. That’s largely because the two best ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (the establishment of a cap and trade emissions trading scheme, or a carbon tax) are seen as impediments to the small-government movement, and indeed are considered to be yet further mechanisms to enrich the elite 1% at the expense of the majority. This is especially so of cap and trade, which will rely on financial middlemen (“banksters”) for its implementation.

Others continue to view combating climate change as an excuse to redistribute the wealth of rich nations to poorer ones, ultimately leading to international welfare through some form of global governance structure (believed by some to be run either by the "freedom-hating" United Nations or the technocrats who represent the corporate elites).

The science of climate change will continue to be challenged by oil industry-sponsored junk scientists, but I think that 2012 may prove to be one of the last years where the science itself will form a significant public opinion battleground. With the release of the next IPCC Assessment report scheduled for 2013 or 2014, issues related to science will start to take a back-seat in the mainstream media, and increasingly the media will adopt a tone of junk-science quackery when it comes to individuals who question the science. We’ll start to see some of that in 2012.

However, a new front has emerged in the climate change struggle, and it’s going to be a trend to watch throughout 2012. Climate change deniers are beginning to shift gears away from disputing that climate change is happening, and even away from the notion that even if it is happening, it’s too expensive to do anything about. The latest attack is one straight from the heart, as increasingly we’ve seen personal attacks on the patriotism of environmentalists and other citizens concerned about climate change.

Indeed, if you follow Sun Media in Canada, the insinuation being made is if you don’t support the tar sands there’s something very un-Canadian about you. Indeed, Sun Media appears to be censoring the very term "tar sands" replacing it with "oil sands" even within the context of quotations used by environmentalists and politicians.

Domestic environmental organizations and individual environmentalists, such as Dr. David Suzuki, are increasingly under attack for having accepted donations from international environmental organizations, some of whom may be operating in countries with their own vested oil interests (such as Saudi Arabia) or (really interestingly) green economic interests, such as Germany or Denmark. The theory here is that if money is flowing to environmental organizations in Canada which want to slow down tar sands growth, this is actually a sinister purpose, whose ultimate goal is to undermine the Canadian resource economy so that other international oil interests in competition with Canada will be better positioned to profit, along with green industry start-ups (such as German wind farms). And therefore "foreign-influenced" environmentalism is anti-Canadian, and the national loyalty of all environmentalists must be called into question.

That the neo-liberals are able to make these arguments at all while ignoring the fact that it’s the same international corporate interests who are running the show in Saudi Arabia and who have invested heavily in alternative energy in Europe is to laugh. But this narrative will continue to have resonance in Canada and in the United States. If climate change denial (or at least taking action on climate change) can be equated with patriotism for one’s nation (presumably at the expense of the rest of the world), then there will be resonance in a nation which is becoming increasingly polarized between the neo-liberals and Everyone Else, and where accusations of “extremism” and “terrorism” are tossed around at highschool students and grandmothers participating in civil disobedience.

A Year of Transition

Yes, 2012 is going to prove to be a pretty dismal and dangerous year over all, as the final gasps of the 20th Century growth-centred economy finally start giving way to a period of transition known as the Long Emergency.

And the Dallas Stars will win the Stanley Cup!

(opinions expressed in this blog post are my own and should not be considered to be in keeping with those of the Green Party of Canada)

2012 Crystal Ball Blog, Part 2: Trends in Economy & Democracy

2011-12-30T21:37:00.001-05:00

Let’s start off Part 2 of this blogpost with a discussion around the economy and democratic rights. You see, increasingly, people are making the connection between the economy and democracy, thanks in part to the global Occupy Movement. But even a cursory look at newspaper headlines throughout 2011 would lead anyone to conclude that there has to be some sort of connection between the two.

Something very telling happened in 2011, which has been overlooked by many as a potential trend. Back in the fall, Greek President George Papandreou returned from a summit with other European Union nations (most notably France and Germany, who have been driving the attempts to get the eurozone back on track) with a plan to implement austerity measures. Rather than making the determination to simply implement those measures, Papandreou decided that he would first take the austerity plan to the Greek people, and ask for a mandate to implement austerity.

That it then emerged into the realm of possibility that the Greek people would reject the austerity measures in favour of Plan B (even though there was, and still is, no Plan B) proved to be a wake-up call for France and Germany and others, who condemned Papandreou’s plebiscite as jeopardizing the entire eurozone. Papandreou was quickly made to fall into line with the technocratic powers that be, and reverse his decision on the plebiscite. He then resigned as Prime Minister. And the austerity deed was done, with no say from the Greek people.

In Italy, former President Silvio Berlusconi has been replaced by the “technocratic” government of Mario Monti. Monti had been appointed to the Senate by the President just a few days ahead of assuming Prime Ministerial powers, and naming his completely unelected cabinet. We now have the absurd situation in Italy of having a government which consists completely of political appointees, rather than elected officials. That this “technocratic” government has largely been praised as the last, best hope to get Italy back on track as a healthy member of the eurozone does not and can not change the fact that democracy in Italy has taken a back-seat to the interests of the bankers.

For who is really calling the shots in Europe right now? When a democratically elected Prime Minister is forced to resign after calling for a plebiscite to implement austerity measures, and when an entire country (and a G-8 country at that, with Europe's third larges economy) can be run by a completely unelected government, what is going on? And in whose interests are decisions really being made?

That’s the connection between the economy and democracy. That’s not to say that a return to a healthy economy must require technocratic decision making in preference to democratic decision making (although when you watch the U.S. Congress in “action”, the flaws of democratic decision making are clearly on display for all to see). In fact, it's far from clear that the technocrats have any clear idea about getting the economy back on track at all, as they are completely plugged into an economic model which requires growth in order to remain viable.

The global Occupy Movement would characterize the erosion of our democratic rights in this way: decisions are being made by the 1% for the 1%, often to the detriment of the 99%. This situation is like Tommy Douglas’ “Mouseland” on steroids, only no one elected these cats.

Promises of a return to democracy are, quite frankly, a load of bull, given that the technocrats will have transformed society without having had the benefit of any mandate from the people to do so.

But sure, that’s Italy and Greece. That’s not happening here in Canada. Well, that’s true, but it doesn’t have to happen here in Canada, because we have an electoral system in place in which it is very easy to allow minority interests to rule with impunity, and that’s exactly where we are at with the Harper regime at the end of 2011. Clearly, in 2011, Harper and his Conservatives, after winning a false majority government (with only 39% of the popular vote, and only a little over 20% of all electors), have embarked upon a war against our democratic processes, through acts of unilateralism. Expect this war on democracy to continue throughout 2012, and the tactics being employed (often with the use of public dollars) to promote the Harper Regime’s war will continue to smear the interests of democracy.

The U.S.

In Canada, our national motto is, “Peace, Order and Good Government”. Arguably, the Harper Regime has been able to deliver on the first two, and that seems to make a lot of people, well, if not happy, at least content. We Canadians tend not to give a lot of thought to what good government is all about, as long as peace and order are being delivered.

South of the border, though, average Americans spend quite a bit of time thinking about their own government, especially through the lens of the U.S. Constitution, a document which has achieved a very noteworthy status for most Americans. Most Americans are very proud of their Constitution, and they should be. For although it’s not a perfect document in my opinion, it seeks to create the circumstance for a way of life under the rule of law which is the envy of the world. That the United States of America has never quite achieved the potential set out in its Constitution is no matter, as it is always good to be able to have a continuing reason to strive for excellence.

Increasingly, however, Americans are waking up to the fact that their beloved Constitution is under attack by their own government. That this has been going on for decades, and on many fronts, may come as a surprise to some Americans, but the acceleration of these attacks after 9/11 in the name of “security” has been particularly noticeable, and frankly should trouble Americans.

In December 2011, the U.S. passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Although a National Defense Authorization Act is passed just about every year by Congress, the Act for 2012 contains some rather Orwellian provisions, which supporters (including President Barack Obama) have claimed are necessary in order to continue the “war” on terrorism. Specifically, this piece of legislation will allow U.S. citizens to be detained indefinitely by their government where they are suspected of engaging in terrorist activities. No charges need first be brought, and there is no right to access a lawyer, and no remedy for appeal. Americans travelling abroad, and those in the United States, are equally at risk.

This bill has raised a massive red flag for the American Civil Liberties Union, and other individuals and organizations who are concerned about the erosion of Constitutional rights.

The idea of being “innocent until proven guilty” used to have an important status in the United States. Thanks to the Republican and Democratic Parties who run the government of the United States, that’s no longer the case. And given the bipartisan support for this measure, there appears to be little that average Americans can do about it. When there are only two parties to choose from, and they are both in favour of the same thing, well, is there really a choice?

Of course, there are other political parties in the United States, but the U.S. electoral system heavily favours the monied interests of the existing parties.

Measures such as those now found in law through the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 have prompted many Americans to ask themselves, “If the government isn’t looking out for my interests, what choices do I have?”. Some have decided that demonstrations are the answer, and the Occupy Movement emerged as the best-known example of people-power in 2011. Others are seeking to change the system from within, through efforts such as the Tea Party, however, the Tea Party since day one has proven to be nothing but an astroturf campaign to break the back of government for the interests of the corporate elite. That many involved in the Tea Party still do not understand that they are working against their own economic interests does not change this fact. And that the Republican Party has now almost been completely taken over by corporate interests masquerading as a grassroots movement again illustrates the power which massive amounts of money bring to the political equation.

But there are other movements afoot which some would consider to be extreme. I expect to be hearing more about some of these other movements over the course of 2012, as trust in the government in the United States will continue to break down. Particularly, we’re going to become familiar with a couple of brands of “terrorists” which haven’t exactly been top of mind in recent years.

Anonymous

First, we will be hearing more from groups such as Anonymous, a hacker “organization” (actually anti-organization) which was been in the news a lot throughout 2011. Anonymous has already begun pooling its resources in efforts to engage in cyber warfare on corporatist interests, particularly those which speak out in favour of rights-reducing measures. And while I don’t expect Anonymous to be branded a terror organization in 2012, I do expect that the U.S. government, and governments around the world, are going to be paying close attention to Anonymous, along with the business community.

The Black Bloc and the Occupy Movement

The Black Bloc will also continue to make appearances throughout 2012, much to the chagrin of the largely peaceful Occupy Movement demonstrators. The Occupy Movement itself is incredibly open to being infiltrated by those with differing agendas. While the Occupy Movement largely enjoyed public support throughout 2011, as the desire to reclaim public spaces from the occupiers became paramount, the Movement continued to lose support. Violent incidents, despite often being initiated by the police, has also led to the erosion of public support for the Movement. I fully expect public support for Occupy to continue to erode throughout 2012, even though those in the Movement have vowed a return.

Occupy is at risk because it poses a direct threat to neo-liberal interests, which have been bent on reshaping the economy and democracy to be better equipped to address the interest of the corporate elites, which is, in short, the making of money. The very nature of the Occupy Movement is one of openness and transparency, and decisions are made on the basis of consensus. There are no true leaders. This leaves the Movement in an extremely vulnerable position when it comes to infiltration of other interests. In 2012, we’re going to see those other interests emerge in the form of violent anarchists intent on causing destruction to the symbols of corporate power. We’ve seen this before at G20 protests. Expect more of the same to occur with events initiated with peaceful intentions by the Occupy Movement. These demonstrations are sure to attract violent protesters. As a result, the Black Bloc may become next Al Qaeda.

And, as it has been demonstrated at G20 protests around the world, when it comes to the “Black Bloc”, not everything is always as it seems. Indeed, the police use tactics of infiltration and instigation in order to break-up protests, sometimes before they can begin. In Toronto, police successfully befriended and infiltrated those planning non-violent protests at the G20 summit, and it is only now coming out that it was the police infiltrators who were championing calls for violent activity. Of course, it’s easier to arrest protesters beforehand if there’s a perceived threat of violence. Many in leadership roles at the G20 protest in Toronto were rounded up by the police before the first international leaders ever touched down in Canada. Expect to see the same happen to the Occupy Movement.

In 2012, I predict that Occupy will once again become a word associated with militarism, and those engaging in the Movement will be branded anarcho-terrorists, mainly as a result of efforts already afoot to discredit what has largely been a peaceful form of civil disobedience. Efforts are already underway through the right-wing mainstream media to discredit the Movement. It is mainly due to the success that the Movement experienced at bringing the idea of income inequality to the front pages of our media (and making it front of mind in our politicians) that will ultimately doom the Movement to a tragic death in 2012.

Although I sincerely hope that I'm wrong about this, as I continue to believe that the Occupy Movement remains an excellent vehicle for awakening and arousing public opinion on matters of inequality and social justice. But the corporate elites must view it as a threat, and so they will do what they can to turn public opinion against the movement.

One last thing: there is emerging an alarming trend whereby governments are now discussing the need for protesters to pay for permits, police and security due to extra costs which are being generated by the protests. We may be faced with an absurd situation where protesters are forced to foot the bill for the security forces which pepper-spray them! So much for freedom of assembly!

Militias

The proliferation of armed militias in the United States has largely been under-reported, especially here in Canada, which has few equivalents to this tradition. Although there are a number of militias which do operate in Canada, and which make the news every now and then; in 2011, the Quebec separatist militia, “Milice patriotique quebecois” made headlines when someone in the media discovered that it existed. Photos of gun-toting separatists posted to Facebook caused quite a stir for 5 minutes one Tuesday morning, and the militia’s founder was forced to go on a bit of a public relations building exercise to stem the hysteria. Sure, CSIS has talked to the militia, and everyone agrees that no one is breaking any law. The militia is purely defensive in nature, of course. Just like the militias in the States.

But this begs the questions: in whose defense, and in defense against whom?

And the only answer that makes any sense is, in the interests of the militia members and their wider community, and in defense against the Government. Many who are members of these militias take the Constitution of the United States very seriously indeed, for it is within the U.S. Constitution that the right to bear arms is articulated. Many believe that the government has been trying to slowly erode that right, along with other rights in the Constitution, by passing laws in the name of security. While militias may share the concerns of Republican politicians regarding foreign terrorists and the need to preserve the American way of life and its values, many within the militias are finding themselves at odds with Republican legislators who are openly seeking to subvert the Constitution. (Add this as yet another reason of why the “left vs. right” political dichotomy has truly broken down). Truly, these armed militias are going to pose a bit of a problem for a government which wants to eliminate rights and freedoms.

They’ve been flying under the radar for some time now, and that’s largely because the militias themselves aren’t particularly keen to draw a lot of attention to themselves, and because the government doesn’t really know what to do with them. Since they haven’t been causing much trouble lately, well, it’s been best to pursue a policy of live and let live.

However, in 2012, with the economy expected to increasingly break down in the United States, and personal freedoms and liberties continuing to be under attack by legislators, including every Republican contender for the GOP nomination except for Ron Paul, we can expect some of these militias to become more active (or at least elements of these militias). It would not be beyond the realm of possibility that we may see a number of Oklahoma City-style bombings or other violent actions from truly fringe elements within these militias (or worse, a false flag operation by the government itself, in order to bolster President Obama’s re-election bid, just in case that war with Iran thing falls through).

Also look for the stirrings of successionist movements at the State level in the U.S., particularly in Texas, California and the other western sates.

Anonymous, Occupy, Black Bloc and Militias

You can see how the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 might come in handy for a government keen on incarcerating Americans expected of involvement in terrorism. If the Black Bloc becomes Al Qaeda in U.S. cities, operating within the Occupy Movement, well, it will be that much easier for the government to round up and detain the organizers behind the leadersless Movement when things start to turn violent. The same can be said for the militias and for Anonymous.

We will start to see the tip of the iceberg regarding “domestic terrorism” in 2012, as increasingly, those involved in peaceful and lawful demonstrations and organizations will become “terrorists” by virtue of professing anti-government stances. The real scary stuff, however, probably won’t happen for a few more years yet. But by the end of 2012, the plan to incarcerate citizens who hold anti-government views should become a lot more obvious, and even the mainstream media will start to cover the trend.

And if you think that Canada will be immune from this sort of lunacy, think again. We in Canada have never enjoyed the range of Constitutional protection from the state in the same way that Americans have, so our laws haven’t required the sorts of drastic overhauling that we’ve seen in the U.S. Here in Canada, we’ve already witnessed the massive detention of peaceful protesters on suspicion that they might become engaged in violent activity, through the kettling efforts of police at the G20 in Toronto. Still approximately 1000 others were arrested, some of whom were the victims of police violence; some for engaging in civil disobedience, or simply for being in a public place at the wrong time. In Canada, there’s always been a much finer line for rights. With the Harper Crime Bill sure to be adopted in 2012, and with super jails being built across Canada, we can certainly expect an uptick on the number of criminals, many of whom will be doing nothing different tomorrow than what they’ve been doing today, and some of whom are sure to be pro-democracy protesters.

The Economy

Many pundits are claiming that 2012 isn’t going to be the year of the global economic collapse, while the average citizen (who isn’t an economist), almost certainly expects it to be. I smile when I hear the pundits talk about the economy’s health and recovery, because I know that economists have to talk this way in order to create the idea of confidence in our economy. That this kind of talk is often successful in achieving the desired outcome, and thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, does not bother me In fact, I’d very much like the economy to remain healthy. I was born into a world with the understanding that economic growth is good for everyone, including me. I sincerely enjoyed believing in this reality, because it seemed so very real. But I know that economic growth can not be sustained, due to the depletion of non-renewable energy resources. Trust me, I’d rather stick my head in the sand and pretend that the sky isn’t falling, and go on about my merry way. But I can’t, and increasingly, neither can more and more citizens whose eyes are being opened.

However, I don’t think that we’re in for global economic collapse in 2012. I expect that the economy will slip back into recession, even here in Canada, but it will prove to be an incremental recession, and recovery will be predicted on the horizon. Only it won’t be on the horizon, and 2013 is going to prove to be a very bad year.

Author and futurist James Howard Kuntsler described this time as being the early stages of what he dubbed “The Long Emergency”, and I’ve come to think of the unfolding decade in this way. The Emergency isn’t going to get underway all at once, but as we’ve already found ourselves in the downward spirals leading to the Emergency, we’re not going to be able to climb out of it any time soon. So, it’s best to prepare for the future which we will find ourselves in, rather than yearning to return to a past which can no longer be. That we must change our governmental, economic and social institutions in order to meet the challenges of the Long Emergency is an evident truth. That there will be considerable resistance by the vested interests of the corporate elites to do so is also self-evident. 2012 will prove to be Year 2 of the struggle between the forces of the neo-liberal corporate elites and Everybody Else.

Left Wing vs. Right Wing

Already, the notions of “left wing” and “right wing” on some sort of linear political spectrum have already started to break down. Increasingly, throughout 2012, pundits and the media will begin to move away from the “left vs. right” political narrative. And I think that’s going to happen in the United States too.

If you don’t believe that left/right political narrative has started to break down, note the use of the terms “fascism” and “communism” to both describe the actions and policies of President Barack Obama by Republicans. Traditionally, we have placed the ideology of fascism on the far right of the political spectrum (and indeed, the Republican Party itself has certainly been attacked lately by pundits on the left, and also particularly by libertarians, as being “fascist”), while communists inhabited the far left end of the spectrum. When an understanding of concepts begins to break down, using those concepts as descriptors becomes increasingly irrelevant. If no one understands what you’re talking about, you can talk about anything, but it's not helpful.

But it’s more than that. The rise of libertarianism in its post 9/11 form on the one hand, and the rise of green politics have also challenged the left/right political dichotomy. For although pundits often place libertarians on the right side of the political spectrum, libertarians themselves are increasingly less likely to identify with the Republican or Conservative parties in the U.S. and Canada, due to those Party's continued support of big government and their desire to restrict personal freedoms and rights. Equally, pundits have been comfortable placing greens on the left of the spectrum, I think largely because there isn’t a very good understanding of green politics out there, but also because environmentalism is seen as requiring strong government regulation in order to work, and that’s generally been considered as the purview of social democratic parties (although it has been Conservatives in Canada and Republicans in the U.S. which have created the biggest deficits, so it's not at all clear which parties are truly the parties of "big government").

But this political narrative has started to break down, which means that a new narrative must emerge, in order to edify the pundits and the public. I believe that we’ll find ourselves in a bit of a transitionary phase for the next few years, although a good counter to the existing left/right narrative has already emerged, at least in one form: the “1%” vs. the “99%”. The problem with the 1% vs. the 99% as a political concept is that many have a hard time identifying with others in the mix on the 99% side of things. That being said, though, not everyone ever fully understood just where on the political spectrum they stood, which gave rise to terms such as “red tory” and “blue liberal”, and populist political parties like the Reform Party.

Nevertheless, I believe that the political narrative will begin to turn into one where the story is no longer “left” vs. “right” but “neo-liberal” vs. “Everyone Else”. That this narrative will prove to be cumbersome and somewhat unhelpful down the road is why I believe that it will be transitory. However, when you are reading political stories in the media in 2012, keep this changing lens in mind.

(continued in Part 3…)

(opinions expressed in this blog post are my own and should not be considered to be in keeping with those of the Green Party of Canada)

2012 Crystal Ball Blog, Part 1: Canadian Politics

2011-12-29T22:17:00.000-05:00

Well, it's that time of year...time to dust off my crystal ball, and make some predictions about the upcoming year that I can write about again next December and discuss how poorly I did. Well, it's all fun and games for me, and I hope that you get a little something out of this as well.

Of course, every year, these blogposts get longer and longer, even though I have developed a reputation for being short, concise and succinct. I chalk it up to the fact that there's just so much going on in the world on which to write about. Anyway, this year, I'll be treating you to a series of 3 Crystal Ball Blogs. The first will be about the Canadian political scene. The second will be about some larger global trends, especially those related to the economy and democracy, with a bit of a focus on the United States. The 3rd post will return to making specific predictions on international events, which is almost always sure to generate a comment or two from my friends in Australia!

So, enjoy these posts.

Canadian Politics

The Canadian political scene will not be as dynamic during 2012 as it was in 2011. And that stands to reason as 2011 was a pretty explosive year, politically speaking. We had a federal election and a number of provincial elections, including a hotly contested one in Ontario, which proved to be more of a sleeper than anything else.

While Dalton McGuinty’s minority Liberal government should give us political junkies a little bit of action to watch, generally speaking the federal scene is going to settle down somewhat, into a “more of the same” situation, now that Stephen Harper’s regime has captured a majority of seats in the House. It seems that even though scandals come and go, the Conseratives aren’t affected, largely due to the media’s reduced attention-span (and to the fact that increasingly the mainstream media has shifted from reporting the news to making the news, and in a few cases, "making up" the news). That coupled with an opposition in transition will mean that Harper will have it pretty easy throughout 2012.

The NDP Leadership Race

One of the biggest stories on the federal political scene is sure to the NDP’s leadership race. Unlike pas Liberal races, NDP leadership contenders appear content to play nicely with one another. The format for the leadership decision-making process too lends itself to a degree of disinterest, as counting mail-in ballots doesn’t exactly make for gripping live television. But at least the NDP has moved to a "one member, one vote" format, getting rid of allowing Union supporters the right to cast ballots (if you're a party that doesn't believe that corporations are people, then frankly unions shouldn't be able to vote as if they were).

We can expect the NDP leadership contenders to come under greater scrutiny as time goes on, especially the four leading contenders (who are Brian Topp, Paul Dewar, Peggy Nash and Thomas Mulcair). Although the media is looking for which contender will emerge as the “next Jack Layton”, none of these leadership candidates is campaigning that way, which is smart in my opinion. But it does mean that the media will generally remain fairly negative about the contenders, particularly the unelected Brian Topp (who has none of the personality of Layton, but all of Layton’s killer backroom instincts) and Mulcair (who lacks Layton’s broad depth of support, having been affiliated with the Liberal Party not all that long ago).

Having said all of this, I expect that Peggy Nash will emerge as the next Leader of the NDP, specifically because NDP voters will come to view her as the closest of the leadership contenders to the Layton ideal, which is really want the grassroots wants. That Nash is also a very respected leader in her own right (which she will ably demonstrate in the next few months leading up to the leadership decision) will become obvious as well. And for my money, the NDP would also be best served by Nash (although as a Green partisan, I'm less than enthusiastic with Nash leading the NDP).

Not only is Nash a dynamic, fluently bilingual woman with a history of not backing down, she may be the only leadership contender able to shape and carry NDP policy in such a way that it will resonate both with the traditional NDP base, as well as former Liberal (and, let’s be honest – Green) voters. She will also do well in Quebec (well, better than the other contenders might, and I include Romeo Saganash and Mulcair in that mix). Nash’s appeal is going to become obvious to most everyone who is watching.

So while I will cross my fingers and hope that the NDP elect Topp as their Leader (who will certainly take the NDP back to third party status, as he is a ripe target for whithering Conservative attacks), I suspect that the NDP’s membership will instead choose a more principled leadership candidate in the form of Peggy Nash.

By-elections (Toronto-Danforth)

A federal by-election will be held in the riding of Toronto-Danforth in 2012. This was Jack Layton’s riding. The biggest question that I have is not which party is going to win the by-election (it will be the NDP, without question), but who the NDP will choose to represent them their. My prediction is it will be Toronto municipal Councillor, Mike Layton.

The Conservative Party of Canada

The Harper regime is going to have an easy ride, especially if the NDP make the foolish decision to elect Brian Topp as Leader. Without a seat in parliament, Topp will remain out-of-sight, out-of-mind to a degree; but the Conservatives will have a field-day pilloring this former Union leader. If Topp gets his party's leadership nod, it will leave the hapless Nycole Turmel helming the NDP in parliament, where she has been overshadowed significantly in the last session by Charlie Angus and David Christopherson (which has no doubt come as a relief to the Dippers).

The Harper regime will continue along its merry way with government by arrogance. A compliant media will largely continue to let the Conservatives get away with scandal after scandal, especially about spending. Debate in the House has already turned into the worst kept joke in Canada – expect more of it.

One would think that this kind of arrogance would lead towards more dissension. It won’t. With federal support of the NDP declining (which may be salvaged somewhat if Nash or Dewar become the Leader), and Liberal support on the rise under a dynamic Bob Rae, expect the opposition to remain divided, and the electorate to remain largely disinterested, just as it has been over scandals related to the Wheat Board; G20; Kyoto; Long Gun Registry data; Statistics Canada; environmental monitoring; scientist muzzling; Franke James defamation; F-35 fighter price-tag; the cost of new prisons; Attawapiskat; the omnibus crime bill fiasco; the recent health-care “deal” shoved down the throats of the provinces; invocation of closure to debates; dirty tricks rulings; illegal election financing; behind closed-doors border decisions; closed-door committee meetings; rights-removing internet legislation; Geneva Convention violations (this is getting depressing, so I’m moving on).

The Liberal Party of Canada

Under able interim-Leader Bob Rae, Liberal support will draw even with the NDP by the end of 2012. Rae will remain the darling of the media in the House, especially if an unelected Brian Topp becomes Leader of the NDP. There will be even more talk that the next Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada will be…Bob Rae.

The Bloc Quebecois

I usually don’t dabble in making predictions about Quebec, but I figure if I can go out on a limb and discuss the whacky world of the B.C. political scene, I might as well venture forth into the Quebec political quagmire. But only so far as it pertains to the federal scene.

I expect that former MP Daniel Paille, the new Leader of the Bloc, will succeed in any bid to regain a seat in the House during the next available Quebec by-election, no matter where it may be. I expect to see the Bloc’s polling figures continue their upward trend, as Quebeccers become increasingly despondent with a disinterested Conservative government. As a result, NDP support in Quebec will continue to drop, in preference to the Bloc.

The NDP

The NDP had a very strange year in 2011. Although it experienced unprecedent success at the polls in the spring election, with the passing of its Leader, Jack Layton, the Party has become mired in issues related to leadership, and has begun to sag in the polls. A lengthy timeframe for the Leadership campaign, coupled with a staggeringly underwhelming performance by interim Leader Nycole Turmel, the NDP has left a lot of unanswered questions for 2012.

While a new Leader in the form of Peggy Nash or even Paul Dewar might breathe some life into this moribund party, expect national numbers for the NDP to continue their descent. But I don’t predict that the NDP will return to pre-2011 levels of support, even with Brian Topp as Leader. The NDP will remain a strong voice for Canada’s progressives throughout 2012. Beyond that, it’s hard to say much, pending the outcome of the Leadership race, which really is (despite my prediction) very difficult to call.

The Green Party of Canada

The Green Party of Canada was probably the biggest loser in the May 2011 election. Support for the Greens plummeted from almost 7% nationally to less than 4%. While the party elected its first-ever MP in the form of Party Leader Elizabeth May, the destruction of national support can not be understated. With only 1 second-place finish and 1 strong third place finish in all of Canada’s 308 ridings (of which the Greens only managed to field candidates for 304), the Green Party is going to be faced with having to do a lot of rebuilding over the next few years.

Recent polls have placed Green support at about 7%, which some see as a good news story. Certainly Elizabeth May’s strong showing in the House has been an asset to the Party, but a strong NDP remains a barrier to further Green Party entry into the House. This is because, like it or not, the Green Party continues to be perceived as a Party of the left, and because the NDP continues to be perceived as a party which champions the environment. Both of these misguided perceptions will continue uncorrected throughout 2012.

**Spoiler Alert** You heard this here first: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May will not be invited to participate in the next televised Leader’s debate. In a cynical attempt to keep both the Bloc and the Greens from participating in the debates, the NDP will push the Conservatives to limit debate participation to only those Leaders who represent political parties in the House (so just the Cons, Libs and NDP). I know this isn’t a 2012 prediction, but I’m making it with the hopes of waking some Greens up to the fact that we can not rely on May’s debating skills to rebuild the Party at the time of the next election, because she likely will not get the chance to have her “Layton moment”. Which means we have to start doing the hard work now.

About those Polls

This seems like as good a place as any for a quick note on polls, given the above reference to the Green Party’s polling having climbed back to 7%. Between elections, at least during the last several elections, the Green Party has traditionally polled much higher than the number of votes it tends to receive on election day. This may be because polls are designed to capture the opinions of all Canadians. Of course, not all Canadians vote, and that’s a really big problem for the Green Party, as Green Party supporters tend to significantly be found in younger age demographics. And since a higher percentage of young people tend to not vote, well, that leads to the difference between polls and results. It also works in favour of the Conservatives, although given the much larger levels of support for that Party throughout all age demographics, the bump in support which the Conservatives will receive between poll and election result will not be as pronounced (although it’s clearly there, as just about every pre-e-day poll under-predicted the Conservatives success in the May 2011 election).

The moral of this story is that as the health of our democratic institutions continues to decline, we will continue to observe that polls are becoming less trustworthy. This will continue until pollsters figure out a way to better present the specific opinions of those Canadians who will actually cast a ballot, weeding out respondents who merely think they might vote, maybe, if they feel like it.

And this should be a bit of a wake-up call for Greens who may believe that rising polling stats are indicative of a healthy Party.

Alberta's Provincial Election

There will be a provincial election in Alberta in 2012. It will see the Progressive Conservatives returned with a majority government, albeit one which is slightly reduced in size from their current majority. The election of Alison Redford to Leader of the Alberta PC’s was the best thing that the PC’s could have done for themselves. She is proving already to be a strong leader, and more importantly, is playing foil to the Wildrose’s Danielle Smith. Redford is in the process of reinvigorating and, to a lesser degree (but the media love this story) re-inventing the PC’s.

Expect Smith’s Wildrose to make additional gains in rural Alberta. But the biggest losses will come to Raj Sherman’s Liberal Party which, along with bearing the curse of the Liberal brand name, are already floundering for lack of policy direction under their new leader. Redford will handily gain more votes from Liberal voters than she will lose to the Alliance, although that may not play itself out in the seat count.

As for the Alberta Party, which was once considered the new flag-bearer of progressive politics in the province, forget about it. The AP will return zero MLA’s, and the progressive banner will be carried by the NDP, which will take one or two more seats than the 2 they currently hold (but will see their share of the popular vote increase as progressive voters look for a place to park their ballots).

And Alberta's newest party, the Evergreen Party, will barely register: in vote count, in the media, in voter recognition. And likely in candidates as well, as they're getting a very late start, having only just been recognized by Elections Alberta as a political party. With a spring election, no money in the bank, and zero brand recognition, the deck is completely stacked against the Evergreens (although I wish them well).

British Columbia's Provincial Election

With NDP Leader Adrian Dix’s popularity on the rise, and B.C. Liberal Premier Christy Clark’s own popularity waning, I expect that there will be no early election call in B.C. in 2012. An election doesn’t have to be held in the province until May of 2013, but there’s been a lot of speculation that British Columbians may end up going to the polls early, as the Liberals and NDP both have new leaders in place since the 2009 election.

If B.C. does go to the polls, I expect that the outcome will be an NDP minority government, with a very large contingent of Liberals. The B.C. Conservatives will not make significant in-roads, although the pundits will predict that they’re time has come (the latest polls shows the provincial Conservatives and Liberals tied at 23% support in B.C., with the NDP at 34%). The Conservatives may pick up a few strategic seats, but they run the risk of appearing to be unelectable, due to the extreme nature of party candidates and policy.

Despite polling at 15% at the end of December, 2011, the B.C. Green Party will see their previous levels of support evaporate to the NDP, and Greens will be shut out at the election, after another lacklusture performance by Leader Jane Sterk. Sterk stepped into a policy quagmire earlier this year when she dragged her party’s policy position away from the installation of time of use electricity meters (currently being installed by B.C. Hydro in an effort to combat climate change) in preference to a position which favours doing nothing with the meters until the science can unequivocally prove them to be safe, over concerns about electromagnetic radiation. CBC TV recently ran a story on this issue, and it made those who believe that smart meters are a health hazard look like ill-informed luddites. Sterk's position on smart meters will come back to haunt B.C. Greens at election time, but mostly Greens will be the victim of a strong NDP campaign.

Ontario & Quebec

There will be no elections in Ontario or Quebec in 2012. Dalton McGuinty’s minority government will continue on until 2013. Jean Charest’s Liberal government will continue to govern until 2013.

(Continued in Part 2...)

(opinions expressed in this blog post are my own and should not be considered to be in keeping with those of the Green Party of Canada)

2011 in the Rear-View Mirror: I Should Have Seen it Coming

2011-12-28T21:49:00.003-05:00

It’s 2011, all over again. Sarah Palin has started to run away with the Republican Party’s nomination process, and the primaries are now seen as a mere formality. President Barack Obama is clinging to power in the United States, battling against elements of his own Party, led by former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. After a failed nuclear showdown with North Korea, Clinton has emerged as the odds-on favourite challenger to Obama for the Democrats’ 2012 nomination. With rising food and oil prices, and the global economy in turmoil at the end of 2011, the next U.S. President will be forced to lay out a viable policy for American’s new Cold War against China.

Closer to home, 2011 proved to be a one-two punch for Conservatives on the federal and Ontario provincial scene, as Stephen Harper’s party steamrolled to a victory which saw both the Liberals and the NDP lose seats to the new Big Blue Machine. Only the Bloc in Quebec managed to hold onto its centre of power. Resigning in disgrace on election night after losing his own seat, former Liberal Party Leader Michael Ignatieff has handed the reigns of power over to interim Leader Ralph Goodale, although it has been Bob Rae who has emerged as the real guiding light of the Liberal Party. In Ontario, Provincial PC Leader Tim Hudak ran a flawless campaign which gave him a convincing majority government at Queen’s Park, despite Sudbury returning Liberal Rick Bartolucci and New Democrat France Gelinas to provincial parliament.

And the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup on home ice, in 7 games over the Vancouver Canucks.

And that’s the way the year 2011 unfolded, according to my own Crystal Ball predictions, made almost a year ago today, in a three-part blog series.

Predicting the future is a mug’s game anyway, and I’ve never had the best track record. My predictions for 2011, though, were at a particularly low point, thanks in large part to the many significant stories which I did not, maybe even could not, have predicted, including the massive uprisings throughout the Middle East, and the worldwide Occupy Movement, which may have now spread to Russia in the guise of pro-democracy protests.

Throw in an earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a rising Orange Tide in Canada, and Michele Bachmann, and, well, even the boldest predictions can go out the window.

Canada’s Federal Election

I was, however, right on the money with a few predictions, including my call that we would have a spring federal election which would finally give Stephen Harper his coveted (yet false) majority government. Of course, I had been predicting an election about every 6 months since the fall of 2008, so I was bound to hit the nail on the head out of sheer tenacity at some point. I also did predict that Michael Ignatieff would lead the Liberals to their poorest showing ever, and resign in disgrace on election night after losing his own riding. Those were about the only federal election predictions I made which came true, however, as I also predicted that the NDP would lose seats, with modest gains made by the Bloc.

I based my predictions for the federal election on the idea that the election would be portrayed by the mainstream media not as a battle about two competing ideas of a vision for Canada, or even about policy. Instead, I predicted that the media narrative would depict the election as a battle between Harper and Ignatieff, with all other issues being sidelined. I termed this a “clash of personalities” and predicted that Ignatieff would become the easy casualty in such a clash. I still think that I was bang on the money with that prediction, except not even I could predict how quickly the media would tire of its own narrative, once a battered and bruised Ignatieff became someone to be pitied. The clash of personalities which I had predicted turned into watching an elephant squash a terrified mole each and every night on our television sets. A mole which couldn’t find the red door of escape, and instead banged up against a blue door which forbade entry. And that just doesn’t make for good TV.

Interestingly, what changed the media’s narrative had absolutely everything to do with the media itself, although few are acknowledging the important role which the media played in driving the counter-story to the narrative. Clearly, part way through the election, NDP Leader Jack Layton was elevated to a status he had not previously enjoyed, and which the media script could not handle. I still recall watching the media begin to scramble about 3 days after the televised English language debate, when the first polls out of Quebec began showing a significant rise in NDP support there. The media was flabbergasted, and at first, disbelieving. Well, who could have predicted this? I, at least, found myself in good company, missing as I did the 2011 Orange Crush.

Yet, the Orange Crush itself really was largely a Quebec phenomenon, which only led to modest changes in the rest of Canada. Of course, in some ridings (especially in the Greater Toronto Area), better-performing NDP candidates might have led to the election of Conservatives, but it’s not entirely clear that the Cons wouldn’t have been elected there anyway, even without a hyped-up NDP.

It wasn’t the strong NDP campaign in Quebec which led to its electoral success there. Indeed, pundits are taking away a completely different message from the NDP in Quebec, one which suggests that the days of the local campaign are largely over, except perhaps in specific ridings. No, it was Layton who bootstrapped the NDP’s Quebec candidates to himself, after appearances on the extremely popular tv talk show, Tout le Monde en Parle, as well as a convincing performance against Gilles Duceppe in the televised French language Leader’s debate.

Sure, Jack was just being Jack, and after 9 years on the federal political scene, he had become very good at being himself. Nevertheless, the stars became aligned for NDP success: national and Quebec-specific exposure as a singular alternative to Stephen Harper (and Gilles Duceppe) through the televised Leader’s debates and French language TV, at a time when the mainstream media’s own Harper vs. Ignatieff narrative was becoming uninteresting. Without this kind of exposure (or had Layton himself been challenged by another strong contender during the Leadership debates, such as the national Party Leader who was not invited by the media consortium to attend the debates), I have no doubt that the electoral outcome for the NDP would have been quite different.

Unfortunately, my prediction that the federal election outcome would be based on style instead of substance proved to be entirely accurate. The media’s attention span proved to be the shortest in my memory, and although policy announcement after policy announcement was rolled out by each political party, the duration for reporting on policy lasted roughly one day, and then the media moved on. The only stories which seemed to generate traction were, initially, the Liberal coalition story (until Ignatieff was finally able to convince the media that he really wouldn’t enter into a coalition with the NDP); the Conservative’s expulsion of young people from staged rallies, because they had Facebook friended politicians from other parties; and following the public opinion polls (which were more of a story than Jack Layton’s rise).

In fact, coverage of the polls dominated the entire election, at the expense of all else. This kind of coverage, which ultimately chooses a winner before any votes are cast, might well be the main culprit for Canada’s low voter turn out. If the polls say that your preferred candidate isn’t going to win, well, why bother take the time to vote? I predicted the worst voter turn-out of any election in Canadian history, and I got it wrong. It was only the second worst, at 61%.

When you consider the notion that only about 37% of voters aged 18-24 typically cast ballots in a federal election, is it any wonder that Canada’s political parties aren’t paying significant attention to the youth vote?

I’ll have a little more to say about trends in polling in my upcoming blogs about predictions for 2012.

Ontario Provincial Election

I continue to believe that I correctly called a majority Progressive Conservative Party victory correctly, as did most pundits at the beginning of the year. It’s not that we were ultimately proven wrong, it was that history simply didn’t unfold the way it was supposed to have. That Tim Hudak is not the current Premier of the Province of Ontario is simply a cosmic oversight, and one that is likely to be corrected in due course.

Which is not to suggest that credit isn’t due to Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals, even if just for hanging on to a minority government. At the outset of 2011, it was a foregone conclusion that the Liberals would be replaced here in Ontario. However, Hudak had a very difficult time connecting with voters, largely due in part to a disinterested media. Unlike with federal elections, it is still very difficult for provincial politicians to capture the media’s full attention, especially now that so much of our mainstream media has consolidated, and there is often little local coverage. And when you’re competing with national and international stories, the amount of space designated for provincial election coverage is nowhere anything like what we see for a federal election.

Hudak burst out of the gate by shooting himself and his party in the foot, with ambiguous comments about “foreigners” taking Canadian jobs. McGuinty took the highroad and we all watched as Hudak’s already-evaporating public opinion lead vanished before the damage control teams managed to pry the “foreigner” talking points out of the hands of all candidates (about a week later). By that time, the damage was done, and Hudak never recovered.

The NDP made modest gaines, with Andrea Horvath running a very lacklustre campaign, targeting voters who…well, who knows? The NDP was all over the map, policy-wise, in this past election, promising a little bit of everything to every one, which failed to connect significantly with voters. Fighting for space in the limited media narrative, Horvath found it mostly because she was a new face, a scrappy opponent, and because the NDP had recently gained popularity federally, due to Jack Layton’s rise to Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, and to his tragic and untimely death.

Horvath and Hudak did little to change voters minds during an underwhelming televised Leadership debate, which saw McGuinty and his hands out-perform the other candidates. Of course, there was another provincial party which was running candidates in each and every riding in Ontario, whose Leader was not invited by the broadcast consortium to attend the debate. More on that later.

Sudbury-Specific Electoral Predictions?

I predicted that the provincial election would see the return of MPP’s Rick Bartolucci and France Gelinas to Queens Park, which did happen (although I have to admit that, although I did not predict how close the race was here in Sudbury, it’s fair to say that I would have completely missed that, and instead have predicted that Bartolucci would have returned with a healthy, if somewhat reduced, margin, rather than just squeaking back in).

Federally, I predicted an easy victory for Nickel Belt’s MP Claude Gravelle, but I had Sudbury’s NDP MP Glenn Thibeault going down in defeat to Conservative Fred Slade, largely over Thibeault’s flip-flop on the gun registry. I received a lot of flack from friends for that bold prediction, which later proved to have missed the mark considerable, as Thibeault was returned with over half of the popular vote, a much wider margin than he was elected with for the first time in 2008. Interestingly, however, was despite a very lacklustre campaign in which Slade took a lot of heat for ducking local debates, Slade still managed to increase the Conservative’s popular vote in Sudbury over 2008 figures, and vault the Conservatives ahead of the Liberals in this riding. Liberal Carol Hartman’s campaign went as well as it could, I suppose, but she was impacted throughout by an incredibly lacklustre federal Liberal campaign.

So, I got 3 out of 4.

The Green Party of Canada

As I’m the CEO of the Sudbury Federal Green Party Association, I like to provide a little bit of focus on the Green Party in my end of year blogs. Last year, I predicted that Elizabeth May would not be invited to attend the televised Leader’s debates, and received a little bit of flack from my colleagues in the Party, who remained convinced that the Broadcast Consortium would have no choice but to invite her again, after her appearance in 2008. And it may have seemed to some that the Green Party’s entire national electoral strategy hinged on May’s participation in the debate. Interestingly, it didn’t, although I don’t believe that was apparent to many in the Party.

Clearly, there was a contingency plan in place for the time when May was told that she wouldn’t be welcome to participate in the debate. The Party would not be caught off-guard again in the same way that it was in 2008 when the Consortium came to the same conclusion to exclude a national Party leader. Of course, the circumstance in 2008 was actually different for the Greens than it was in 2011, as Blair Wilson had announced that it was his intention to sit in the House as a Green MP when parliament reconvened. Wilson never got that chance in 2008, as Stephen Harper broke his own fixed-date election law and pre-empted Wilson. That left some debate as to whether there was actually a Green MP in Ottawa or not, and it could have been that ambiguous circumstance which led the Consortium to conclude that despite leading a national political party which runs candidates in each and every riding across the nation, and despite receiving a per-vote federal subsidy, the Green Party should be kept from participating in the debate.

It was only after a significant public outcry which ultimately convinced Jack Layton to publicly change his mind and not oppose May’s inclusion in the 2008 debate that the Consortium relented. To this day, I can not forgive Jack Layton, who claimed to champion democratic values, for his continued opposition to allowing May to participate in the debates. That many grassroots members within his own Party stepped up and demanded May’s inclusion reflects well on his Party.

In 2011, when the writ was dropped, there were clearly no Green MP’s in the House, and the Broadcast Consortium quickly announced its decision to sideline May. That none of the other federal political party leaders (and the Bloc Quebecois, too, which isn’t even a national party) stood to oppose the Consortium’s decision was clearly a travesty for democracy in Canada. However, from a purely political point of view, it only made sense, as May’s presence would have led to additional national exposure for May and the Green Party, which would have at the very least made May look like a contender for the Saanich-Gulf Island seat she was challenging. That this sort of politics of opportunism which the other party’s played on does nothing but increase the level of cynicism and disrepute which politicians throughout this country have from the general public doesn’t appear to matter.

May went on to win a seat in Saanich-Gulf Islands (SGI), handily defeating Conservative cabinet minister Gary Lunn after running an aggressive campaign (May is a tireless campaigner). I predicted that Lunn was going to be returned, in part due to a strong challenge from Liberal Renee Heatherington. Heatherington’s campaign, of course, was hampered by a poor national campaign under Ignatieff. But let’s not kid ourselves here – approximately a half million dollars from Green Party coffers was poured into SGI both pre-writ and during the campaign. The riding was flooded with Green volunteers, some of whom slept in shifts because there was not enough room at the inns. All of this added to the fact that May herself is a star candidate, and that she and her message resonated with the voters in SGI, probably to a degree moreso than any other riding in the country (polling had been done earlier to show that SGI was likely the most "Green-friendly" riding in Canada).

And that was the Green Party’s national campaign strategy in a nutshell. And this was never a secret to anybody who had been paying attention to the Green Party. There’s even a term for this kind of strategy: a “beachhead”. It was successfully implemented by UK Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas, who won the Green’s first seat in the British parliament with an up-the-middle win in Brighton Pavillion in 2010. Rather than investing in a “rising tide” national strategy which would have seen strategic assets dispersed to many ridings during the federal election, the Green Party placed its eggs in one basket and hoped for a single positive outcome. While May’s participation in the televised Leader’s debate would have been helpful to her chances in SGI (and for candidates throughout the country), it wasn’t completely necessary.

May’s victory goes to show what a large, dedicated and well-funded political machine can do in terms of achieving electoral results. That it played out in only one riding for the Green Party is simply a matter of scale. If you look at the factors which contributed to the overall success of the Conservative Party, it is difficult to conclude that the only way to political success is to out-spend your opponents. That the Greens managed to do this in one riding out of 308 is, actually, a remarkable accomplishment for the Party, and one that I did not foresee occurring.

Now, with national exposure in Ottawa, May has been on the mainstream media’s radar a lot more often. In 2011, she was the lone voice who opposed the continuation of Canada’s bombing mission in Libya, much to the chagrin of those grassroots NDP supporters who clearly understood that Canada had chosen sides in a civil war. And recently, May has been on the frontline of opposition to Canada’s notice to withdraw from the Kyoto Accord.

That the federal Green Party saw its overall electoral support drop down to below less than 4% (from a high of 6.8% in 2008) may prove, in the long-run, to be less important for the Party’s overall success than having May in the House for 4 years. Personally, I think it will be, and that there will prove to be significant opportunities over the next few years for the Green Party to grow its support. The 2011 low support figures can be chalked up to May not being invited to the debate, along with a surging NDP.

But May must now ensure that she is invited to the next televised Leader’s debates, which means that she must stay on as Party Leader over the next 4 years. That the decision to attend these critical public debates remains in the hands of an unaccountable group of broadcasters who have their own vested interests means that the ultimate decision will not be up to May.

The Green Party of Ontario

My prediction regarding the Green Party of Ontario’s success, however, proved to bang-on. I had said that the Green Party of Ontario would perform poorly in the provincial election, and would not elect anybody.

But let’s examine what did happen to the GPO, which saw its share of the popular vote drop from 8% in 2007 down to less than 3% in 2011. What happened?

Well, again, unlike in other provincial jurisdictions, Green Party of Ontario Leader Mike Schreiner was not invited to attend the televised Leader’s debate. Not being invited to attend the debate is a significant signal to voters that a Party really isn’t to be taken seriously. This was the second election, however, in which the Green Party ran candidates in each and every Ontario riding. The decision of the Consortium not to invite Schreiner remains a curious one, given that Greens participated in televised Leader’s debates this year in Manitoba, and earlier in PEI, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In Saskatchewan, the Green Party became that province’s third party.

Media, however, continues to take its cues from, well, itself. Not only did the provincial media giants choose to marginalize the Green Party of Ontario by not inviting Schreiner to the Leader’s debate, largely the GPO itself was completely marginalized from all pan-provincial conversations. Reading the editorials of the political pundits, and watching the TV news coverage, it was almost as if the Green Party didn’t exist (only to be rediscovered on election night when the results needed to be reported, and then, in some cases, wrongly identifying its candidates as “Independents”).

Only TV Ontario decided to give the Greens a bit of a break, by including Party candidates and pundits in news programs, where seats had traditionally only been reserved for the PC’s, Liberals and NDP. TV Ontario expressed that the time was right to include Greens in their programming, as the GPO offered unique opinions and expressions on issues important to Ontarians. Imagine!

However, the quality of GPO candidates and pundits left a little something to be desired at times. “Unsteady” seems to be a good choice of words to describe the performance of GPO candidates especially (the pundits, generally, fared a little better). Of course, keep in mind that it is far more difficult to look good when you have to perform in sound bites, when your Party doesn’t provide you with talking points, and when your whole rationale for becoming a candidate in the first place probably has a lot to do with wanting to do politics differently. So GPO candidates were forced to give a performance on TV which, in and of itself, was likely something which they were in opposition to.

However, some of the GPO’s amateur decisions related to TV Ontario simply can not be overlooked, including one near and dear to my own heart, which saw the GPO sending a candidate from Scarborough to attend a TV Ontario panel discussion on Northern Ontario. That decision, quite simply, blew my mind, and really did speak volumes about the political naiveté of the Party.

There appeared to be little in the way of an electoral strategy implemented by the Party, although clearly more resources were being expended in a few ridings in Southwestern Ontario. Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, where the Party did very well in 2007 under Shane Jolley, ended up nominating a different banner-carrier for the Party, and saw Jolley run as an independent, which was a blow to the Party, given that popular PC MPP Bill Murdoch had stepped aside. In fact, the Green Party of Ontario placed no candidates in second spot anywhere in the province, and had but 1 third place finish.

With a minority government in place now in Toronto, the GPO has its work cut out for it to remain relevant, given that there is likely going to be an election within the next couple of years.

International Scene

The U.S.

Internationally, I predicted that Sarah Palin would enter the GOP nomination race, and run away with it. I believe that Michele Bachmann’s entry might have derailed Palin. And that’s too bad for Palin, because the state of Republican contenders at the end of 2011, I continue to think that she might have done very well had she thrown her hat in the ring. That the world may be a safer place for her decision, well…if Bachmann or Perry end up taking the nomination, it may be hard to tell.

Korea

I actually didn’t predict war in Korea, but I was hedging my bets a little. You may recall that at the end of 2010, both North Korea and South Korea had become quite belligerent over the North’s shelling of a Southern military installation on an off-shore island. Now, at the end of 2011, North Korea is back in the news again, with the death of their Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il, and the rise to power of his untested son, Kim Jong-Un.

Coalitions

In Australia, I predicted that Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s coalition would fall. It hasn’t. In Britain, I predicted that Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition would continue to survive, despite being wracked by protests, which did happen (will it continue to survive, with the Conservative’s anti-Europeanism? I’ll weigh in with a prediction in my next post).

The Middle East (and environs)

I predicted the fall of the Zardari government in Pakistan, with the military stepping in and taking control. That hasn’t happened yet. In Iran, I predicted that despite rising tensions, nothing much would happen beyond rhetoric. And that’s largely played out.

What I didn’t predict or write about in any way was the growing unrest throughout the Middle East, led by protests in Tunisia and Egypt. Although I was aware of a growing sense of anti-government sentiment in some parts of the Middle East and North Africa (particularly in Yemen and South Sudan, which achieved its independence this year), I didn’t think that the sentiment would prove newsworthy. Boy, did I blow that one.

The Economy

I did predict unrest in Europe, as a result of the economy and austerity measures, particularly in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. But everyone was predicting that at the end of 2010, which only goes to show for how long now this crisis has been brewing. What I did not foresee was a global movement based rising out of North America, based on consensus decision-making and a desire to close the gap between the rich and poor, by drawing attention to issues of economic disparity through the occupation of public spaces.

Nuclear Power

And a nuclear meltdown in Japan? Forget about it. I’ve lived my life, up until this year, firmly entrenched in my belief that the nuclear power industry in first-world nations was one of the safest industries in the world. I’ve had to deal with seeing my own beliefs challenged and ultimately, come crashing down, as the disaster in Japan unfolded over weeks and months. What I have taken away from Fukushima is not just a significant degree of concern related to nuclear power generation, but my eyes have been opened to the extent which the nuclear power industry has gone to cover up environmentally damage, and not just in Japan.

Remember that when Fukushima was unfolding, there was no talk of a meltdown, and we were all being reassured by the nuclear industry and a compliant mainstream media that the disaster would be contained, and evacuees would be able to return home. Then, doses of radiation started showing up unexpectedly (and inexplicably) in places where no one had been looking for it. The evacuation was extended to a larger geographic area. Iodine pills were flying off the shelves by a population who were growing increasingly sceptical that they were getting the straight goods from their governments. Eventually, the government of Japan fell over its handling of Fukushima, but word has been very slow to leak into the mainstream media in North America over the true extent of the nature of devastation in Japan. It is not now largely known that 3 reactors at Fukushima have, in fact, experienced meltdowns.

The time has clearly come to say no to this dangerous and poisonous form of power generation. That Germany, Italy, Denmark and Japan all did so in the wake of Fukushima is to their credit. That we here in Canada and especially in Ontario continue to contemplate building new nuclear reactors shows, to me, a complete lack of foresight and visionary thinking on the part of our political leadership. Not only is nuclear power dangerous, it is also the most expensive form of commercial power ever to be generated, once all costs are factored into the equation. Not to mention the costs of cleaning up after a disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima.

Hindsight is 20/20

So, that’s my 2011, now appearing in the rear-view mirror. I’ll share with you my predictions for 2012 over the next couple of blogposts. Hope you enjoy!

(opinions expressed in this blog post are my own and should not be considered to be in keeping with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Eat a Banana, Save the Planet!

2011-12-20T19:25:00.001-05:00

Look, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Chiquita Bananas, after having long ago learned about human-rights repressing, anti-democratic business practices which their predecessor, the United Fruit Company, engaged in throughout Central America in the past century. So I find having to write about what’s been happening in the media today a little ironic. But at the same time, there’s actually a lot at stake, and since much of it is going on behind-the-scenes, I thought I’d take a few moments to share my own observations about bananas and their media-hyped impact on climate change.

For rest assured, despite Ezra Levant’s rant in Sun Media today (“Yes we have no bananas, you hypocrite”, the Sudbury Star, December 20, 2011), the issue at hand isn’t simply about bananas, or even Levant’s strange concept of “ethical oil” (on which he wrote the book – quite literally, he wrote the book “Ethical Oil” from which he now profits through shameless self-promotion of the term). Nor is it necessarily even about human rights – at least not in the way that Levant and others are portraying the matter.

Instead, what we’re seeing playing out in the media today has everything to do with Canada’s war on climate change action, and our government’s shameless shilling for the multinational oil industry. You see, the Harper regime came to the conclusion quite a while ago that fighting climate change for the good of Canadians and providing profit for Big Oil was mutually exclusive. Since then, they’ve gone out of their way to put the interests of their corporatist supporters ahead of those of Canadians. Indeed, with their recent decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Accord, the Harper regime has taken considerable pride in giving the finger to the entire world.

But this isn’t about Kyoto. This is about the Harper regime’s constant war on the interests of Canadians. By continuing their unmitigated acts of sabotage against the interests of average middle-class Canadians by accommodating at seemingly every opportunity the interests of the oil industry, Harper and his ilk are condemning both Canada and the world to the effects of runaway climate change. All of this is being done simply so the oil companies can make even more profit. There is no other reason which stands up to scrutiny.

Sun Media Goes Bananas

Now, if that sounds a little over-the-top to you, consider the humble banana. Levant and his cohorts at Sun Media seem to think that they’ve hit upon a really cheery holiday story which will warm the cockles of their neo-liberal supporters, some of whom, such as Jason Kenney, are ministers of the Canadian government. Levant has tweaked to the notion that Chiquita Brands has somehow made a decision to boycott Alberta’s oil. And in Levant’s world, that’s tantamount to treason against the State! Although which state, exactly, no one is sure (maybe it’s that North American Union which the neo-liberals are just waiting to spring on us all, without any consultation…kinda like yesterday’s health “deal” announcement. But that’s another story).

In response, Levant and Sun Media have called for a boycott of Chiquita bananas. To provide even more ammunition in support of a boycott, Levant points out that Chiquita was just fined back in 2007 for giving “protection money” to South American paramilitary organizations, some of which appear on the U.S.A’s list of known terrorist organizations. And Levant is right: that’s pretty bad. Of course, giving money to the government of Colombia, which continues to threaten and abuse the rights of its own people is also pretty bad. It’s all pretty messy in Colombia, no matter how you look at it. But, depending on who is doing the looking, the mess might not matter so much. And thanks to the Harper regime, Canada now has a free-trade deal with the human-rights repressing regime currently in charge of Colombia. Well, most of Colombia anyway. But that’s another story.

Now, here’s where things get interesting. A little further digging reveals that Chiquita Brands has not launched any kind of boycott against Alberta oil. What they have done is announce that they will try to use petroleum from non-dirty sources for transport fuel, in order to try to limit the effects of climate change, at least somewhat. This does mean that Chiquita will be trying to steer clear of oil produced from tar sands bitumen. And that’s what seems to have Levant’s so upset.

I guess Levant would feel a lot better if the humans-rights abusing, terrorist-sponsoring Chiquita Brands had instead decided to buy tar sands oil. I know that I would have felt better. I suppose that for Levant it’s best to do business with the devil than have the devil take his business elsewhere. But that’s another story.

Environmental Tariffs

There are actually a few things at stake here, and singling out Chiquita Brands for a boycott actually plays quite well as a media-hypable proxy for addressing the bigger issues. You see, right now the European Union is considering labelling Canadian heavy oil produced from tar sands bitumen as “harmful to the environment” (and therefore “dirty”) in comparison to oil derived from conventional sources. This means that importing tar sands oil into the EU will require the imposition of a surcharge (a.k.a. “a tariff”), which amounts to a financial penalty assessed against dirty oil producers.

And it also could stand as a precedent which ends up penalizing dirty Canadian industries. The State of California has just recently announced that it will support the EU’s labelling initiative as it pertains to tar sands oil. Presumably, that means that tar sands oil ending up in California may also be subject to a tariff.

And California…that’s the same U.S. state which has been in the news lately because it is part of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). Recently, the Province of Quebec announced that it was moving forward with establishing a cap and trade emissions trading scheme under the auspices of the WCI. So, dirty Alberta oil could also receive a surcharge of sorts through a cap and trade program if it were to be imported to…Quebec.

What other provinces are also a part of the WCI? Why, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. Together with Quebec, that means that over half of Canadians may one day end up paying more for dirty Alberta oil through some sort of surcharge levied through a cap and trade scheme.

Dirty Oil

Look, call it what you want, but the fact is that oil produced from tar sands bitumen produces significantly more greenhouse gases than oil derived from conventional sources (between 3 and 5 times as much). So, from the point of view of carbon pollution, the oil is dirtier, period, end of story. And we know that the historic build-up of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is what’s responsible for global warming and the Earth’s changing climate.

Interestingly, the Harper regime has probably done its corporatist oil-industry buddies no favours by pulling out of Kyoto. What Harper has accomplished is to hand the European Union the smoking gun it needs to affirm that Canadian tar sands oil really is dirty and therefore to subject it to a tariff at the time of import. And while its true that the EU imports hardly any dirty oil from Canada right now, it’s the precedent of the matter which is much more important.

And if the importation of dirty oil itself can be subject to a tariff, what about products produced exclusively from energy derived from dirty sources? Why not subject them to a tariff as well?

Climate Change and the Economy

EU nations, including the tar-sands supporting United Kingdom (with David Cameron’s government playing Harper’s proxy at the EU negotiations), have met their Kyoto greenhouse reduction commitments, and in many cases, have exceeded them. The governments of the European nations made the hard choices back in the late 1990s to take Kyoto seriously. It turns out that those choices weren’t really all that hard to make, as producing cleaner energy has actually led to job creation throughout the EU, and especially in nations such as Denmark and Germany, which (along with China) are now the go-to places for clean energy products and research and development. The EU nations accomplished all of this while still growing their economies. Their success story doesn’t at all mirror the Harper regime’s narrative which pits the choice of “jobs” against “the environment”. But that’s another story.

With the EU having done their heavy-lifting regarding climate change, Canada’s withdrawal from Kyoto has come as a bit of a slap in the face. That Canada’s withdrawal has come at the same time of an announcement to continue to expand the dirty-oil producing tar sands (coincidentally timed to take place during the Durban COP-17 climate change conference) will not be lost on the Europeans. With Canada’s declaration of war against those wishing to stave off the economy-crippling horrors of climate change, labelling tar sands oil as “dirty” now more than ever seems like an easy decision for the EU to make.

And make no mistake: the economies of most nations in the world face significant risk from a changing climate. That Canada, which has been pushing the completely misguided notions of “climate prosperity” and “ethical oil”, will also suffer from the upheaval of climate change seems to matter little to the Harper regime. Canada’s economy is integrated with the global economic village, and our economy is sure to be negatively impacted by economic upheaval throughout the globe. For the Harper regime, that average Canadians will suffer from global economic devastation isn’t nearly as important as the need to continue to enrich the Harper’s oil interest buddies and supporters.

And that’s what makes this all a human rights issue, and a moral issue. Is it moral for Canada, one of the world’s biggest per-capita polluters, to sabotage international efforts which seek to limit greenhouse gas emissions and which (hopefully) will lessen the social/physical/economic impacts of climate change? Is it ethical to put the corporatist interests of Big Oil ahead of the interests of just about everyone else on the planet? By declaring war on efforts to combat climate change, Canada’s government has made its decision. I’ll leave it to you to determine whether it was a moral one. I suspect that you know my own opinion.

Saving the Planet, One Banana at a Time!

Which brings us back to bananas and the boycott against Chiquita Brands for having the audacity to finally make an attempt at being a “good corporate citizen” (at least as far as climate change goes…which, by the way, will almost certainly impact Chiquita’s own bottom line, as they have invested heavily in agricultural activities in tropical areas of the world, which are sure to be some of those hardest hit by climate change…so Chiquita probably does have a vested interest in taking climate change action). If Chiquita can be made to bend on the concept of “dirty oil”, it will prove to be yet more ammunition in the fight against labelling at the EU, and (probably more importantly) by California (and potentially other WCI partners). And if the boycott works and leads to Chiquita backing down, woe be to any other business which decides that it’s going to try to implement a similar action in the name of “environmental responsibility”. Including those businesses which operate almost exclusively in California and which may not have a choice in the matter. Canadian boycotts of Californian businesses may yet prove to be the sort of political wedge issue which neo-liberal Republicans in California might use to gain control of the State and turn back the clock on dirty tar sands oil decisions. There is a long game being played here.

The banana may yet become a more compelling symbol in the fight against climate change than “350” or “2 degrees C”. Although the science would likely prove otherwise, I can certainly see the slogan, “Eat a banana, save the planet” catching on, at least for a little while, thanks to Sun Media.

(opinions expressed in this blog post are my own and should not be considered to be in keeping with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Balancing 'Occupy Sudbury' and the Public Interest

2011-11-30T19:44:00.002-05:00

I read with interest today an editorial published in the Sudbury Star by the Star’s Editor Brian MacLeod (“City should not facilitate permanent ‘Occupy’ presence – Point of View”, the Sudbury Star, November 30 2011)

I have been a supporter of Occupy Sudbury almost since the first day of the occupation, as I share many of the concerns of those who have and who are now occupying a part of Memorial Park in Sudbury’s downtown. I do not, however, consider myself to be an occupier, as I lack both the courage and the conviction to maintain a physical presence in the Park in order to stand for what I believe in. My shortcomings in this respect are my own burden to bear, and I do not relish having to answer the future questions of my daughter who, years from now, may ask me where I was when the Occupy Movement had its first physical presence in Sudbury.

Media Coverage

With regards to the editorial, on the whole, I believe this was a pretty balanced piece from Brian MacLeod regarding the future of the Occupy Movement in Sudbury. As a follower of the global Occupy Together Movement, I appreciate that Brian has taken the time to articulate in his editorial the reasons that the Movement has come together in the first place. All too often, our mainstream media has tended to focus on the occupation of public spaces (and generally in a very negative way), while entirely missing the point as to why the protests are going on. Alternatively, the mainstream media in many cases has offered only its airy dismissal of a leaderless protest movement that makes no demands.

The lack of thoughtful coverage of the Occupy Together Movement in the North American mainstream media has not been in reaction to the media’s inability to pigeon-hole and sound-bite the protesters, despite the protests of many journalists to that effect. Granted, it’s easier for the media to deal with a single spokesperson, especially one who can identify a protests’ single demand in 20 words or less. But that’s not what this Movement is all about. It’s an organic, truly grassroots Movement which has coalesced not for one specific reason, but to shine a light on a society which clearly is leaving too many people behind in all of our communities. Poverty, environmental degradation, social justice, healthy democracy, education, human rights…we could (and should) be doing so much better addressing all of these issues.

Yet the mainstream media has, to a degree, failed to articulate to a generally disinterested public the reasons behind the Movement, mainly because most of the issues which the Movement wants to have addressed are issues which the mainstream media are not ready to report on to any great degree. That income inequality has now entered the vocabulary of the mainstream media is a testament to the success of the global Occupy Together Movement. But that’s just one issue (and the one issue with the best sound-bite to emerge from Occupy: “We are the 99%”).

Occupy Sudbury and a Unique Local Issue: Homelessness

Here in Sudbury, one of the biggest issues that I’ve heard discussed when I’ve attended the Occupy site in Memorial Park has been homelessness. Those at the park engaged in a Charter of Rights sanctioned act of freedom of assembly have come face to face with the issue of homelessness and how it is affecting community members. I know that many who are staying in the Park have expressed surprise with their new-found knowledge about the homelessness situation in our Greater City. Their eyes have been opened to this local issue, and they are doing what they can to bring more attention to this issue. Whether that’s directly providing food or shelter to the homeless, or protesting unjust federal legislation which will lead to more social inequality, poverty and homelessness, those involved directly with Occupy Sudbury have found themselves on the frontlines of this issue, due to their direct experiences.

Although homelessness does receive some coverage in the mainstream media, again the coverage tends not to delve into the systemic reasons for homelessness. The media is very good at reporting on the “what”, but continues to struggle with reporting on the “why”. And that’s why I’m glad that this editorial provided a significant level of depth to the discussion. Our mainstream media continues to be a prominent force for shaping public opinion, and I believe that it’s important to watch what’s being reported in the media, and what’s being omitted by the media. There is certainly a lot more going on in the world today than what appears on our TV sets and in our newspapers. Thankfully, new social media has provided us all with a historic opportunity to inform ourselves about issues and matters on which the mainstream media has not or will not address. That we must often wade through conflicting facts, unsourced materials and a bevy of cat videos to find real stories remains perhaps a frustrating experience for those who participate in social media.

Participatory Democracy and Consensus-Based Decision-Making

All of that being said, above, with regards to Brian MacLeod’s editorial, I think that there is one area where MacLeod has missed the mark, and that has to do with what is to happen next at the Park. I believe that we can all stand to learn a valuable lesson about the health of our democracy from the Occupy Sudbury protest underway at Memorial Park.

The Occupy Together Movement is a truly grassroots movement, with decisions being made in the most democratic way possible: through a consensus-based approach which truly expresses the will of all of those involved in the decision-making process. This isn’t an exercise in “majority rule” or “might makes right”. Instead, this approach to “participatory democracy” in which those engaged in decision-making seek first to discuss all issues related to the matter under discussion, and provide for an organic way forward which all involved in the process are able to buy into. When a decision is made by the group, the group is then able to take ownership of it.

And as we know, those who make decisions have to wear those decisions. With a consensus-based approach to decision making, the entire group will share in the success of the decision made, or in its failure! Either way, though, the group has taken ownership.

Full disclosure here: I belong to a federal political party, the Green Party, which has embraced a consensus-based decision-making approach within its corporate structure. The consensus-based approach to making decisions was in place in the Party long before I became a member. I can tell you that it was one of many aspects of the Green Party which attracted me to joining, and to giving much of my time and energy to. So I am biased about consensus-based decision making processes.

With regards to Brian MacLeod’s advice to Occupiers that it’s time to move the protest ahead through other means, I don’t think that there’s any question that the time has come to do so, and I know that Occupiers have been having those discussions. As MacLeod points out, the minutes of the Occupy Sudbury General Assembly are available online, and anybody is free to come down to the Park and participate in the Assembly (as I have done on occasion), or to offer suggestions and ideas online through their Facebook Page. Occupy Sudbury offers a truly open and engaging process for people to become involved with on issues important to our communities.

The Continuing Occupation of a Part of Memorial Park: Finding Balance in the Public Interest

However, it seems that for now, the Occupiers have chosen to remain in the park. I understand that this upsets a number of people in the community, given that a part of our public infrastructure appears to have been removed from the public realm, and that there are concerns regarding costs to the municipality. That these concerns with the occupation are being brought forward to our City and to our elected officials is another exercise in democracy. If one feels strongly about what’s going on in our community, it’s important to express those concerns in a legitimate and healthy manner. Writing or calling your Councillor is one way of doing so. Of course, physically occupying a portion of the public realm is another, in my opinion. That there must be a balance between the two is evident, along with a recognition that at some point, a decision regarding the future of the Occupy Sudbury site will need to be made. Such a decision, however, needs to be informed by the will of the community, which means that the valid issues brought forward by everyone require careful and conscientious consideration. We can not afford to be dismissive of the opinions and positions of others simply because they may appear to be contrary to our own.

I believe that the occupation should continue at this time. The following informs my opinion: First, the entirety of Memorial Park has not been placed out of bounds for the general public. In fact, the Occupiers have been very welcoming of anybody who has stopped by the portion of the park being occupied, and certainly when members of the public have simply indicated that they’re not interested in engaging the protesters, the protesters have let those members of the public be.

I understand that the physical nature of that part of the park being occupied appears to have become less inviting for the public, but I believe the opposite is actually happening, despite appearances. What I’ve seen is that more people than ever are using Memorial Park now because of the occupation. People are stopping by, and engaging members of their community whom they’ve never met before. They are forming new relationships, and in some cases, new business partnerships. They are talking, expressing opinions, and getting to know others in their own community. In fact, I would argue that Memorial Park is being utilized by the public to a much higher degree than it ever was before Occupy Sudbury moved in.

Yet, there remain questions related to by-laws, and I understand that there are those in our community who prize by-law enforcement over Charter Rights. I also understand that Occupy Toronto and Occupy Vancouver both were taken to provincial courts, and argued that their Charter Rights should trump municipal by-laws, and in both cases, lower court judges ruled against the occupiers. That being said, it should be kept in mind that circumstances on the ground in both Vancouver and Toronto were quite different than in Greater Sudbury, given the nature of the occupied space (in Toronto and Vancouver, the entirety of the park was under occupation, and there were a number of health-related issues identified). In Toronto, the City successfully argued that community residents should be able to walk their dogs in St. James Park without the hindrance of encountering protesters. The judge agreed that being able to walk one’s dog was in the greater public interest than the right to freely assemble throughout the day.

In Greater Sudbury, only a portion of the park is under occupation, and the public remains able to use those sections of Memorial Park which are more suited to the public realm anyway, and include those areas where the military memorial is located, along with the splash park (although in November in Sudbury, there’s not a lot of use of that section of the park by anybody). And for those walking your dogs at Memorial Park, the occupiers have been known to provide doggie treats for your pet, if you stop by to have a word with them.

Our Charter of Rights allows for freedom of assembly to protest. I understand that there are those who may believe that the right to protest should be restricted to certain hours of the day, and should not also include the right to erect structures – certainly judges in Vancouver and Toronto came to this conclusion (albeit after a month-long occupation of a public space). It’s not clear that a judge in Greater Sudbury would come to the same conclusion, given the differing circumstances. However if a judge ultimately does so, I’m sure that the occupiers will discuss their options at a General Assembly and find their own way forward. Should they decide to engage in civil disobedience in the face of a judge’s order to the contrary, they will no doubt be arrested, just as a small number of protesters in Toronto were when the police moved in after the judge’s ruling.

Hopefully it won’t come to something like that in our community, given our City’s demonstrated desire for tolerance. I personally question what is truly motivating many of those who have taken issue with the occupation of a part of Memorial Park in our community, given the under-use of the Park at this time of year, and indeed at many times of the year. That it may appear that protesters are breaking the law has not been determined. I would expect that if our Police Service believed that laws were being broken, action would have been taken before now.

Public Discourse

Municipal by-laws are a different story, of course, and it does appear that there may be some infractions taking place. Of course, every municipality has a different set of by-laws, and engages in enforcement in slightly different ways. I note that when the City was intent on enforcing its zoning by-law during the recent Vale labour dispute, the lands being occupied by Vale replacement workers were still available for the habitation of those replacement workers while the enforcement matter worked its way through the court system. That the labour dispute ended before a court hearing could determine the validity of the City’s enforcement powers was immaterial. The point here is that there is a process to be followed for by-law enforcement, and the automatic eviction of premises simply because they have been deemed “undesirable” isn’t part of the process. Where health and safety are in jeopardy, well, that may be another story, and different action may be required. Right now, though, I have not heard that there are any health and safety related issues which have been brought forward, except by the occupiers themselves, who are reasonably asking the City for permission to maintain a chimney for the purposes of keeping warm throughout the ongoing protest.

Yet, clearly there are those who believe that it’s time for the occupation to end. The fact is that it’s probably time that the City host a public discussion about the future of the Occupy Sudbury site in Memorial Park. That’s what we do in democracies. The occupiers don’t have a monopoly on public discourse. Let us all then be a part of the decision-making process regarding the future of this Movement within our community. I say if Council wants to open public hearings on this matter to determine the will of Sudburians to support the Movement or not, by allowing for a by-law exemption to facilitate a chimney, what could be a better outcome for our community than that?

And that’s where I have to disagree with Brian MacLeod, who in his editorial has called for the City not to facilitate the continued occupation of the park. I note that MacLeod has not called for a unilateral effort to begin the process of removing the Occupiers from the Park, although some who have commented on the online version of his article have done so. A better approach in this circumstance, an approach in the interests of democracy, would clearly be to now call for a public discussion about the issue. Recently, MacLeod did just that in an earlier Point of View editorial when he called for a discussion regarding the disposition of public infrastructure (Pioneer Manor) through a sale to private interests (see: “Let’s have the debate about Pioneer Manor – Point of View”, the Sudbury Star, November 26 2011). Publicly discussing the way forward on issues important to our community seems to me to be a sensible approach for our decision makers to engage in.

The Interests of the Public and the Interests of Democracy

I understand that we elect our municipal council to make the tough decisions on our behalf; that’s the way our representative democratic system functions. That Council should make decisions after receiving input and advice from the public is often a luxury of time which they can not afford to partake of to a significant extent, I understand that. However, all decisions must be informed by something, even if it is only a gut feeling when a councillor is put on the spot and does not have the luxury of study or time. Sometimes our decision makers simply have to act, and make the best decision that they can make.

With regards to the on-going occupation of a part of Memorial Park, which has been happening for more than a month now, I would suggest that the City does have the luxury of time on its side, and that any decision to be made should be carefully considered. Calls for a unilateral move by an admittedly growing public who wish to see an end to the Occupation should not be heeded out of hand, and no decisions should be made those whom we have elected to represent our interests prior to community consultations on the matter. Those who wish our Council to act in place of listening to the public first should remember that the Occupiers and their supporters are also taxpayers and electors.

Given that the Occupation has continued for over a month now, and all issues brought forward by by-law enforcement have been dealt with in a timely manner by the Occupiers, there is no need to act in haste. In fact, to do so at this time should be considered an affront to our democracy. That Occupiers may be working on alternatives to carry their message forward through other means does not negate the fact that they have chosen to remain physically entrenched at Memorial Park for “as long as it takes” (I believe that’s the time period which has been specified by the General Assembly, but somebody please correct me if I’m mistaken). A more than month-long lack of legal action at this point informs my position that the Occupiers are not engaging in an illegal activity. If the position adopted by the Occupiers ultimately proves to be an illegality through a court challenge, then maybe I would have a different opinion regarding the continued occupation.

But right now, as a taxpayer of the City of Greater Sudbury, I support the Occupiers’ continued use of Memorial Park for the purposes of protesting our economic, social and political systems. I’ll be pleased to share my opinions and reasoning regarding my support with Council if and when public consultations on this matter are held. Which they should be. I note that the City of London is currently under investigation for making a closed-door decision regarding the future of the former Occupy London site. It is incumbent upon all of us to respect our democratic processes.

Our City has a long history of tolerance when it comes to protests and disputes. That the City has taken a measured approach to the current Occupy Sudbury protest speaks volumes regarding this tradition, and a civic understanding that in a civil society, we must be prepared to tolerate dissent. In the case of Occupy Sudbury, the City has tolerated what some have called “an exercise in civil disobedience” by continuing to allow the protest to occur in the form of the occupation of a portion of an under-used public space for more than a month. This isn’t facilitation on the part of the City – but it has been an expression of tolerance. And I can say that I am proud of Greater Sudbury’s continuing tolerance of an on-going peaceful protest in the heart of our community.

The Occupy Together Movement has been in the process of changing its tactics for some time now. That the physical occupation of Memorial Park might yet come to an end through a decision of the Occupiers remains a possibility. That the Greater Sudbury community may ultimately determine the need for an end to the occupation through a democratic process also remains a distinct possibility. Whatever the outcome, it must be in the form of a democratic expression of the people. We are all stakeholders in this process – Occupiers, Supporters, the homeless, downtown residents and those who Dissent to the Occupation. Let’s have an open discussion about the future of the Occupation. There’s no reason for haste here, and no reason to circumvent an adult conversation about the future of our community.

That we will all surely learn more about many of the issues to which our mainstream media remains largely aloof will also be a positive outcome for those who choose to involve themselves in the process.

(opinions expressed in this blog post are my own and should not be considered to be in keeping with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Cliffs Chromite Project: My Response to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency's Call for Public Comments

2011-11-16T18:10:00.003-05:00

The following is a copy of a letter which I have submitted to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency regarding the environmental assessment process underway for Cliffs Chromite Project. Cliffs is seeking to establish an chromite mine (open pit and underground) on crown lands in remote Northwestern Ontario, known as the Ring of Fire. Chromite ore will be processed on site, and then trucked several hundred kilometres to an existing rail head at Nakina, Ontario, where it will be loaded and transported to a ferrochrome production facility (smelter). Currently, Cliffs "base case" for the environmental assessment is using the Moose Mountain site, located in the City of Greater Sudbury, about 20 minutes drive outside of the community of Capreol, for the purposes of the EA, although no commitment has been made to locate the smelter there.

Cliffs has published the "Cliffs Chromite Booklet", which contains more information on the plans for this project.

Commenting on the draft CEAA Guidelines closed on November 16th. Opporutnities for addtional public input may be availalbe later in the process, once technical and other studies have been finalized by Cliffs and its consultants.

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November 15, 2011

Cliffs Chromite Project
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
Jim Chan, Project Manager
55 St. Clair Avenue East, Suite 907
Toronto ON M5T 1M2

*Sent Via email and Regular Mail*

Re: Cliffs Chromite Project, Public Comments Invited on
Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Guidelines

I have had an opportunity to review the draft EIS Guidelines posted to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) website for the Cliffs Chromite Project. I understand that this project includes four components:

1) The mine site, intended to be located near McFauld’s Lake in that part of remote Northwestern Ontario which has lately become known as “The Ring of Fire”. The mine will extract materials from Cliffs “Black Thor” deposit;

2) The ore processing facility, which is to be located at or near the mine site;

3) An integrated transportation system to service the mine site and ore processing facility, which will include air transport features, and an all-weather roadway which will connect the mine site and ore processing facility to the railhead at Nakina (a portion of this road is already in existence);

4) A ferrochrome production facility to be located elsewhere in Northern Ontario, and for which the draft EIS assumes will be located within the geographic boundaries of the City of Greater Sudbury, at a location known as “Moose Mountain” outside of the community of Capreol (this assumption forms the “base case” for ferrochrome production facility).

I have also reviewed materials previously published by Cliffs on the internet (at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/66087132/CliffsChromite-Booklet), known as the “Cliffs Chromite Booklet” (dated February, 2011). This publication was extremely helpful in my understanding of the anticipated project and processes, although I do understand that some or all of the information contained in this publication may be out of date or otherwise not relevant to the CEAA’s environmental assessment process, as it appears that the CEAA is relying on more recent information received from Cliffs (noted in the draft Guidelines as being from May, 2011).

I wish to offer the following comments:

1. “Comprehensive Review” vs. “Joint Environmental Assessment”

The four components of this project, as outlined above, are limited in scope to what is currently being sought by a single corporation for approval from the CEAA. Specifically, the mine which is to be located to exploit Cliffs’ Black Thor deposit, is only one of several deposits of chromite in the area which are expected to be commercially viable deposits.

Further, portions of the integrated transportation system will undoubtedly provide service for accessing other deposits, both those staked by Cliffs (such as the “Big Daddy” deposit) and those of Cliffs’ competitors.

Finally, the ferrochrome production facility will also undoubtedly process ore from other deposits in the Ring of Fire, including Cliffs’ Big Daddy deposit, and perhaps those of some of Cliffs competitors as well.

Given the unique circumstance which future chromite producers in the Ring of Fire find themselves in, the environmental assessment process being contemplated by the CEAA in its draft guidelines is simply not providing the right kind of assessment, in that it will ignore the anticipated development of other deposits in the area, including Cliffs own Big Daddy deposit. Without assessing impacts from other anticipated development, the process which is laid out in the draft guidelines will not address the full range of anticipated actual impacts.

I understand that a more comprehensive process is available to the CEAA, known as the “Joint Environmental Assessment”. Given the specific situation which mining companies in the Ring of Fire find themselves in, and the clear overlap of issues, it would seem sensible for mining companies to work together and provide a truly comprehensive analysis of expected developmental impacts. A Joint Environmental Assessment would also likely save mining companies and the governments of Canada and Ontario money, as redundancies could be addressed through a single process (whereas each company may be asked to repeatedly provide the same information, for the repeated review by our governments; this is not an effective use of time and money, in my opinion).

Respectfully, I believe that the CEAA needs to provide an environmental assessment process which will capture the full range of anticipated impacts of all proposed development within and stemming from the Ring of Fire. Only a truly comprehensive process can assess anticipated impacts. Further, such a process will likely cost less in the long term. I strongly urge the CEAA to initiate a Joint Environmental Assessment for all projects within the Ring of Fire.

2. Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Whatever process is to be used, the draft Guidelines prepared by the CEAA appear to be deficient when it comes to the need to factor the costs of greenhouse gas emissions into the project components. Specifically, greenhouse gas emissions need to be considered as part of the “net economic and social benefit” of the project to Canada.

Emissions Costs

While section 10.2.1.2 of the Guidelines references that the EIS should include a discussion of measures to minimize the release of greenhouse gases, there is no requirement for the EIS to assess the future cost of such emissions. A per tonne levy on carbon emissions may have significant financial impacts on the Cliffs Chromite project, and indeed on all future projects located within the Ring of Fire. That there isn’t currently an established price on carbon emissions should not mean that the anticipated costs of carbon pricing aren’t considered.

Ontario’s recent election returned to power a government which campaigned on Ontario’s continued involvement in the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). The WCI is a group of provincial and state level governments in Canada and the United States which has been working together to establish a carbon emissions trading program, also known as a “cap and trade” carbon pricing system. Further, in the May 2011 federal election, more votes were cast for the candidates of parties which support carbon pricing (approximately 60%) than for political parties which have been non-committal on putting a price on carbon (approximately 40%). As such, we can fully expect that carbon pricing will be a reality at some point during the anticipated lifespan of the Cliffs Chromite project, and therefore the cost of emissions need to be evaluated.

Total Emissions

With or without an assessment of the anticipated costs of carbon emissions, the draft guidelines do indicate in section 10.2.1.2 that the EIS shall discuss analytical techniques and relevant policies in the EA, and list and estimate greenhouse gases produced for all relevant project sources, and compare these to other mining projects. Here the CEAA should also require in the draft EIS that the EA should include projections for greenhouse gas emissions based on both the current provincial energy mix and the province’s anticipated future energy mix, over the estimated lifespan of the project. Further, the assessment of greenhouse gas emissions should be identified for each of the four project components, and be cumulative over time.

“Should” vs. “Shall”

In section 10.2.1.2 of the draft EIS guidelines the word “should” is used regarding a discussion of measures to minimize the release of greenhouse gases; this word should be replaced with the word “shall” in order to clearly require the discussion. This change will provide some certainty for Cliffs that minimization measures must be looked at.

Specific Concerns

With regards to greenhouse gas emissions, I have specific concerns regarding two components of the project, which I will address briefly, below. These issues could be built into section 10.2.1.2 of the Guidelines.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Transportation System

Cliffs appears to have decided that road transport on trucks from the Black Thor deposit to the Nakina railhead will be the primary method to move ore and ore concentrate. I believe that more information is needed regarding rail transport before Cliffs can definitively identify a preference for a road network. While I do not have specific data regarding greenhouse gas emissions from trucks versus rail for the quantities of ore and concentrate to be shipped, it is my suspicion that rail transport from Black Thor to Nakina would offer lower emissions. Rail transport should be assessed as part of the EA process, as it would provide a legitimate alternative to trucking.

Further, the Moose Mountain site, which is intended to house the ferrochrome production facility, is located considerably outside of the City of Greater Sudbury’s settlement area boundary. While this may be a sensible location in order to minimize noise, odour and dust other environmental impacts on existing development, the fact is that Moose Mountain is currently only accessible by road (although a rail spur is being contemplated for the movement of goods to and from the site). As approximately 300-500 jobs are being contemplated for the ferrochrome production facility, the EA should also address the best way to minimize greenhouse gas emissions for employees who must travel to and from Moose Mountain. Specifically, the EA should address public transit routes, including busways and/or the opportunity for a light rail corridor (tramway), instead of simply requiring access to be by personal motorized vehicle, which is the current situation.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Energy Use

According to Cliffs, the arc furnace which is to be located at the ferrochrome production facility will use as much electricity as a city with 300,000 inhabitants uses. Given this circumstance, is there any opportunity at all for Cliffs to implement some form of carbon capture and storage, in order to minimize greenhouse gas impacts on our atmosphere? Assessing the potential for carbon capture and storage should be a requirement of the Environmental Assessment.

Further, Cliffs may wish to consider providing for green energy production on-site at both Moose Mountain and at McFauld’s lake, either through biomass, wind or solar, in order to help offset impacts on the provincial energy grid.

3. Cumulative Effects

Section 10.9.3 of the Guidelines indicates that Cliffs shall identify the sources of potential cumulative effects. Here, the Guidelines should clearly identify that one of the sources of cumulative effects is the presence of other commercially viable mineral deposits in the Ring of Fire (including chromite), both under the control of Cliffs and those not under Cliffs control. Exploitation of at least some of these deposits is likely to move forward towards development over the next 20 or so years. Infrastructure to be created through the Cliffs Chromite project will most likely also provide service to Cliffs exploitation of other deposits, as well as for Cliffs competitors, especially the use of the transportation and production infrastructure which is being contemplated by Cliffs through this EA process.

4. Water Quality and Hexavalent Chromium

The proposed ferrochrome production facility is to be located in close proximity to Lake Wanapitei, which is a drinking water source for the City of Greater Sudbury. I understand that the Guidelines emphasise the need for the EA to look at anticipated impacts of the production facility on water, and also specifically reference hexavalent chromium as a chemical compound of interest. That being said, the importance of understanding the anticipated impacts of hexavalent chromium on the Lake Wanapitei watershed can not be understated, given the lake’s importance as a drinking water source, and given the acidic nature of Sudbury’s soils. This is an extremely important issue, and Cliffs must address it seriously and comprehensively.

5. Economic and Social Benefit

The economic and social benefit of this entire project remains unclear and unknown at this time. Yet, that has not stopped publicly elected officials at all levels of government from offering their backing and support. Despite the backing of elected officials, the CEAA needs to take this matter seriously. To do so, a comprehensive analysis of costs is necessary. Without understanding the full and anticipated costs of this project, questions regarding economic and social benefit will remain unanswerable.

Regarding costs, specifically the EA should look at anticipated energy costs and the level of subsidy which Ontario taxpayers may be asked to contribute in order to make this project economically viable for Cliffs. Cliffs has already gone on the public record with claims that current electricity prices in Ontario are too high for the economic viability of a ferrochrome processing facility, and that the public should therefore subsidize their operation. Ultimately, this may or may not be a good economic approach, which is why more information regarding current and future energy costs and subsidies are required.

Cliffs should provide an economic impact analysis of the entirety of the Cliffs Chromite project, including a realistic assessment of wealth creation through direct jobs (both permanent and temporary) and indirect jobs from establishing a new industry in Ontario’s north. Ideally, this economic impact assessment should look at the full range of economic opportunities offered through anticipated development of the Ring of Fire in its entirety, so that the public can have a clear picture regarding total costs and opportunities.

The costs to the planet’s climate should also be assessed and it should be determined through the EA process whether Canadians will derive a social benefit from the Cliffs Chromite project, which is anticipated to be a significant contributor to climate changing greenhouse gases. It may be that the social benefit of not allowing this project to go forward outweighs any benefit of permitting the significant outputs of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Again, this issue is bigger than Cliffs Chromite project, and the CEAA really should consider the total contribution to greenhouse gas output of all anticipated Ring of Fire development.

In Conclusion

I am frustrated that the CEAA has chosen to assess Cliffs Chromite project as a single project, disconnected from the reality of development proposals on the ground in the Ring of Fire. If ever there was an area of proposed development for which a Joint Assessment should be used by the CEAA, clearly Northwestern Ontario’s remote Ring of Fire fits the bill, as development is to be in an isolated, geographically confined area, which because of its ecology, is sensitive in nature. The Ring of Fire is located within the habitat area of Canada’s iconic woodland caribou, an endangered species which is very skittish when it comes to development. While I am glad that the draft Guidelines developed by the CEAA require the assessment of potential impacts on caribou from Cliffs Chromite project, the fact is that this assessment should be taking place on a broader scale, and it should consider the impacts from all anticipated development.

This ad hoc approach to assessing development is doing a considerable disservice to the people of Canada, and to residents of the City of Greater Sudbury in particular, who may be on the hook to finance upgrades to service a ferrochrome production facility which may ultimately be bigger in scale and used longer than anticipated to simply service ore and concentrate from Cliffs Black Thor deposit. We don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into here, and the EA process contemplated in the draft Guidelines won’t provide clarity when it comes to actual anticipated impacts. A more comprehensive process which assesses the Ring of Fire in its entirety is therefore necessary.

Another process is available to the CEAA: the Joint Environmental Assessment process. The CEAA should require a Joint EA process at this time. It is to the CEAA’s, and ultimately Canada’s shame, that our federal environmental assessment agency is deciding to pursue an ad-hoc approach when environmental sustainability and the health of Canadians could be at risk from development if it proceeds in an uncoordinated manner.

Further, Cliffs may find itself financially disadvantaged for being the first company through the door, as it were, and may have to foot the bill to answer many questions which go beyond the specifics of their project. To make the process fair for Cliffs, a Joint Environmental Assessment process would see costs shared amongst all who will benefit from resource exploitation.

I wish to be kept informed of all aspects of the CEAA’s environmental assessment process, and added to the list of those to be consulted by Cliffs throughout the process.

Sincerely,

Steve May
CEO, Sudbury Federal Green Party Association

(the opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

The Occupy Movement's Overwhelming Success

2011-11-16T18:04:00.001-05:00

What started on Wall Street with the habitation of Zuccotti Park early this fall has transformed into a global movement where public spaces within our cities, big and small, have become populated with citizens braving the elements around the clock. The “Occupy Together” Movement, or simply the “Movement”, has brought attention to a number of issues in our society which, frankly, weren’t receiving the kind of attention that they deserved. The Movement has been an overwhelming success, even as inhabitants are being flushed out of the public realm in an increasing number of communities. That the future remains uncertain for all existing occupations can not detract from the Movement’s success.

Now, that may seem a strange comment for me to make. Wasn’t the goal of the Occupy Movement to change the world? Did that somehow get lost along the way? Well, yes and no. Changing the world is a noble goal, one I’m sure most of those participating in the Movement would love to see occur. But I don’t think that anybody sleeping in our public parks really thought that the world was going to change overnight. Indeed, the very type of change of being requested by the Movement wasn’t something which could just “happen” in the same way that the demands of the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square could be met. Changing our corporate greed-based economic system to a more equitable system based on values and compassion (if that was one of the many requests being made) was not going to happen with the resignation of any head of state.

The Occupy Movement was condemned to failure by some media pundits right at its beginning. Not all of the pundits questioning the Movement were necessarily predisposed to its failure (although a good many were). Even those pundits with whom the Movement’s issues found resonance found themselves questioning the Movement’s tactics. How could the occupation of public spaces bring about real change, particularly when there were no demands being made, and no leaders were emerging who could speak on behalf of the Movement? A goal-less, leaderless movement which would inevitably find itself on the wrong end of by-law enforcement (or police batons), well, how was that ever going to change the world?

So the pundits predicted that the occupations of public spaces would deteriorate, until the public became fed up with the presence of protesters in the public realm. Often, this sentiment was expressed with considerable disdain towards the people participating in the protest. “They don’t know why they’re there.” “They don’t understand the issues.” “They’re a bunch of communists.” “They feel a sense of entitlement and don’t want to work.” Sometimes, the protesters were belittled because of their levels of income, almost as if a person’s worth in society really did have a dollar value attached to it.

Would a violent end to the occupations of public spaces be good or bad for the Movement? Although that question was not being specifically asked by the pundits, clearly those paying attention were watching, almost waiting, for the violence to break out, much as they were at the Toronto G20. Violence makes for good video footage after all, and it allows us to create a barrier between “us”, the non-violent watching events unfold at home, and “them”, the violent anarchists with whom we have nothing in common. In short, violence plays well for the mainstream media, because it’s interesting and makes media consumers feel alternatively fearful and good about themselves. It sells.

That a number of occupations have been brought to an end now, mostly with minimal violence, has probably been a disappointment to those who have been keen to see the peaceful protest fail. There has been a desire amongst the right-wing media in particular to want to separate the protesters from the common people who might otherwise support the Movement. That violence may still be the result should our armed police services instigate it against peaceful protesters who have been ordered to leave our parks will not diminish the success that the Movement has already achieved.

Look, I’m one of those people who pays very close attention to the mainstream media, as I believe that the media wields real power through its ability to influence public opinion. If you have a cause, for example, that isn’t being talked about in the media, it becomes very difficult for you to get your message out. Trust me; I’m a member of the Green Party, and I speak from experience. Perhaps getting the message out is a little easier now with the advent of social media, but even social media users find themselves in a whole other realm when the mainstream media picks up their YouTube clip of the day, or investigates something arising from someone’s blog or Facebook status update. The mainstream media, in my opinion, remains a venue for public influence. The mainstream media isn’t just a mirror being held up to society, reflecting society’s image back at it.

Jon Stewart on the Daily Show probably had the best line about the Occupy Movement and the media. When the Movement first originated on Wall Street, it received little media attention. Suddenly, that all changed. Stewart had an explanation of how that worked, and to illustrate, he showed a picture of a dial, labelled “Media”. The dial could be set to one of two settings, labelled: “Ignore” and “Circus”. Once the media circus began in New York City, the Movement was not going to be put back in its bottle.

Suddenly, the mainstream media was awash with discussions about income inequality, some serious, some much less so. What was different, though, was although some in the mainstream media had been writing about these issues for a long time (here in Canada, Linda McQuaig at the Toronto Star comes to mind), in general these were voices in the wilderness, reporting on niche-interest issues. Certainly, no one in government was talking about these issues, and there were an absence of talking heads on TV gabbing about income inequality. Although there has been considerable focus on the economy as of late (and for good reason), there were few voices talking about how those benefiting from growth have disproportionately been the richest amongst us.

The media circus in New York changed that, and pretty soon everybody was talking about the income inequality. Sure, some of the coverage was very negative, especially from the right wing media, which seems to want to make a political issue out of everything. But, Oscar Wilde once remarked that the only thing worse than being ‘talked about’ was not being talked about. In this case, Wilde was proven right yet again. Believe what you want about the issue of income inequality. But you can not deny that this issue has suddenly exploded onto the public agenda.

The TV talking heads can’t stop talking about it. Government officials from Presidents to Ministers of Finance have talked about it. Here in Canada, leadership hopefuls of progressive political parties have expressed a desire to incorporate some of the Movement’s messaging in public policy. Sentiments of sympathy for those concerned about the issue have been offered by the heads of major corporations and Wall Street bankers.

And this is why the Movement has already proven to be a success. No matter what happens next, the issue will remain on the public agenda. The issue has proven itself to be different from the kind of pop-up issue which the media tends to report on for a few minutes, and then drops when the next issue of the day pops up. Unlike when billionaire Warren Buffett urged the U.S. government to tax the rich (do you remember that?), this time the issue will have staying power, and it can no longer be ignored.

That the “issue” has no single expression is probably its greatest strength. Had the Movement offered a prescriptive resolution, or issued demands, those ideas would have formed the backbone for future discussions, which admittedly would make it easier to “get behind”, but it would also open itself up to criticism. By deliberately not describing what a desired outcome would be, by deliberately not drawing a line in the sand and laying out what it would take to declare victory, the Movement has proven itself to be a remarkable success. And that’s because now people will be engaged on finding workable solutions, of which there are probably many, but admittedly few which are going to be easy to implement. When solutions arise from considerable discourse, there is always more public buy-in.

Instead of creating a single idea, what the Movement has done has been to start creating the desire for change, of some kind. The Occupy Movement has been the spark which has led to engagement. Now, when we discuss economic issues at a geopolitical level, there will be a different voice which emerges to add its own perspective to the discussion. And that voice will be questioning the wisdom of the entire system.

In fact, it’s already started to happen. I see it creeping into mainstream media discussions about what’s happening in the Eurozone. Oh, it’s not an overwhelming voice yet, but some are questioning whether it might not be better for Greece to default, for example. Whether austerity measures make sense. And some have called Germany and France’s kyboshing of former Greek PM Papandreou’s call for a referendum a victory of the bankers over the democrats, recognizing that we are going down a slippery slope here in the name of economic growth. Is Italy really better off with a government consisting almost entirely of appointed technocrats? How will anyone be held accountable when the austerity measures are implemented?

Eyes are being opened to a new way of looking at the world, and what I’m seeing reflected back in the mirror are more people questioning whether the pursuit of gross domestic product and growth at all costs is going to ultimately be beneficial for a majority of the world’s population. For us all.

Our economic and political systems are broken. Together, those systems are looking after the interests of a minority of the people and ignoring the will of the majority. Income inequality is but one expression of this disconnect. There are many others, but all are intertwined with one another. The Occupy Movement has provided a spark to add income disparity to the public agenda. As it is so connected to many other important issues, like peak oil, climate change, poverty and homelessness, war and resource depletion, I remain optimistic that these issues, too, will soon begin to receive a higher level of scrutiny from all of us. And that we shall urge our decision makers to take them seriously on our behalfs, despite what the corporate interests might think about that.

It’s past time that we wake ourselves up to all of these issues. I know that it’s not going to happen overnight, but I am optimistic that it will happen. It is already happening. And when I see the success of the Occupy Movement, I know that a small group of people can accomplish a lot when we work together.

(the opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

The Austerity Agenda, Part 3: Fight the Power

2011-11-04T02:38:00.001-04:00

Lately, at least since 2008, the injustices of our economic system have been on a bit more of a public display. How can it be that we reward big banks for losing our investments, and reward them with our own money through public dollar bailouts? Sure, that didn’t happen here in Canada, but that’s only because Canada’s neo-liberals, who were clamouring for more deregulation of the financial sector, couldn’t figure out a way to seize power in the 1990s. Of course, they’re in power now, and determined to do what they can to cater to the bankers, although deregulation now is a political no-go.

But a Tobin Tax isn’t. Out of all of the measures I identified before which would generate revenue for our governments to pay down the debts, out of all of those measures, why did I refrain from discussing new taxation? Well, politically, it’s just not on the table right now, I think because Canadians don’t understand the true extent of the mess that we’re in. Sure, we don’t have it as bad as some, even as bad as most. But when a ship is sinking it doesn’t matter whether we’re stowed in the hull or sitting atop the highest mast: we’re all going to end up in the same place. Sure, maybe by staying up top we prolong the hope of being rescued, and that might work in a ship-sinking scenario. But in this case, it’s our global economy which is sinking; it’s not as if there’s another economy out there steaming along the horizon which might catch site of us before we go under.

There has been talk of implementing a tax on financial transaction. This would have the effect of both raising revenues for governments and minimizing the sorts of casino-style banking speculation which has gone on in the financial system and which led in part to the 2008 collapse. Like heroin, banks remain addicted to risky financial behaviour, even if their habits haven’t been in the news as much lately. The reason for their addiction is simple: they are still making gobs of money from speculation, and will continue to do so until it all comes crashing down again. Back in 2008, some of the biggest banks in the world almost went under. Had not the United States and other nations injected massive amounts of taxpayers dollars into the banks, they would have collapsed. Back in 2008, our governments could, just barely, afford to engage in these actions. Now that the United States is running a trillion dollar deficit, will it be able to afford to do so again in the future?

Well, maybe. But they’re going to have to get public spending under control first, which means more cuts to social programs. Or at least they could stop financing one or two wars (why do you think Obama is finally bringing the troops home from Iraq an Afghanistan?). If the U.S. can squeeze every penny out of its budget by cutting public services to the bone, they may just find enough money to hand over to the bankers when the next crisis hits.

Sounds like a pretty lousy proposition for the public, doesn’t it? The problem is, though, that having these banks fail might be an even worse proposition. Sounds like a “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” scenario, doesn’t it? So where does the real problem lie?

The Real Problems: Economics & Democracy No More

Those currently down at Occupy Sudbury know the answer. The problem lies with our current economic system. The one which must be fuelled by constant growth, or else it doesn’t work. That’s part of the answer. The other part of the answer is a governance model which will continue to put the interests of the rich corporations ahead of the interests of the rest of us.

Remember, for a moment, what happened back in the fall of 2008 in the United States. George W. Bush, who was on his way out as President, tried to push a stimulus package through Congress. The lower house, the House of Representatives, initially balked, and refused the package. The more well-heeled Senate, however, was on board, and eventually the House of Reps was bullied into making a decision to hand over billions of dollars of taxpayers money to the banks and auto sector. That elected U.S. officials were able to change their minds so quickly says a lot about the governance system in place there.

But not once did anybody ever think that maybe this sort of unprecedented public spending initiative should receive the blessing of the People. There had just been an election in the United States, the one which brought Obama to power. Yet stimulus spending was never raised as an issue beyond Obama and his Republican Party challenger John McCain agreeing to do whatever would need to be done. Not exactly the sort of public discourse which was being considered by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou (who by the time that this is published may no longer be Greece’s Prime Minister) when he said that there would be a referendum. Of course, it’s been remarked that elections generally aren’t the best of times for serious public policy discussions. Which leaves me with this question about the United States: given that the U.S. political system is in constant election mode, when does it find the time for the sorts of adult public policy conversations it needs to have with its populace?

Oh ya. That’s right. It doesn’t.

Of course, here in Canada, things were different. Nobody was talking about bailing out banks in the fall of 2008. In fact, the Prime Minister was openly musing about the excellent opportunities being presented for investors to make money as people were being thrown out of work. And you know what? Stephen Harper was quite right: it was a great time for the richest to get even richer.

Canadians returned Harper and his Conservative Party to government with a larger mandate in 2008, as they had campaigned on making government smaller, decreasing spending, and getting the deficit under control (the deficit which the Conservatives themselves had created through irresponsible cuts to consumption taxes, of course, but that rarely came up during an election in which the media was fixated on pooping puffins and the Leader of the Opposition’s difficulty speaking the English language). That what Canada ended up with once in power was a Conservative government which created the highest deficits ever seen in this country was another thing. Here in Canada, there was no public discussion about bailing out the “too big to fail” sector, or providing economic stimulus through even more revenue-killing tax cuts. Our elected officials made those decisions on their own, without our specific consent. And this has been a bit of a problem with regards to the legitimacy of stimulus spending ever since.

What we Canadians got instead was a Prime Minister who flouted our democratic conventions and prorogued parliament in order to avoid a confidence vote which would have removed him from power. What Harper did in 2008 is not all that different from the situation in Greece today. In both cases, the democratic will of the people has taken a back seat to those who wield power. Back in 2008, that wasn’t apparent to many Canadians, who viewed the Constitutional Crisis as some arcane political manoeuvring, or an attempt at the electoral losers to seize power from its victors. That the media gave great comfort to those who held those views did not change the fact that the prorogation of parliament in 2008 by Stephen Harper was one of the worst abuses of democracy in Canadian history.

That elected leaders in the European Union are now publicly declaring that the interests of investors and the economic elite must be considered greater than the democratic rights of Greeks to choose their own destiny is further evidence that democracy just doesn’t matter as much as it used to. Clearly, if the public is going to accept the coming austerity measures, the public must do so as quickly and quietly as possible, preferably before they understand what’s really going on. Papandreou wasn’t prepared to force-feeds the Greeks Buckley’s Mixture, even if he thinks that they need it. The rest of us will be given the same choice when the time comes (which is to say, none at all), unless we start to wake up and do something about it now.

The Middle Class: Waking Up is Hard to Do

I attended an event on Wednesday night at which poverty activist John Clark spoke about the coming austerity crisis. What struck me as most poignant was that Clark said that if activists think that we can change the game through tactics which have been employed over the last several decades, we are bound to fail. That Clark would not discuss in great detail the tactics which he thought would be successful in changing the minds of government was, to me, a little telling. For I have no doubt at all that Clark has given this a lot of thought. So have I, although I’m not an activist, and I’m especially not an activist versed in the tactics of the Labour Movement out of which Clarke and most of those in attendance at last night’s meeting emerged.

If the recent tactics of organized labour will not work in delaying or minimizing the austerity measures, what will it take? Clark suggested (and I agree) that there will need to be a broader-based public acceptance of the movement opposing austerity. In Greece, certainly it’s not just the Unions who are on the front lines in Athens – it’s pensioners, youth, women and all of those who have a lot to lose when the austerity measures are imposed. But it’s also not enough, for what’s really missing in Greece is the participation of the broader middle class. Sure, there are some there, engaging in the protests, but the middle class in Greece, as the middle class throughout the world tends to do, remains unengaged. Sure, they probably believe that they’ll be impacted by the austerity measures, but…

But surely it won’t be so very bad, will it? It’s not like they’ll all lose their jobs, their homes, their abilities to feed their families, right? Surely that’ll happen to some, they think, but not to most. Not to me. And they’ll be right about that. Until it happens to them.

As long as the middle class remains unengaged, those pushing austerity are sure to succeed. And it looks like the middle class in North America at least, is taking zero interest in engaging. If anything, the middle class is being convinced by corporate propagandists and astroturf movements like the Tea Party to vote against its own economic interests and support wasteful tax-cutting measures which will only decrease the relative health of our governments and their ability to service the debt. Which can only mean that the middle class itself will need to be squeezed even further in the name of Economic Growth.

It seems clear that the only way to truly succeed will be to engage the middle class to a significant degree, and to have the middle class actively participate in a way which would make the middle class entirely uncomfortable. And I’m not sure that seems a likely prospect. Who likes to be removed from their comfort zone? I mean, if it’s not happening in Greece, how can we expect it to happen in Canada?

Which is why I don’t expect the middle class to become engaged in time to stave off the austerity medicine which we will be force-fed. And that’s why I lament the future world which my own children are going to inherit, because with austerity being the name of the game, we still will not have addressed the real problem, which is our current economic system.

The Only Long-Term Solution: Changing our Economic System

Look, I’m not an anti-capitalist. I just believe that a system which depends on growth and which can not grow is a system which isn’t working any more. And like a lightbulb which was useful when it worked, but no longer useful now that it’s burned itself out and needs to be replaced with something that does work, I believe that it’s time we got serious about changing our economic system. Sure, that’s going to be a monumental undertaking, as it will pose huge challenges to the rich who control the system and to the labour movement which operates within the system, but, like changing a blown lightbulb, if we want to carry on it’s got to be done. We can’t let Big Money, Big Government and Big Labour get in the way here. Not when our future is at risk.

We must transform our current economic system into one which has at its heart the concept of sustainability, rather than the concept of growth. That may sound simple, but in our consumerist society, it’s not going to be. We need to start putting a dollar value on waste and other externalities, and building those costs into the prices of goods and services. Only by monetizing waste and all externalities will we be able to achieve innovation in production and service delivery. Nothing makes business and industry want to innovate faster than saving money!

Rather than living in a throw-away society which emphasizes a culture of convenience (for those who can afford it), we will instead prize durability and energy efficiency. Instead of an economic system which can only function if we mortgage our children’s future, we can and must create a system which leaves our children a better planet than the one that we have inherited (and seem intent on passing along to our kids). Instead of exploiting the next seven generations so that we may live in (relative) luxury, we need to consider and plan for the needs of those seven generations, and actually take the actions necessary to ensure that there’s more than enough left for those future generations.

And before you start thinking that’s all well and good and “kumbayah” Steve, let’s revisit why sustainability has to be the way forward. Our current economic system is not broken: it’s doing exactly what we should have been expecting it to do. It has served us well, some of us much more so than most of us. But now our economic system, which requires Growth to function, has run into a circumstance where growth can only be achieved by impoverishing ever more people in the same way that a parasite feeds on our blood for its own sustenance.

Our Current Economic System as a Blood-Sucking Parasite

Our current economic system must be recognized as a threat to our own well-being. And if not a threat to our own personal well-being, certainly a threat to the well-being of our neighbours, family and community. And if left unattended, this threat will grow into a clear and present danger to our children, even while making us sicker and sicker.

Our only long-term solution is to remove the parasite, as difficult as that will prove to do. In the end it won’t matter to the parasite anyway, because the parasite itself is doomed. Whether that doom comes through its exorcism from our bodies, or whether it comes because it has sucked our lifeblood dry doesn’t matter – at least not to the parasite. It may matter to us, sure. But what’s more important here, us or the parasite?

Judging by what’s going on in the world, clearly prolonging the health of the parasite is much more important than you or me. Does that make any sense?

There will come a time when the middle class will need to figure out where it stands, but I fear by then it will be too late. Unless we can figure out a way to wake more people up, the austerity deed will be done without our consent. We may even believe that the medicine our governments are force-feeding us is for our own good, and we’ll accept it like sheep who can’t see the world beyond their own pens. And it may keep us going for a while, sure. But at some point in time in the not too-distant future, likely in my lifetime and certainly in the lifetime of my daughter, our economic system which requires Growth will again butt up against natural barriers which will constrain growth. They will be the same barriers: peak oil and ever-higher energy prices. And our governments will again demand more sacrifices from the public; only the next time we will have found ourselves in a situation where we are likely unable to resist.

And then it will happen again. And maybe again. Maybe the next time it happens, rather than force more austerity measures on us, we will choose instead to eliminate those factors which contribute to economic competition over the remaining scarce resources, in order to allow those remaining resources to be used by more efficiently by fewer corporations and people. By that, of course I mean some kind of significant reduction in human population, which would be achievable only by war, mass famine, or some kind of health care crisis, real or manufactured.

These fluctuations in our economic system, these ups and downs, will continue to happen as long as we try to implement short-term solutions to a long term (and terminal) problem, that being the end of an economic system which can not function without perpetual Growth. It will happen until the whole system stops working. And it will happen because an economic system which needs to grow has to be and will be constrained by a natural system which is finite.

The answer isn’t to continue to feed the system, the parasite. The answer must be to jettison the parasite and create a new system. And that’s not going to be easy. Far from it. But it’s what we must do.

You can see why I’m in a very bleak headspace today.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

The Austerity Agenda, Part 2: Democracy in Tatters

2011-11-03T23:39:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou returned from a meeting with Eurozone members, clutching a deal which was hailed (at the time) as the salvation of Europe. World markets went on a celebratory spending spree at the news, which continued right up until Papandreou announced that he would take deal to the public through a referendum. Papandreou wanted the Greek People to give their assent to the severe austerity measures being requested by the Eurozone. Only a referendum would lend democratic legitimacy to the austerity measures to be implemented, according to Papandreou. Greeks would vote knowing that a rejection of the austerity measures would likely see Greece thrown out of the Eurozone and left to sink or swim on its own (with sinking being the likeliest outcome either way).

And then a truly scary thing happened, and it was this scary thing which has contributed to the dark headspace that I seem to find myself in today, as I indicated in Part 1 of this post. As European markets plunged on the news that Greece was going to hold a referendum, the other Eurozone nations, notably France and Germany (who are going to be on the hook for a significant part of the bail out extended to Greece) demanded that Papandreou not hold the referendum, and institute the austerity measures without going to the Greek People as Papandreou had planned.

In Animal Farm parlance, this can be summed up as: In a democracy, all people are equal. But some people are more equal than others.

Or, if you’d prefer a Star Trek reference (which caused Mr. Spock a headache, due to its complete lack of logic): The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. Sure, things worked out well for Spock, but he had Captain Kirk, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, Scotty and Bones in his corner. We've got Suncor, Harper, Obama, BP and Haliburton looking out for our interests.

In Greece’s case, the needs of the Investors outweigh the needs of the People. That’s the message which our international leaders are telling the Greeks today.

What the hell is going on?

The Buckley’s Mixture Approach to Democracy

It’s almost as if the needs of the wealthiest supercede the hopes, dreams, aspirations and desires of everybody else, and that everybody else is being told that we must remain subservient to the will of the rich, for our own good of course. Else those stock markets will tumble, and we’ll all be out of jobs. We’re being told to listen to the rich investors because they know what’s best for us, and that if we’re going to continue to grow our economy, the majority of us are going to have become a little poorer. That’s what Austerity is all about. It’s the only plan that they’ve got, and therefore it’s the only way forward.

Of course, they are right. Right now the only way for the economy to continue to grow is by making the middle class poorer than it is today. These moves will consolidate the growth of wealth even further into the hands of the wealthy, who can then continue to spend and increase the GDP. Jobs will be created along the way, absolutely, because we need workers to exploit those remaining resources in hard-to-get-to places in the ground, like the tar sands. You’re not against creating jobs, are you? That those workers will be earning less pay than they would have years ago doesn’t matter (and “less pay” here may be a relative term, but when you factor inflation into the equation, it will be less pay). Just be happy that you have a job, and don’t rock the boat.

So if the rich are right, why not go along with their scheme? Why not except these austerity measures the way that we drink Buckley’s Mixture? The measures will be painful at first, but if it’s the only way to get out of the crisis, well let’s do it. It tastes horrible, but it works, right?

Reality Intercedes

No, it’s not right at all. Because what’s missing from this point of view is Reality.

Our current economic system, which has functioned generally pretty well these past five or six decades (ok, that’s arguable, but let’s move on), is predicated on a concept which completely ignores the impacts of reality. In order for our current economic system to work, it must continue to grow. That’s why when economists talk about growth, it’s always a good thing, but recession is bad. Depression? Terrible! Don’t you dare go there. While Growth may not need to be continual (a little recession every now and then will bring wages back in line, for example), the overall trend toward Growth must be a constant in our current economic system. Sustained contraction, also known as “negative growth” just won’t work.

But here is where reality comes in: Sustained Economic Growth is no longer possible, and there’s very little that we can do about it. Our economy has encountered barriers to growth which can not be overcome without drastic action of a kind which only the psychopathic would contemplate. Economic Growth has been fuelled by inexpensive energy, and for a number of reasons, we’ve run out of that. And there is no replacing it.

Inheriting the World

We are living in a time of energy austerity, which hasn’t been imposed on us by any government. We find ourselves here because of our selves. We used up significant sources of one-time energy to give ourselves the luxuries of the modern world. But we haven’t paid for those luxuries ourselves. And I tell you this is probably the biggest reason that I find myself in a cold and bleak place today, because I realize that the lifestyle that I inherited from my parents and all of the good things that I’ve had, from gadgets to education to universal health care to economic opportunity, all will be paid for by my children and their children. The world that my daughter is inheriting from me is going to be a crappy, broken place.

I remember being young and watching the first space shuttle take off from Cape Kennedy, with its solid rocket boosters painted white. I wasn’t yet 10 years old, but I remember hearing the adults talking about how this space shuttle will lead us back to the moon, which will be a staging ground for a mission to Mars. From there, the asteroid belt beckoned, and who knows? The moons of Jupiter perhaps? When the movie “2010” came out a few years later, I was enthralled by the mystery and majesty of Jupiter, and I imagined visiting its moons one day, just as those astronauts and cosmonauts in the movie did. After all, the year “2010” wasn’t that far away, right? Surely we had ample time to get our act together as a species to explore our own solar system.

Those dreams of my childhood seem so wasteful now. It’s not that we chose to ignore space travel, it’s that we chose to ignore developing the new technologies necessary to build a better society. It’s past 2010, and we’ve yet to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, even though we’ve known all along that they weren’t going to last. Sure, there’s still a lot of oil in the ground, and we can squeeze more out of the bitumen in the tar sands. But the oil in the ground is heavy and dirty and perhaps most importantly – expensive to get out of the ground. And the tar sands? Well, the energy invested to make a barrel of tar sands oil is close to half that barrel of oil. So sure, there’s a net energy profit to be made there, but look at the cost!

Humanity won’t be going to Jupiter in my lifetime. We probably won’t even make it back to the moon, and if we do, it will be for show, and not to establish a base of operations for a Mars mission. Over the past several decades, we had the opportunity to invest our public dollars in sustainable energy solutions, but instead we did the exact opposite: we invested in wasteful energy solutions, such as car-dependent suburban neighbourhoods fuelled by cheaply made goods sold in big-box stores at the end of energy-intensive supply chains. We paved over our farmland and decided it was better to import salads from California and Chile. We built bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger everything, all requiring more fuel to run, more energy to heat.

Waking Up the World: The Occupy Movement

Author and futurist James Howard Kuntsler, who coined the term “The Long Emergency”, referred to “suburbia” as being, “the greatest misallocation of resources of all time” a number of years ago. Most people who heard him make that remark scoffed at him, and pointed out all of the great things suburbia has brought us. Of course, most people never heard the remark in the first place, because very few were paying attention. Even today, the biggest news-making items in Canada have more to do with Justin Bieber’s supposed love-child than the Long Emergency in which we now find ourselves in.

What will it take for people to start paying attention? I’m sure that’s a question which those occupying Wall Street were asking themselves back in September when the occupation of Zuccotti Park began in New York City. After severakl weeks of being ignored, the mainstream media finally woke up to the fact that there was a protest going on, and maybe it was newsworthy. Things went from “silence” to “circus” pretty quickly. The media is sure to lose interest at some point, but today at the beginning of November, it’s something that we are still talking about. For me, that’s a very positive sign.

Occupy Wall Street led to a larger, international movement, now known as “Occupy Together”. Media pundits have provided mixed reviews on the protest. Some have suggested that since there are no demands and no leaders, the protest is destined to fail. Indeed, the Occupy protests do seem to defy the conventions of what it means to have a successful social campaign which leads to real change. Any marketing expert can tell you that having a small number of defined goals, and a time-limited campaign fully mapped out is the only way forward. Success must be measurable, surely!

Other pundits have been more critical, and have largely been spouting propaganda for their corporatist interests. As an aside, it saddens me that so many Canadians don’t understand that today’s mainstream media has transformed into an organ of propaganda for corporate interests. That’s why the same old, predictable neo-liberal lines are present throughout all media, and even those organizations which might want to challenge the neo-liberal way of thinking can only go so far, or else they risk being silenced through lost jobs. Eric Margolis, who refused to tote Sun Media’s party line on the Middle East, was ousted a few years back, and his platform for challenging our thinking and attitudes about international affairs was diminished as a result. Sure, he’s still online, but how many people today turn to online sources for their news?

Waking Up Youth: The First Step

Well, actually an increasing number of us do. But for the most part, alternative media is still in its infancy, and the mainstream media continues to rule the roost, even online. Alternative media remains largely in the purview of young technocrats, who, because of their numbers worldwide are only just now waking up to the notion that they can have real influence on existing power structures. Whether Tahrir Square was the first Twitter Revolution or not, it was an overthrow of an old, entrenched, corrupt power by a youthful, largely peaceful movement which captured the dreams, hopes and aspirations of young Egyptians throughout the world. But here in North America, the young remain under the thumb of the Baby Boomers, and although youth are finding out about issues on Twitter and Facebook, and watching first hand accounts of violence against the poor posted from cellphones onto YouTube, for the most part North American youth (like the rest of us) remain unengaged in what’s going on in the world around them. When just getting by is a struggle, it’s hard to worry about current events.

And of course, since young people overwhelmingly do not vote, our political parties pay only lip service to issues which might be important to them. Youth in Canada are kind of like an Occupy protest, only with much less clarity of purpose. While we can put our hopes into youth to be the ones to wake up, given that they will be feeling the impacts of the austerity agenda much more significantly than any other demographic, we really should expect nothing more from our youth than we would expect from ourselves. After all, which age demographic do you think is making Justin Bieber and Grand Theft Auto the top trending story on Twitter today? And which age demographic is CNN catering too when it brings you live coverage of the Michael Jackson wrongful death trial? We are all equally implicated.

Occupy Sudbury

The Occupy Sudbury protest taking place in Memorial Park has been receiving balanced press from our local media, which doesn’t surprise me, as we seem to have some of the fairest local media outlets in Canada here in Sudbury. I’ve been down to the Park a number of times now since the occupation began, and I’ve had the chance to listen to a number of the people down there who are either like myself, just visiting, or have chosen to sleep in the cold and the rain in order to make the occupation a success. After all, you can’t occupy a space unless you have people committed to being there.

I’ve been overwhelmed by some of the personal stories of hardship that I’ve heard, and I have a better understanding of what it is which motivates the occupiers. The media will have you believe that the Occupy Movement is about protesting corporate greed (best case scenario) or about lazy young people, welfare bums and anarchists looking for handouts from banks through some kind of communist wealth redistribution scheme. Lately, in Canada, an anti-First Nations tone has started to creep into media discourse, as ultra-right wing pundits like Ezra Levant have started suggesting that the Occupations could turn into a Caledonia-style armed conflict in the midst of our communities because First Nations people are involved. This, of course, is racism at its worst, but it’s great for stoking fears in the middle classes whose support will be key in moving ahead with Phase 2 of the movement, whatever that might be.

While the Movement might have been predicated on the notion of the need to do something about growing income disparity and the economic inequalities which are promoted by our current system, let me tell you that it’s actually much more than that. Of course those are some of the very real issues which bring people down to Memorial Park and other public spaces throughout Canada, North America and the world as part of the global protest. Other issues are also frequently brought up by protesters: climate change; taxation; a lack of government responsiveness; homelessness and poverty. And the coming economic austerity measures which will need to be imposed on us in order to continue fuelling Economic Growth.

Every time that I’ve visited Occupy Sudbury, I’ve been amazed at how happy the protesters are. Not that they’re truly happy mind you, but given the personal hardships which they have previously faced, and the ones which they are going through now to keep the occupation moving forward, I just don’t understand how it is that they’ve managed to maintain such positivity. I mean, here I am in my personal dark space, yet I’ve had to sacrifice so little. Both the occupiers and me understand where our society is heading, yet they embrace hope and optimism and, most importantly, action. They believe that they can change the world as a result of what they are doing. And I’m tempted to believe along with them, although I realize that what’s happening right now in our public spaces is only a beginning.

But as far as a beginning goes, the Occupy Together Movement has been wildly successful. That it may yet end in violence and despair as the powers that be may choose to wage aggression on a peaceful protest saddens me (although I don’t think that will be the outcome in Sudbury, given the wisdom continually displayed by our local municipal leaders and Police Services to remain largely uninvolved). Mainstream media pundits have already declared that the Movement has failed, because it either hasn’t articulated its demands for an end-game, or invigorated the public into larger support. That’s the kind of short-sighted thinking that I’ve come to expect from the media, however, which seems to be caught up in a constant sense of wonder every time a new story breaks, forgetting of course that there is history behind everything.

The Occupy Movement just didn’t suddenly coalesce from nothingness. Dissent has been building throughout the world for some time now, decades even. Those who have tried to peer into the future and who have witnessed the cluster of ill omens headed our way have largely been dismissed as Cassandras on the wall of Thebes. But guess what? Cassandra was proven right in the end, but that didn’t save the Thebans or herself.

No, the Occupy Movement has not been a failure. It’s been an absolute success, an unbridled success, and I suspect that’s why the occupiers in Memorial Park seem to be happier than I would have expected them to be. They know that they have initiated a dialogue with governments, corporations, banks, the media and the public about the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us. Where others have failed in the past have tried to break through the barriers of conversation to bring these issues to the general attention of the public, the Occupy Movement has finally succeeded. Talk about income disparity is suddenly mainstream. And that genie won’t be going back into its bottle.

(...continued in Part 3)

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

The Austerity Agenda, Part 1: Blood from a Stone

2011-11-03T18:28:00.001-04:00

Today, I find myself in a very bleak space. It seems that I’ve been heading here for some time, although I’ve been unable to put my finger on exactly why I’ve found myself walking along this route to darkness. I’ve looked around at the world, and I have sensed that things are beginning to fall apart, whether that’s globally, nationally or locally, it appears to be happening. I’ve told myself that I have been mentally prepared for this, as it’s been something that I’ve been expecting for some time now. But as I look around on this road to darkness, I think that the one thing which surprises me the most, today, is how alone I am. I’m feel like a hitch hiker in the desert, and I just don’t get it. I always thought that misery loves company.

Today’s post is going to be formatted a little differently from my typical posts, as I want to talk about a few things which have been happening over the past week or so. These things have been building to a crescendo for some time now, and over the past few weeks they’ve exploded onto the scene. Yet so many of my friends, family, coworkers, and others whom I interact with continue to remain blissfully unaware of their significance. And I don’t understand why. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or a three year old) to connect the dots. What’s going on?

The Continuing Economic Crisis

I see our economy teetering on the brink, as it bashes up against all-too formidable natural constraints. Growth is necessary to power the economy, but with energy and food prices climbing, with competition for scarce resources amongst nations leading to higher prices, and with the wages of common people being squeezed throughout the world in order to give the corporations just a little more wealth, can we really be surprised that a global recession seems likely?

But the thing is, it can’t end there; and this is the part which genuinely confuses me, because I don’t understand why more people don’t understand this: The coming recession won’t be a new recession. Although we have experienced technical economic growth globally since 2009, after the short recession of 2008 (short because of the economic stimulus of public dollars being pumped into the economy and into the hands of corporations and banks – the so-called “job creators”), the real truth of the matter is that the world has been in an economic crisis for some time now.

Whether technically in recession or not, the crisis has been real, although not sustained. During these past few years we’ve been in a kind of Sitzkrieg, or Phoney War stage of the crisis, when it’s been easier to pretend that the hardships ahead might not happen. In his eye-opening book of the same name, author and futurist James Howard Kuntsler described where we are at today as the opening stages of the “The Long Emergency”. Kuntsler’s description is bound to be apt, even if the “Emergency” experiences ups and downs. In fact, there absolutely has to be ups and downs, given the economic circumstances of Peak Oil.

The End of Inexpensive Energy: Economic Impacts

I wrote about all of this before, just recently, in my blog, “The Limits of Growth and the Coming Recession: Why Measuring Matters”, so I won’t go into great detail again here. Quickly, though, when the recession hit in 2008, oil prices had never been higher. As people lost their jobs and there was less economic activity, oil prices began to fall. As the economy began to rebound, thanks to lower energy prices and a massive injection of public money, things started to pick up again and the price of oil began to rise. The same thing will undoubtedly happen again when the next recession hits.

However, oil prices (and the price of all non-renewable energy sources) will never fall back to where they were in the mid-2000s or before, because of resource depletion. That’s what Peak Oil is all about. So, although the price of oil may fluctuate with economic output, the overall trend is towards ever-higher prices. Which in our economy will mean less economic output, and less growth, maybe even decline.

And our current economic system can’t sustain itself for long when growth is not occurring. When economies are forced to contract, guess which group of people find themselves as the biggest losers? It’s not necessarily those who are already poor, as they’ve largely been left out of the current economic system’s benefits. Sure, they may lose what little they have. And the wealthiest amongst us may end up losing the most from an aggregate perspective (billionaires can afford to lose millions of dollars), but the rich will continue to be insulated from the shock.

It’s the middle class who will be the biggest losers, mostly because the middle class has become comfortable with its circumstance. This point has been borne out over the past several decades, as there has been little real growth in the middle class in terms of economic spending power. It’s been the middle class who has been squeezed out of prosperity and the ability to increase its wealth. We work longer hours for marginally better pay, only to see our gains eaten up by inflation and higher taxes, while our quality of life plummets due to government take-aways.

How will the middle class react to the coming austerity measures, those currently being contemplated for economic basket case nations like Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, France, the UK and the United States? Wait a moment. Those nations include some of the biggest economies in the world. The term “economic basket case” is being misapplied by me, surely? We used to reserve that term for nations like Argentina, Chile, Poland, Russia and Bolivia, right? What gives?

Why Austerity

Deficit financing gives, that’s what. In the past, prosperous nations like Canada and the United States used to run its finances akin to how a household was run. It was ok to rack up some debt, primarily to purchase necessary items, like a home or even a car for transport. But there was always a point beyond which debt no longer made economic sense, because servicing that debt would simply cost too much money, or interest payments would have to be strung out over a greater time. In those days, now long past, national debts were held to a level which were generational in nature, just as a household has generally held its debts to a level which could be paid off during the productive lifetime of the household.

Then something happened back in the 1970s. The prosperous nations, for many reasons, but in part because they wanted to become even more prosperous, decided that it was ok to accumulate higher levels of debt in order to pay for public services and infrastructure, and to stimulate the economic system. As a result, massive highways were built to suburban utopias (a term I use here ironically), and productive agricultural lands gave way to subdivisions. The stock market ratcheted itself up a notch, and new ventures were formed to sell goods to suburban consumers occupying bigger houses: bigger cars, bigger televisions, bigger everything.

In the 1980s, the economy really kicked into high gear after a few early years of recession. Massive companies consolidated in order to squeeze out more profits, and new terms entered our vocabulary: “off-shoring”, “downsizing” and “out-sourcing”. In the North American heartland, factories closed down and manufacturing was moved to where labour was cheaper. The hollowing out of cities, previously relegated to large American centres, began to strike mid-sized cities, like Sudbury. While the suburban, car-accessible fringes grew with the development of big box stores and power centres selling cheap goods made far away, we thought we had it all. And for a while we did. Until we started losing our jobs, and then even shopping at Wal-Mart became a luxury.

And we paid for all of this – all of it – through deficit financing. The debt from which these goods were created was to become “inter-generational”, meaning that it would not be paid off within the lifetimes of those who received the majority of the benefit. The real costs would be passed on to future generations to deal with. And now national governments find themselves in circumstances where they can no longer service the debt under current budgetary constraints. Just as someone living in poverty may be forced to make a terrible choice between paying the rent or buying food, now too our governments find themselves in similar predicaments. The rent, clearly, has to be paid by our governments, meaning the debt has to be serviced. Or else eviction is going to occur, and it’s going to be hostile and nasty.

Finding Sources of Revenue

So what will our governments sacrifice? Public sector salaries are an easy first target. No one is going to complain when well-paid unionized government workers are forced to take cuts. But cuts to salaries and jobs aren’t going to amount to very much in the budget. Which means deeper spending cuts are going to prove necessary. What about public services? Absolutely there will be cuts to our public services, especially to those services which assist those living in poverty. After all, the poor are an easy target for governments: they don’t have any power, there’s a perception that they don’t contribute to society, and they certainly don’t vote. Those living in poverty will be the second group hit by austerity measures.

But where do we go from there, what’s the plan? Maybe sell off some public assets to private enterprise, even if we have to do so at bargain-basement prices (because there will be a risk for the private sector to turn a profit in a time of economic decline). In Ontario, we can say goodbye to the LCBO, public electrical utilities, transit services, waste collection, maybe even sewer and water services. And when these public services leave the public sector, we can say goodbye to good-paying jobs as well. Which leads to less wealth staying in our communities. Sure, these efforts might lead to raising the GDP and contributing to economic growth, because someone will probably make money off of privatization. But it’s not going to be the 99% who do the work.

But why stop there when it comes to public services? Especially when there are debts to be paid. What about police and fire protection services? Does that seem silly to you? It seems silly to me, sure, but check out the sizable chunks of a budget which these services eat up. If we contracted out our police services, as they do in some municipalities in the United States, we could save money.

How about health care services? After all, they’re doing just fine in the United States without public health care, while we here in Canada pay so much and receive so little in return? We wouldn’t have to get rid of the whole system all together, just decrease the overall funding to it by offering less service. Plus, we can make the rich pay their way by requiring them to seek out privatized services! Wouldn’t that mean more money then being allocated to help those who can’t afford to pay? Not sure where the middle class might fit in, but those technical things could be worked out.

But why stop there? Why not generate revenue through selling advertising rights to public parks and transit stops? Or bottling all that water that just ends up being wasted at the mouth of our rivers, and selling it for profit? Do we really need libraries when everyone has access to the internet? And swimming pools and recreation centres are costly too, so if you want to use it, you should pay for it, not me. Same goes for a public education system too, by the way. Or how about we sell off our roads to private consortiums who can maintain them by charging tolls to users (ok, I’ve gone too far with that last one I’m sure!)

Would the public accept it? The public probably wouldn’t be very happy about it, but then again, they might not have any choice. Literally.

(…continued in Part 2)

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Cliffs Chromite Project and the Environmental Assessment Process: Time Will Tell

2011-10-24T18:03:00.002-04:00

I read with interest an article appearing in the Sudbury Star about Cliffs Chromite Project and the federal environmental assessment process which is now officially underway (“Environmental assessment begins on Cliffs project”, the Sudbury Star, October 12, 2011). I’ve been getting more interested in this project as details have started to filter out into the public over the past year. The project, which includes new mines in Ontario’s remote north, and a new smelter facility which might locate in Sudbury, became a bit of a provincial election issue in Sudbury when it became clear that there was a significant level of uncertainty surrounding the project’s costs to taxpayers. I blogged about this uncertainty in late September (see: “How Much Does That Cost? Part III: Cliffs, Chromite & Moose Mountain”, sudburysteve.blogspot.com, September 29 2011), and identified a number of questions for which I hoped answers would be forthcoming.

Since reading the initial press release from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA), and after reviewing the CEAA’s draft guidelines for the Cliffs Chromite Project, I’m optimistic that some of the questions which need answering are likely to be answered through the environmental assessment process. It appears that Cliffs is intent on working with the federal and provincial regulators to provide a lot of detailed technical information regarding their project. Cliffs provided a decent overview of their proposal to the public earlier this year which I found to be informative and upfront, and it was from that overview that many of the questions that I have with the project have emerged (see: Cliffs Chromite Project – Project Description Summary, February 2011).

The Process

Of course, questions are expected to be asked at the outset of any project designated for an environmental assessment. Soon, it will be time for Cliffs to provide answers. What the CEAA will be ensuring is that the government’s own questions, in compliance with federal and provincial environmental regulations, will be answered by Cliffs (and from reviewing the CEAA’s draft guidelines, it’s clear that the CEAA has a LOT of questions for Cliffs to answer).

The CEAA’s requirements, however, can be considered as a “baseline”. The environmental assessment process contemplates that there may be more questions to ask, which are project-specific and beyond the scope of what would be considered baseline. Those questions, too, may be valid ones to have answered about any project, but this is where things start to enter the realm of uncertainty. Where the CEAA identifies project-specific matters and issues which are beyond the baseline, there’s a good chance that an EA proponent is going to turn their attention towards answering those questions (it’s a smart idea to stay on a public regulator’s good side).

However, the EA process is a public process. What about those questions which are bound to be asked by members of the public? Let’s use me as an example, as I intend to participate in the unfolding environmental assessment process. I may ask a question or raise an issue with the specifics of this project which might not be something which the CEAA has considered. The CEAA can then either adopt my question/issue and direct Cliffs to address it, or they can decide that my question really isn’t relevant to their decision-making process, and should be ignored.

And rightly so. I can easily see circumstances where those involved in a process like this might want an EA proponent to give them the moon, requiring the production of expensive technical studies which really won’t assist with decision-making. I would think that often EA proponents are requested by the public to prove a negative, such as to show the absence of something, either from a site, or from a process. Sometimes, it’s important to show that a feature isn’t there (such as showing that an industrial process won’t emit carcinogens, or that there are no endangered species living on the site). But I’m sure it’s easy to carry things too far (such as a study which shows the impacts on future homeowners where no one is planning to ever build a home).

I’ve never participated in an environmental assessment process before. I’m hoping that the questions that I have fall into the group of questions which are deemed relevant, but I would terribly naïve if I thought that all of my questions will be treated that way through this process. All that I ask of this process is if I have a relevant question, I’d like to see it answered. And if my question isn’t relevant, I’d like to shown why it’s not. I think that’s reasonable. I guess I’ll find out. I’ll certainly be providing the CEAA with my comments pertaining to their draft Guideline, which is the best opportunity to identify which additional questions should be asked.

Costs

Some of the questions that I have pertain directly to costs, and specifically to the cost of electricity which Ontario taxpayers may be on the hook for in terms of a subsidy. Cliffs estimates that the processing facility is going to require the same amount of electricity (largely to run its arc furnace) as a city with a population of 300,000 uses. That’s a lot of juice! And with energy prices higher in Ontario than in surrounding jurisdictions, it’s no wonder that Cliffs is looking toward our government to chip away at the price per kilowatt hour.

So I’ll be wanting more information in terms of the amount of power which Cliffs intends to use, and I’d like to see a pricing scheme based on estimates related to the actual and anticipated cost of electricity over the lifetime of the project.

Of course, this may be considered beyond the scope of the EA process, because the environmental assessment doesn’t appear to concern itself significantly with costs. It starts at a point where it assumes that if there are costs, they’ll be paid. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear through the process who it will be that ends up paying the costs. In the case of Cliffs Chromite Project, the taxpayer is the one who will likely be on the hook for paying the massive subsidies needed to make this project profitable for Cliffs.

Look, maybe there’s a case which can be made which shows that the project and economic spin-offs are a good investment for we taxpayers to make. Maybe it makes sense that we subsidize the electrical costs of this project (along with some other costs). But until we get all of the facts about the project, along with its expected lifetime costs, it seems premature to suggest that the project makes sense at this time. Yet some of our elected leaders seem keen to jump into supporting this project, feet first and eyes closed as it were.

Environmental Considerations

Along with the electrical costs, what sort of environmentally-related costs can we expect from this project? How might this project effect the health of our ecosystems and our own health down the road? What sorts of greenhouse gas contributions will the project contribute to our atmosphere over its lifetime? Is there a likelihood that our drinking water could be contaminated by the industrial by-products of chromite processing?

These are questions which will be raised and hopefully answered through the environmental assessment process, which is great (although the emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions seemed a little weak in the Draft Guideline).

However, what about long-term costs associated with environmental issues? For example, how will this project continue to be economically viable when the government decides to put a price on carbon? Now, for many it may seem foolish to speculate about the economic impacts of carbon pricing, given that there currently isn’t any price on carbon emissions at the moment. Yet, here in Ontario, we are part of the Western Climate Initiative, which is a group of sub-national governments in Canada and the United States which are currently working on a cap and trade carbon emissions trading scheme. Since we just elected a new government here in Ontario which ran on a platform which committed it to the Western Climate Initiative, it seems logical to imply that there will (one day soon) be a price on carbon emissions. Given this situation, I’ll be looking to the environmental assessment process to provide information about these costs, as certainly they will be applied to the project’s electrical needs.

And then there’s hexavalent chromium. I understand that hexavalent chromium is a particularly carcinogenic by-product of chromite processing, one which interacts with acidic soils to produce toxic run off. The Draft Guidelines specifically reference studies needed to look at hexavalent chromium, which tells me that the government is also concerned about this chemical compound. I’d like to know more about what sorts of costs the public could be on the hook for should this compound end up in our drinking water supply (Lake Wahnipitae is pretty close to the site proposed for the new smelter).

Process Questions

Cliffs has submitted a project which includes four separate components: 1) mining of the Black Thor deposit; 2) processing of materials on-site; 3) a transportation system which includes a new road to the mine site; 4) a production facility/smelter, which for the purposes of the EA submission, assumes a location outside of Capreol at Moose Mountain.

First off, is the success of each of these components needed for the project to receive approval? What might happen if a smelter location elsewhere is chosen? Will Cliffs have to go back to square one with a whole new environmental assessment? I would think that maybe Cliffs would have to do that, no matter how silly it might seem. But if you think about it, transportation impacts for example may change, dependent on where a smelter is going to locate.

Will Cliffs now be tied to making a commitment to Sudbury, simply by virtue of the environmental assessment process? What if it proves that a different location is actually a better location, in terms of the environment?

These are questions which will need to be addressed as the process itself unfolds.

Comprehensiveness

The above question about process really got me thinking about just how comprehensive this environmental assessment will be. You see, Cliffs owns the rights to a number of other deposits close to Black Thor (including one known as the “Big Daddy” deposit). Yet the anticipated impacts from these other projects won’t be factored into the current environmental assessment. Now, as far as on-site impacts at the areas to be mined, that might make sense. But what about at a smelter facility? It’s not really likely that a new smelter to be built in Sudbury is going to process materials only from Black Thor, is it? Not when Cliffs owns the rights to other deposits, and other mining companies are ready to move forward developing their own deposits too.

Yet, it seems to me that the process for siting the smelter is only going to contemplate anticipated impacts from just the Black Thor deposit, which is absolutely absurd! For example, if materials from Black Thor are going to require an amount of electricity which a city of 300,000 people use, what about Black Thor and Big Daddy together? Sure, it’s actually the size of the arc furnace which would be the determinative factor, I get that. But at some point, if there’s enough material working its way to Sudbury from the Ring of Fire, why wouldn’t Cliffs think about installing a second arc furnace?

And as far as the transportation system goes, right now the Cliffs Chromite Project estimates that there will be between 50 and 100 trucks travelling daily to and from the railhead at Nakina. But that’s just for Black Thor. What about the other deposits Cliffs controls? And what about other companies in the area?

Well, it turns out that these aren’t just questions that I’m asking. I’ve discovered that a number of other organizations who have been paying attention to the Ring of Fire are also concerned about the lack of comprehensive analysis which the CEAA is requiring Cliffs to undertake. Now I appreciate that Cliffs is the “first through the door” as it were, and can’t be responsible for whether other companies ever develop their deposits or not, but at the same time, if there is a high level of expectation that some of these other projects will move forward in the near future, it only makes sense that they be included in a more comprehensive analysis.

Such an analysis may show, for example, that the road network proposed by Cliffs doesn’t make economic or environmental sense, and instead a new rail line would be better for Ontarians. Rail is a better transport option for high-volume traffic, and given that Cliffs is already contemplating the use of rail to move their product from Nakina to Sudbury, I’d have to think that if the Black Thor deposit only is being evaluated, rail probably makes sense as the right environmental choice, despite its initial higher costs (and maybe those costs really aren’t all that high). Throw in the development of the other deposits, and rail increasingly makes sense.

Yet the CEAA seems determined not to look at the anticipated comprehensive impacts. On October 12, 2011, Mining Watch Canada put out an excellent press release about the CEAA’s decision not to look at cumulative impacts (see: “What Kind of Environmental Assessment for Ontario’s Ring of Fire?”). In an article which appeared in the October 20th edition of the Sudbury Star ("Chiefs aim to stop review", October 22 2011), it appears that the Matawa First Nation, which has traditional lands in the Ring of Fire, is also extremely concerned about the lack of comprehensive analysis being required by our government before development can proceed.

Timelines

The CEAA process is estimated to take about a year and a half from start to finish. I suspect that’s a fairly optimistic timeframe, given the circumstance. I hope to be engaged throughout the process, and I invite others to become involved as well, especially if you have an interest in ensuring that this project proves itself to be in the interests of Ontarians. With significant public subsidies which are likely to be in the multiple-billions of dollars on the table in order to make this project profitable for Cliffs, its incumbent that we remain engaged and have our questions answered.

I’ll be sure to post a copy of my letter to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to this site prior to the November 15, 2011 deadline for submissions.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Who are the Real Extremists?

2011-10-04T18:42:00.000-04:00

The following is a copy of a letter to the Editor of the Sudbury Star (a Sun Media outlet), submitted by me on Wednesday, September 28, 2011. At the time of posting this to my blogsite, the letter to the Editor remains unpublished. I'm publishing this on today, on the same day that national Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan released his report which indicates that Canada has no intention of meeting its Kyoto Treaty greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.

Which begs the question: if protesters in Ottawa last week were fined $65 for trespessaing, what fine is now appropriate for Canada, an international law-breaker? Stephen Harper talks about a "law and order" agenda, but willfully breaks the Kyoto Treaty, which Canada entered into in good faith. In whose interests has Canada broken the law?

Who are the real extremists?

(Aside) I saw a great, and unfortunately true, tweet earlier today: "Canada is to climate change what Japan is to whaling". Our international reputation will continue to plummet under a Conservative-led government. We have to Stop Harper!

-----

Re: Oil industry propagandist Ezra Levant’s column, “Extremist oil protest puzzling”, published in the Tuesday, September 27th edition of the Sudbury Star.

So, Mr. Levant wants us to believe that people protesting against the climate crises on Parliament Hill earlier this week are extremists in the employ of foreign governments. Last I checked, those getting arrested for engaging in a civil disobedience exercise on the Hill on Monday came from all walks of life, right across the country. They were proud to be fined $65 to make their point. What brought them together was the idea that our government needs to be more responsive when it comes to climate change.

Levant uses a bait-and-switch technique to question why protesters didn’t set up barricades in front of the Saudi embassy. Of course, Levant wrote a book about how Saudi and middle eastern oil is “unethical”, so he’s got a financial stake in promoting the idea that pumping Canada’s dirty tar sands oil is somehow better for Canadians.

Sure, Saudi Arabia has it’s problems. But so does Canada. The Alberta tar sands project is the single largest industrial contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Environmental organizations from around the world are keeping a close eye on decisions being made in Canada, which Levant interprets as some kind of sinister ulterior motive. What Levant doesn’t want you to know is that greenhouse emissions from the tar sands will raise the carbon content in our atmosphere on a global scale. That means that people living in Canada, or the U.K. or Bangladesh all have a stake in lowering emissions.

Levant, though, would rather label grandmothers and others engaged in civil disobedience exercise as extremists working for foreign interests. Of course, the real truth is that the tar sands interests for whom Levant shills are composed of a number of foreign-owned companies, such as Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. I don’t think that there’s anyone left in Canada who doesn’t believe that the multi-national oil industry has its own vested interests: making money at the expense of dumping tonnes of carbon pollution into our atmosphere.

Levant’s rant is an injustice to the environmental protesters who only want Canada to meet its international obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our government continues to pursue policies which encourage the industrial expansion of the tar sands, while knowing tar sands oil will disproportionately contribute to the climate crisis. Given the anticipated impacts of global climate change, including the impacts which we will experience here in Canada, who are the real extremists?

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the views of the Green Party of Canada)

How Much Does That Cost? Part III: Cliffs, Chromite & Moose Mountain

2011-09-29T18:28:00.000-04:00

This is the third in a series of blogposts I’ve made this past week regarding issues related to costs which I’ve been pondering. In Part I, I wrote about the hidden costs of nuclear energy, many of which I was unaware of before the last 6 months. I started taking a very close look at nuclear power after reading about the Japanese nuclear industry dangerously misleading the government and the people of Japan about what was really happening at Fukushima Daiichi. I also began to pay close attention to the Nuclear Waste Management Organizations plans to find a Northern Ontario community to host a long-term nuclear waste storage facility. The potential issues related to the transportation of nuclear waste through Greater Sudbury has now led to the creation of a new organization in my community, Nuclear Free Sudbury.

In Part 2, I wrote about the unfortunate situation which the City now finds itself in with regards to the competition over the use of Market Square. On the one hand, there’s Laurentian University, which wants to put its new School of Architecture there, and on the other hand, there’s the existing farmer’s market, which uses this specially-built site on the weekends to bring local food and crafts into the city centre. Both of these uses should be located in the downtown, and it’s unfortunate that it looks like the farmer’s market is going to have to find a new home. What I want to know is how much that’s all going to cost, and whether once all costs are added together, there remains an economic case for the new School. I suspect that there would be, but I just don’t know.

Cliffs Natural Resources Chromite Project

In Part 3, today I’m going to write about another emerging issue in my community that I hadn’t really given much thought about until earlier this year. Cliffs Natural Resources, a mining company based in Cleveland, Ohio, came into possession of something called the Black Thor deposit in Ontario’s remote north. This is in the McFaulds Lake area, also known as the Ring of Fire. It’s located about 340 kilometres north of the railhead at Nakina, in the midst of the James Bay lowlands, which is one of the largest wetlands in the world.

Cliffs wants to develop a chromite mine in this area, and process some of the ore mined on site. Raw ore and concentrate produced at the processing facility will then be moved south to Nakina, which is on the Canadian National Rail line. From there, it can be shipped by rail to a new ferrochrome production industry, where it will be further refined to produce granulated ferrochrome for global stainless steel industries. Alternatively, it can be shipped by rail to ports and head out of Canada, as currently there isn’t a facility in North America which refines chromite.

Cliffs has been interested in building a ferrochrome production facility on a vacant site 20 km northwest of Capreol, which is a community within the City of Greater Sudbury. Currently, this site is occupied by an aggregates operation, but there’s not much else going on there. The site has been described as a “brownfield” because in the past, there was a mine and related industrial infrastructure there (known as “Moose Mountain”), along with a small community, called Sellwood. Back in the 1930s, Sellwood was completely abandoned after Moose Mountain closed down, so it’s fair to say that the area being looked at by Cliffs is a ghost town.

Cliffs projects that building the ferrochrome refinery will bring about 500 construction jobs into the community. The refinery itself, when its up and running, will employ between 400 and 500 people at good, well-paying jobs. Needless to say, this is an exciting opportunity for Greater Sudbury, a city with an unparalleled rich history in mining and processing.

I know all of this because the Sudbury Star posted a handy link to a document developed by Cliffs (dated March 22, 2011) just last week, in anticipation of Greater Sudbury municipal Councillors and the Mayor travelling to Cleveland to meet with Cliffs. Here’s the link to the document, “Cliffs Chromite Project: Project Description Summary”

Attracting Cliffs

You see, the Moose Mountain site northwest of Capreol isn’t the only site being eyed by Cliffs for a ferrochrome production facility. The City of Thunder Bay, and the municipality of Greenstone (in which Nakina is located) are also in the running. Timmins thinks it has a chance, but I don’t see how, as one of Cliffs requirements for the ferrochrome facility is that it be accessible by rail from Nakina. The cost of shipping materials to Timmins from Nakina by truck isn’t something any company which wants to make money would ever contemplate. Moose Mountain, Thunder Bay and Nakina are all on the CN rail line (well, Moose Mountain needs a short spur, which used to exist at one time, and the right-of-way remains intact).

So, there is some healthy competition going on here between northern Ontario communities to bring jobs to town. And you know what happens when communities find themselves in competition with one another for jobs, right? They usually end up falling all over themselves to bring in the new business or industry by trying to create the most attractive economic situation possible, which usually amounts to subsidies of one sort or another being offered.

Cliffs project, however, isn’t some little mail-order catalogue business. It’s a big deal. A huge deal. In fact, it’s going to take a lot to make any northern Ontario community look attractive to Cliffs, given the economics around chromite mining and processing. The advantages that Greater Sudbury can offer over Thunder Bay aren’t nearly as important to Cliffs as the advantages that Ontario can offer over Quebec, or vice versa. You see, Quebec (and Manitoba) have something that is desirable to Cliffs which Ontario doesn’t have: relatively inexpensive electricity.

Electricity

You see, according to Cliffs, the arc furnace which will power the ferrochrome production facility will require the same amount of power as….are you ready for this? I wasn’t when I first saw this little tid-bit of information, it was unbelievable, but this comes straight from Cliffs. The ferrochrome facility will use as much electrical power as does a city of 300,000 people.

That’s just a smidgen less than twice the population of the City of Greater Sudbury. So building this facility will be like building two new Greater Sudburys in terms of electrical needs (well, maybe not exactly, given that Greater Sudbury already has a lot of heavy energy users due to the mining and refining which is happening here. Call it two new Barries instead maybe).

That’s a lot of watts of power. I mean, I knew that mining used a lot of energy, but that’s one heck of a lot of power. No kidding that Cliffs wants to get the best deal on energy that it can. When you’re using that much, a few cents per kilowatt hour (the difference between peak and off-peak for time of use energy users) can literally mean billions of dollars a year. I don’t know how many billions, but it would be a lot, I think.

And that’s my point. I don’t know how many billions Cliffs might save if they build a ferrochrome production facility in a jurisdiction which offers reduced energy rates. But why should I be concerned? That’s business decision which Cliffs is going to have to make for itself, right? What business of that decision is my business?

We Are The Stakeholders

Well, if Greater Sudbury is falling all over itself to convince Cliffs to locate the ferrochrome production facility within its municipal boundaries, it seems that the Province of Ontario is also doing what it can to create an attractive investment climate for Cliffs. And that means (you guessed it): subsidies. Specifically with regards to what I’ve written so far, it means subsidizing the costs of energy in order to make Ontario just as attractive to Cliffs as Quebec might be.

So when governments are dangling subsidies in front of industries to attract investment, guess what? I suddenly become an interested party, and you and I both are stakeholders in this decision making process. None of this is to suggest that governments shouldn’t offer businesses incentives to set up shop in their jurisdictions. Look, I’m actually all for that idea. But there has to be a strong economic case made which justifies the rationale. Which brings us back to costs, and in this case, the price of electricity.

Paying the Electricity Bills

Let’s step back for a moment. Why are the costs of electricity so much higher in Ontario than they are in Quebec. Actually, there are a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that Quebec chose to invest in massive hydro-electric projects in its northern regions, which led to significant environmental damage on the ground. Ontario, wanting to avoid the headaches experienced by Quebec, chose to invest billions upon billions of dollars in expensive nuclear energy instead, while keeping inexpensive (but environmentally damaging) coal powered facilities.

As cheap coal has come offline over environmental concerns (in part: let’s be upfront here, the coal plants were reaching the end of their lifespans anyway), and with the crazy way energy has been handled by government after government in this province, we’ve begun to experience a real rise in electricity rates, while Quebec hasn’t. In fact, they’re producing so much excess energy in Quebec, they’re making money off of exporting it to the United States. So Quebeccers are benefiting from inexpensive hydro electric rates and making a buck off of exporting raw energy. Good for them.

So what can Ontario do to gussy itself up for Cliffs, with the hope that Cliffs will ask Ontario to the dance instead of Quebec? Why, Ontario will have to offer competitive electrical rates for Cliffs! That’s the ticket!

But…who is going to pay for the two new Barries worth of electricity? Either Ontario’s ratepayers will pay through higher rates, or taxpayers will take on the burden through subsidies. Likely it will be the latter, but either way, I’m talking about your money and my money going to Cliffs.

Again, that might not be a bad thing. Our money goes to all sorts of different places right now through one program or another, ostensibly in pursuit of the greater public good. Hey, again, I’m all for that.

The Greater Public Good

But what is the greater public good in the case of Cliffs? That’s the question that I’d like to get some answers to. What is the expected cost of providing subsidized electricity so that Cliffs can produce ferrochromite and turn a profit? I’d really like to know, especially given that Ontario’s debt continues to grow daily, and our current $15 billion deficit won’t be slain until 2017 (and then only if the economy continues to perform above expectations. With the markets tanking and a recession imminent, slaying the deficit in a few years might just be wishful thinking).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we are all living beyond our means. Our economy predicated on growth at all costs is not sustainable, and we are bumping against the limits of growth. The era of inexpensive energy is over, and we all must adapt. That means we’ve got to start thinking locally, and acting globally. By that I mean that we have to start to get serious about reducing climate changing greenhouse gas emissions, and doing full cost accounting of all public expenditures. Growth isn’t sustainable.

A Case for Chromite?

With regards to Cliffs, however, the world continues to need chromite, right? Well, yes and no. Actually, demand for chromite has plummeted over the last decade, as new deposits were brought on stream. Right now, the price is very low, and we’re about to enter a recession, which is never good for the mining industry. It’s not Xstrata’s fault that it took a hit last week on the European exchanges; that’s just the nature of the economic beast we’ve created.

Chromite prices are already low, and if Black Thor and other deposits in the Ring of Fire (like Big Daddy…seriously, who gets to name these things?) are brought on stream, we can expect to see even lower prices for the product. Which means that for Cliffs to make money (and for Greater Sudbury to keep those 400 to 500 jobs), governments might have to dig deeper into their pockets and offer greater subsidies.

As Black Thor is expected to have only a 25-35 year lifespan (according to Cliffs, the initial open pit mine will operate for 10-15 years, and then the underground mine will operate for another 15-20), and as the Mining Act already provides a 10 year tax holiday for remote northern Ontario mines, what was the economic case for chromite again?

Infrastructure and Environmental Costs

Oh ya…have I mentioned anything about the infrastructure which will need to be built to actually access the deposit? Right now, there’s a road which heads north from Nakina for about 80 km. But Black Thor is another 260 clicks north of that. That means that we’ll need to build some kind of transportation corridor northwards from Nakina for quite a considerable distance, over muskeg and bog and some wide fast flowing rivers. Cliffs believes that a road will prove itself to be cheaper. That may be the case right now, but look at some of these numbers (thanks again to Cliffs):

Black Thor is expected to produce between 3,600 and 7,200 tonnes of raw ore and concentrate a day. All of that needs to be moved south to the Nakina railhead. The average truck holds about 70 tonnes of material. Cliffs estimates that between 50 and 100 trucks will be making the 340 kilometre journey from Black Thor to Nakina each and every day (and then they’ll head back again, empty).

With rising gasoline prices, what might the costs of transportation be? Might it not be less expensive in the long run to consider building a rail line between Nakina and Black Thor? Sure, the initial costs might be more substantial, but think about future costs. Higher gasoline prices are even more likely. When you factor in a tax on carbon (which is inevitable), trucking might begin to look less attractive. Certainly there would be fewer greenhouse gas emissions if rail is used. I don’t know what would ultimately be less expensive for Cliffs, but I do know that we can’t ignore the real costs which are associated with carbon emissions any longer. Trucking might seem a better deal for Cliffs right now, but that might only be because they (and all of us) are allowed by our governments to treat our atmosphere as an open sewer. And that’s just not sustainable. Which is why carbon pricing will be coming to a future near you.

Whose going to be on the hook for building whatever kind of transportation corridor ultimately gets built? Why, that’ll be us taxpayers again, either totally on the hook or in partnership with industry. And what about those electrical transmissions lines to deliver the power to Moose Mountain? How much is all of that going to cost?

Answers Needed Before Commitments Are Made

These questions about cost are really ones which we need to get some answers to before we embrace the concept of mining Black Thor and building a ferrochrome refinery in Ontario. That’s not to suggest that I’d be in favour of mining the deposit just to see it shipped to Quebec or China for the value-added refining by the way. But I do want to know what the costs are expected to be. Because if those costs are too high, it might simply be best to leave the resource in the ground for now.

And that’s something nobody seems to be talking about. So I guess I’m going to start that conversation.

I very much look forward to participating in the environmental assessment process which Cliffs is going to have to go through with the federal and provincial governments, because I expect some of the answers to the questions that I’ve asked here will be addressed by that process. However, I know that our environmental assessment processes are deficient in Canada, because we refuse to look at the full costs of any project (and here I’m referring to a number of environmental costs, including carbon emissions). Without legislative requirements to address those costs, they won’t be assessed, which is bound to leave us with an incomplete picture about the full costs of Cliffs chromite project.

I’m all in favour of bringing 500 new jobs to my City as long as there’s an economic case which can be made for doing so. Right now, I’ve yet to see it, and the more I look into it, the more questions I have. I’m sure that others in my community are bound to find themselves in the same quandary that I have, asking themselves, “How much does that cost?”

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

How Much Does That Cost? Part II: The Sudbury Farmer’s Market

2011-09-28T18:46:00.000-04:00

If you live in Greater Sudbury, no doubt you’re well aware of the controversy which has been brewing regarding the downtown Market Square. For those who don’t know the story, let me give you a little bit of the background as to what’s going on.

Laurentian University will be building a new School of Architecture, something a majority of Sudburians are excited about. Our City Council has committed to be providing funding towards this project, along with senior levels of government. Council, however, made their funding commitment conditional upon the new School being built in the downtown. Laurentian University, whose campus is located quite a ways away from the urban core of the City, was more than eager to move forward with a downtown location for the School. In fact, they’ve looked to the successes which have been experienced by universities in Brantford and Cambridge with off-campus, downtown schools.

We’ve all been very excited about the new School of Architecture coming to Sudbury’s downtown. Laurentian University was involved in a site selection process for some time, and the public was on pins and needles waiting for an announcement of the University’s preferred site. OK, maybe we weren’t all pins and needles, but there was certainly a mounting interest in hearing about LU’s preferred site. Especially when rumours began to circulate in the community about Laurentian eyeing the downtown Market Square – the current home of Sudbury’s one and only farmer’s market.

Downtown's Market Square

Market Square was developed by the City back in 2000 from an old rail storage building, with the express purpose of housing the farmer’s market. Previously, the farmer’s market was an entirely outdoor affair, happening on the weekends in a downtown parking lot. The building itself offers ample space for indoor market vendors, and has covered space outside for farmers to sell their wares. There’s also a bit of public square in front of the building, with a raised stage for performers, and seating for people to watch or just hang out on. We don’t have a lot of good public gathering spaces in the City; the Market Square itself is by far the best, and most used.

It’s really a very impressive space, all in all, in my opinion, and the location is a pretty darn good one. Sudbury’s downtown isn’t all that big, being boxed in by hard edges on three sides (the railway tracks on the west and south sides, and an impressive cliff face along Brady on the eastern side; only the northern side is somewhat open, and even then, once you’re above Ste-Anne Street, it no longer feels like you’re in the downtown). Market Square is located flush up against the rail way line on the western side of the downtown, although mixed commercial uses continue a ways westward along Elm Street on the other side of the tracks.

There’s also a fairly large parking lot on the Market Square site. Now, if you’re not familiar with Sudbury, you won’t understand the significance of this parking lot. Here in Sudbury, there exists a perception that the downtown is under-serviced with parking. I have to say that I don’t see it that way; to me it looks like we have plenty of parking, and if anything, I think it’s time to get rid of a number of our surface parking lots and create some pedestrian-friendly public spaces. But nevertheless I have to acknowledge the existence of the perception that there’s a lack of parking in the downtown.

Site Made Public

Back in August, the City sent a letter to the farmer’s market vendors, and a meeting was held. At that meeting, it was finally revealed that Laurentian had chosen Market Square as the preferred site for the new School of Architecture. Vendors were, to say the least, unhappy with this news, as many have poured so much into making the farmer’s market a success at Market Square. At the meeting, it was discussed that LU would entertain sharing the Market Square site with the farmer’s market, and there was even some suggestion that the building itself might be kept.

Well, when the news was made public in Greater Sudbury, everybody it seems had an opinion. The School of Architecture Vs. The Farmer’s Market has been the talk of the town. Laurentian eventually ended up going to Council to discuss the future of Market Square. You see, the City owns the land. Laurentian was told by Council that Council wasn’t inclined to make a decision until the issue of relocating the farmer’s market was adequately addressed. Playing hardball, LU made it clear to Council that development plans for the new School would fall apart if the site couldn’t be secured by the fall of this year.

So, the pressure is now on. Market Square vendors aren’t happy. Council finds itself in a very awkward spot. LU continues to push ahead with its plans, and refuses to publicly disclose which other sites in the downtown were looked at. By failing to talk about alternatives, LU is burning through a lot of good will with the public. However, both Greater Sudbury’s downtown development corporation and Business Improvement Area have come out in support of LU taking over Market Square, perhaps because they’re concerned that Laurentian might walk away if they don’t get this site. Without any other alternatives identified, I am certainly concerned that they’ll walk, and the downtown will miss out on the opportunity to host the new School.

"Public Consultation"

But I’ll tell you this: even supporters of a downtown school have become miffed at LU’s approach to securing a site. Last week, the City hosted a public forum, ostensibly to discuss the future of Market Square. I attended that forum, along with hundreds of other members in my community. There were two rows of drawings posted which people could talk about. The row on the right showed concept drawings of the new School of Architecture and how it would fit onto the Market Square site. There were some people from Laurentian University there to talk about the drawings, but no one was wearing name tags, and it was unclear whether anyone was actually speaking on behalf of the University.

The row of drawings on the left depicted a number of locations for the new home of the farmer’s market. The City was handing out a questionnaire for feedback on these proposed new locations.

What was missing from this exercise, of course, was any discussion about keeping the farmer’s market at Market Square. It looked to everybody as if moving the farmer’s market is a done deal, never mind any additional public input. All that needs to be determined now is where the new home for the farmer’s market is going to be.

Putting aside the process which has led us to this predicament, it certainly does seem to me that Laurentian will eventually gain access to the Market Square site for the new School. I think it’s regrettable that they’re putting our Council in an awkward position, but the University has played hardball, and it looks like there isn’t any other alternative.

Which now leads me to costs.

Valuation

There are a number of issues related to costs which have been brought up by the public throughout this process, and it appears to me that no good answers have been given. First, there’s the cost of the Market Square site itself. Apparently, Laurentian University has assessed the stie, and determined it be worth slightly less than a million dollars. A number of Councillors have expressed that they think that value is really low. The cost of purchase is important, because LU will have to pay fair market value to buy the site from the City, as the City has made it clear that their contribution won’t consist of land value. I’m not sure that LU had anticipated that kind of reaction from the City, but here we are.

The public wants to know what the site is worth. I’m actually less interested in that, as I’m sure that the matter will eventually be worked out, and whatever the value of the land is ultimately determined to be, LU will pay it.

Benefits to the Downtown

A number of different numbers about the cost of hosting the farmer’s market at Market Square have also been brought up. Depending on who is doing the talking, the City either loses hundreds of thousands a year hosting the farmer’s market at Market Square, or the farmer’s market is actually acting as a small-business incubator that creates jobs and wealth in our downtown. I suspect that the truth is probably somewhere in between, but the public has generally been sceptical about the idea that the farmer’s market adds a lot of value to downtown businesses.

The farmer’s market is only open two days a week – Saturday and Sunday. While most downtown businesses are open on Saturdays, the downtown is pretty hollowed out on Sundays. Given that parking is available right at the Market Square site itself, a lot of trips made by residents are single-purpose. Sure, some people like to explore the downtown after visiting the market, but many just get back in their cars and head home.

I’m still curious, though, about how much money the farmer’s market actually brings into the downtown. I don’t think anybody really knows, but wouldn’t that be a nice-to-have right now, given the on-going conversation? If the City is taking a hit keeping the market open, but downtown businesses are benefiting from increased traffic flow, well, that might be a good thing (although it’s still a subsidy from taxpayers – but one I’d be willing to continue to pay, for I sincerely believe that a healthy downtown is good for the community, and if we need to give a little right now, treat it as an investment).

Now, the new School of Architecture is supposed to bring 400 students and, what is the number now? 75 staff to the downtown? That’s a lot of people who will be brought into the downtown every day. Some believe that students don’t spend money, and the staff will get back in their cars and spend their money at Wal Mart. I think that’s pretty short-sighted, especially since these aren’t undergraduate students. I had the benefit of attending a downtown campus when I went to University (Ryerson), and I can tell you that my fellow students and I certainly made some significant contributions to the local economy (and not just at the Zanzi).

But, right now, everything is just anecdotal. I think that the public would really like to see some projections from Laurentian University regarding what the downtown can expect in terms of revenues from the new School. Can we expect a bigger return than the farmer’s market currently provides? I would think so, but I just don’t know. And I wouldn’t mind having some more information about that.

Moving Costs

And finally, if the farmer’s market is going to move from Market Square, where is it going to end up, and how much will that cost? One of the proposals which the City had produced showed the farmer’s market occupying the ground floor of an as-yet-to-be-built parking garage on Elgin Street, near the under-used CP rail station. Another conceptual drawing actually placed the market in the rail station. The public was encouraged to comment on these concepts without the benefit of any information about cost.

If the farmer’s market is going to move, guaranteed that Greater Sudbury taxpayers will be on the hook (again) for paying for the site. We put about a million dollars into Market Square 10 years ago, and now we’re going to invest an additional….how much into a farmer’s market which apparently loses money in the City every year. Again, I think taxpayers should be supporting the farmer’s market (although it would be nice if our senior levels of government could chip in and make accessing local food a priority), but at what cost? I’m certainly not at all in favour of having my tax dollars go towards building a parking garage so that drivers can have access to even more subsidized parking in the downtown.

Of course, there were other concepts presented which likely will have minimal costs. However, these concepts were largely ones where the farmer’s market would occupy an outdoor location only. Given that the majority of the current market’s vendors are indoor vendors, I’m not sure that a completely outdoor market is going to work, and selecting an outdoor-only site might lead towards the dissolution of the market altogether.

A People-Focus to the Downtown

We’re certainly in a pickle here in Greater Sudbury. Our Council is going to have to make a decision about Market Square very soon, and likely they’re going to have to do so without having the benefit of information pertaining to costs. The only thing which is a certainty is that Council is going to be slagged by the public, no matter which decision they make. When even supporters of the new School are turned off by the tactics of LU, there likely won’t be a big party thrown to toast Council when they decide to sell the Square and move the market.

If more information was available about costs – both current costs and anticipated costs and benefits – Council and the public would have had a much more engaging discussion about the future of our community. We are all stakeholders here. This isn’t just about market vendors or Laurentian University, or downtown businesses for that matter. We all have an interest in improving our downtown, and remaking Greater Sudbury into the type of community that we need to face the future. That kind of community has as its beating heart a vibrant, livable, walkable downtown, with attractions and amenities, and above all, people.

No downtown has ever found success by catering to cars. Our downtown must be people-centred. That’s why the new School of Architecture and the farmer’s market are such wonderful assets for our downtown. Both will lend to the creation of a sense of community.

Making Tough Decisions

Council has a touch decision to make, and maybe another one after that if we have to go looking for a new home for the farmer’s market. The first decision, to let LU secure the Market Square site, may be a forgone conclusion right now. I sincerely hope, however, that we have a better handle on costs related to the relocation of the market before any decision is made.

And I certainly hope that the farmer’s market doesn’t become a pawn used to justify building a downtown parking garage to subsidize drivers with my tax dollars.

I hope to make it out to Council Chambers next Monday (starting at 4:30) to listen to what others in my community have to say about Market Square, Laurentian University, and the farmer’s market. I certainly hope that the small matter of cost is brought up by a few of my neighbours.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

How Much Does that Cost? Part I: Nuclear Energy

2011-09-27T18:18:00.000-04:00

Over the past month, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how much things really cost. Costs are something that everyone thinks about, but lately I’ve been doing a lot wondering about what truly comprises a price tag, especially when a salesperson is giving you a pitch.

Over the next three blogposts, I’m going to be looking at a few things which have been on my mind about costs over the past month.

What got me started on this was my own investigation into the price of nuclear energy. As some of my readers might know, I, along with a few other interested residents, started a new organization, Nuclear Free Sudbury, earlier this month. We were growing concerned with what we were hearing in the media about the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s (NWMO’s) site selection process for a permanent home to house spent fuel bundles, the very worst kind of nuclear waste. With Wawa and Hornepayne being considered by the NWMO, it increases the likelihood of having nuclear materials transported through Greater Sudbury, especially if rail transport is an option.

Our Nuclear Heritage

Although I’ve been a member of the Green Party for some time now (whose member-approved policies are to say no to new nuclear), I’ve always positioned myself somewhere in the middle of the debate when it comes to nuclear energy. I confess, I’m one of those people who is fascinated by the technological, and the idea that a few tiny atoms can unleash such incredible power which humanity has the ability to harness, well, that kind of stuff excites me. Unless we’re talking about unleashing that power over cities in a time of war. I remember watching the made-for-TV movie “The Day After” when I was growing up, and later the British movie, “Threads”. With awesome power comes awesome responsibility.

So, despite having very clear memories of Chernobyl unfolding on national news programs, I’ve never thought of myself as a nuclear-phobe. That the environmental movement is still arguing whether nuclear energy has a place to address the climate change crisis says to me that there remains a bit of a misunderstanding about nuclear energy. However, when the disaster in Fukushima happened earlier this year, striking one of the safest nuclear facilities in the world, I told myself that it was time to dig a little deeper.

And so I dug. And in my digging, I became increasingly alarmed with what I was finding out about the nuclear industry in general, and specifically with the alarming series of cover-ups and misinformation which the Japanese nuclear industry was providing to their government, to the Japanese people, and by extension, to the rest of the world.

It’s easy to write off Fukushima as being the result of tsunami, but given that tsunamis aren’t particularly unusual events in that part of Japan, it really raises some questions. Further, it seems that meltdown began when power was severed from the reactors, which occurred before the tsunami struck. Of course, the whole situation was clearly aggravated by the tsunami itself. The point, however, is that the Japanese nuclear industry has been the safest in the world – up until disaster struck.

Canada’s nuclear industry likes to make the same claim about itself regarding its safety record. And for the most part, Canada’s nuclear industry has a lot to crow about. Not only have our reactors not melted down (aside from that little incident at Chalk River back at the dawn of the nuclear age), but radiated materials are transported by the nuclear industry all the time, and there hasn’t been a recorded incident made public.

Of course, spent fuel bundles have never been transported off site in Canada, and when it comes time to move these extremely dangerous materials, whole new technical challenges will need to be overcome. Can we move them safely? Probably. At least until something goes wrong. And that’s the problem with the nuclear industry: when something goes wrong, invariably it goes very badly wrong.

A Long-Term Storage Facility for Canada’s Nuclear Waste

We’ve got a lot of this nuclear waste sitting around at reactor sites, in shorter term storage facilities. After 60 years of generating nuclear power, Canada has yet to come to terms with exactly what we’re going to do with these spent fuel bundles, which will remain radioactive for millions of years (and folks, that’s not an exaggeration, that’s just physics). In response to this problem, the NWMO has begun looking for a permanent home for spent fuel bundles.

Now, at first blush, it might seem pretty silly to think that a community will voluntarily make itself home to Canada’s first-ever repository for the most hazardous nuclear materials ever produced by humanity. I mean, that’s not exactly the sort of thing a community would brag about in a travel brochure. “Come Visit Beautiful Wawa – Home to Canada’s Nuclear Waste”. Nah.

But the NWMO has dangled this carrot in front of communities, which is a very real incentive for a potential host: an investment of between $16 billion and $24 billion dollars in order to meet today’s needs. And, of course, jobs jobs jobs. Constructing the facility will take years, and once it’s up and running, skilled technicians will need to be on hand to make sure that it’s running properly. And a small army of security guards will be needed to make sure that nothing bad goes wrong. They’ll be receiving nice paycheques, which they’ll be spending in the host community.

In those terms, perhaps that’s not such a bad deal after all. The nuclear waste will be buried, so it’ll be out of sight and out of mind. The facility itself will be built to last for a staggering 300 years (what do we ever build to last that long? I mean, I’ve been through 4 laptops in the past 3 years). As long as you don’t mind the trucks carrying their space-age storage bins, hosting a nuclear waste storage facility really does seem like a good idea.

I can’t fault the communities of Wawa and Hornepayne and the others for looking into the NWMO’s process. Although I still don’t understand why the NWMO is looking at inhabited locations for this kind of facility, when there’s all that blank territory on maps of Canada (well, actually I do know, and it has to do with politics). Anyway, the site selection process isn’t the specific point of today’s blog. Instead, I want to talk about those $16 to $24 billion in costs.

The Price Tag for Nuclear

So, who’s going to pay for all of that? Ultimately, it’s going to come out of my pockets and your pockets, either through direct funding by our federal and provincial governments, or by the nuclear power companies who will have to hit ratepayers up for the costs. Either way, though, these are unbudgeted expenses right now. No one is setting aside any money to actually build this facility.

NWMO’s site selection process is expected to cost about $9 billion dollars, all just to figure out which site will be best. Some of that money has been budgeted, and we electricity ratepayers are funding it. That’s good, in my opinion. We’ve derived the benefits of nuclear energy for the past 60 years now. It’s about time we start paying some of the costs of those benefits, such as those costs needed to find and fund a permanent secure storage site.

Of course, I wasn’t alive when the decision was made in Ontario to build our first nuclear reactors. I know, though, that those reactors didn’t come in on time or on budget, and no reactor built in Ontario since then has either. I, specifically, in my 40 years of existence, have benefited a lot from nuclear power, which has been produced at pretty cheap rates, so I’ve been told (something like 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour, that’s what I keep hearing from the pro-nuke industry).

Of course, I haven’t been paying the real costs for nuclear energy. Nobody has. This long term storage facility question mark which will cost more than $30 billion to identify a site and build a facility, well, no one has been paying for that yet. Those are costs that we and our children will have to pay over time. Never mind that it was my parent’s generation that benefited from cheap nuclear power. They, and my generation today, have only done so because we refused to pay the full price for it.

There’s a term for that, you know. When you don’t pay the true costs for a product or a service, and those costs are passed on to be paid in the future. We call that a “subsidy”. And with regards to what we’ve been doing related to nuclear power, we’ve been subsidizing the production of energy by passing on these real costs to future generations.

So not only are we leaving our kids and grandkids with a monumental environmental hazard in the form of never-before-seen-on-Earth nuclear waste, we’re also going to stick them with the bill for disposing of it all properly.

Of course, they may choose to add their own nuclear wastes to the ever-growing pile of spent fuel bundles, if they decide to refurbish reactors, or build new ones. I, however, think that our kids are going to be better financial managers than my generation was, and certainly better money-managers than my parent’s generation proved to be. Our kids are going to have an enhanced appreciation of the term “full cost accounting”, and a much better understanding of environmental and social externalities forming part of the real costs of any undertaking.

The End of Our Economic System

I believe this because we are now experiencing an end to capitalism as we’ve come to know it. Not an end to capitalism, mind you. Just an end to the way in which we’ve practiced it. Here I mean specifically to our wasteful and polluting ways, all in the pursuit of growth as if it were some Holy Grail. Well, it’s rapidly becoming clear that if growth is a Grail, we’ve actually found ourselves stuck in a Monty Python movie.

My daughter had her first birthday this past summer. By the time she is 80 years old, she will have lived through a time of massive change, due to the end of inexpensive energy and the climate crisis. In her lifetime, she will witness the collapse of either the current economic system, or the massive reduction of individual users of resources. One or the other has to happen, because we are pushing up against the limits of growth.

Right now, we are using up our non-renewable resources at an unsustainable rate. It can’t go on. We will either have to make the difficult switch to renewable resources, or we will have to figure out some way where there are fewer of us available to access our limited non-renewable resources. Think about the second part of that sentence for a moment. That’s the only other way to prolong our unquenchable thirst for oil.

Nuclear Subsidies as Snake Oil

Will nuclear power be a part of our energy future? I don’t think so. We’re starting to understand even now that the costs of producing nuclear energy are simply too staggering to come to terms with. We all want inexpensive energy. That’s why nuclear should have never been considered an option in the first place, but when you don’t do a full cost accounting, you end up being swindled by salespeople.

When you hear that nuclear power can be produced at 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour, but wind power costs upwards of 12 cents per kilowatt hour, it sounds like nuclear is a great deal. However, when you factor in the true costs of nuclear, which include the mining and refining of uranium ore, along with the multi-billions in unbudgeted costs related to the long-term storage of radioactive materials (not to mention transportation costs for those materials to the facility, if it ever gets built), it’s clear that wind is a better deal, as it doesn’t produce any hazardous waste materials.

Even when you factor in manufacturing costs for turbines, that’s nothing in comparison to building a new nuclear reactor. Energy from new nuclear reactors will actually have a baseline costs closer to 20 cents per kilowatt hour, and even that doesn’t take into consideration costs associated with mining/refining and the long-term storage of nuclear waste. Wind just makes a lot more sense from a cost perspective.

Moving to a Renewable Energy Future

But Canada won’t be powered exclusively by wind, because the wind doesn’t always blow. Solar power is becoming cheaper due to better technology, and its waste by-products aren’t anywhere near as dangerous as nuclear. And let’s not forget that hydro power in Canada is abundant. Right now, thanks to the historic wise investments made in hydro power in Quebec and Manitoba (while Ontario experimented with expensive nuclear), there’s more power being produced in Canada than we need as a nation. A lot of that excess capacity travels south to the United States. And when the Lower Churchill area is finally brought on line, presuming Quebec and Newfoundland figure out a way to play nicely together, we’ll have even more renewable capacity.

It’s true, there are environmental costs associated with hydro power which we’ll need to factor into any equation. It would be remiss of me to suggest otherwise in a blog about the importance of costs. But those costs, whatever they may be for a specific project, will need to be assessed fully and comprehensively at the time a project comes forward.

The best way to reduce our costs, however, when it comes to energy, is to simply use less of it. Canadians are one of the world’s biggest per capita energy consumers. If we simply used less of it, we could save ourselves some money while simultaneously increasing supplies. Conservation doesn’t have to be hard. But in our culture of convenience, it’s something that’s rarely top of mind. It’s easier for all of us to demand more energy production than to make the decisions to use less.

Time of use pricing, of course, will start to play a role in conservation efforts. If I can save money by using energy during off-peak hours, I’ll be more than happy to do so.

Bequeathing Our Debt to Our Children

We need to start getting serious about passing on our costs to future generations. Canada is running a $40 billion deficit right now, thanks to gluttonous spending of stimulus dollars. Sure, some good things happened from spending that money (although I think we could have spent the money much more wisely, by focusing on energy efficiencies!), but what are our chances of paying for those costs any time soon, and still enjoying the level of services we’ve come to expect as Canadians? Simply put, there isn’t any chance. Either taxes will have to be raised, or cuts will need to be made. Or we’ll just have to keep passing costs on to our kids.

Eliminating the deficit is one thing, though. The fact is, the spending from 2009 and 2010 is now a part of our debt, which stands at over $230 billion. Our kids and their kids will be paying down the debt, unless nations around the world get together and hit the reset buttons, which doesn’t seem likely. Much more likely is that we’ve already started bumping up against the limits of growth, and either we’ll find a way to move towards sustainable local economies (and away from an unsustainable global economy), or there’ll need to be fewer of us around to consume resources at the rates we’re doing so today.

Change is coming. I remain optimistic that we’ll find a way to meet the challenges head-on. A good start will be to begin looking at the full costs associated with any proposed investment which relies on our taxpayer dollars. That didn’t happen in 2008-10 with the so-called “economic stimulus”. Did we really need more gazebos at a time when there’s a two year long wait for social housing? Did we have to repave roads without thinking about simple little things like bike lanes? Was important for us to bail out the auto sector without requiring them to get their act together on fuel efficiency for their vehicles? No, we just through money at stuff and hoped that jobs would be created (or maintained).

Getting our Act Together

We can’t keep doing this. Unless an economic case can be made for new investments, we shouldn’t be using taxpayers dollars to subsidize any project. We can’t keep passing along the costs to our children, after deriving the benefit of the subsidy ourselves. It’s time to get serious about living within our means. And that’s why this dogmatic idea that we need to grow our economy at all costs will have to be abandoned, because it’s not working.

If living within our means and fully costing public investments sounds radical to you, guaranteed that it will make perfect sense to your grandchildren. I’m very worried about what my daughter is going to think about me and my wasteful generation when she turns 20. Already, Generation Y is pointing to my generation and that of my parents with accusatory fingers, telling us that we’ve f***ed up the planet. Sure, we’ve done a lot of good, but we did a lot of that good for ourselves, and passed along the costs for that good to our kids. That’s not really the best way to manage our finances now, is it?

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Limits to Growth and the Coming Recession: Why Measuring Matters

2011-09-26T17:34:00.001-04:00

“If it matters, measure it.” – Stephen Harper, speaking of the funding of maternal health projects announced on September 20, 2011, with regards to the need to implement international commitments.

“If it matters, measure it.” - motto of the Fraser Institute.

“It’s all in the mind, y’know?” – Ringo Starr, “Yellow Submarine” (the movie)

When it comes to our economic successes, or lack thereof, it matters that we measure where we are today, and where we’re likely to be heading in the future. While some say that past performance is the best indicator of future expectations, it isn’t. At least not when it comes to economics. Being able to figure out where we are today, what tomorrow’s needs are, and plotting a course on how we get there, that’s what really matters.

Yet, ask your average economist which road we need to find ourselves on, and you’ll get a clear answer: If the economy doesn’t grow, we’ll enter into a recessionary period, which leads to unemployment and economic contraction. And that’s bad, bad, bad.

The spectre of rising unemployment is certainly problematic, and it’s something that I’m very concerned about as I look around and witness stock markets beginning to bottom out around the globe. The question on the minds of economists now is whether to stimulate the economy further, as President Obama and some of the continental Europeans are advocating, or whether to implement austerity measures, as suggested by Republican Tea-Partiers, Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherety, and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

Of course, every-day average people are simply worried whether or not they’ll be able to hold onto their jobs if we experience another global slow down.

The Great Stimulus of ‘08

In the past, just recently in 2008, we managed to stave off the worst of the Great Recession through global stimulus programs which injected massive amounts of money into new projects, some of which even created jobs. Of course, in the United States, a lot of tax payers money went to bailing out banks, and ultimately to the salaries of high-paid banking executives. Where ever those dollars ended up, one thing can’t be denied: the global stimulus of taxpayer dollars pumped into private enterprise restored confidence to shaky markets, and the major doom and gloom scenarios being predicted by some did not occur.

I say that it was taxpayers dollars which funded the stimulus programs, but some further refinement is necessary to understand what really happened. It wasn’t really my tax dollars which funded those programs which saw government money flow to the private sector (whether to bail out banks, or to repair roads). No, it wasn’t my money. The taxpayer dollars which provided the stimulus weren’t taken out of my pocket: they were taken out of the thin air. They now exist as additional debt at the provincial and national levels of government, to be serviced by future taxpayers.

So it wasn’t that we were spending my money or your money, at least not at the time. It’s only now that the bills are starting to come due that you and I are going to have to pay. With interest. And we’ll continue to service this debt until our children start paying taxes in order to make their own contributions to the debt.

The Confidence Game

That we are living beyond on our means is very clear in economic terms. Yet so few economists appear to be concerned about the levels of debt that taxpayers are required to service. Well, at least they appear to be unconcerned publicly, despite the multi-billion dollar deficits accruing at the provincial and national levels of government in Canada. Not to mention the more than one trillion dollar deficit in the United States.

However, if economists were to express their sincere concerns regarding the economic health of the world, surely it would shake the public’s confidence in the entire economic system. And that system would collapse like the house of cards that it is. Our economic system is, of course, based on the idea of confidence more than on any other notion.

It wasn’t always like this, of course. The value of money used to be representative of the value of resource holdings, such as gold. There used to be a time that you could show up at your bank and redeem your paper money for gold. That system had been in place for hundreds of years, but that all went away in the last century. Now, your paper money is worth only what we, collectively, believe it to be worth. Our beliefs in the value of money are expressed in our confidence in the economic system. When market values go up, and we’re more confident, our general economic outlook is rosier. When markets go down, we’re a little more concerned about our economic health. When markets crash, wealth can be wiped out very quickly, and a nervousness about those markets remains. Confidence is lost, and won’t be rebuilt quickly.

How can it be that confidence is propping up our entire economic system? I’d not suggest running this experiment, but there’s a good chance that we’ll find ourselves in the midst of it sooner or later: take away confidence from the system, and see how quickly the entire system collapses. And then you’ll know what the secret behind the basis of our economic health is: as Ringo Starr said in “Yellow Submarine”, “It’s all in the mind, y’know?”

Physical Limits

Unfortunately, we can’t wish ourselves into prosperity with positive thinking in the same manner that we can find ourselves in a recession due to a loss of confidence. The reason for this is that continued economic growth has started to butt its head up against some significant and very real barriers. Rising resource prices might be in part due to speculation within the economic system, but with static agricultural output and more mouths to feed, the laws of supply and demand have clearly kicked in. Of course, it’s not that simple, even with food. For although the world as a whole is getting richer, the gap between the rich and the rest of us has grown wider, which means that (when coupled with population growth), there is actually less wealth available for a larger number of people today than there was 20 or 30 years ago.

And that’s important when it comes to food production and consumption. If less food is being produced, the price will be driven up. But rich countries have a lot more room to absorb rising prices than do poorer nations, so the rich countries will continue to take what they want, leaving behind a smaller share for the poorer countries needs. If you want a measurement that matters to be able to plan for the future, you’d think that having less food being available to an increasing number of people would be one we’d all want to pay attention to.

Of course, there’s another reason why food prices are climbing, and it has everything to do energy inputs into our agricultural system. Who knew that farming was an industrial activity?

Peak Oil

The production of oil has stagnated in the past several years, as a result of hitting its global production peak. “Peak oil” refers to the circumstance where overall production first stagnates, and then begins to decrease, as it can not be replaced with new production coming on line. This phenomenon isn’t unique to oil production; in fact, the production of any non-renewable resource will peak at some point. It’s just that we’ve started to talk about peak oil lately as oil has been the main fuel we’ve used to power the engines of our economy in the pursuit of ever more (and necessary) growth.

Right now, the global demand for oil has never been higher. In the past, where demand outpaced supply, new production was found, and eventually brought on line, adding to overall supply and, interestingly, lowering prices.

That scenario played back in the 1970s, after the OPEC countries threw the west into economic turmoil by demanding a higher price for their oil. Western countries reluctantly paid the higher price for gasoline, but to increase their oil security, turned to new areas for exploration. Not wanting to rely on a limited source under the thumb of governments they couldn’t control, new deposits of oil were exploited, such as the North Sea and Alberta’s Tar Sands. By the 1980s, the price of oil and gasoline had levelled out, and although the price didn’t return to what it had been pre-1973, the West experienced a massive increase in its economy throughout the 1980s. The increased demand for oil due to economic expansion meant that prices could only fall so low, but abundant oil and low energy prices fuelled the expansion. None of that would have happened unless new supplies were found to meet demand, and those supplies were exploited as quickly as possible to fuel the expansion.

Some believe that the same thing will happen again. And why wouldn’t it? If the economy remains healthy, we’ll continue to see a rise in demand, especially as nations like China continue their march towards industrialization. Exploration is now taking place deep in our oceans, and in the high Arctic. Exploration is even happening in the Antarctic, although only discretely and for the purposes of “science” as per the International Antarctic Treaty. There’s talk in the United States of opening up the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve in that state’s remote north, to oil exploration and pipeline building. These new supplies, when brought online, are sure to meet growing demands, just as we’ve done in the past, right?

Well, no. Even should these hard-to-reach and expensive-to-pump supplies be brought online, we’ll still be in a situation where tomorrow’s production will not exceed global peak production, which was estimated to have occurred either in 2006 or 2007, according to the International Energy Agency’s annual 2010 bulletin (the text says 2007, but the graphic shows a peak in 2006; either way, the IEA hadn’t even acknowledged that peak oil was even a possibility until 2009, so to say, “Whoops, it’s peaked!” in 2010 was a pretty progressive step forward for that organization).

So, if global oil production can’t meet the global demand for oil, what’s going to fuel economic growth? Uhm….

A New Paradigm

And that’s why continued growth can’t be fuelled by wishful thinking. And that’s also why past behaviour isn’t the best predictor of future outcomes – because the future isn’t going to be like the past.

Simply put, we’ve entered into a new paradigm. And while I hate that word, “paradigm”, there is no better way to describe the current circumstance. Author and environmentalist Bill McKibben chose a different way of explaining this new paradigm in his book, “Eaarth”, in which he successfully managed to avoid ever using the term “paradigm” or “paradigm shift”. McKibben tried to explain it this way: we’re no longer living on the planet Earth that we thought we were living on. Because today’s circumstances (physical, economic, social and environmental) are so radically different from the way things were even back in the 1980s, we need to begin to start thinking that we’re actually inhabiting a completely different planet. This ain’t your father’s Earth.

In other words, we need to give our collective mindsets a shake. The lessons that we’ve learned in the past about good economic stewardship no longer apply to the present situation.

Yet, here we are in 2011, talking about how best to stave off a recession (stimulus vs. austerity) which, when put into the context of butting up against the limits of growth seems all but inevitable. If physically the coming recession is an inevitability, doesn’t it make more sense to actually admit that we’ve got a problem on our hands, and begin to make preparations to deal with it? We’ve got the measure of the matter, shouldn’t that guide our decision making?

Preparing for the Flood

I seem to recall that in Manitoba earlier this year, people knew that flooding was going to happen on the river in front of their homes, and they started sandbagging their property in order to protect it. And then they helped their neighbours do the same.

But we’re not doing that with the coming recession. Instead, we’re ignoring the warnings that the river is rising, and worse, we’re telling our neighbours who are seeing signs that the waters are starting to rise, not to worry. And worse than worse, we’re belittling our neighbour’s efforts when they start to fill those sandbags. Instead, we are revelling in our knowledge that we’ve at least not lost confidence that everything is going to be ok. There wasn’t a flood last year, and even back in 2008 and 2009, the predicted flood wasn’t as bad as everybody thought it would be. Why worry? Why help out with the neighbour foolishly filling sandbags? Invite him over for a beer instead and watch the football game. Those Bills are sure a surprise this year, huh?

The Dogma of Economic Growth: Why Our Leaders Aren’t Leading

Of course, if the experts admit that there’s going to be a recession, we’d expect that they’d begin to start talking about the best ways to mitigate against the impacts of the recession. The truth is that our experts aren’t able to have that kind of conversation with the public, because to do so would mean that they would have to admit that everything that they’ve believed in up until now was bunk, and will not be of assistance when the floodwaters rise. If our leaders wanted to get serious with voters about how best to insulate ourselves from the recession, they will have to admit that the investments which they have made with our taxpayers dollars were, in fact, generally very unwise to meet the challenges of tomorrow. Since voters don’t usually like hearing that kind of story, it won’t get told. At least not by our current crop of leaders. So I guess we need some new leaders, right?

The Dogma of Economic Growth: Why We Don’t Want Our Leaders to Lead

Of course we ourselves would be in for a very rude awakening too, if we were to admit to ourselves that our entire economic system isn’t working in our best interests, as it is predicated on the notion that not only is growth good, but growth is always required to avoid economic collapse. As we are now approaching physical limits to growth, we’ve kind of put ourselves behind the 8-ball. What were we thinking? Did we really need all of this crap to make us happy? Our real wealth hasn’t increased anyway. What the heck have we all been working our butts off for these past couple of decades? We’re not better off; we’ve not reaped the benefits of our tireless work. Only the richest amongst us have harvested the real wealth created through a growing global economy. Who profited from our work?

Never mind. Have a beer and watch the game while it’s still on.

Measurements that Matter

If it matters, however, we have to measure it. If the future matters to us, we have to take stock of where we are today. The measuring has been going on for some time now, but it seems that the results just aren’t sinking in. We know that the middle class is shrinking, that there are more poor people today than there were 20 years ago. We know that we’ve created an unprecedented amount of wealth since the 1980s, but the middle class is only marginally better off (and by some measurements, we’re not better off at all). What happened to all of that wealth? It went to the richest amongst us, who are paying even fewer taxes today than they were 30 and 40 years ago.

We know that we have run out of inexpensive energy. We know that we are in the process of altering our climate. We know that either one of these crises would be sure to lead to less food being produced, and less clean water being available for consumption. Together, it’s an absolute given that our industrial agricultural processes will not meet the needs of our growing population. It is clear that as energy and food prices rise, an increasing number of people will starve. Often, when people are starving, civil unrest, even war abounds, which creates security issues for neighbouring nations.

And while war may be good for economic growth, it’s generally not a good thing for the people who find themselves impacted by it. And the idea that war is good for the economy has even come under fire lately, for although wars in Afghanistan and Iraq contributed significantly to GDP growth in the United States (an economist will tell you that GDP growth is a “good thing”), these wars were financed by credit – public money created out of thin air, subject to interest payments. Americans will be paying the price for these wars when those bills come due. War’s contribution to America’s annual trillion dollar deficits can not be understated.

The measurements are all around us, yet we aren’t paying attention to them. We’d rather believe in the resiliency of human nature to overcome any challenges that we must face. We’d rather convince ourselves that we have confidence in the ability of our economic system to continue its upward expansion, and if we experience a few setbacks in terms of recessions every once in a while, well, ups and downs are normal. There’s nothing to see here, move along now. Have a beer and watch the game.

When the Flood Comes, Guess What? We’re All In This Together

Unfortunately, I’m your neighbour, and I can no longer live in denial that the water is rising. And every day, another neighbour’s eyes are opened to the measurements that tell us that the water is rising. We look to each other for assistance, to begin the process of building that community we need to move forward together. Yet our leaders tell us not to worry, that there is no flood headed our way. And we know that they’re lying to us because they’re too embarrassed, too entrenched with their dogmatic way of thinking to tell us the truth. You, however…you continue to believe those leaders. We, however, have the evidence that we’ve got to take action together.

Please. Put your beer down, and turn the game off, and come outside and see that the waters are rising. See that your neighbours are going to need your help to make it through this thing together (and understand too that you’re going to need our help as well). If you do nothing more than stop repeating the dogmatic mantra of the vested interests, that “Growth is Good, Everything is going to be all right”, even that would be a help to the rest of us who want to get on with the packing the sandbags.

Confidence in our current economic systems is all in the mind, y’know? If it matters, it must be measured. We need to use those measurements to find a way forward. Right now, our leaders are keen on burying the measurements and humming a happy song about how great it is to live in an imaginary world. With or without them (although preferably without), you and I need to work together to secure ourselves and our community from the coming flood. Can I count on you, neighbour?

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Transportation Choices: Getting the Priorities Right in Greater Sudbury

2011-09-18T14:22:00.002-04:00

(the following post was originally printed in the August, 2011 edition of the ReThink Green newsletter under the title, "Transportation Choices: Getting the Priorities Right")

When it comes to getting around in Greater Sudbury, it’s all about roads. Our sprawling city is connected by thousands of kilometres of asphalt, the quality of which Sudburians are never reluctant to complain about. Most Sudburians can’t imagine getting around without their cars. However, for an increasing number of those in our community, car ownership isn’t an option. Whether that’s due to the rising price of gas, or higher personal debt (often as the result of student loans), increasingly people in our City have begun to make alternative transportation choices.

What Sudburians have discovered when they’ve decided to get around without the benefit of a car is that our City doesn’t provide the most pleasant environment for those on foot, bike or the bus.

Let me be upfront here: I own a car, and I am often a motorist. But I am also a pedestrian, and not just when I am walking between my parked car and the entranceway to a mall or big-box store. I am also a cyclist. And I take the bus. I suspect that many of you experience getting around our City in the same ways that I do. So when I’m writing about motorists and pedestrians, I’m really writing about all of us.

Choices have been made in Greater Sudbury which ultimately have proven to be little different than choices made throughout North America. Our love of the car and the convenience which it has given us has meant that we have prioritized its use over all other forms of transportation. This has happened despite our knowledge that personal vehicles powered by fossil fuels are the least sustainable form of transportation available to us.

Our car-based convenience culture has contributed to climate changing greenhouse gas emissions. It has led to the development of inefficient suburban communities which will function poorly as the price of energy becomes increasingly expensive. It has led to unhealthy lifestyle choices and an epidemic of obesity.

But it does seem to get us to where we’re going more quickly than other means of transport! Time is money, after all. And when time is money, nothing beats the car.

Car ownership doesn’t come cheap, which is why more people are choosing not to buy or lease cars. Purchase prices, insurance, gasoline, routine maintenance, and the joys of those unexpected little things going wrong all contribute to the high price of car ownership. Often, because we are paying so much for our vehicles, we expect our governments to off-set other costs which can be controlled. In Greater Sudbury, this has translated into an expectation that our roads will be in good shape for driving at all times of the year, and that they will allow us to move about as quickly as possible.

We car owners resent having to pay for parking. We look upon provincial licensing fees as a cash grab. We like to think that the tax we pay on our gas and through fees are going towards building better roads for us to drive on. We would openly rebel if there was talk of putting a toll gate on a roadway important to us. Don’t we pay enough already to drive our cars?

No, actually, we don’t. When the real costs are tallied up, it’s clear that car drivers are being subsidized by society, which happens in many familiar, and some unfamiliar, ways. Our governments offset oil exploration costs through direct favourable taxation policies. We allow oil producers and car owners to pollute our atmosphere at no cost, despite the health- and environment-related costs of doing so. And while our governments tax gasoline, the amount of revenue collected makes only the smallest dint in the road maintenance budgets of our federal, provincial and municipal governments.

In Greater Sudbury, the heaviest burden of road maintenance, which includes winter snow-plowing, falls upon the backs of property tax payers. While our municipal government may receive special grants from higher levels of government for road repair and maintenance (especially for things like bridges), the lion’s share of money set aside for these activities comes from you and me. If you own a home or rent, you’re paying property taxes, a good portion of which goes directly into the roads budget – whether you own a car or not.

Further, have you ever thought about the extent of land which has been set aside for roads and parking? What other uses might we have made out of those lands if our priorities were different? For example, there are numerous municipal parking lots in the City’s downtown, which admittedly generate some revenue for the City, but ultimately having these public lands set aside for the exclusive use of car owners is a subsidy. We all pay for the maintenance of parking lots. That municipal parking lots generate revenue might make us feel a little better, but perhaps more revenue would be generated from their sale to private enterprise, potentially to be used for housing in the core, or new businesses.

We often don’t think about the extent of private lands which have been set aside for parking, but the amount is considerable. Developers of new subdivisions must ensure that a certain portion of land is made available for driveway parking. Without this requirement, developers could build more affordable homes on smaller lots. Instead, our parking requirements lead to less efficient, spread-out communities, which are detrimental to the use of alternative forms of transportation.

Think about the New Sudbury Centre for a moment, and the sheer amount of land in a core area of our community which has been set aside for parking. What higher and better use might this land be used for? What kind of transit-supportive mixed-use communities could be established amidst the wastelands of parking lots around our malls?

But, say some, no one would go to the mall if you couldn’t park there. To which others might reply that there would be no need to drive to the places where you shop if they were within walking distance or if better public transportation were available.

Our transportation corridors have been built to maximize the speed at which cars are able to get around, often at the expense of all other forms of transportation. The way in which signalized intersections give preference to cars over pedestrians, along with the built environment of these transportation corridors have made parts of our City very unfriendly to pedestrians. Larger lane widths which facilitate greater vehicular speeds actually put slower-moving cyclists at risk. Winding bus routes through suburban subdivisions make transit use undesirable and problematic for many.

Instead of choosing to promote more sustainable forms of transportation, we have over the years prioritized car ownership, and constructed our cities and tax systems for the benefit of cars over pedestrians. That this choice has proven to be the least sustainable in terms of the long term health of our environment and economy is becoming increasingly obvious. Yet many in our community will still fail to see the need to begin shifting our resources into the promotion of healthier, more sustainable transportation systems. Some may even refer to these ideas as waging a “war on the car”. It’s nothing of the sort, of course; but when a few minutes travel time may be put in jeopardy by providing a new, safe pedestrian access route, or through the traffic-calming presence of cyclists sharing the road, to some drivers, it may seem that way.

Nevertheless, we must begin planning for the future which will find ourselves in, and it’s not going to be like the past. The end of inexpensive fossil fuels and a growing awareness of the real costs of carbon pollution are sure to drive up the costs of car ownership and use. An increasing number of your neighbours will be looking to get around this City without a car. We must begin the transformation of our car-centric City into a people-centred community.

That means that we need to rethink how we design our communities and allocate our transportation budgets. That doesn’t mean that we will stop repairing roads and vehicular transport infrastructure, especially when safety is an issue. But it might mean giving prioritization in our budgeting processes to projects which make pedestrian, cycling and transit infrastructure safer and more accessible for users, as there are sure to be more of them in the future than there are today.

-Steve May
(Along with being a motorist, cyclist, pedestrian and transit user, Steve May is the CEO of the Sudbury Federal Green Party Association)

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

The NDP's Lip-Service to Democracy Misleads Canadians

2011-09-04T17:28:00.002-04:00

I am directing today’s blogpost specifically at those NDP supporters who have an interest in addressing Canada’s democratic deficit. Although I am writing from a partisan perspective, I nevertheless invite you to take a very critical look at what your support for the NDP has actually accomplished when it comes to addressing the democratic health of this nation. I believe that the record of the NDP on this issue speaks volumes, and that in fact that your support for the NDP, which has promised action on democratic renewal, has actually led to a circumstance which is increasingly detrimental to the principles of democracy.

I became a partisan in large part because of my dissatisfaction of the NDP’s lip-service to issues such as the climate crisis and democratic renewal. As environmentally-minded Democrats in the United States are now finding out, those who claim to champion an issue and then do nothing when in power, are equally or more dangerous than partisans who are outright opposed to a particular issue. That’s what has been happening with the NDP with regards to addressing Canada’s democratic deficit. Although I speak to you today as a partisan from another Party, one with a different tradition than yours, I ask you to nonetheless take a close look at what your past support of the NDP has really accomplished when it comes to addressing Canada’s growing democratic deficit. I believe that you won’t help but see that the NDP, despite offering solutions, has in fact been a significant part of the problem.

The NDP: First-Past-The-Post Electoral Reform

Canadians like to think that we live in a representative democracy, where every vote counts. However, throughout the country, our elections for provincial and federal representatives all use the antiquated First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system, in which the candidate with the highest number of total votes will be selected to represent a particular geographic area (a riding), no matter that the candidate may have failed to receive a majority mandate. In a two-party system, the FPTP system would assuredly work well, but Canada has never had a two-party system. Even back before the days of the NDP and its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), there were other parties, including the Progressive Party, and in Ontario, the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) which challenged for, and in some cases, obtained electoral power.

Clearly, not every vote counts in Canada’s elections. In the federal riding that I grew up in, Bramale-Malton-Gore, for example, the winning Conservative candidate received 34.4% of the vote in the May, 2011 election. Voters who cast ballots for other candidates, including the 33.5% who voted NDP and the 28.4% who voted Liberal, have nothing to show for their ballots, because their candidates failed to receive the most votes. No candidate received a majority.

Bramalea-Gore-Malton is not unique amongst Canadian ridings. As a result, movements to reform our electoral processes have been afoot throughout the nation. These movements champion alternative electoral systems, such as those used in most other democratic nations. Canada’s FPTP electoral system is actually in minority use throughout the world, as most other democracies have abandoned it (or never instituted it in the first place) due to the skewed results the system often leads to, while disenfranchising voters.

The New Democratic Party is often portrayed as a champion of Canadian democracy. Most often, this is because the NDP claims that it is interested in changing the First-Past-The-Post electoral system. Partisans from other political parties, notably Liberals and Conservatives, have derided this plank of the NDP’s platform, claiming that the NDP has historically wanted to change the system because it could never elect enough legislators to have an impact on the political system.

However, that perspective should be considered nonsensical, especially now with the federal NDP polling at numbers close to the ruling Conservative Party’s. And the NDP’s provincial electoral successes have clearly demonstrated that the NDP can form a government under the FPTP electoral system.

Indeed, in recent times, the NDP have governed in Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia. Interestingly, although the NDP has claimed to be an advocate for democratic renewal and reforms to FPTP electoral systems, when in power, the NDP hasn’t done a thing to reform our antiquated electoral systems.

In fact, it was left to Liberal parties in Ontario and in British Columbia to put electoral reform to the people in referendums.

The NDP and the Power of Votes: Maintaining the Outdated Rural/Urban Status Quo

When it comes to one person, one vote, where has the NDP been?

Recently, Interim Leader of the NDP Nycole Turmel found herself opposing electoral reforms being brought forward by the Conservative Party, which are intended to add ridings in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, as a result of population increases in those provinces. Right now, there is perverse situation which exists in Canada whereby rural votes actually wield more proportional power than do their urban counterparts, due to the number of votes which are required to elect a legislator. While Canada strives to have an average of about 90,000 voters per riding, the fact is that due to out-migration, many rural ridings have significantly fewer voters than the average, while fast-growing ridings like Brampton West in the Greater Toronto Area have closer to 160,000.

Instead of embracing the idea of empowering voters (or better yet, demanding real change calling for the introduction of an alternative electoral system), Turmel and the NDP were dismissive of the government’s plan to create new ridings. Ostensibly, Turmel insisted that the interests of rural ridings be considered. Yet those rural ridings are the ones whose electors have wielded disproportionate power in the first place; it’s in the rural ridings where the problem lies.

Does the NDP want to maintain the electoral status quo, and tell new immigrants to Canada’s most populous areas that they should continue to accept proportional disenfranchisement? Does the NDP really want to say to urban voters that it’s ok that your votes don’t count as much as do the votes of rural Canadians? Apparently, purely for partisan reasons, that’s exactly what the NDP wants to accomplish, because those parts of Ontario, Alberta and B.C. have been difficult ones for the NDP to make breakthroughs in. Plus, now that the NDP represents the majority of Quebec ridings, it needs to do a better job of looking out for the interests of Quebec. Although Turmel didn’t say so, might it be that the NDP’s dismissiveness of the Conservative plan has more to do with a relative weakening of the power of Quebec legislators, due to the addition of seats of in other provinces?

Again, the NDP seems committed to a course of action where the concept of “one person, one vote” is compromised.

The NDP: Internal Elections and the Power of Unions (“Non-Persons”)

Even internally, the NDP have never used a “one person, one vote” system to elect members to its own governance structure, or for the election of their Leader. When Jack Layton became the Leader of the NDP almost a decade ago, 25% of votes in the leadership contest were allocated to unions. This means that grassroots members of the NDP didn’t have the final say on who the Leader of the Party would be, not until the unions cast their ballots. Now, unions may be comprised of real people, but they, like corporations, aren’t real people themselves. Yet the NDP, due to its historical association with the labour movements and trade unions, has always given the unions prominence of place in their internal elections.

Currently, there is a movement brewing inside of the NDP to curtail the voting power of the unions, in time for next year’s leadership contest. Given that the NDP hasn’t held a leadership contest in almost a decade, it’s unclear if those new, youthful card-carrying members of the NDP might be aware that under existing rules, their votes don’t count in the same way as an incorporated union, a non-person’s, does.

Right now, it’s not clear whether the NDP will abandon this special treatment they have historically afforded to the unions. It looks like leading candidate Thomas Mulcair (who, not surprisingly, is being pushed out by the internal NDP apparatus) is advocating for the change; but NDP insider, President Brian Topp, is against removing the special treatment for unions at the ballot box.

I agree that political parties should be entitled to elect their Leaders in any way they see fit. As I’m not a member of the NDP, it’s really none of my business what the NDP does internally to make up its own election rules. But as a Canadian concerned about reforming our provincial and national electoral rules, it seems to me that a party which doesn’t believe in the principle of “one person, one vote” or another type of representative choice, and which instead embraces the notion that corporate entities (“non-people”) have the right decide election outcomes (as their votes are proportionately worth more than the thousands of grassroots party members), well, that doesn’t sit well with me. And it shouldn’t sit well with anybody else who is concerned about Canada’s democratic deficit.

The NDP: Choosing Partisanship Over Democracy at Every Opportunity

When it comes to the democratic health of Canada, the NDP have been very good at paying lip-service to democratic principles. However, when opportunities have arisen for the NDP to show leadership, they have failed to do so in every circumstance.

Jack Layton, the former Leader of the NDP, was given an opportunity to demonstrate leadership on democracy back in 2008. At the beginning of the 2008 federal election, a group of media broadcasters, responsible for hosting the televised leadership debates, made a decision that Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, would be shut out of participating in the debates, despite the fact that the Green Party was running candidates across the country.

Instead of following then-Liberal Leader Stephane Dion’s lead to condemn the unelected and unaccountable Broadcast Consortium’s decision to exclude May, Layton’s knee-jerk reaction was to express his consent with the Consortium’s decision. This despite the fact that Layton was fully aware that the televised leader’s debates offers its participants an unparalleled opportunity to engage the Canadian electorate.

Layton eventually changed his mind, but not until NDP-supporters across Canada demanded that May be allowed the opportunity to participate in what amounted to a spontaneous uprising. NDP members were heard on national TV and radio programs to lament that Layton seemed more interested in playing partisan politics in silencing May than he was in promoting democracy.

The NDP: Consenting to Silence Other Voices at Every Opportunity

Of course, when the Broadcast Consortium came to the same conclusion to exclude Elizabeth May from the 2011 debates, Layton was seen to mouth his regrets about the decision – but then did nothing to further the interests of democracy.

What is often forgotten in these shameful episode is that the television broadcasters, the NDP, Conservative, Liberal and Bloc parties were involved in negotiations before and after decisions were made to exclude May. The Green Party was not present at the table, and decisions about May’s participation were made in negotiation with representatives from May’s political rivals, including the NDP.

The NDP, of course, led by Layton, was probably the biggest beneficiary of this behind-closed-doors decision to exclude May from the 2011 debates. Layton’s knock-out blows against Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff opened the eyes of the electorate to the NDP as a real alternative to the inept Liberals and fumbling Bloc. Almost overnight, Layton’s personal popularity soared, and he bootstrapped the rest of the NDP into the biggest electoral success experienced by that federal party ever. By having a hand in shutting out the voice of a compelling political rival, Layton set the scene for the NDP’s ultimate success, but at the expense of putting the NDP’s own interests ahead of the democratic interests of the nation.

In Ontario, the Provincial NDP Follows Suit

Layton, of course, wasn’t alone in doing so. Just this past weekend, the Ontario provincial election’s leaders debate was announced. Again, the Green Party will be excluded from the debate, despite its 8% showing in the last election, and its goal to run candidates in every riding. Clearly, the Green Party of Ontario is a pan-provincial party with a fully-developed suite of policies.

Ontario’s public broadcaster, TVOntario, clearly agrees with that assessment, as it announced this weekend that Greens would, for the first time, be represented on all TVO partisan political panels. Why? Because it’s in the interests of democracy to do so.

Yet, the provincial broadcaster’s decision not to invite Mike Schreiner, Leader of the Green Party of Ontario, has been met with silence from the NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and her Party, despite claiming to be champions of democracy. Remember: the NDP participated in discussions with broadcasters. The NDP could have chosen to stand up for doing the right thing, but for partisan gain, they instead chose to silence the voice of a political rival.

Greens have participated in televised leaders debates in provincial elections in BC, PEI and New Brunswick. There’s no good reason that they should be excluded from the debates here in Ontario. Only partisan political interests by the other parties have led to this outcome. Those Ontarians concerned about democratic health have clearly been let down by the NDP yet again.

The NDP: Dangerously Misleading Canadians

I am someone who is very concerned about the growing democratic deficit in this country. And I am continually frustrated that the NDP, a party whose supporters clearly believe it be a party above the partisan fray when it comes to the interests of democracy, that the NDP continues to always put their partisan interests ahead of the democratic interests of Canadians. The NDP, at best, pays lip-service to the principles of democratic renewal. If they would only practice what they preach, all Canadians would be better off. However, by pretending to want to do something on the issue, Canadians who long for real democratic reform are being misled by the NDP, causing more damage in the long run.

Perhaps, if you’re truly interested in the democratic health of this nation, and you’ve been a supporter of the NDP, perhaps it’s time to look elsewhere.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

A Door Exists for the Liberal Party. Will Liberals Step Through It?

2011-09-01T20:02:00.004-04:00

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been blogging about the media’s ideas related to an NDP-Liberal Party merger, and I’ve shared my own thoughts about why I think it’s a bad idea. I’ve expressed the notion that a merged Party of grits and dippers would become a party of compromise, offering little in the way of bold vision, opting instead for the sorts of boutique public policies voters have become familiar with in the past little while emerging from the NDP and Liberal Parties. I’ve suggested that the zeitgeist of the times, the growing restlessness within the Canadian electorate (especially amongst younger Canadians) demands something newer and more significant – public engagement on the real significant issues of our time, which include the climate crisis and the end of inexpensive energy. I probably should have added democratic renewal to the list earlier this week. I’ll do so now.

I continue to believe that a Party of Compromise just won’t work. The result of a merged NDP and Liberal Party will be to drive blue Liberals away, and to leave the socialist element of the NDP feeling that they’ve lost their home. The Liberals can’t embrace the socialist aspects of the NDP, and the NDP just can’t buy into the corporatist policies of the Liberals. In this context, the only kind of party which could emerge would be a populist party offering up boutique, niche policies, but largely asking for your vote because they’re not the Conservative Party.

The NDP and the Politics of Spin - Not Good Enough

Canada deserves better than a party devoid of vision, wanting to govern for the sake of governing only, and setting itself up only in opposition to something else. That’s really a good description of both the current NDP and Liberal parties. We’ve seen the NDP move toward the centre of the political spectrum under Jack Layton, and the abandonment of principles in favour of populism and spin. Getting elected has become more important to the NDP than good public policy.

The NDP’s opposition to Stephane Dion’s emissions-reducing carbon tax, coupled with Jack Layton’s cynical scuttling of Paul Martin’s government at a crucial time in global climate change negotiations has shown that the NDP isn’t serious about the climate crisis. Provincial New Democratic parties have followed his lead: in British Columbia, the NDP opposed the globally renowned carbon tax introduced by former Premier Gordon Campbell and his Liberal Party. In Ontario, we actually have the perverse situation where NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has proposed public policies which will make it easier for Ontarians to consume more gasoline and electricity, which will only increase our dependence on fossil fuel resources at a time when those resources are becoming more expensive.

Jack Layton also used to talk a lot about Canada’s democratic deficit, and the NDP have long argued for proportional representation. Yet it’s clear that the NDP has only ever been all talk on this issue, despite that NDP supporters might insist otherwise. But the facts speak for themselves. When in power provincially, NDP governments in Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba and Nova Scotia have done nothing to implement reforms to antiquated first-past-the-post electoral systems. Instead, it’s been left up to Liberal governments in both Ontario and BC to hold referendums on electoral reform (twice in BC), and although the Liberals in both provinces were clearly not committed to reforming the system, at least they put it to the people. The NDP have never done that.

Instead, what we’ve seen from the NDP have been efforts to frustrate Canada’s democratic processes. In 2008, Jack Layton’s initial reaction to leaving Elizabeth May, the Leader of the Green Party, out of the crucial televised leader’s debates was to throw his support to the broadcast consortium. Only when supporters within his own party rose up and demanded May’s inclusion did Layton change his mind. In 2011, when the broadcast consortium made the same decision about May’s participation, Layton mumbled words of disagreement, but did nothing to try to convince the consortium and Canadians that the consortium’s decision wasn't in the interests of democracy. Instead of supporting the principles of an open and accessible democracy, the NDP’s knee-jerk response has always been to put their party's own interests first.

Ideology and Politics

Some may say that all political parties behave this way. I guess that’s probably true, however it’s my observation that some political parties tend to do it more than others. And the NDP has, in the past decade under Layton, clearly led the pack in putting politics before principle. And yes I say that knowing that I'm torn up inside because Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party are remaking my Canada in their own image even as I write this blogpost. However, while Harper has sacrificed some ideology for political gain (most notably at the end of 2008, during the coalition crisis, when he bowed to pressure from the centre and left to inject massive stimulus dollars into the economy, raising the deficit to an all time high, which was clearly something fiscal conservatives were reluctant to do). The Conservative’s continued attack on the Long Gun registry also comes to mind, although even that attack on what should be perceived as a tool which assists with his law-and-order agenda at least appeals to the anti-government libertarian supporters within his party.

The Liberal Party has been more difficult to pin down on the issue of whether they’re more or less willing to sacrifice ideology for political gain. But that’s only because it’s very difficult to describe the Liberal Party of Canada as a party driven and motivated by ideology at all. The party may share some broad idea of promoting a progressive and liberal Canada, but beyond that, the Party’s successes have either been driven by singular policies (rather than vision or ideology), or by simply opposing the “other”.

Liberals Moving Left?

Most political pundits have suggested that the Liberal Party has shifted leftward on the political spectrum, having been squeezed by Harper and the Conservatives on the right, due to the Conservatives own leftward shift. Despite producing one of the most right-wing Prime Ministers in history in the form of Jean Chretien, I’m not certain that the leftward shift of the Liberals under Ignatieff was as pronounced as the pundits claim. Certainly Stephane Dion’s Liberals fought the 2008 election campaign to the left of Paul Martin’s Liberals in 2006, but I believe that Ignatieff actually took the Liberals further to the right in 2011, having abandoned the more progressive public policies on offer from Stephane Dion.

OK, I realize that what I’ve written here defies “mainstream” thinking. Jean Chretien a right-winger? Stephane Dion’s new tax proposal a “progressive policy”? Ignatieff moving the Liberals to the right of the political spectrum instead of the left? Definetly not mainstream. Let me try to explain.

Climate Change as Political Game Changer

Stephane Dion has been involved in the issue of climate change for quite some time. You may recall that he was the Minister of the Environment at the time when Jack Layton joined Stephen Harper to take down Paul Martin’s government. You may also recall that Dion, during the Liberal Leadership race, decked out his supporters symbolically in green scarves. His carbon tax shift proposal had everything to do with his desire to address the climate crisis and the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

It’s often forgotten that along with putting a tax on emission-producing goods and services, Dion’s proposal would have put more money back into the hands of working Canadians in the form of a sizable cut in personal income taxes. This would have left Canadians with more money in their pockets, with which they could choose to pay for carbon-heavy goods and services, or perhaps save by choosing instead goods and services which produce fewer emissions. Dion also championed policies previously proposed by Paul Martin which would have assisted lower-income Canadians (Martin’s national child care strategy comes to mind).

That he lifted his Green Shift carbon tax proposal from the Green Party holus bolus, save some tinkering to water down the expected results doesn't matter. Dion acted boldly when others who probably should have did not.

When Ignatieff became the Liberal Leader, he quickly disposed of Dion’s carbon tax policy (despite the Liberal membership’s recommitment to it at the same convention which saw Ignatieff anointed Leader). Ignatieff then began to embrace the tar sands as an economic boon to Canada, further scaring away green supporters in his own Party and distancing himself from Dion’s record, which at the time was considered to be one of failed public policy.

Good Public Policy / Bad Messaging

That Dion’s Liberals were soundly defeated in 2008 probably did have something to do with his progressive carbon tax proposal. Explaining it to Canadians was a difficult job, and not just for Dion. I remember watching the Liberal Party’s candidate for the Nickel Belt try to explain the policy at the Chamber of Commerce all-candidates meeting in Hanmer. After failing miserably to make any sense at all, the Green Party’s Fred Twilley had to step in and explain her Party’s own policy to her and everyone else in attendance.

No, clearly the communication of the carbon tax shift was an abject failure. And the Conservatives calling it “Stephane Dion’s tax on everything” didn’t help. But what also hurt was Jack Layton’s (in my opinion, inexplicable) attack on the policy. Layton and the NDP claimed to be interested in combating climate change, yet the sound public policy of taxing emissions was rejected by the NDP in favour of establishing a cap trade emissions trading scheme.

NDP Sabotage of Environmental Issues for Political Gain

Layton said that a cap and trade scheme would make the big polluters pay, instead of the little guy. He was partly correct; certainly, the big polluters would pay to purchase carbon credits up front. However, these costs would clearly be passed on to consumers down the road. And without the benefit of the offsetting cuts to income tax in their wallets, those consumers would have no extra wealth to pay for the rising costs of goods and services. So the manufacturing industry (especially small businesses, which have fewer resources to absorb additional costs) and average Canadians (especially those living in poverty), lose. Meanwhile, the real profiteers would have been the banks and the financial managers. That hardly fits the NDP’s claim to represent the interests of the little guy.

But Layton and the NDP wanted to draw a clear distinction between themselves and the Liberals, and try to convince Canadians that they were the better defenders of the environment through their muddy cap and trade proposal, which was even more difficult to explain to Canadians than Dion’s tax cut. But unlike Dion, Layton didn’t really bother to try. He simply reassured Canadians that the proposal was on the level, that environmentalists liked it, and that it was being implemented in other places, like Europe. So he avoided all critical analysis.

The Liberal Record on the Environment: Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving

That Michael Ignatieff dumped the good emissions-reducing carbon tax policy and chose to adopt a cap and trade position (and then not talk about it) says a lot about how the Liberals had embraced politics over vision. Was Ignatieff’s move ideologically motivated? Probably not so much, because the Liberals have only ever demonstrated a wishy-washy commitment to environmental issues anyway.

Does that hurt, Liberal Party supporters? What, aren’t the Liberals the Party that ratified the Kyoto Protocol? Sure, Chretien signed the document – but then he and the governing Liberal Party did less than nothing to implement it. Instead of developing a plan to lower emissions, in keeping with international commitments under Kyoto, the Liberals invested in the tar sands and let emission rise without intervention. Instead of a real plan for emissions reduction, we got Rick Mercer running around challenging average Canadians to reduce their own emissions through a 1 tonne challenge, while oil and gas companies were encouraged to ramp up unfettered production.

It has been more important for the Liberals to be perceived to be taking action on the environment rather than to actually take action. Stephane Dion actually wanted to change that with a serious proposal. And the Liberals stabbed him in the back after one failed election, and then turned their back on his good public policy in the next.

Hope for Change? Not So Much.

Could the NDP and the Liberals change in time for the next election? Yes, sure they could. The Liberal Party actually probably has the best chance to do so, along with the most motivation. The NDP will likely want to continue to cling to the notion that cap and trade, which has failed in Europe and Chicago, and which was rejected by the U.S. Congress, is the best tool in the climate crisis, largely for the political reason that a carbon tax is a policy position “owned” by the Liberals (and the Green Party). Instead of proposing a comprehensive set of policies to address climate change, we’ll probably end up with more of the same: a real hodge-podge which might take one step forward (eliminate corporate welfare to the wealthy oil and gas companies) and two steps back (remove taxes from home heating and gasoline so that Canadians can burn more emissions; establish an unworkable cap and trade scheme which makes the finance sector richer, average Canadians and small businesses poorer, and likely does nothing at all for actually reducing emissions when dubious “offsets” are factored in).

The Liberals, on the other hand, actually have a real chance of going back to Dion’s good public policy proposal. With the B.C. Liberal Party’s success with their carbon tax (now being looked at in Europe, Australia, and the U.S. as a model for moving forward towards a low-carbon economy), and with the Ontario Liberal Party’s success in encouraging renewable energy production, it’s quite possible that the Liberals might try to embrace the environment as their next big policy theme. That they will probably do so in a cumbersome and awkward way may doom them to failure again, given the difficulty in communicating to Canadians the importance of the issue, and how public policy can be implemented.

The Environment, and the Left and the Right

That the environment has become an issue equated with the “left” side of the political spectrum has been something which has saddened me personally, especially after having been embraced by Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives. However, the right has firmly established its credentials as the anti-environment fossil fuel industry-coddling side of the political spectrum. It didn’t have to be that way. Certainly the media has played a big role in entrenching the notion that “saving the environment” is a left-wing idea, and will harm the economy.

Saving the environment, as Greens know, would do no such thing. It’s actually a smart economic investment, especially when you factor in how much it will cost to not save the environment! If media pundits actually gave the whole issue more than a passing thought, it would quickly become clear that the lack of “environmental” policies on offer from the Conservatives are actually the biggest source of harm to Canada’s future economic fortunes. We Greens understand this, but we have a hell of a time getting this message out. Largely because Canada’s media simply doesn’t want to hear it.

Stephane Dion understood the issue, and he was thrown under the bus by the media and eventually by his own party.

The NDP might understand the issue intellectually, but they’re not actually willing to go to Canadians with solutions, for fear that those solutions will harm the jobs of unionized employees in carbon-intensive industries. And because they believe that there are few additional votes in the issue. Since the environment is an issue of the left, those left-wingers predisposed to wanting to save the environment will be voting NDP anyway, so the issue remains in the background, and solutions are complicated compromises which won’t be analyzed by anybody anyway.

The Conservatives might even understand the importance of the environment too, but since they are beholden to big business and because their core voter demographic are wealthy older white men, the best that they can do is to attack the environment at every opportunity, and keep everyone else divided on the issue.

Of course, the Green Party understands this issue. But our problem is getting the word out, especially when the NDP (and at least under Dion, the Liberals) pretend to be champions of the environment, without actually (for the most part) wanting to propose workable solutions (and by workable I here mean solutions which also make economic sense). The Green Party has failed on the basis of its political abilities, in my opinion, and not on issues of public policy.

Love, Hope and Optimism?

There are still reasons for optimism, though, and they may be found in the growing restlessness of our times, especially amongst our youth. However, I believe that real hope for change won’t be found in the NDP, unless youth can be the catalyst for change. Butting up against entrenched union ideologies which promote the brown economy over a low-carbon future, however, will be difficult for young idealists to overcome.

Instead, I believe that the best possible way forward lies with the Green movement, which in Canada right now is best represented by the Green Party. However, the Liberals have a chance to join the club, if they truly want to be game-changers. It will require Liberals to move into increasingly uncomfortable territory, however, and such moves will be opposed by some of the entrenched interests in that Party.

In short, the Liberal Party could become the Green Party, only with access to a better communications strategy. That door is open to the Liberals right now. They question is will they even acknowledge that the door exists, and perhaps dare to step through it?

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Politics as Usual: Why The Liberals and the NDP, Together or Separately, Will Continue to Fail Canadians

2011-08-31T18:29:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I started writing a blog about all of the interesting things which political commentators have had to write about this past summer. I also began looking at why a merged NDP-Liberal Party would not appeal to the growing restlessness, found particularly amongst today’s youth, for real change. Today I’d like to expand further on that topic, as I feel there is a lot more at play here than a desire to unite Canada’s political “left”. The restlessness we’re feeling is something which I believe can’t be addressed in the context of left-wing / right-wing politics, at least when neither the left nor the right has any desire to address the big issues of our time. Those issues, of course, all have to do with the end of inexpensive energy and a warming planet.

I realize that you might not be interested in my “environmental mumbo jumbo”, in which I place a significant emphasis on the threats which the perils of climate change and peak oil pose to our society. Keep in mind, though, that these really are both economic issues, whether you want to believe so or not. Not only are they economic "issues", peak oil and the climate crisis are very significant threats to the health and well-being of our economy. And that means your job, and your family’s employment and prospects for employment.

As neither the Liberals or the NDP seem the least bit interested in engaging voters on either of these issues (or on the growing gap between the rich and the poor – and here I am clearly suggesting that the NDP, with its move to a more centrist political view, has clearly moved away from seriously wanting to tackle poverty – an opinion which I know is sure to rile NDP supporters. But take a very critical look at today’s NDP, which has in my opinion failed the very people whom it purports to defend. Look at what Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horvath is offering voters in the upcoming provincial election: cuts to taxes which may provide short-term relief, but will lead to long-term pain for people, especially our poorest). As such, it’s inconceivable to me that a merged party would be a better vehicle to offer a shared vision, when currently neither the NDP or the Liberal Party has been able to articulate anything close to a comprehensive vision for our nation.

Vision

In my humble opinion, there are only two national political parties who are offering compelling visions of Canada. The Conservative Party, the one which gets the most press, does have a vision for Canada, and they are doing what they can to slowly implement that vision. That’s why the Canada of today has started to look quite different than the Canada that existed 20 years ago. That the Liberal under Jean Chretien began the process of taking Canada to the right (beyond where Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney had led) does not change the fact that this vision is now completely owned by the Conservative Party.

"In Opposition To" as the Only Alternative

In contrast, the New Democrats and Liberals have only offered their tentative opposition to the rightward direction itself (or, in the case of the Liberals, really just the pace of moving towards that direction). There has been no compelling narrative offered by these parties which stands in contrast to the vision of the Conservative Party. They have instead simply pointed to themselves, appealing for our votes on the basis of being the “other”, served up for our consumption with the whip-cream and cherry of boutique niche policies proposals.

NDP-Liberal Party Merger

I agree in part with the Globe & Mail’s Robert Silver, who acknowledges that politics as usual isn’t working but suggests that there are significant issues with a Liberal-NDP merger which likely won’t be overcome (see: “A counterintuitive alternative to a Liberal-NDP merger”) . Silver, in particular, is concerned about the baggage carried by both of these parties, and a lack of desire for involved members to take ownership of the other party’s baggage. Liberals will not be comfortable with the socialist heritage of the NDP, while the NDP won’t accept the corporatist agenda of the Liberal Party.

For a merger between the Liberals and the NDP to ever work, there will need to be significant accommodation made by both parties, including the further watering down of big-issue items. While the Star's Chantal Hebert expounds about there being only two tribes (see "Shifting political landscape holds major consequences for all parties"), it’s not at all clear which tribe Liberal Party supporters truly identify themselves with. There will be extremely disenchanted Liberals and NDP supporters alike, should there be any merge. Grits on the right, and Dippers on the left will be disenfranchised. They may decide to stick it out for a while (especially left wing New Democrats, who unlike disenfranchised Liberals, will have no other place to go should they think about leaving), but ultimately whether the new merged party proves to be successful or not, hearts and hopes will be broken.

Silver believes that the solution to this situation is the creation of another political party altogether. That’s where I disagree with him, although I understand where he’s coming from. A new party wouldn’t carry the same baggage as the old parties, and would allow its grassroots members to drive the policy bandwagon. However, again, the likely outcome of such a new party will be to offer Canadians a mushy centre-left suite of boutique policies. And it’s not at all clear that Liberals or Dippers would abandon ship in numbers enough to make yet another political party work.

The Green Party of Canada

In contrast to the Liberals and New Democrats, the Green Party of Canada is the only party other than the Conservative Party which is offering Canadians a compelling vision for the future. In fact, it’s fair to say that the Green’s vision of Canada is quite different again from the Canada that we know today. Where the Green Party has failed (and failed considerably, in my opinion) has been in its ability to “get the message out” about this alternative vision. While the Green Party must take some responsibility for its lack of communication, the fact is that entrenched powers have worked to undermine the Green Party’s ability to broadcast its message.

Getting the Message Out

In the previous election, the Media Consortium chose not to invite Green Party Leader Elizabeth May to either of the two national televised debates, despite the Green Party’s commitment to running candidates in just about every riding in the country. The importance of the televised debates in an election campaign can not be understated. May’s participation in the 2008 debate saw Green support jump to almost 7% nationally. Layton’s blows against Ignatieff in the 2011 debates have been credited with his rise in personal popularity in Quebec, and his party’s successes there over the Bloc this past May.

Unlike in 2008, none of the national party Leaders seemed to be all that concerned about May’s lack of invitation to the debates. In 2008 you may recall that both Harper and Jack Layton were initially supportive of the Consortium’s decision to sideline May. Only Stephane Dion, and an outpouring of emotion from Canadians, led to the Media Consortium’s ultimate invitation. Layton eventually publicly changed his mind.

In 2011, Layton and Ignatieff both mumbled that it would have been their preference for May to be there, but they stood by and did nothing to try to change the Media Consortium’s mind. With May out of the debates, Green support evaporated to about 3% nationally.

With media and political interests stacked against the Greens, it’s really no wonder that the Green Party has had such a difficult time in getting the word out about its vision.

I often wonder whether the Orange Crush would have happened at all if May had been in the debates. That she would have been able to communicate the Green Party’s vision of Canada to voters would not have been assured. While she made Stephen Harper look bad in the 2008 televised debate, she did little to talk about what a Green Canada would ultimately look like. She may have fumbled her opportunity in 2011 as well. But even a fumble would have been a success in part, for I have no doubt whatsoever that May would have outshone any and all of the Leaders in the televised debate. It is quite possible that enough progressive voters might have instead opted to throw their votes to the Greens rather than to the NDP, and the Orange Crush might not have ever happened. And the Liberals may not have suffered their worst defeat ever. And the election might not have brought about a false majority government for the Conservatives.

But playing the what-if game, while fun, really gets us nowhere. That the Green Party offers a compelling and complete vision of a Canada which rivals and stands in contrast to a Conservative Canada isn’t particularly helpful when no one (well, very few) knows that it exists.

The Zeitgeist of our Times is Restlessness with an Increasingly Disfunctional Status Quo

As Canadians grow increasingly restless in a world fraught with increasing economic, environmental and social instability, looking at an NDP-Liberal merger as a way of appealing to the zeitgeist is really a lot like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. A merged NDP-Liberal Party will only offer itself up in opposition to a Conservative vision of Canada, rather than articulating its own vision. This is because a merged party will be hamstrung by forced compromise, and born in compromise, there will be no ability for it to articulate a bold vision for Canada’s future. That it may gain power in the next federal election will not be enough to move Canada in a direction in which an increasing number of Canadians desire Canada to go. That it may slow Canada’s drift to the right may be commendable, but on its own, that can never be more than a compromise goal. If the big issues of our time remain off limits (and they almost certainly will in a party born of compromise, pursuing niche boutique policies), the restlessness will remain.

Politics as Usual Isn't the Answer

The Liberals and the NDP, separately or together, have so far not provided a viable vision for a future Canada. As long as both parties remain mired in boutique politics which fail to address the very real and compelling issues of the day, Canadians looking for real hope would be better served by turning away from the old line parties, whose primary goal appears to be the ascension to power at the expense of good, comprehensive public policy.

Politics as usual can't be the answer. It's clear to me that Jack Layton understood this, as he wrote so very passionately about this issue in his last letter to Canadians. That Layton led a political party which has become, in my opinion, increasingly devoid of passion and good public policy, seems somewhat ironic. However, in the pursuit of power, Layton and the NDP felt compelled to abandon the pursuit of good public policy, and instead concentrated on the politics of spin and boutique issues as a means of achieving power. Had Layton ultimately found himself one day in a majority government situation, it could be that he would have offered up a vision which Canadians could embrace. That he failed to offer such a vision while pursuing power has been the primary reason that I am not a member of the New Democratic Party.

Politics as usual isn't the answer to the growing restlessness of our times. And that's why real vision and real change won't be found amongst today's NDP or Liberals. Mired in the politics of spin, pursuing power at all costs, those two parties will not decide to stop playing political games. And as long as they are playing games, they will fail to make an effort to get down to the business of engaging Canadians on the significant issues of our time.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Restlessness with the Status Quo and Appealing to the Zeitgeist of Our Times

2011-08-30T18:45:00.006-04:00

As summer draws to a close, it can’t now be said that this past August was a slow news month for Canadian political commentators. With the unexpected passing of Jack Layton, former Leader of the NDP, Canada’s political commentators have been in overdrive. Last week saw, for the most part, praise for Layton’s years of public service, which put aside partisan politics. However, there were a few political commentators (such as the National Post’s Christie Blatchford) who refused to jump on the non-partisan bandwagon. Since Layton’s funeral on Sunday, more commentators have joined the anti-Jack chorus. Most, such as Sun Media’s Ezra Levant, are, not surprisingly, on the right-wing side of Canada’s political spectrum.

Interestingly, these right-wing commentators, like Levant, have put Stephen Harper in their sights, because he authorized a state funeral for Jack Layton, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The hyper-partisan far-right-wing (and here I must draw a distinction between neo-cons like Levant and many others who are comfortable referring to themselves as small-c “conservatives”) must believe that they can somehow benefit from these kinds of attacks on Harper. Maybe they think that he can be kept in line, or risk some version of a Canadianized Tea Party arising either in the midst of his own political party, or outside of it.

A Strong and United Conservative Party

The chances of that happening, however, are, in my opinion, not very good. Harper continues to dominate the right-wing of Canadian politics in a way which George W. Bush never did south of the border. Party discipline in Canada has always been more severe than in the United States, where Republicans and Democrats often work together on issues, or oppose the positions of their own parties. In the U.S. Congress in particular, there has always been a bigger sense of independence for legislators to go their own way (or, some would say, to look after their own interests first).

It’s not that way in Canada. Or at least, when party discipline does start to fall apart, that becomes a notable exception. And as far as Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are concerned, the party should be considered the strongest that it’s ever been. Even with pundits like Levant chirping at Harper from the far right.

No, there is no threat of a Wildrose or Tea Party-type usurpation of power on the right wing of the Conservative Party, despite the notion that Harper has taken his party further towards the centre. With an election four-years away, unless a significant number of Conservator legislators broke with the existing Party, there really isn’t any opportunity for a Canadian Tea Party to muddy the Conservative waters. Hence, it should be clear sailing for the right in Canada for some time now.

Quebec

Elsewhere, however, party politics has started to breakdown, and it’s given Canada’s political commentariat a number of stories to write about this past August. Most notably this has happened in Quebec, where Pauline Marois, Leader of the Parti Quebecois, is fast becoming the captain of a sinking ship. Several PQ MLA’s have already abandoned her, choosing to sit as Independents in the legislature. A few others are openly positioning themselves to challenge her leadership. Apparently, it’s not so much that Quebeccers have lost their interest in separatism (although recent polls show that support for separation is the lowest it’s been in quite a while); it may have more to do with the overall zeitgeist of our times.

Zeitgeist

Around the world, and within Canada, people are looking at governmental and political institutions and are coming to the conclusion that those institutions aren’t working well. In short, more and more people are determining that the status quo is failing them. This increasing uneasiness with the status quo is manifesting itself in different ways, depending on where one lives.

In the United States, Americans have turned to the Tea Party, a movement which is difficult to describe, because it apparently means different things to different individuals, even as it attempts to be all things to everybody. In general, the Tea Party movement advocates for reducing government spending, leading to smaller government. It may also stand for less direct intervention of government in the lives of average Americans, although it remains unclear if that’s a shared goal of the movement, given the concerns raised by some Tea Partiers over pensions. At its worst, the Tea Party movement may be something more sinister, arguing for more middle class austerity measures and declaring war on the poor. This despite the fact that most Tea Party supporters are themselves middle class Americans.

The Canadian Experience

In Canada, our own dissatisfaction with the status quo has played out differently. I believe that Canadians have generally been a little less dissatisfied with our political and governmental institutions than citizens of other nations, yet it can’t be denied that over the past decade, Canada has moved considerably to the right. That this movement occurred in increments does not alter the fact. And, with a Conservative government currently enjoying a majority in the House of Commons, we can expect our nation to be carried even further to the right during Harper’s mandate.

The May 2011 Federal Election

The May 2011 federal election might not have been the significant expression of dissatisfaction with the Canadian political landscape which many pundits have made it out to be. Certainly, in the Province of Quebec, it can clearly be said that voters expressed their frustration with the status quo, choosing to boot the Bloc, while turning to the untested NDP under an enigmatic Jack Layton. As much as the NDP want us to believe that Quebeccers have embraced them, the truth is that the NDP gained seats primarily as a result of a rejection of the BQ. However, that Quebec did not turn to the Liberals or the Conservatives is notable. The NDP, and Layton in particular, offered Quebeccers a compelling narrative, while the Liberals and Conservatives didn’t.

In fact, the Liberal narrative on offer in Quebec was resoundingly rejected by Canadians outside of that province. But clearly the Liberals were delivered a body blow by a national rise in NDP support in the final days of the election. Canadian voters increasingly opted to try out Layton and the NDP, and as a result, Liberal MP’s fell in overwhelming numbers to Conservatives. This happened because the Canadian right stood firm against a divided left. The fact that it looked like the Orange surge could have swept Layton or Ignatieff into a minority government situation in the final days of the campaign might have actually increased Conservative fortunes in key ridings.

Voters didn’t abandon the Liberal Party wholesale. Instead, more voters opted to give Layton and the NDP a chance. Some right-of-centre Liberals clearly switched allegiance to the Conservatives, rather than risk an NDP minority government. This happened in the Greater Toronto Area in particular, which you will recall was an area the Conservatives had invested a significant amount of campaign time and money. It paid off.

Electoral Results: Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo?

But we should not interpret Harper’s majority government as dissatisfaction with the Canadian status quo. It can not be ignored that the percentage of the popular vote which cast their ballots for Conservative candidates was relatively unchanged between 2008 and 2011 – approximately 40%. That means that the other 60% of voters cast their ballot for other parties. That can only be interpreted as a rejection of the Conservatives. It is only because of Canada’s archaic first-past-the-post electoral system that the political will of Canadians expressed on May 3, 2011, to reject the Conservative Party somehow perversely led to a Conservative majority government.

And we can not forget the almost 40% of Canadians who, for whatever reason, chose not to cast a ballot at all in the election. If these non-votes had been counted in a FPTP situation, Nobody would be the Prime Minister of Canada, with Harper serving as Leader of the Opposition. That 40% of our electorate has chosen to disengage itself from our political processes is the clearest indicator yet that the status quo is failing Canadians.

I am not here, however, suggesting that the Conservative Party does not have a true mandate to govern. On the contrary, I understand the rules very well, and although I believe that those rules, which have led to the absurd outcome of a false majority government, need to be changed, I am not at all suggesting that the Liberals or the NDP should now be governing in Harper’s stead, either separately or together, due to their combined vote totals. What I am suggesting is that the 2011 election, which saw a significantly different outcome than the 2008 election, wasn’t really all that different in any significant way – other than in Quebec.

Restlessness

Yet, as we emerge from the summer of 2011, there is a growing restlessness in Canada. This restlessness did not culminate in the praise offered to Jack Layton and his family at Saturday’s funeral. Instead, Layton’s death and the outpouring of grief may prove to be the spark which lights the fire that sweeps through Canada in a way that the May 2011 election did not. Already, prominent Liberals are openly discussing the option of considering a merger with the NDP, despite attempts by Liberal interim Leader Bob Rae to play down the talk.

Yesterday, Justin Trudeau, the bright light of Liberal youth, said that a merger should be on the table for discussion.

That the NDP itself appears to remain uninterested in a merger does not take into consideration the aspirations of many of its supporters, who are growing increasingly hostile to Canada’s right-wing government. I would not be surprised if one or more of the yet-to-be-announced NDP leadership hopefuls opens the door to discussing a Liberal-NDP merger.

A Liberal-NDP Merger

A merger between the NDP and the Liberals may at first blush appear to appeal to the zeitgeist of the times, uniting the left and threatening to topple the Conservatives in the next election. Chantal Hebert, in today’s Toronto Star, writes that there really are only “two tribes” in Canada, despite the presence of 4 national political parties (“Shifting political landscape holds consequences for all parties"). A merged Liberal-NDP party, however, will not ultimately prove to be the animal many think it would be. And that’s because whatever kind of hybrid animal it turns out to be will be an animal of further compromise.

Political Compromise in Place of Vision

Already both the Liberals and NDP have abandoned the kind of bold thinking that these two parties used to be champions of in the past. Whether it was the NDP thumping away about medicare, or the Liberals offering a vision of Canada with its own constitution and Charter of Rights, those days are gone now for both parties. What we’ve seen increasingly emerge from both the Liberals and NDP are populist boutique issues, designed to target specific voting blocks, rather than comprehensive public policies to address the big issues of the day. While some of these boutique policies may be decent, there has not been any over-arching vision for a future Canada on offer. Instead of a 7-course meal, the Liberals and the NDP offer only one choice from Column A and one from Column B.

This has happened not because Liberals and New Democrats can no longer count amongst themselves the sort of bold thinkers who dominated their parties in the past. There are Stephen Lewises, Tommy Douglases, Pierre Trudeaus and Lester Pearsons in those parties today. Jack Layton may have even been one of them. Certainly Stephane Dion and Justin Trudeau are; perhaps even Bob Rae fits the bill. But as long as Canadian politicians find themselves straight-jacketed by spin and appeals to niche voter targeting in their quest for power, we’re unlikely to see the boldness of spirit which will appeal to our growing restlessness. The zeitgeist of our time demands better than a Liberal-NDP merger.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)

Jack Layton: Tireless Canadian Hero

2011-08-22T17:15:00.000-04:00

I’m sure that Jack Layton had a special place in his heart for Sudbury. Although not from these parts, Layton connected with spirit of the community, and identified with our struggles and challenges. Over the past several years, he was a frequent visitor to our community, taking part in rallies hosted by the United Steelworkers Local 6500 during their year-long strike at Vale (formerly INCO). He also came on other occasions to talk with, and most importantly, to listen to the concerns of ordinary citizens.

My first memories of Jack Layton came from watching CFTO’s 6 o’clock news when I was a teenager in Brampton in the mid 1980s. Back then, Layton was a municipal Councillor known for doing something a little outrageous every now and then. With wild hair and a big moustache. Layton would show up to Council meetings in jeans. Layton, a former Ryerson professor, was always a part of the urban background noise of my teenage years.

When I first started commuting to Ryerson for school, I had time to follow Toronto’s municipal politics in greater detail, as there always seemed to be a newspaper to pick up and read on the GO Train or GO Bus. Given that my profs were very Toronto-centred, I figured it was best to start paying more attention to what has happening in the big city. Layton wasn’t always front page news by any stretch, but he was always there, moving his causes forward, sometimes in the public eye, sometimes not. His causes weren’t always my causes, but they were ones he took on passionately, and in the belief that he was doing what’s best for Toronto.

When he became the head of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, he brought renewal and activism to that organization. I was just beginning my career at that time, and I remember thinking that a committed urbanist like Layton would do a lot of good leading a cross-country association of municipalities. When it comes to assessing what the needs of cities are, Layton understood. His activism was apparent in his leadership, and when he left the FCM to run as leader for the New Democratic Party, he left behind a legacy of success which is still apparent today.

Whether you liked Jack Layton’s politics or not, it’s difficult to deny his ability to make personal connections. When I think about what successful politicians have to do in order to appear sincere with voters (which doesn’t always come naturally), I know that Layton never had to be taught any tricks. For Layton, they weren’t “tricks” at all; they were just the right thing to do. To listen to people when the talk, to make eye contact and show emotion. To empathise with people sharing their personal stories. To show respect to others with whom he quite clearly disagreed, by not interrupting, or using uncomfortable body language.

Jack Layton always cared about what people had to say to him.

I only ever spoke to Layton once, and then just for the briefest of moments. It was outside the Sudbury Arena on the day of one of the earliest rallies put together by USW Local 6500. I was there with a number of Green Party supporters, to show solidarity with Union. Layton was being ushered into the arena by his handlers, but he was sure to offer a handshake a few words to everyone on the way in. In our green t-shirts with partisan logos, it was clear that we weren’t on the same team – but on this day, it didn’t matter. We’d come together to support the same good cause. Layton could have walked on by, but instead he shook my hand. I told him that it was great he had come to our community. He told me thanks, and that this fight was everybody’s fight.

My politics and Layton’s haven’t been the greatest fit, as anyone who might regularly read my blog must know. Layton’s heart, though, was always in the right place, and he spent his life trying to do what he thought was best for Canadians. He understood that the current political structure needed to be challenged, which led him to the NDP. He courageously battled in what he perceived to be the interests of the common person, and against the forces which sought to sideline the efforts and aspirations of common people.

It was with tremendous sadness that I heard about Jack passing away earlier today. He cared about Canada’s future, and he cared about Canadians. He cared about my community, and all of the communities across the nation which were looking for ways to do better. He was a tireless Canadian hero, who has left us much too soon.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with those of the Green Party of Canada)