Monthly Archives: June 2014

Jun 13 2014
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Economy, Employment

For once, the feds abandon Voodoo economics 

 

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In a stunningly sensible – and, therefore, utterly unexpected – move for the federal government, the Department of Employment and Immigration has announced plans to restore the integrity of its jobs data, which have been about as reliable as a help wanted ad on a social media website.

One day after the Globe and Mail broke a story about an internal memo to Employment Minister Jason Kenney that practically bragged about all the money the department was saving by eschewing Statistics Canada’s pricey research services in favour of a private contractor’s scans of popular, online classified platforms, the red-faced cabinet member told the House of Commons, in effect, “um. . .never mind.”

To be precise, he said, “The government will be launching two significant, robust, new labour market information studies (by Statistics Canada). Of them, on will be a quarterly study on job vacancies and the other a robust annual survey on wage rates, just as experts have asked us to do.”

One of those experts is Don Drummond, a former chief economist at TD Bank who chaired the 2009 Advisory Panel on Labour Market Information and thinks that empirical evidence is not such a bad tool to deploy when crafting policy on something as crucially important to national well-being as employment.

Prior to the announcement yesterday, Mr. Drummond had a few choice words for a government that enjoys creating panels and striking task forces just as long as it doesn’t have to listen to them, especially when their findings are ideologically inconvenient. “Things are getting done in the opposite direction” he told the Globe. “Normally, you create an information infrastructure and that informs policy. But here we’ve had dramatic changes in policy with the temporary foreign worker program and the Canada Job Grant, while we are undermining the lousy information infrastructure we already have.”

It’s anyone’s guess what Mr. Kenney means when he refers to his new surveys as “robust” (not once, mind you, but twice). Surely, though, anything is better than counting the number of times Kijiji posts the same job to its listings, and calling that bone fide data. 

According to reports, the new job-vacancy survey is expected to cost about $8 million annually surveying 100,000 employers across the country, while the $6-million wage survey will followup with greater detail.

The investments will effectively restore the department’s total annual budget of around $81 million for “Learning and Labour Market Information” – a fact which still  didn’t stop NDP MP Nathan Cullen from observing, “They (the Conservative government) do make themselves ignorant purposefully.”

Regrettably, he has a point. This is not a political culture that tolerates dissent or criticism. In fact, it’s not a huge fan of facts when said facts contradict even a sliver of its worldview or run counter to its spending and program priorities.

Canada’s crime rate, particularly for violent offences, is at a 40-year ebb. 

So, naturally, logic dictates throwing more people in jail for longer and for lesser crimes. That’ll justify building more prisons and passing along at least some of the cost to the provinces if only to keep the federal account book nice and sanitary.

Oil and gas exploration and development is an inherently risky business, fraught with all manner of threats to soil, air and water. 

So, naturally, official policy stipulates fewer and easier environmental rules and regulations – not more and tougher ones – to lubricate the great, big job-generating machines out west (where, let’s face it kids, everybody in their right minds ought to work, live and play).

Climate change is real, or so says virtually every top scientist in the world. The cost of its economic depredations may be counted in the trillions of dollars on a planetary scale, possibly within as few as two generations.

So, naturally, as Prime Minister Harper recently emoted, no country in the world would sacrifice the short-term opportunity to get people working – in our case, due to Alberta’s oil sands – by imposing emission standards that are designed to avert a global catastrophe. 

After all, what’s the sense in worrying about the future, when the here and now is all we’ve ever cared about thanks to our what’s-for-lunch attention spans?

Still, we may now rest assured that the good folks over at Employment and Immigration have finally seen the light: Good data means good policy. Evidence is cool. Science is hot. 

Until, of course, the tea leaf lady darkens Ottawa’s doorstep once again. 

 

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Jun 12 2014
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Climate, Economy, Energy

Climate change is real. But do the feds care?

 

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Senior federal Tories no longer deny, as more than a few once did, encroaching climate change. Their thinking on the issue has evolved. Now, they accept it, almost willingly, as a cost of doing business in the 21st Century.

With all the bellicosity that this proposition implies, Prime Minister Stephen Harper thumbed his nose at U.S. President Barack Obama this week, suggesting that the latter’s effort to enforce new emission standards for power plants was disingenuous.

“No matter what they say, no country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country,” he said during a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Ottawa. “We are just a little more frank about that.”

Moreover, he added, “the measures outlined by President Obama, as important as they are, do not go nearly as far in the electricity sector as the actions Canada has already taken ahead of the United States in that particular sector.”

Finally, he said, “It’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change, but we seek to deal with it in a way that will protect and enhance our ability to create jobs and growth. . .Frankly, every single country in the world (feels the same way).”

Now, who’s being disingenuous?

Canada’s official government position on climate change is virtually non-existent. The feds do not maintain, let alone enforce, regulations governing greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry for a very good reason: They are terrified of angering their pals in Big Petrol. 

According to a report in the Globe and Mail last year, the World Resources Institute stated that in 2010 this country’s carbon footprint was the tenth-largest in the world. “On a per-capita basis, Canada is 17th; among the G20, Canada trails only Australia and the United States,” the item noted.

As for Canada’s putative lead over the United States in regulating the electricity sector, Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank based in British Columbia, begs to differ. In a blog post on June 4, he wrote:

“While Canada did introduce federal coal regulations in 2012, the regulations have a long phase-in period that allows some of Canada’s coal plants to operate clear through the middle of the century, without any greenhouse gas controls whatsoever.”

Mr. Dyer observes that this “timid response” guarantees that meaningful drops in greenhouse gas emissions won’t appear until 2030. In this context, he writes, “The U.S. proposal is far more effective at reducing greenhouse gases from electricity generation in the short term, compared to business as usual. Analysis suggests the EPA rules would reduce power sector emissions by an estimated 23 per cent below business as usual by 2025, compared to five per cent from Canada’s federal regulations (according to Environment Canada’s own numbers).”

Apart from this, Pembina estimates that, between 2005 and 2020, tar sands expansion will have rendered preposterous Canada’s faint-hearted promise to the international community to cut its greenhouse gas production by 17 per cent.

“Environment Canada estimates that Canada will only be ‘halfway’ to meeting its 2020 target in 2020 – meaning that we’re on track to miss the 2020 target by 113 million tonnes, or double the current emissions of British Columbia,” wrote Clare Demerse, Pembina’s former director of federal policy, on the Institute’s website last year. “To date, the federal government has not published any plan or proposal to close that gap.”

Under the circumstances, how can any political leader in Ottawa claim with a straight face that the government has a plan for mitigating the effects of the nation’s increasingly rapacious fossil fuel industry?

Energy Minister Joe Oliver is practically apoplectic over the possibility that Alberta oil will forever languish where it does no one any good. In a recent speech, he described the black gold as “landlocked”, costing the national economy billions of dollars a year in lost revenue.

Meanwhile, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq is ritually fond of stating that the federal government’s emissions policy demonstrates how she and her Conservative confederates are “standing up for Canadian jobs,” as if no clean, sustainable alternative is even worth considering.

Fair enough. But if certain federal Tories no longer deny the existence of climate change, neither should they deny the other truth: They couldn’t care less.

 

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Jun 11 2014
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Economy, Society

Seeing the forest in our urban trees

 

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The TD bank complex in downtown Toronto is the product of a procedural imagination, a throwback to the so-called international style of architecture that eschews all forms of ornamentation, especially those afforded by Mother Nature, herself.

How brilliantly ironic, then, that one of that institution’s senior officials, having for too long tolerated the glass and steel that frames his working life, now declares that trees are a city’s true salvation. 

But, then, that’s Craig Alexander for you. The senior vice-present and chief economist of Canada’s second-largest bank with a current market capitalization of $102 billion has been plunking away in the minor keys of capitalism for years, hoping to provoke more innovative and socially redeeming uses for the filthy lucre that makes the world go round. 

This time, he’s latched onto trees. 

“Urban forests play a much greater role than just beautifying the scenery,” he writes in a recent special report entitled, “Urban forests: the value of trees in the city of Toronto.” In fact, the “green space. . . is a critical factor in environmental condition, human health and the overall quality of life.”

According to Mr. Alexander’s research, 10 million trees from 116 different species comprise Hog Town’s urban forest, covering 30 per cent of the city. That’s about 16,000 trees per square kilometre, or four for every man, woman and child.       

What’s more, they’re worth a fortune. If you were to chop them all down and start over, you’d need to spend about $700 per tree or $7 billion in total to reforest places like the Don Valley, Highland Creek and Rouge River watersheds.

But why do that? “Beyond their value as a commodity,” Mr. Alexander asserts, “urban forests help ease the burden of managing snow, rain and other wet-weather flow by intercepting falling precipitation in their canopy, increasing the amount of water absorbed into the ground, and reducing soil erosion.”

And that’s not all. Trees generate oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide and scrub the air of other pollutants. In fact, each year, Toronto’s forest gobbles up 25 per cent of the city’s industrial emissions. That’s about equivalent to the exhaust from a million automobiles. “The amount of air pollution bated by Toronto’s urban forest generates an annual savings of $19 million  – just under $2 per tree,” Mr. Alexander notes.

Then, there is the efficacious effect trees have on property values, as they help moderate the micro-climates of leafy neighbourhoods and yield energy savings to homeowners. All in all, Mr. Alexander writes, “The City of Toronto’s urban forest. . .provides an additional $80 million of environmental benefits and cost savings each year. . .The annual maintenance cost of a tree is roughly $4.20. For every dollar spent on maintenance, trees return $3.20 to the community. . .Trees located in areas where it is difficult for them to grow – such as street(s) – return about $1.35 of benefits for  every dollar spent.”

So, the bottom line is, as this banker quips, “keeping the green on our streets, keeps the green in our wallets.”

Still, whenever I read one of Mr. Alexander’s informative, cheerfully written reports, I get the impression he’s talking about something bigger than just the subject on which he’s focussing. 

Two years ago, he authored a widely-quoted study on the long-term benefits of investing public money in structured, universally accessible early childhood education. His argument followed a familiar train: “High quality early childhood education (ECE) has widespread and long-lasting effects – not only for children, but for parents and the economy as a whole. . .For every dollar invested, analysis shows the return ranges from roughly $1.5 to almost $3, with the benefit ratio for disadvantaged children being in the double digits.”

There is a certain, hopeful subtext in all of this – the notion that our lives in this country needn’t be proscribed by the procedural manipulations of capital markets, and the cookie-cutter thinking these inevitably produce.

Sometimes, by dint of real imagination, we do spend money on the right things precisely to improve our lot and that of our neighbour. 

We do see the forest for the trees.

 

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Jun 10 2014
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General

A city begins to breathe again

 

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It took some time for the awful realization to dawn on the outside world, but when it did, the tweets, text messages and emails poured in from all over the country and beyond. Good friends and relatives and even a few people I haven’t seen or spoken to in years all wanted to know: How was I holding up?

A darn sight better, I would say, than residents of a triangle of Moncton’s northwest end, apocalyptically dubbed “the red zone”. That’s where Codiac RCMP had a heavily armed Justin Bourque – the alleged killer of three of their fellow officers last week – holed up for 30 hours. Their message for that neighbourhood: Lock your doors, head for the basement, stay away from the windows and, of course, try not to worry.

It was good advice for anyone, a somber yet determined Mayor George LeBlanc, declared. The important thing now was to do what we were told and let the police do the job for which they were trained. But, really, I wondered, can anyone ever be fully trained to handle the scope of tragedy that transpired in the evening hours of June 4?

I covered the cops as a general assignment reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail in the 1980s. In those days, shootings (often fatal) were an almost daily occurrence, but they were usually drug or gang related. Even so, those peace officers knew that when they put on their uniforms in the morning, they were also, to some extent, painting bulls eyes on their backs.

In interviews (or just over a few beers after work) they would tell me that the worst type of call they had to make in the course of their duties was in response to report about a lone gunman. Fortunately, it didn’t happen often. Still, they would say, drug lords are predictable. Their violence was calculated; just business. A crazy with a semi-automatic is a whole different animal.

Under those circumstances, then, when cops tell you to stay put and keep your head down, it makes sense to heed them. And, fortunately, thousands in Moncton did just that last week. But, for some of us who were not near or in the quarantined area, the temptation to answer the question the world was posing was irresistible.

How, indeed, were we holding up?

The city was in lockdown. No schools or government offices were open. Most stores and private businesses were shuttered for the duration. My neighbourhood, which is usually full of old people walking their dogs and young mums pushing their strollers en route to some happy rendezvous, was bizarrely quiet. And, yet, here and there, as we strolled down the leafy streets of the old west end, my wife and I detected small signs of life as usual.

“Oh, look, there’s so-and-so weeding her garden,” one of us would comment.

“Yes, and look, it seems that her neighbour so-and-so is getting ready to mow,” the other would remark.

We felt a little like anthropologists observing the habits and customs of a newly discovered tribe of humans, oblivious to the cargoes of violence just beyond their apprehension. 

On the other hand, we knew that we, too, belonged to that community of vigilant putterers who seemed determined to, as the British foreign ministry commanded at the outbreak of World War II, “keep calm and carry on.”

As we stopped to chat, our conversations seemed almost defiantly cheerful. 

Yes, the current predicament was horrible. Yes, our hearts went out to the poor families of the fallen officers. 

But, also, yes this was an exceedingly rare event in a city that boasts a stellar record of orderliness and bonhomie. Yes, the RCMP will prevail. And, yes, we will pull together and get through this, just as we have other travails in our municipal history.

In fact, the good news for the general state of our shared civilization is that most communities in this country do surmount their tragedies.

That, of course, is the subtext of the question: How were we holding up? 

Last week, we were managing. Now, with faith and an unbridled sense of community, it starts to get better.

 

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Jun 06 2014
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Politics

Election counting down to more of the same

 

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If one recent opinion survey is any indication, New Brunswickers believe there’s a big difference between the party-sanctioned storybook of Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward and that of his youthful rival Liberal Leader Brian Gallant. 

In fact, if the election were held today, the chances are excellent that the latter would sweep into power with a landslide for his roster of candidates.

Corporate Research Associates of Halifax reports that more than one-half of decided voters in the province support the Liberals (53 per cent), while less than three in ten (28 per cent) back the Tories, who well on their way to completing their first and only term of office. 

“Presently, one-third of New Brunswick residents are either completely or mostly satisfied with the provincial government (35 per cent, compared with 33 per cent three months ago), while over one-half (54 per cent, compared with 56 per cent) are dissatisfied,” the pollster reports. “Meanwhile, 11 per cent do not offer an opinion (compared with 10 per cent).”

Also telling are the leaders’ respective personal popularity ratings among prospective voters. “David Alward’s. . .is stable this quarter, with two in ten New Brunswick residents preferring (him) for Premier (20 per cent, compared with 22 per cent in February),” CRA says. “Brian Gallant of the Liberal Party is preferred by one-third of residents (35 per cent, compared with 31 per cent).”

If nothing else, this suggests that New Brunswickers share feelings about the leaders, themselves, that are anywhere from dim to luke-warm, but are markedly more animated when it comes to the official platforms of the parties. And, in this regard, the public is going Grit, at least for now. 

But how different are PC priorities from Liberal ones in this province? 

The fiscal eco-system is the same wherever you go, regardless of the team jersey you happen to be wearing. The long-term debt is $11 billion and climbing for Grits and Tories, alike (and, as we’re standing up to be counted, for NDPers and Greens). The annual deficit of $500 million doesn’t yield to anyone – not even to those who wear their ideologies on their sleeves.

All this virtually guarantees that if and when Mr. Gallant assumes the reigns from Mr. Alward this fall, he will face the same bruising problems that have coloured life and politics in this province over the past four years. In this instance, Grit and Tory messages will, by necessity, begin to sound eerily similar.

In fact, in many respects, they do already.

When Premier Alward delivered his 2014 State of the Province address in January, he identified natural resources, innovation and job creation as “key components of the province’s plan for the future. . .It is time to bring our greatest resource, our people, home to work.  We have a clear plan to create jobs by growing a domestic oil and natural gas industry in New Brunswick, re-establishing our forestry sector as a leader in North America, and planting the seeds for growth in our knowledge sectors that will drive our economy for generations.”

Meanwhile, here’s what Mr. Gallant has been saying about the province’s future, according to the provincial Liberal Party website:

“We need to do a better job training New Brunswickers to fill current and future jobs. By investing in our people, we can match our workforce with the available jobs, get people to work, and power the growth of New Brunswick’s economy. . .We can find more ways to add value to our products. We can help our agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture industries become more efficient, so they can compete in other markets and against businesses around the world. . .Investments in knowledge and updating our school curriculum can help us grow emerging industries, such as the Information Communications Technology (ICT) Sector.”

If one didn’t know better, one might say these two gentlemen were pitching in the same bullpen.

There are differences, of course. The premier likes his natural gas fracked and ready to serve, while Mr. Gallant may or may not be allergic to the stuff (he hasn’t quite decided). 

Fundamentally, though, unless the political rhetoric changes and the candidates begin leveling with the public about the enormous, decidedly non-partisan, problems the province faces, the choice voters make in 100 days won’t herald a new beginning as much as it will the same old story.

 

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Jun 06 2014
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Climate, Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

New Brunswick’s climate change talking points

 

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Greenhouse gas emission targets, like New Year’s resolutions, are made to be broken. Still, as loyal supplicants of the state of denial otherwise known as New Brunswick, it behooves all of us to wish Premier Alward and company all the best with their new Climate Change Action Plan.

Luck? You’re going to need it. 

“To do its part under the Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers (NEG-ECP) 2013 Climate Change Action Plan,” the strategy, released on Monday, declares. “New Brunswick has committed to achieving greenhouse gas reduction targets of: Ten per cent below 1990 levels by 2020; and 75-85 per cent below 2001 levels by 2050.”

Apparently, this is perfectly doable. After all, as the report notes, the province managed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent between 2005 and 2010, even as it grew its economy by 19 per cent over that period.

Forget that in 2011, New Brunswick belched 18.6 million tonnes of 

CO2 equivalent, which amounted to the third-highest per capita emissions in the country, behind Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Forget, too, that as the plan clearly states, “New Brunswick’s economy faces challenges due to its high ‘carbon intensity’. In other words, the province consumes a relatively large amount of energy per dollar of economic production, and despite recent 

progress, much of the energy New Brunswick uses still comes from refined petroleum products. With the transition to a lower carbon economy well on its way, people around the world are making significant changes to the way they do business. As a province that exports much of what it produces, New Brunswick’s reputation and real performance in climate change may affect its trade competitiveness in international markets.”

All of which is another way of saying what U.S. Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman warned this week: If we don’t soon get our climate-change act together up here, north of the 48th, there will be economic consequences to pay elsewhere on the world stage.

“We need to continue (the) work together moving toward a low-carbon future, with alternative energy choices, with greater energy choices, with greater energy efficiency, and sustainable extraction of our oil and gas reserves,” he said in a speech in Ottawa on Monday. “This is not a task we can take on individually. It can only be successfully challenged together.”

Mr. Heyman made his remarks as his boss U.S. President Barack Obama’s unveiled sweeping, new plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 per cent by 2030. 

Again, like New Brunswick’s targets, the number feels arbitrary. Who knows what can happen in five years, let alone 15 or 35? Almost no one foresaw the industrial output-killing Great Recession of 2008, which, incidentally, did more than all the earnest policy makers in the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Still, it’s a start, and that’s more than we can say for our own venerable leader Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose only response to criticism this week that he’s not moving fast enough to match US. initiatives on climate change was downright surly: “(Obama is) acting two years after this government acted and taking actions that do not go nearly as far as this government went.”

The unvarnished truth is, however, that the Yanks are on course to cut all of their emissions by 15 per cent by 2020. In contrast, we Canucks are more or less happily sitting with our heads stuck in the Alberta oil sands, where production dooms any hope of meeting our oft-stated reduction target of 17 per cent a scant six years from now.

In New Brunswick, several factors militate against the new action plan’s chances of success. Oddly enough, none of these has anything to do with tight oil and gas development, an as yet unrealized sweet dream, or wretched nightmare, depending on who’s doing the talking.

Without dramatic, even temporarily traumatic, changes to the energy mix in this province – without a concerted effort to cut back usage, conserve electricity and, finally, migrate to renewable sources for in situ consumption – all of our greenhouse gas reduction targets will remain, like so many of our other promises in New Brunswick, made to be broken.

 

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Jun 04 2014
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Democracy, Politics, Privacy

Who watches the watchdog?

 

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The degree to which Daniel Therrien will faithfully execute the duties of his office as Canada’s incoming privacy commissioner rests entirely on his appreciation of the meaning of one word.

Call it independence or objectivity or dispassion, but the mandate and mission of this parliamentary watchdog are both clear and specific. 

They go like this, straight from the official record: “The mandate of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) is overseeing compliance with both the Privacy Act, which covers the personal information-handling practices of federal government departments and agencies, and the Personal Information Protection and Electronics Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada’s private sector privacy law. The mission. . .is to protect and promote the privacy rights of individuals.” 

In this, “the Commissioner works independently from any other part of the government to investigate complaints from individuals with respect to the federal public sector and Sutherland private sector.” 

So, then, what are Canadians to make of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s choice to succeed Interim Commissioner Chantal Bernier? By all appearances, the two could not possess more divergent pedigrees. 

Like her predecessor, Jennifer Stoddart, Ms. Bernier comes from the traditional, bible-thumping school of public watchdoggery, preaching the gospel of accountability in all things government-related, come what may. 

In contrast, Mr. Therrien’s resume reads like that of a consummate insider, a man who appears to be more comfortable with going along to get along. His official bio, posted to the Prime Minister of Canada’s website, is unapologetic, even cheerful:

“In his current role, among other notable achievements, Mr. Therrien co-led the negotiating team responsible for the adoption of privacy principles governing the sharing of information between Canada and the U.S. under the Beyond the Border Accord, an umbrella agreement to enhance trade and security which includes 33 specific arrangements. These principles provide for the implementation, harmonization and augmentation of safeguards found in Canadian and U.S. Privacy legislation.”

To his supporters (among them, somewhat incongruously, is Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau), Mr. Therrien is the model of perspicacity, experience and knowledge – exactly what the office he will soon fill needs. To his detractors, he’s a catastrophe waiting to happen.

In a letter to Mr. Harper, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair asserted, among other things, that Mr. Therrien “has nether the neutrality nor the necessary detachment to hold this position.” 

Michael Geist, an electronic security consultant, also expressed concerns. “Surely, the government is sending a bit of a signal that in an environment when there were other privacy commissioners and people with deep backgrounds on the privacy side, that they’ve chosen to focus on someone whose most recent emphasis has been on safety and security,” he told the Toronto Star last week. 

In a different time, none of this would have captured the public’s imagination quite so compellingly. After all, the privacy office, itself, wields more moral than legal persuasion over the affairs of public servants. It reports to Parliament, which is, for the moment, numerically weighted in favour of the sitting government. 

Still, the digital age – the age of whistle-blowers like Edward Snowdon and Julian Assange – has produced its very own brand of fear and loathing, where big brothers lurk around every street corner just under the closed circuit TV monitors that record you picking your nose as you jaywalk to work. 

Now, along with all the other bad news to digest, comes a front-page report in the New York Times this week that alleges the National Security Agency in the United States is “harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents.”

In this environment, Mr. Therrien’s nomination deserves the scrutiny it’s getting.

He may well be the dutiful, responsible, careful thinker his backers describe. He may be better-equipped to exercise his duties than any parliamentary watchdog, before or since. He may be a mandarin who manages to cross over from public servant to ombudsman, seamlessly. 

But will he be independent, the essence of his task? 

Time – that commodity this democracy is running down every day – will tell.

 

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Jun 03 2014
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Education, Politics

It’s time to walk the talk on education

 

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Fisheries and Oceans minister Gail Shea’s heart is in the right place when she says that education is the key to Canada’s long-term prosperity.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s heart (such as it is) is likewise in the right place when he urges the international community to emulate this country’s commitment to improving maternal and child welfare around the world. 

Still, actions always speak louder than words, and when it comes to putting their money where their mouths are here at home – where functional illiteracy rates are among the highest in the industrialized world and the federal government’s conception of early childhood education is nothing more than a grab bag of measly tax giveaways to individuals and families – national leaders are mute to the point of perpetual silence.

“A skilled workforce leads to a stronger economy with more and better jobs,” Minister Shea told a graduating class of Holland College in Prince Edward Island last week. “For governments, more people working means more people paying taxes. Taxes are necessary for providing things like health care and education. So, it is an investment in the future, it is an investment in you, and it is an investment in the province and the country, as well.”

She added: “Everybody graduating here tonight has recognized that having a better education and greater skills will help you achieve success.”

Elsewhere, Prime Minister Harper told participants in a three-day summit of maternal and child health, “It’s a philosophy of our government, and I think of Canadians more broadly, that we do not measure things in terms of the amount of money we spend but in terms of the results we achieve.”

Later, in an interview with the Globe and Mail, he elaborated: “We’re in a truly global world. So I do think it is in our broader, enlightened self-interest to make the world a better place. But I also do think some of these things are just worth doing in their own right. We are a very wealthy and lucky people. . .Most of us were fortunate to be born at this point in history and in this particular country.”

But how will history and this country’s future generations judge this particular point in time? 

Mr. Harper is absolutely correct. On a per capital basis, Canada is, compared with its trading partners, awash with cash. The country is set to return to surplus within the next few months and, barring unforeseen events (such as those that afflicted world financial markets in 2008), natural resources development will buoy the economy, injecting sustainable volumes of black ink into federal government coffers for years to come. 

What should we do with that boon? Should we instruct our elected leaders to return it to our individual bank accounts? Or should we take a longer, more considered view of our nation’s true source of wealth and economic durability? 

Universities and vocational colleges consistently complain that our children (when these institutions get their hands on them) are woefully ill-equipped to compete in the labour markets of the world. The kids are, in fact, not alright. Higher education scrambles to undo what lower education has done to little Johnny and Jane. 

Meanwhile, the pressure to train young people to fit existing job roles mounts, even as advanced disciplines in critical thinking, communications and cultural awareness fade to the vanishing point along the horizon most other – and less economically promising – economies as ours, dutifully chart. 

A half-century of hard-won experience in places like Norway, Sweden and Finland convincingly argues that state investments in national early childhood education programs are the best hedges against illiteracy, lassitude, crime, and social dissolution among young people.  

And yet, with few exceptions, Canada – with all its money and resources, with all its hearts in the right places – chooses to spend the money it hasn’t promised to return to taxpayers on prisons, military aircraft that don’t fly and staged commemorations of wars it may or may not have won two centuries ago. 

It’s long past time to put our money where Gail Shea’s mouth is.

 

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Jun 02 2014
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Environment, Politics

Political palaver is making global warming worse

 

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If Prime Minister Stephen Harper is waiting for his frenemy in statecraft, U.S. President Barack Obama, to establish a regulatory agenda for carbon emissions before he raises any finger but his middle ones to his critics in the environmental lobby, his patience will soon be rewarded.

Today, the putative leader of the free world introduces what one news report describes as “the most significant action on climate change in American history.”  According to the Guardian online, “The proposed regulations Obama will launch at the White House on Monday could cut carbon pollution by as much as 25 per cent from about 1,600 power plants in operation today.”

Consider that these facilities account for as much 40 per cent of all emissions in the United States, and you can’t help suspect that these rules might actually possess some gravitas for a change. 

Consider, also, that Mr. Obama is using his executive authority without the imprimatur of Congress, where nearly half of sitting Republicans publicly reject the science behind climate change. That means no pesky horse-trading when it comes to the language and substance of the new regs.

In effect, reports the Guardian, “The rules, which were drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency and are under review by the White House, are expected to do more than Obama, or any other president, has done so far to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions responsible for climate change. They will put America on course to meet its international climate goal, and put US diplomats in a better position to leverage climate commitments from big polluters such as China and India.”

Or as the president told graduates of West Point during a speech last week, “I intend to make sure America is out front in a global framework to preserve our planet. American influence is always stronger when we lead by example. We can not exempt ourselves from the rules that apply to everyone else.”

Hmmm. What say you now, Mr. Harper?

For years, Canada’s prime minister has insisted he can’t do much to further his international commitments – particularly, the ones he made in 2009 at the Copenhagen climate change conference – to reducing this nation’s carbon footprint without a clear signal and comprehensive guidelines from its largest trading partner.

Now, he has it. 

In fact, one could argue, he’s had it for nearly a year. 

“Today, President Obama is putting forward a broad-based plan to cut the carbon pollution that causes climate change and affects public health. The plan, which consists of a wide variety of executive actions, has three key pillars: Cut carbon pollution in America; prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change; lead international efforts to combat global climate change and prepare for its impacts.”

That’s an excerpt from a document entitled, “The President’s Climate Action Plan”, dated June 25, 2013. It is, apparently, the fountainhead for this week’s regulations. And, according to a recent report in the Globe and Mail, somebody in the environment ministry was well aware of the plan on the day of its unveiling last summer.

“The United States has implemented limits on emissions from the oil and gas sector that are ‘significant’ and ‘comparable‘ to those the Conservative government is considering, says a newly releases Environment Canada memo, one that contradicts Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s assertion that Canada is waiting for the U.S. regulations before it will act,” the Globe piece revealed. “The June, 2013, memo. . .was produced after President Barack Obama released his Climate Action Plan that day.”

How curious, then, that Mr. Harper – apparently oblivious to Mr. Obama’s initiative – should tell Global News in December, that regulating Canada’s oil and gas  emissions “would be best done if we could do this in concert with our major trading partner…so that’s what I’m hoping we’ll be able to do over the next couple of years.”

The good news is, of course, nothing now prevents Mr. Harper from boldly going where no westernized, reform Tory has gone before: To the front lines in the battle to save the planet from too much hot air; a commodity, it seems, that’s common to polluters and politicians, in equal measure.

 

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