Fish Lip Service

Imagine that your government would only protect you if you were proven to be valuable to the economy.  Imagine that even if you were valuable to your economy, and therefore legally had the protection of the government, they are careful to point out that they will only protect you, not your home.  Would you feel protected?

This is what has happened to the fisheries act under Bill C-38: the government has been careful to clarify which fish they will protect (only those with commercial value), and they've removed protection for the habitat of fish.  This has all been done for the sake of cutting red tape for development projects, and the government insists that it has not reduced actual protection, just bureaucracy.  But how can they single out a few types of fish to protect in the midst of an ecosystem?  And how can they expect to protect those fish without protecting the places where those fish live, breathe, eat, and spawn?  In this regard, what is true of a fish is also true of you and me: how can we be healthy and safe if our environment, which provides the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, and the materials for our shelter, clothing, and other consumer goods, is not itself healthy and safe?

Of course, just because the government no longer protects the habitat of fish doesn't necessarily mean that they are at risk.  Development projects still must undergo environmental reviews, even though those have been streamlined significantly (read: sped up).  But new legislation actually gives a minister the ability to circumvent the assessment process, if the project is significant enough.  

So we have protection of fish, but without protection of streams; and we have (fast) environmental assessments, unless it's a really big project, in which case it can be skipped.  This speaks volumes about the Harper government's commitment to a growing economy at all costs, as well as its belief that economy and environment are opposed to one another and economy must triumph over environment.  These assumptions are simply untrue.

There is a belief, common in our government, that environmentalists are against the economy.  What an absurd claim!  We have jobs, pay taxes, buy the products we need (and want), give to charity, and volunteer in our communities, just like everyone else.  While we may debate over whether continual growth is positive (or even possible), we know we need an economy to survive as a community, as a nation.  What environmentalists don't believe in is a growing economy at all costs.   

Protection of the environment is not about being a bleeding-heart animal lover, or coveting our favourite canoeing spots.  Economy cannot exist without environment, which is the source of all of our goods and resources.  To pay lip service to protection of the environment while allowing major industrial projects to skip even an assessment is disingenuous, and will ultimately cut the legs of our economy (that is, our environment) out from under us.

Jeff Wheeldon

Wanted: Extraordinary Canadians

Penguin Canada recently released a biography of Tommy Douglas, one volume of their Extraordinary Canadians series.  I received it for Christmas, and finished reading it on December 27^th.  At only 221 pages it was a light and fun read, a brief outline of the career of the Greatest Canadian (as Douglas was voted in 2004) that gave a strong sense of his character and personality.  By the end of the book I had a great sense of loss: we need Tommy Douglas in Canada today, just as much as we needed him in his own time.

I was not yet two years old when Tommy Douglas died, so I have never known a Canada without his incredible contributions.  He’s known as the father of Medicare in Canada, which (in spite of its problems) is an institution that is treasured by most Canadians, but he and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF, the fore-runner of the NDP) were the first to promote many ideas and institutions that I’ve always known to be a part of life in Canada.  The original CCF mission statement, The Regina Manifesto (1932), called for the protection of rights for ethnic and religious minorities; a Canadian constitution, charter of rights, and central bank; national workplace standards, EI, CPP, and public healthcare.  At the time, they were called Communists for suggesting such things; now, at least thirty years after we’ve adopted all of those ideas, we take them for granted.  Fairly impressive work, considering that Douglas, the CCF, and the NDP that followed it have never formed a federal government!  Their small voice in government and the Canadian public square, over time, have had great effect.

Throughout this biography I was struck by the ways in which our situation today reflects the situations that Douglas faced.  The rhetoric used against Douglas and the CCF in political campaigns, both in Saskatchewan and federally, compared them to Nazis and Communists in the same sentence, charged that they would confiscate farms and require all citizens to work for the government, and many other baseless claims; these make our attack ads today seem petty and tame by comparison.  And the reaction against their proposed universal health care included the charge that “bureaucrats would commit women with menopausal symptoms to insane asylums”, which sounds just as bizarre as the reaction to the so-called Obamacare that continues to rage in the US.

Today, all of the angry rhetoric and baseless claims are against the suggestion that we need a system that is environmentally and economically sustainable.  Sustainability, like universal health care, is a sensible solution to problems caused by our society.  It's not partisan ideology.  Like healthcare, a government policy on sustainability is simply Canadians doing together what we already do individually: take care of each other.  In the midst of all of the debates about climate and oil, it's easy to lose sight of that.  We need new Tommy Douglases to rise above the rhetoric and insist on what is right.

Jeff Wheeldon 

Voluntary Simplicity

I recently heard about a survey that found that those young adults who carry the most debt are also the one who feel most empowered with their finances. It is only as they get older that they realize that their debt does not empower them; rather it controls them. The above poll-based observation describes the average Canadian! The average Canadian owes $1.50 for every $1.00 he owns and does not realize how much he is controlled by his debt. 

It seems bizarre, but I can understand why we feel that sense of empowerment.  When we buy something, we experience the power of money – the power to get what we want.  If we buy something with cash, that feeling goes away once the money is gone and the novelty of the purchase wears off; but with credit, we carry a constant power source in our wallets, with a power that doesn't really wear off until we go bankrupt.

However, that feeling of power is just that: a feeling, an illusion – not reality. In the ancient world, prisons were used primarily to house people who couldn't pay their debts.  We may not be in prison because of our debts; nevertheless, our debts control us as if we were. Our grandparents didn't carry so much debt. So why do we?

You may have heard of something called "Voluntary Simplicity.” Depending on whom you heard it from; you may believe that it is a growing movement of self-sufficiency and non-compliance to corporate powers. On the other hand, you may consider it a hippy stunt that would have us all poor and living in communes. Voluntary Simplicity has to do with being frugal, making things rather than buying them, and making do with less – and depending on your perspective, that could sound like heaven, or even hell. 

Let me suggest another way altogether of looking at this concept of Voluntary Simplicity, a way we all be able to relate to: voluntary simplicity is about financial freedom in a world full of debt. It's about knowing the true value of things, and refusing to pay more – or less – than something is worth.  It's about re-learning the skills that make our heritage so rich, and sharing our knowledge and support with our communities.  It's about knowing that spending money only gives you a feeling of power, whereas the real power lies in deciding not to spend money on things you don't need. It's about knowing that, as Scotiabank regularly reminds us, "you're richer than you think" – because real wealth is not defined by our credit limits.

We invite you to join us in thinking about voluntary simplicity and simpler living. Val Hiebert, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Providence University College will share her insights as she addresses the South Eastman Transition Initiative at the Eastman Education Centre, Loewen Blvd, next Thursday, November 24th at 7:00 pm.

By Jeff Wheeldon             

Twenty Years

I will be 27 years old this year, so perhaps my scope is a bit small, but when I think about the passing of twenty years it seems to me to be a long time. A lot can happen in a day, much less a year; and being only 26 years old, I’m well aware that much has changed in my lifetime. Twenty years, in terms of our planet, is a drop in the bucket; but in terms of the way we humans change our world, and change the way we interact with it and with each other, twenty years holds an awful lot of change. Or does it?

Reading a book from 1990, I came across a section on “The Ecological Crisis.” I was continually surprised to find the dates of references to be no later than 1990, because they read like today’s newspaper. Twenty years ago, we faced the same ecological issues we face today, including climate change, water and air pollution, threats from non-native species that lack predators in their new environments, overflowing landfills, and the extinction of as many as two dozen species per day, to name but a few. We’ve come so far since then in technology, human rights, health, and many other areas; why hasn’t the headline changed for ecology?

That’s not to say that we’ve done nothing. In 1990, when I was six years old, there were only two ecological problems that I was aware of: acid rain, and the hole in the ozone layer. Both of those issues have, to some extent, been solved by new technology. But what hasn’t changed at all was the real cause of those issues: human consumption of fossil fuels, and the over-use of chemicals. Since 1990 our culture has changed dramatically, our access to information has never been better, and our connectivity to one another and the rest of the world is almost beyond belief – yet when it comes to the environment, we’ve merely replaced one chemical with another rather than change our behaviour. And these are for our environmental successes: there remain the issues of deforestation, destructive mining practices, extinction of species, and of course climate change, that we’ve hardly begun to address.

Since 1990 we have seen some improvements in the way we think: attitudes about things like recycling and smoking have changed dramatically. Green has become chic. But attitudes and actions do not always go together, and if we want to live responsibly in this world, they must. I don’t expect human behaviour to change as quickly as technology, or even as quickly as attitudes; meaningful trends take longer to develop than fashion or technology. But what if we didn’t wait for the trend to develop, and instead were intentional about making a change, as individuals, as communities, and as a nation? If we set our minds to it, there doesn’t seem to be much that we can’t accomplish in a very short time. Let’s make the next 20 years count.

Jeff Wheeldon