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

Beyond Capitalism

We had a booth at Summer in the City. Our theme was Envisioning a Solar Future. We drew attention to the many opportunities we have to harness solar power: solar for electricity – to light our houses and to pump water in off-grid situations; solar to heat water – for domestic use and to heat our homes; solar to bake our food and solar to dry and preserve our food. We had some excellent conversations.

Many people wondered what price they would pay for the various solar systems. We did have the answer that question and advised them to check with suppliers.

However there is another answer to the question of cost, that suppliers can’t answer. I recently spoke with a friend who has covered most of his south facing roof with solar electric panels. On a sunny day he generates more electricity than he can use, and sells the surplus to Manitoba Hydro. When the sun goes down, he purchases electricity from Manitoba Hydro. It all looks impressive.

I challenged my friend and suggested it would take him twenty years to recover his investment. He told me that, by his calculations, cost recovery will take seventeen years without considering interest; perhaps thirty years considering interest. But, he challenged me, why should the rate of return on an investment be considered the most important criteria when making an investment.

“Were I seeking the highest financial return on an investment I am making,” he continued, “I should invest in the Alberta tar sands. Were I to do that, I believe my investment would be bad for my children on the long run. With these solar panels, I am investing in something I believe will be good for them.”

As I have reflected on what he said, I come to realize there is something very profound in that way of thinking.

Capitalist thinking has had a profound effect on all of us. It has taught us that the most important, perhaps only, consideration when making an investment is the financial return on that investment. I dare say those of us who have our savings in the Credit Union, have them there primarily because the return there is higher than at the bank. The fact that the Credit Union is built on not-for-profit principles is incidental to our investment choice. This is capitalism at its best, but not humanity at its best.

Capitalism does not ask whether an investment contributes to the creation of beauty or the destruction of beauty. It does not ask whether an investment contributes to the taking of life or the giving of life. It is concerned only with the financial return.

This does not mean capitalism is bad. It becomes bad, however, when the investor is not conscious of capitalism’s limitations. Unfortunately, all too often we are so enamored with the allure of capitalism that we forget this limitation. If more of us would apply ethical criteria to our investments, there is little doubt that the world would be a better place.

By Eric Rempel

Measuring Wellbeing

Last week I lamented the continuing emphasis on GNP and growth, not only by our governments at all levels, but also within our news media. The media is educating us in the inadequacy of GNP as a measure of our wellbeing, and then that same media floods us with information about GNP as if that is the only measurable indicator of wellbeing.

As long as we focus on GNP, our concern will be the amount of money changing hands each quarter, not the actual well-being delivered by the economy. Taking seriously a different way of measuring wellbeing is crucial to establishing a sane, sustainable, steady state economy.

The unlikely country of Bhutan, a kingdom in the Himalayas with a population about that of Winnipeg, is giving world leadership in the development of a “Gross National Happiness” indicator. By the standard measurements of wealth, Bhutan is not a rich country. In terms of GNP per capita, Bhutan is ranked 130 in the world. But they have established as a national goal, to become happy, rather than to become rich. As early as 2007, Business Week ranked Bhutan as the happiest country in Asia, and the eighth happiest in the world.

At a recent UN conference, the Prime Minister of Bhutan observed that GDP growth is killing the planet, destroying our future, and making humanity less equitable and, on the whole, more miserable. I think he’s right.

Any attempt to measure happiness will, without a doubt, draw the skeptical response that any such measure must, by its nature, be subjective. While this is true, the implied inference that such a measurement is then unreliable and of little value needs to be challenged. If we limit our pursuits to the attainment of indicators that are easily measured (economic growth), we are doomed to pursue that which is unattainable: perpetual growth.

Remember, if you hang your laundry out to dry, letting the sun and wind do the drying, you do not contribute to GNP. But if you throw it in the dryer and use electricity, you give the GNP a nudge upward. If one parent stays home to care for children, the GNP index is not happy. If both parents take a job and place their children in daycare, the GNP smiles.

It is interesting to note that following Bhutan’s lead, Britain's David Cameron, and France's Nicolas Sarkozy have become supporters of adding well-being to raw economic indicators. Australia, New Zealand, China, Italy, Japan and South Africa are some other countries that are considering measuring wellbeing as a way of informing policy.

Here we have the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. Data for this is being collected by a non-government group, which may be a good thing in that it makes it independent of political bias.

Unfortunately however, any reading of the federal omnibus budget bill now before the house must conclude that the only interest this federal government has, is in economic growth. This bias could be offset by greater enlightenment at the provincial or municipal level. But it is lacking there too.

Eric Rempel

Why the Continuing Emphasis on GNP?

It happened again last night. The national news reported “Canada's gross national product [GNP] grew at a 1.9 per cent annual pace in the first three months of the year, the same pace seen at the end of 2011.” So what does this tell us? Well it tells us that the total value of everything produced by enterprises in Canada grew by 1.9% annually. What it does not tell us is whether this growth was good or bad.

I find this discouraging! Discouraging because 30 years ago, in 1992, the same broadcaster, the CBC, first showed me how inadequate and potentially misleading reporting GNP is. 1992 was the year of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. If you don’t remember it, google for it. This was the first UN conference on the Environment and Development. The CBC, and other media covered it extensively. It was because of that conference and that reporting that conference, that many of us first realized the fragility of the environment we depend on, and the negative impact human activity is having on the very resources we depend on for life.

Specifically on the GNP, I came to realize that an oil spill off the coast of British Columbia does more to raise the GNP than the discovery of a new cure for cancer. We were told then, of the need for more meaningful indicators of well-being than GNP.

And much as been done to develop a new index. Best known is the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW). But it is hardly well known. It is ironical that the same media that covers and applauds the existence of this index, does not use it.

I find it discouraging that the media, in spite of giving us these stories about the need and development of better indicators of national well-being, continue to use GNP in their reporting as if it is the only indicator of our nation’s economic health with any value.

No doubt the GNP is easier to measure than the CIW. I suspect it is realistic to expect a report on GNP every quarter, whereas a quarterly report on CIW is probably not possible. Nevertheless, I think it is reasonable to expect a news item on GNP to include some comment on more meaningful context. For example “GNP rose slightly this month, but we don’t expect that to have an effect on the CIW because . . .” I think our news media is guilty of biased reporting whenever it reports on GNP and doesn’t place that in the context of wellbeing.

Somewhere within us, we all know that some growth is good, and some is not good. When reporting growth, the media has a responsibility to help us discern the likely effect that growth is having on our wellbeing. Were the media to do that, we all would be more critical, in a good sort of way, of any growth occurring around us. And were we all to have that critical capacity, it would affect the policies favoured by our politicians.

 Eric Rempel

Rethinking Global Finance (II)

Two  weeks ago I alerted readers to the fact that global financial institutions, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are presently in the process of rethinking the advice they give to governments around the world. They have become acutely aware that the present trajectory of financial practices is simply not sustainable.

Johnny West, founder of OpenOil, a Berlin-based consultancy in oil and other extractive industries, and columnist for Petroleum Economist, has written extensively about some of the new thinking that is happening in these global institutions.

At the heart of this re-orientation is the notion that much more of the profits of extractive industries like oil and mining should flow towards local governments. According to Paul Collier, governments should then use these funds to “Invest in investing: the creation not of industries but of the infrastructure to support them, that infrastructure being partly physical, such as roads and utilities, and partly social, such as developing trading and legal systems which encourage private investment.”

Unlike manufacturing that actually makes something people need, extractive industries are making massive profits by delivering products to people who own them in the first place. (Consider that in 2008 Exxon made a profit of $45 billion dollars – the largest profit ever recorded by a company.) Because of this unique dimension of extractive industries, it is argued that we can stay well within capitalist orthodoxy by also applying unique taxation practices for these industries without creating market distortions.

The traditional argument is that these massive profits are justified because of the huge risks these companies take in discovering their products. However, with present computerized data now available on the substructure of most of the earth’s surface, the risks are substantially reduced. Why, for example, should government not use this data to identify where oil and minerals are located and then auction off the rights of extraction to the highest bidder. Nova Scotia did just that recently. It invested $15 million in oil exploration and then sold extraction rights for $900 million. You could argue that the rightful owners got the lion’s share of the profits.

There is cause for concern, for example, when corporations are extracting large amounts of oil from some African countries which are largely fed by Save the Children or the World Food Program. What would happen if, in such cases, the IMF moved in to advise local governments to insist that most of those oil profits should go to feed their own people and strengthen local infrastructure?

Some of the impetus for this new way of thinking is coming from Latin America where an increasing number of countries are claiming ownership of their own oil and minerals. It is becoming clear, that if private companies want to stay in the game, they will have to be willing to make major concessions. The World Bank and the IMF should see the writing on the wall and begin advising governments differently in relation to their extractive industries.  

Jack Heppner

Local Fruit, Free for the Sharing

Unless you have a mature orchard in your backyard you probably don’t have access to a diversity of local fruit. The grocery store may sell a small selection of local fruit, however most fruit is trucked in from afar. Distant fruit is picked early and expected to ripen enroute. This results in fruit with focus on texture rather than taste. How do you get local fruit when you don’t have fruit trees? The answer is Fruit Share.

Fruit Share is an organization started by Getty Stewart in Winnipeg that connects volunteer fruit pickers with tree [or rhubarb] owners to harvest luscious, local fruit. This year South Eastman Transition Initiative is bringing Fruit Share to Steinbach.

When you walk the neighbourhoods of Steinbach you may notice many fruit trees and bushes. Apple trees, cherry trees, and rhubarb plants are just a few of the possibilities. During September you may notice some fruit beginning to get over-ripe, it may even be littering the sidewalk on which you walk. Local fruit going to waste!

With many people struggling to fill their bellies, food should not be squandered. There are different reasons that fruit owners may not be able to harvest their own fruit. Fruit owners may not be physically able to reach the fruit on the high branches or they may not have time due to a busy schedule. Un-harvested fruit drops to the ground and rots; this attracts insects, undesirable animals and makes a mess.

Now Steinbach fruit owners who do not have the ability or desire to pick their own fruit can register with Fruit Share. Fruit Share will organize Steinbach volunteers to harvest that fruit. On the day of the harvest 1/3 of the fruit will go to the fruit owner, 1/3 will go to the volunteer pickers and 1/3 is donated to a local organization such as the South East Helping Hands Food Bank. Instead of wonderful fruit going to waste, Fruit Share connects those in the community who have excess to those that have a need.

Not only does Fruit Share rescue fruit and deliver it to those who want it, Fruit Share also builds community. New friendships and connections can be made over the sweet success of a full apple basket or a freshly baked crisp made from the harvest of a neighbour’s plentiful tree or bush.

Next time you bite into a tasteless apple trucked in from a distant land take the time to sign up with Fruit Share. Make your fruit trees available to those with the ability to harvest them or sign up to volunteer and go home from a harvest with an armload of delicious fruit costing you only an afternoon of picking with friends.

Fruit Share is now picking rhubarb. Do you have excess or are you looking to make some rhubarb crisps? Visit and register at www.fruitshare.ca or call Fruit Share Steinbach at 326-3919. 

Rebecca Hiebert

Rethinking Global Finance (I)

Most of the time we find ourselves preoccupied with personal and local issues with reference to developing sustainable lifestyles. In one sense that is appropriate because it is the sum of many individual choices that changes lifestyles generally in a region like Southeastern Manitoba. On occasion it is helpful, however, to raise our eyes to the global dynamics that either hinder or enhance sustainable lifestyles around the world.

Ever since World War II, two agencies that have impacted millions around the world are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They were created to assist developing countries to become economically viable. The World Bank would loan developing countries money for major projects designed to stimulate their economies. If a country had difficulty paying its debt, the IMF could be called upon for advice, additional monies or loan guarantees.

That was the theory. In reality it quickly became apparent that these agencies were the handmaidens of established governments and large corporations. In short, the following story was repeated around the globe: The World Bank persuaded developing countries to borrow money for projects to boost their economies. The money went directly to international corporations to build the projects but the debt was unloaded onto the developing country. When these loans could not be paid, the IMF came in to call for “structural adjustments” in exchange for debt reduction or further loan guarantees. These adjustments consisted of the three kingpins of neo-liberalism: privatization of public utilities, deregulation of industries and cuts to social spending. This, in turn, created an environment for international corporations to move in for the kill. (If you don’t believe this scenario, read “Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” by John Perkins, and “Shock Doctrine,” by Naomi Klein.)

This environment created a dynamic in which wealth inevitably flowed upward. The number of billionaires around the world began to mushroom while abject poverty continued largely unabated. And now even developed countries are beginning to look to the IMF to rescue their faltering economies. With most of the world’s wealth now in a few private hands, it is becoming clear that economies around the world are in deep trouble.

It is in this context that the World Bank and the IMF are attempting to re-invent themselves because the present trajectory is simply not sustainable. For the first time in history the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, is not an economist but an anthropologist and medical doctor who appears to be prepared to challenge status quo thinking at the World Bank. And the IMF is presently studying a paper proposing that extractive industries like oil and mining be taxed at a higher rate than other industries.

The IMF and the World Bank have a virtual monopoly on giving advice to governments about public finance and a whole lot else. So there is reason for optimism that the new winds blowing through these organizations will help to bring a greater degree of sustainability for economies around the world. More about this in two weeks.

Jack Heppner