Merry Christmas one and all.
***
It has been pretty much two years since I've started this blog. As of late things have slowed down here. Being swamped with work, tutoring, teaching, school and a new relationship I find that when I do have free time the last thing I want to do is think. I do think but it never seems to be at a moment when posting it here is feasible.
***
I've added some new links to the side menu. I've been doing some reading and thinking concerning consumerism and its effects on society and people. Not necessarily something new as I've posted on these subjects previously but I thought I'd share a couple of websites I found interesting.
***
I've gotten hooked on the new Battlestar Galactica tv series. I managed to find the first two seasons online and have simply loved the show. I recently found myself watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and was really suprised by the differences between the two shows.
Star Trek was birthed as a utopian concept. Rodenberry wanted to use a vision of utopia to critique and engage contemporary society. I was never a fan of the original series and can't really speak to it however having watched both TNG and DS9 I find that the Star Trek franchise has lost its way. In my opinion ST has become a show with two faces. The first face is a simple action adventure show. The second face is one of a preacher.
ST takes place in a future where humanity's faults have been irradicated and as such are left to self-righteous preaching towards other 'species' about how wrong they are and how humanity has found perfection. However I find the preacher rings hallow because there is no longer a connection with the society to which it is hoping to engage. I can't relate to any of the characters and as such the disconnect that exists works to defeat the message that they wish to impart. This of course defeats the original intent of the show: to engage society and create a forum for discussion.
The first face of ST, that of action adventure also fails Rodenberry's original vision. At best these shows or movies are decent science fiction but at worst they are just horrible. That isn't to say that they are bad episodes in the franchise just that when the writers go this route they lose sight of the utopian ideals of ST.
Battlestar Galactica however doesn't have any utopian imaginings. In some ways it tries to engage contemporary society, much like ST, however it does it more through an anti-utopian vision. In this re-imagined BSG, 99.9% of humanity has been wiped out by the fruits of its own creation; the Cylons a robotic race created by humanity to be its slaves and soldiers. However into this utopia reality called when the Cylons rebelled and a long and bloody war was waged. The war finally ended and the Cylons left the 12 Colonies and flew out into space not to be heard of again for 40 years. How did they reintroduce themselves? They nuked 12 planets.
What I like about this show is that it too has two faces, one that is action adventure and the other is social mirror. The difference between BSG and ST is that BSG doesn't have the utopian pretension of ST. The characters of BSG are displayed with their faults and weaknesses for all to see. This difference allows for a greater connection between the characters and the viewer as we are able to actually see ourselves in the situations presented on screen.
I believe that I have made it clear that I feel more of a connection with anti-utopian fiction however I do truly appreciate utopian fiction. Having studied utopian fiction I see its merits as a focal point on the horizon for us to strive towards. By pointing to the way things could be we can engage society and discuss the way things are. This was the original intent of Star Trek. I'll leave you with a quote from Oscar Wilde:
"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence."
***
Edit:
I watched a bit of Star Trek: First Conact during the holidays and there was this one scene where Picard is explaining the differences between the utopian future and the dystopian past that caught my attention. The woman asked how much a ship like Enterpise cost to build. Picard explained that the economics of the future worked differently and that they had no money. I personally see this as a primary element for utopia. So much of what I see that is wrong with the world today is driven by money and the desire for it that if we were to do away with it that we would be better off.
That is one thing that I appreciate about Star Trek.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Cement
Well today is my 20th consecutive day of work. Not a record by any stretch and in no way am I going to complain especially when compared to sweatshop workers in the thirdworld. Still its a bit tiring and leaves little time for a personal life. But now my first teaching placement is complete (I passed with flying colours by the way) and if there is one thing that I know, I know that I want to be a teacher.
I had always been a bit hesitant about it all, particularly with the idea of working with young kids, however that is all gone now. I am 100% secure in my decision to become a teacher.
The thing that cemented it all for me was after a morning away from the students that I had been teaching for two and a half weeks. When I returned to the class in the afternoon they were all over me, demanding to know why I wasn't with them and wanting to know where I was. It made me feel really good to know that I had been missed and that they had enjoyed having me in their classroom.
I can't wait to get back into the classroom.
I had always been a bit hesitant about it all, particularly with the idea of working with young kids, however that is all gone now. I am 100% secure in my decision to become a teacher.
The thing that cemented it all for me was after a morning away from the students that I had been teaching for two and a half weeks. When I returned to the class in the afternoon they were all over me, demanding to know why I wasn't with them and wanting to know where I was. It made me feel really good to know that I had been missed and that they had enjoyed having me in their classroom.
I can't wait to get back into the classroom.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Canada 2020: part 8
Rachel A. Qitsualik
Rachel A. Qitsualik writes regular columns on Inuit culture for Native Journal and News/North. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Indian Country Today, Nunatsiaq News, Rabble.com, Up Here magazine, Aboriginal Voices, and the Ring of Ice anthology. She is currently working on a personal anthology and a novel. She lives in Nunavut.
Nalunaktuq: The Arctic as force, instead of resource
Rachel A. Qitsualik Aug. 31, 2006
In a much warmer 2020, the white bear's tracks no longer grace Arctic snows. The remnants of Inuit culture stand baffled as the last sea mammals perish, as creeping grasses and trees surround them, as southern industries pillage what many call the "New South." Ice is but a memory, while the Northwest Passage serves as the Arctic replacement for the Panama Canal in this new boom era.
The histrionic paragraph above reflects an all too popular vision of the Arctic's future, one generally held by those who have never lived in the Arctic. I, however, grew up in this place: I've lived in igluvigait (igloos) as well as in southern houses, untangled dogsled traces as readily as I've bought bus tickets. And my mind's eye renders me in the Arctic of 14 years hence as easily as five minutes from now.
Can you feel the warm August air? It's 2020, and:
In the hills, my husband and I chuckle at the staccato noise of a raven, shortly before bird and laughter are submerged beneath the roar of vehicles. We turn to see a trio of military helicopters flying over Frobisher Bay.
"Is it another CASP?" my husband asks. "Or a rescue?"
I shake my head, unsure, since these days there are as many rescue missions as Canadian Arctic Safety Patrols, or CASPs. The acronym replaced the old SOVOP (Sovereignty Operation) around 2012, when the federal government decided it needed a friendlier term. I can still remember the first one — Operation Narwhal in 2004 — where vehicles were hobbled by unexpected frost, and the military had to call upon the assistance of Inuit Rangers after losing contact with two communications specialists in the hills. Those operations improved significantly by 2010, however, just in time to address our contemporary problem: foreign shipwrecks.
The ice remains
It's at once embarrassing and alarming, the way wrecks are piling up in the so-called Northwest Passage, Arctic waters where Inuit have hunted for ages. They still hunt out there, of course, since Inuit can hunt just as easily from a boat as upon the once-common sea ice. It's tricky, navigating the sludge of icebergs in a small boat, but definitely worth it: global warming, it seems, has caused plankton populations to rise, increasing the numbers of fish and sea mammals with easier access to Arctic coasts. I can't recall a time when the hunting culture was this strong, though bears are no longer hunted. Warmth has made the recently stabilized bear population more dangerous, since the animals are reverting to the coastal and island hunting style of their ancestors; but their numbers are small. The end of the bear hunt is no loss, especially in comparison to the gift of food that comes with bountiful sea mammals.
Unfortunately for many, another prospective boom is starting to resemble bust. It's amazing to think back on all the sabre-rattling between the United States, Denmark and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage, only to have so many ships ripped asunder by unanticipated icebergs. In 2018, there was a great deal of hoopla over Canada's new licensing system (favouring the United States, of course) for foreign usage of Canadian Arctic waters, even though the U.S. had already been using the waters since 2009. The issue only came to the forefront of public awareness in 2011, when an American oil tanker (the Rose of Texas, I think it was) split open 300 kilometres from Gjoa Haven, ruining local fish stocks and poisoning coastlines.
Inuit made little headway complaining that the bacterial strain used to clean up the oil was giving their children skin ulcerations, but the Canadian public at least roused itself once the pictures of afflicted seal pups came out. The result was the licensing system of two years ago, along with heavy costs in CASP operations to make sure that no illegal dumping, immigration, speculation or fishing occurs. Add to that the cost of rescue efforts for foreign ships that dash themselves like dazed juggernauts upon this new and unfathomable Arctic.
The Land, you see (as Inuit call the Arctic), has always liked to play tricks. In this case, all the profiteers were so busy expecting Arctic waters to stay open that they forgot one thing: the Pole is still far from ice-free, and global warming goes on. As ice farther north warms and breaks off, the resultant "slush" — ice chunks from the size of a baseball to that of a high-rise — floats south. Instead of the expected, ice-free Northwest Passage, the Danish tankers shipping fresh water from Greenland (there is, after all, a global freshwater crisis in 2020) and the U.S. tankers shipping (what else?) oil have instead found themselves negotiating a treacherous boreal labyrinth.
Iqaluit sprawl
So many lives have already been ruined as a result of greed and lack of foresight; but that, too, is an old story in the Arctic. I pick an Arctic dandelion (holding it under my chin, yep, I like butter), and turn to the town of Iqaluit, the edge of whose sprawl lies nearby. The housing crisis of years past is over for now, having been solved by global warming. The illusion of boom, of less permafrost and more shipping, lured hordes of southerners to the North over a decade ago, believing that the Arctic was destined to become prime real estate amid rushes for gold, sapphires and diamonds. They found, instead, an Arctic that was warmer but nevertheless treeless and incapable of becoming any nation's new breadbasket, and in which shipping costs and fair practices left a bitter taste in the mouths of the most rapacious companies. They built homes and complexes but were already fleeing by the time 2015 rolled around — homes that are now occupied by mostly Inuit families.
And as they retreated to the South again, pockets empty and lips curled, with bittersweet memories of a beautiful but strangely unprofitable land, they were haunted by a single, frustrating mystery: the knowledge that they could never say exactly why the Arctic hadn't been what they'd expected.
But Inuit elders could have told them. If anyone had bothered to ask, Inuit might have explained the Land to them. And you can bet the word nalunaktuq would have been uttered.
Come back to the present for a bit, even the past, and we'll talk.
The root word of nalunaktuq is nalu, or "not knowing." In Inuktitut (the Inuit language), nalunaktuq loosely means "difficult to comprehend" or "unpredictable." But why should the Inuit perspective on such a thing matter? Well, besides the fact that their burgeoning population makes up 86 per cent of Nunavut, Inuit have learned the harshest lessons from the Land. The best such lesson has been that of nalunaktuq:: the fact that general trends serve as poor indicators of what the Arctic will actually do. Many people believe that Inuit survivability and Land-knowledge are one, but few suspect that both hinge upon an acceptance of the Land's protean nature. Much of the popular shock over signs of warming in the Arctic stems from the assumption that, of all environments, the Arctic is traditionally the least inclined to change. This variety of pop sophism, however, is easily unmasked through even cursory examination of the era that birthed Inuit culture itself: for the truth is that Inuit are a young people, and they were shaped by previous global warming.
The first great warming
The planet Earth, between AD 800 and AD 1200, was a hot place. There are tales of rich apple orchards in England, and sunburns being common. At any time, in any place, when things begin to heat up, people move around. History shows this was one of the greatest eras of tribal migration and rising empires. Inuit first emerged out of Alaska, around the very time of the warm period's onset. The warmth had given sea mammals ready access to Canada's Arctic archipelago, and Inuit culture had adapted to specialize in hunting them — basically eating their way eastward via innovations such as improved boats. They did so well that, by AD 1000 (the time of Leif Ericsson's discovery of "Vinland"), they were across Canada. By 1200, they were settled into Greenland, just in time for the planet to fall into its chilly phase once again. Nevertheless, folklore — that subconscious history of a culture — never forgets; and to this day, Inuit ajaraaq (string games) retain the string figure called Kigiaq.This is the beaver, an animal that ranged as far as the Arctic once, during the Earth's last warming period.
As heretical as it sounds within the context of pop dogma, the last time the planet grew hotter, it was actually good for Inuit. This is because Inuit are the embodiment of adaptability itself, and other peoples who direct eyes toward the Arctic — however warmer — would do well to emulate such plasticity. Lately, we've become inundated with sweeping, nigh-hysterical pronouncements along the lines of "Global warming will render 95 per cent of Arctic species extinct within 10 years" or "Climate change will destroy Inuit culture within a decade." We humans instinctively love a crusade; but a crusade is past-oriented, while adaptation is future-oriented. We cannot trust crisis, since someone always profits from fear; nor can we trust prediction, until the day science can provide us with an accurate five-day forecast. But we can trust in our heritage as an ancient species, and an adaptive one. We can trust in our own ability to change, if the Land will not.
The truth is that the Arctic is warming — but I fear more for how the South will react to it than I do for Inuit. The common southern perception seems to be that global warming will reshape the North into the South, as though the Arctic were defined, up to this point, by cold alone. Many businesses view the Arctic as a new fruit ripe for the picking, counting on global warming as the friend who will give them a boost in reaching out for it. But ask anyone who has lived in the Arctic for a time and they will tell you that its islands and shores are strewn with the bleached remnants of such ambition: shipping costs that mounted beyond control, inconstant yield, disastrous turns of weather. Who can count the number of disappointed ventures?
Inevitably, the next couple of decades promise the illusion of boom for the Arctic — perhaps, in some greed-maddened brains, the mistaken belief that a warmer North is about to sprout trees and spawn its own little Toronto. It simply won't happen, because even with the eventual melting of permafrost, the Arctic is poor in topsoil and gravel, twin requirements for the agriculture and construction necessary to sustain large populations. Some might resort to the argument that population is a non-factor, and that fleets of international ships will directly connect North to South. But the attempt to have this very thing is what, I believe, will lay the groundwork for tragedy. My greatest fear is that shipping interests, driven by blind speculation, will brave the slew of icebergs resulting from inconstant freezing only to spill their ice-gutted bellies into Arctic waters as they fail. How long, I wonder, will Arctic communities have to suffer such disasters before those companies finally pull out?
Inuit, until that day, will have to be patient and adapt: no new trick. Inevitably, they'll watch it all, endure it as usual and feed the latest sea mammals — which will also use the Northwest Passage — to their children. Just like their ancestors did the last time the planet warmed. And Inuit will stand over the wreckage left by the overambitious, whose nerves shattered around the time they realized the Land would not obey a clock, and they will use the ruins as a picnic area or an outpost camp. And they will adapt, even as they whisper a prayer over the skeletons of those who refused to do the same. For Inuit have never owned the Land, having learned of old that it is no man's resource.
It is a force, and it is nalunaktuq.
Pijariiqpunga. (That's all I have to say.)
Link ...
Rachel A. Qitsualik writes regular columns on Inuit culture for Native Journal and News/North. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Indian Country Today, Nunatsiaq News, Rabble.com, Up Here magazine, Aboriginal Voices, and the Ring of Ice anthology. She is currently working on a personal anthology and a novel. She lives in Nunavut.
Nalunaktuq: The Arctic as force, instead of resource
Rachel A. Qitsualik Aug. 31, 2006
In a much warmer 2020, the white bear's tracks no longer grace Arctic snows. The remnants of Inuit culture stand baffled as the last sea mammals perish, as creeping grasses and trees surround them, as southern industries pillage what many call the "New South." Ice is but a memory, while the Northwest Passage serves as the Arctic replacement for the Panama Canal in this new boom era.
The histrionic paragraph above reflects an all too popular vision of the Arctic's future, one generally held by those who have never lived in the Arctic. I, however, grew up in this place: I've lived in igluvigait (igloos) as well as in southern houses, untangled dogsled traces as readily as I've bought bus tickets. And my mind's eye renders me in the Arctic of 14 years hence as easily as five minutes from now.
Can you feel the warm August air? It's 2020, and:
In the hills, my husband and I chuckle at the staccato noise of a raven, shortly before bird and laughter are submerged beneath the roar of vehicles. We turn to see a trio of military helicopters flying over Frobisher Bay.
"Is it another CASP?" my husband asks. "Or a rescue?"
I shake my head, unsure, since these days there are as many rescue missions as Canadian Arctic Safety Patrols, or CASPs. The acronym replaced the old SOVOP (Sovereignty Operation) around 2012, when the federal government decided it needed a friendlier term. I can still remember the first one — Operation Narwhal in 2004 — where vehicles were hobbled by unexpected frost, and the military had to call upon the assistance of Inuit Rangers after losing contact with two communications specialists in the hills. Those operations improved significantly by 2010, however, just in time to address our contemporary problem: foreign shipwrecks.
The ice remains
It's at once embarrassing and alarming, the way wrecks are piling up in the so-called Northwest Passage, Arctic waters where Inuit have hunted for ages. They still hunt out there, of course, since Inuit can hunt just as easily from a boat as upon the once-common sea ice. It's tricky, navigating the sludge of icebergs in a small boat, but definitely worth it: global warming, it seems, has caused plankton populations to rise, increasing the numbers of fish and sea mammals with easier access to Arctic coasts. I can't recall a time when the hunting culture was this strong, though bears are no longer hunted. Warmth has made the recently stabilized bear population more dangerous, since the animals are reverting to the coastal and island hunting style of their ancestors; but their numbers are small. The end of the bear hunt is no loss, especially in comparison to the gift of food that comes with bountiful sea mammals.
Unfortunately for many, another prospective boom is starting to resemble bust. It's amazing to think back on all the sabre-rattling between the United States, Denmark and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage, only to have so many ships ripped asunder by unanticipated icebergs. In 2018, there was a great deal of hoopla over Canada's new licensing system (favouring the United States, of course) for foreign usage of Canadian Arctic waters, even though the U.S. had already been using the waters since 2009. The issue only came to the forefront of public awareness in 2011, when an American oil tanker (the Rose of Texas, I think it was) split open 300 kilometres from Gjoa Haven, ruining local fish stocks and poisoning coastlines.
Inuit made little headway complaining that the bacterial strain used to clean up the oil was giving their children skin ulcerations, but the Canadian public at least roused itself once the pictures of afflicted seal pups came out. The result was the licensing system of two years ago, along with heavy costs in CASP operations to make sure that no illegal dumping, immigration, speculation or fishing occurs. Add to that the cost of rescue efforts for foreign ships that dash themselves like dazed juggernauts upon this new and unfathomable Arctic.
The Land, you see (as Inuit call the Arctic), has always liked to play tricks. In this case, all the profiteers were so busy expecting Arctic waters to stay open that they forgot one thing: the Pole is still far from ice-free, and global warming goes on. As ice farther north warms and breaks off, the resultant "slush" — ice chunks from the size of a baseball to that of a high-rise — floats south. Instead of the expected, ice-free Northwest Passage, the Danish tankers shipping fresh water from Greenland (there is, after all, a global freshwater crisis in 2020) and the U.S. tankers shipping (what else?) oil have instead found themselves negotiating a treacherous boreal labyrinth.
Iqaluit sprawl
So many lives have already been ruined as a result of greed and lack of foresight; but that, too, is an old story in the Arctic. I pick an Arctic dandelion (holding it under my chin, yep, I like butter), and turn to the town of Iqaluit, the edge of whose sprawl lies nearby. The housing crisis of years past is over for now, having been solved by global warming. The illusion of boom, of less permafrost and more shipping, lured hordes of southerners to the North over a decade ago, believing that the Arctic was destined to become prime real estate amid rushes for gold, sapphires and diamonds. They found, instead, an Arctic that was warmer but nevertheless treeless and incapable of becoming any nation's new breadbasket, and in which shipping costs and fair practices left a bitter taste in the mouths of the most rapacious companies. They built homes and complexes but were already fleeing by the time 2015 rolled around — homes that are now occupied by mostly Inuit families.
And as they retreated to the South again, pockets empty and lips curled, with bittersweet memories of a beautiful but strangely unprofitable land, they were haunted by a single, frustrating mystery: the knowledge that they could never say exactly why the Arctic hadn't been what they'd expected.
But Inuit elders could have told them. If anyone had bothered to ask, Inuit might have explained the Land to them. And you can bet the word nalunaktuq would have been uttered.
Come back to the present for a bit, even the past, and we'll talk.
The root word of nalunaktuq is nalu, or "not knowing." In Inuktitut (the Inuit language), nalunaktuq loosely means "difficult to comprehend" or "unpredictable." But why should the Inuit perspective on such a thing matter? Well, besides the fact that their burgeoning population makes up 86 per cent of Nunavut, Inuit have learned the harshest lessons from the Land. The best such lesson has been that of nalunaktuq:: the fact that general trends serve as poor indicators of what the Arctic will actually do. Many people believe that Inuit survivability and Land-knowledge are one, but few suspect that both hinge upon an acceptance of the Land's protean nature. Much of the popular shock over signs of warming in the Arctic stems from the assumption that, of all environments, the Arctic is traditionally the least inclined to change. This variety of pop sophism, however, is easily unmasked through even cursory examination of the era that birthed Inuit culture itself: for the truth is that Inuit are a young people, and they were shaped by previous global warming.
The first great warming
The planet Earth, between AD 800 and AD 1200, was a hot place. There are tales of rich apple orchards in England, and sunburns being common. At any time, in any place, when things begin to heat up, people move around. History shows this was one of the greatest eras of tribal migration and rising empires. Inuit first emerged out of Alaska, around the very time of the warm period's onset. The warmth had given sea mammals ready access to Canada's Arctic archipelago, and Inuit culture had adapted to specialize in hunting them — basically eating their way eastward via innovations such as improved boats. They did so well that, by AD 1000 (the time of Leif Ericsson's discovery of "Vinland"), they were across Canada. By 1200, they were settled into Greenland, just in time for the planet to fall into its chilly phase once again. Nevertheless, folklore — that subconscious history of a culture — never forgets; and to this day, Inuit ajaraaq (string games) retain the string figure called Kigiaq.This is the beaver, an animal that ranged as far as the Arctic once, during the Earth's last warming period.
As heretical as it sounds within the context of pop dogma, the last time the planet grew hotter, it was actually good for Inuit. This is because Inuit are the embodiment of adaptability itself, and other peoples who direct eyes toward the Arctic — however warmer — would do well to emulate such plasticity. Lately, we've become inundated with sweeping, nigh-hysterical pronouncements along the lines of "Global warming will render 95 per cent of Arctic species extinct within 10 years" or "Climate change will destroy Inuit culture within a decade." We humans instinctively love a crusade; but a crusade is past-oriented, while adaptation is future-oriented. We cannot trust crisis, since someone always profits from fear; nor can we trust prediction, until the day science can provide us with an accurate five-day forecast. But we can trust in our heritage as an ancient species, and an adaptive one. We can trust in our own ability to change, if the Land will not.
The truth is that the Arctic is warming — but I fear more for how the South will react to it than I do for Inuit. The common southern perception seems to be that global warming will reshape the North into the South, as though the Arctic were defined, up to this point, by cold alone. Many businesses view the Arctic as a new fruit ripe for the picking, counting on global warming as the friend who will give them a boost in reaching out for it. But ask anyone who has lived in the Arctic for a time and they will tell you that its islands and shores are strewn with the bleached remnants of such ambition: shipping costs that mounted beyond control, inconstant yield, disastrous turns of weather. Who can count the number of disappointed ventures?
Inevitably, the next couple of decades promise the illusion of boom for the Arctic — perhaps, in some greed-maddened brains, the mistaken belief that a warmer North is about to sprout trees and spawn its own little Toronto. It simply won't happen, because even with the eventual melting of permafrost, the Arctic is poor in topsoil and gravel, twin requirements for the agriculture and construction necessary to sustain large populations. Some might resort to the argument that population is a non-factor, and that fleets of international ships will directly connect North to South. But the attempt to have this very thing is what, I believe, will lay the groundwork for tragedy. My greatest fear is that shipping interests, driven by blind speculation, will brave the slew of icebergs resulting from inconstant freezing only to spill their ice-gutted bellies into Arctic waters as they fail. How long, I wonder, will Arctic communities have to suffer such disasters before those companies finally pull out?
Inuit, until that day, will have to be patient and adapt: no new trick. Inevitably, they'll watch it all, endure it as usual and feed the latest sea mammals — which will also use the Northwest Passage — to their children. Just like their ancestors did the last time the planet warmed. And Inuit will stand over the wreckage left by the overambitious, whose nerves shattered around the time they realized the Land would not obey a clock, and they will use the ruins as a picnic area or an outpost camp. And they will adapt, even as they whisper a prayer over the skeletons of those who refused to do the same. For Inuit have never owned the Land, having learned of old that it is no man's resource.
It is a force, and it is nalunaktuq.
Pijariiqpunga. (That's all I have to say.)
Link ...
Monday, October 30, 2006
Wal-mart and the evil that runs our society
Kind of an inflamitory title I know but I figure I should say something.
The evil of which I speak is consumerism. I know I've written about this before but it came up again recently. I was out and about with a friend and they were talking about going to Wal-mart. I spoke up about Wal-mart being a bad thing and that I don't shop there. They asked about a situation where I could only get what I wanted from Wal-mart, what would I do? I told them I'd do without. I spoke about my desire to support local small business owners and that I'm willing to make such a small sacrifice as going without some things if it means that I'd have to shop at Wal-mart.
It seemed like I was speaking some foreign language. Their reaction was kind of puzzling to me. It doesn't seem like that big a deal to do without something that I don't really need in order to follow my principles. Oh well.
So they asked me what I would do if it was something for my child and the only place I could get it was Wal-mart. I told them that I'd have to explain to my child that they would have do without. Blasphemy, it seems.
There are so many things that people pine for, beg, borrow and steal for yet very little of which is really necessary. My father is constantly going on about NEEDING a new 42" plasma TV. It seems that his 32" TV just isn't doing the job. It bothers him that he doesn't have this new, better, bigger TV. I think that this is a very common condition because corporations have been very effective in conditioning our society to think that we are our possessions. We live in a society that is being buried by debt, bankruptcies are at all time highs and the gap between the rich and the poor constantly growing. We keep being told that if we don't have the latest gadget or the bigget doohickey we are a lesser person. I know homeless people who have cellphones but don't have food to eat or a roof over their head. A cellphone!
Wal-mart is just one of many and has become something of the whipping boy by those of us who are critical of such large corporate power, influence and greed. Wal-mart gets a large proportion of its products from China which is a country clearly documented as violating human rights on a grand scale. They were caught and penalized a few years ago for trading with the Sudan which was under a trade embargo at the time. I find it amazing that people think I'm the one thats nuts for not wanting to shop at a store that destroys towns, abuses its staff and supports inhumane regimes around the world. All because its much more important to have that cheap pack of tube socks or portable DVD player rather than taking a stand and saying that human life is more important than my owning some piece of superfluous shit that in reality means nothing to me.
Corporations try to tell us that we are what we consume. If I wear a Nike logo I'm athletic. If I drink a Starbucks grande latte I'm somehow sophisticated and discerning. Its all nonesense. If I wear Nike it doesn't make me athletic it simply says I'm an overweight guy who wears a shirt made in Indonesia. If I drink a Starbucks coffee it means that I'm stupid enough to spend over $3 for a friggin' coffee. Corporations are actively marketing towards children because they know that if they can ingrain within them the idea that they are what they buy then they are guaranteed profits because children are unable to think critically. Of course many adults simply refuse to think critically as well. Its okay to ask questions, tough questions.
I guess that that is why I get stupified looks when I suggest that I might ask my child to do without something unnecessary if it means not perpetuating our present consumerism model for society.
Of course I'm stupified by the fact that people are completely and utterly unwilling to look beyond their own nose and begin to look at that bigger picture.
The evil of which I speak is consumerism. I know I've written about this before but it came up again recently. I was out and about with a friend and they were talking about going to Wal-mart. I spoke up about Wal-mart being a bad thing and that I don't shop there. They asked about a situation where I could only get what I wanted from Wal-mart, what would I do? I told them I'd do without. I spoke about my desire to support local small business owners and that I'm willing to make such a small sacrifice as going without some things if it means that I'd have to shop at Wal-mart.
It seemed like I was speaking some foreign language. Their reaction was kind of puzzling to me. It doesn't seem like that big a deal to do without something that I don't really need in order to follow my principles. Oh well.
So they asked me what I would do if it was something for my child and the only place I could get it was Wal-mart. I told them that I'd have to explain to my child that they would have do without. Blasphemy, it seems.
There are so many things that people pine for, beg, borrow and steal for yet very little of which is really necessary. My father is constantly going on about NEEDING a new 42" plasma TV. It seems that his 32" TV just isn't doing the job. It bothers him that he doesn't have this new, better, bigger TV. I think that this is a very common condition because corporations have been very effective in conditioning our society to think that we are our possessions. We live in a society that is being buried by debt, bankruptcies are at all time highs and the gap between the rich and the poor constantly growing. We keep being told that if we don't have the latest gadget or the bigget doohickey we are a lesser person. I know homeless people who have cellphones but don't have food to eat or a roof over their head. A cellphone!
Wal-mart is just one of many and has become something of the whipping boy by those of us who are critical of such large corporate power, influence and greed. Wal-mart gets a large proportion of its products from China which is a country clearly documented as violating human rights on a grand scale. They were caught and penalized a few years ago for trading with the Sudan which was under a trade embargo at the time. I find it amazing that people think I'm the one thats nuts for not wanting to shop at a store that destroys towns, abuses its staff and supports inhumane regimes around the world. All because its much more important to have that cheap pack of tube socks or portable DVD player rather than taking a stand and saying that human life is more important than my owning some piece of superfluous shit that in reality means nothing to me.
Corporations try to tell us that we are what we consume. If I wear a Nike logo I'm athletic. If I drink a Starbucks grande latte I'm somehow sophisticated and discerning. Its all nonesense. If I wear Nike it doesn't make me athletic it simply says I'm an overweight guy who wears a shirt made in Indonesia. If I drink a Starbucks coffee it means that I'm stupid enough to spend over $3 for a friggin' coffee. Corporations are actively marketing towards children because they know that if they can ingrain within them the idea that they are what they buy then they are guaranteed profits because children are unable to think critically. Of course many adults simply refuse to think critically as well. Its okay to ask questions, tough questions.
I guess that that is why I get stupified looks when I suggest that I might ask my child to do without something unnecessary if it means not perpetuating our present consumerism model for society.
Of course I'm stupified by the fact that people are completely and utterly unwilling to look beyond their own nose and begin to look at that bigger picture.
Monday, October 16, 2006
I feel I should write something ... anything.
It's been quite a while since I've been a regular contributor to my own blog. Pretty sad state of affairs.
***
In a lot of ways I really hate dating. I'm sure everyone's got a different opinion on the subject but it's not something I generally look forward to. When did our society stop producing women who you can have a conversation with? I swear if I hear "what are you thinking?" one more time I'm going to strangle the person. Especially when its only the second date!
I mean do women have such uninteresting and uninspired lives that they have nothing to say for themselves? Are they so disinterested in the world around them that the only thing they have to contribute to a conversation is "what are you thinking?" The real kicker is that 99% of the time I have to lie to them because if I say that I'm thinking about school, other women, politics or war they either get annoyed or respond with varying degrees of ignorance.
My kingdom for an intelligent woman!
***
School is a seeming joke. I have to start teaching in three weeks but I still don't know where my placement is going to be nor do I feel that I've learned anything so far that would make more capable of teaching than before I started teacher's college.
***
Everyday I come home I see the wedding gift that I bought for a friend of mine and still haven't managed to get to her. I swear one of these days it will make it to her place!
***
Despite my previous rant concerning dating I've gone out on a few dates with someone new. Its a good thing that I live with meager means because she's intelligent, thoughtful and quite the conversationalist! Hip-hip-hooray! She's also quite attractive which is a definite plus.
***
In a lot of ways I really hate dating. I'm sure everyone's got a different opinion on the subject but it's not something I generally look forward to. When did our society stop producing women who you can have a conversation with? I swear if I hear "what are you thinking?" one more time I'm going to strangle the person. Especially when its only the second date!
I mean do women have such uninteresting and uninspired lives that they have nothing to say for themselves? Are they so disinterested in the world around them that the only thing they have to contribute to a conversation is "what are you thinking?" The real kicker is that 99% of the time I have to lie to them because if I say that I'm thinking about school, other women, politics or war they either get annoyed or respond with varying degrees of ignorance.
My kingdom for an intelligent woman!
***
School is a seeming joke. I have to start teaching in three weeks but I still don't know where my placement is going to be nor do I feel that I've learned anything so far that would make more capable of teaching than before I started teacher's college.
***
Everyday I come home I see the wedding gift that I bought for a friend of mine and still haven't managed to get to her. I swear one of these days it will make it to her place!
***
Despite my previous rant concerning dating I've gone out on a few dates with someone new. Its a good thing that I live with meager means because she's intelligent, thoughtful and quite the conversationalist! Hip-hip-hooray! She's also quite attractive which is a definite plus.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
My life
My life is the sound of silence.
I came to this conclusion this morning while sitting at the coffee shop reading. There I was sitting amongst several people yet alone. People were talking and sharing while I sat quietly in the corner reading my book anguishing over the fact that I had no one to share things with; nobody to talk to.
I think that this is part of the reason that I started this blog to begin with. I wanted a release, a way to say what was on my mind, to speak, to be heard, to show the world that I am somebody. Yet that feeling of self never seems sure or complete when all one is left with is the silence one finds in their mind.
I'm not saying that I'm depressed or anything like that just that those moments of connectivity are too few and far between. I can't say that I really understand how to go about changing this either. I talk with people, I go out and spend time in public places, I meet people all the time at school. There just seems to be something about me that keeps that distance in place.
I came to this conclusion this morning while sitting at the coffee shop reading. There I was sitting amongst several people yet alone. People were talking and sharing while I sat quietly in the corner reading my book anguishing over the fact that I had no one to share things with; nobody to talk to.
I think that this is part of the reason that I started this blog to begin with. I wanted a release, a way to say what was on my mind, to speak, to be heard, to show the world that I am somebody. Yet that feeling of self never seems sure or complete when all one is left with is the silence one finds in their mind.
I'm not saying that I'm depressed or anything like that just that those moments of connectivity are too few and far between. I can't say that I really understand how to go about changing this either. I talk with people, I go out and spend time in public places, I meet people all the time at school. There just seems to be something about me that keeps that distance in place.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Well hello there.
Well I finally did it.
I got myself a laptop computer.
I was always so ambivalent towards them. I mean what did I need a portable computer for?
Then a friend of mine got one and over time I kind of got enamored with the notion of having a computer I could take with me. So I did it. I bit the bullet and shelled out the cash (with the help of my overly generous parents) and got myself one.
It came in handy too. Two days after I got it blew out my knee (its being diagnosed at this stage as a torn ACL) which required me to be off my feet for a week. Having the ability to sit on the couch and still use my computer was a huge blessing. The week flew by.
Today, for the first time I’ve taken my computer on the road with me. As I write this I’m sitting in my favorite coffee shop watching the world pass by. I love it.
I’m in teachers college now, or as it was explained to me, the School of Education (it seems ‘teacher’s college’ refers to a time when teachers came directly out of high school and went to teacher’s college – that is no longer the case as all teacher’s require at least a BA). So I grabbed up my computer and headed down to the coffee shop to do some homework. There are just too may distractions at home. It’s just so nice being able to do my work on the computer here rather than having to hand write everything then having to transpose it all onto the computer later.
Wonderful.
***
Everything seems so strange right now.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Its been a long time since I could say that. I’ve been going on now for five plus years struggling towards becoming a teacher and now the end is in sight. It feels good.
Of course this has simply brought on a new set of worries, such as actually teaching. I’m going to be in the classroom in November for three weeks. It seems like such a short time away that I’m concerned that I just won’t be able to learn what I need to learn between now and then.
***
Its been a long time since I’ve actually written anything here. It feels kind of weird. I’m not too sure what it is I should say.
***
I recently participated in an online discussion concerning the existence of God and the role of religion in politics. The discussion was mostly with Americans and I’m not all that sure what role that played in how the discussion played itself out. We (Canadians) often hear about such things as a Culture War and the Religious Right from America. While I knew what they were I’m not all that positive that I had truly experienced them before, or at least not the American version. Everyone seemed to be very angry.
I’ve worked hard over the past several years to become the kind of person who is able to discuss delicate issues (politics, economics, religion being the big three) without getting personal. Of course I’m not always successful at it but I try. You’d have to ask a friend of mine how well I really do at achieving these lofty aims, but I enjoy discussing such matters and in doing so I try to be polite, civil and attentive. This discussion made it hard to hold onto such values.
I guess because such discussions are so well tread that people start mid-stride. There are so many stereotypes, accusations, condemnations and insults flying around hat it seems that nothing is ever really discussed. It just seemed to be time where people were constantly poking each other in order to piss someone off rather than to truly have a discussion. I found it rather frustrating, especially when I kept being attacked (for lack of a better term) for things I had no part in.
I guess I’ve just been lucky to have had a friend with whom I could discuss such matters in a civil manner. I’ve learned a lot from such discussions; both about myself and my beliefs as well as differing viewpoints concerning such issues. However this was not one of those times.
I got myself a laptop computer.
I was always so ambivalent towards them. I mean what did I need a portable computer for?
Then a friend of mine got one and over time I kind of got enamored with the notion of having a computer I could take with me. So I did it. I bit the bullet and shelled out the cash (with the help of my overly generous parents) and got myself one.
It came in handy too. Two days after I got it blew out my knee (its being diagnosed at this stage as a torn ACL) which required me to be off my feet for a week. Having the ability to sit on the couch and still use my computer was a huge blessing. The week flew by.
Today, for the first time I’ve taken my computer on the road with me. As I write this I’m sitting in my favorite coffee shop watching the world pass by. I love it.
I’m in teachers college now, or as it was explained to me, the School of Education (it seems ‘teacher’s college’ refers to a time when teachers came directly out of high school and went to teacher’s college – that is no longer the case as all teacher’s require at least a BA). So I grabbed up my computer and headed down to the coffee shop to do some homework. There are just too may distractions at home. It’s just so nice being able to do my work on the computer here rather than having to hand write everything then having to transpose it all onto the computer later.
Wonderful.
***
Everything seems so strange right now.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Its been a long time since I could say that. I’ve been going on now for five plus years struggling towards becoming a teacher and now the end is in sight. It feels good.
Of course this has simply brought on a new set of worries, such as actually teaching. I’m going to be in the classroom in November for three weeks. It seems like such a short time away that I’m concerned that I just won’t be able to learn what I need to learn between now and then.
***
Its been a long time since I’ve actually written anything here. It feels kind of weird. I’m not too sure what it is I should say.
***
I recently participated in an online discussion concerning the existence of God and the role of religion in politics. The discussion was mostly with Americans and I’m not all that sure what role that played in how the discussion played itself out. We (Canadians) often hear about such things as a Culture War and the Religious Right from America. While I knew what they were I’m not all that positive that I had truly experienced them before, or at least not the American version. Everyone seemed to be very angry.
I’ve worked hard over the past several years to become the kind of person who is able to discuss delicate issues (politics, economics, religion being the big three) without getting personal. Of course I’m not always successful at it but I try. You’d have to ask a friend of mine how well I really do at achieving these lofty aims, but I enjoy discussing such matters and in doing so I try to be polite, civil and attentive. This discussion made it hard to hold onto such values.
I guess because such discussions are so well tread that people start mid-stride. There are so many stereotypes, accusations, condemnations and insults flying around hat it seems that nothing is ever really discussed. It just seemed to be time where people were constantly poking each other in order to piss someone off rather than to truly have a discussion. I found it rather frustrating, especially when I kept being attacked (for lack of a better term) for things I had no part in.
I guess I’ve just been lucky to have had a friend with whom I could discuss such matters in a civil manner. I’ve learned a lot from such discussions; both about myself and my beliefs as well as differing viewpoints concerning such issues. However this was not one of those times.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Canada 2020: part 7
Roger Gibbins
Roger Gibbins is president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation, a public policy research group based in Calgary. Prior to assuming the leadership of the Canada West Foundation in 1998, Roger was a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, where he started his academic career in 1973 and served as department head from 1987 to 1996. Roger has authored, co-authored or edited 21 books and more than 100 articles and book chapters, most dealing with western Canadian themes and issues. In 1998 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and was the president of the Canadian Political Science Association from 1999 to 2000.
Western separation, the time has come
Roger Gibbins Aug. 21, 2006
It should never have come to this. Tomorrow Albertans will go to the polls to vote on leaving Canada, and any doubt as to the outcome was removed last month when the British Columbia legislature resolved to hold a similar referendum within six months. It is likely that Saskatchewan will soon follow suit.
The legal technicalities are straightforward. Back in the late 1990s, when the Quebec sovereignty movement was still alive and well, the Supreme Court and later Parliament through the Clarity Act recognized that the Government of Canada had an obligation to enter into negotiations if there was "a clear expression of the will of the population of a province on whether the province should cease to be a part of Canada and become an independent state." Those negotiations could begin as early as next week.
Back in the 1990s, no one imagined that this option would be exercised by a province other than Quebec. The critical question, therefore, is how did we get to this sorry state of affairs? What went so wrong along the way?
Although there has always a small smattering of separatist support in Alberta, usually a very small smattering, the origins of our current mess date back to 2006 when oil prices first passed $70 a barrel. The Alberta government, having paid off its provincial debt, was then generating larger surpluses than the federal government.
At the same time, the Ontario economy was beginning to falter in the face of both intensifying international competition and weakening U.S. markets. A rising Canadian dollar, driven upwards by robust international markets for natural resources in western provinces, squeezed the vise even tighter on the traditional manufacturing sector.
For a while the growing regional divide was masked. On average, the Canadian economy was doing well, and thus regional disparities within the context of more general national prosperity attracted less attention. Unemployment rates were at record lows, and Canadians across the country were enjoying growing real-estate wealth.
It was also assumed by most Canadians that the regional disparities being generated by Alberta's energy wealth, and for that matter by the general wealth of the resource-based western Canadian economy, would largely disappear once resource markets returned to normal levels. The western boom was seen as a temporary blip, a one-off windfall analogous to a lottery win. As Ralph Klein, then premier of Alberta, noted when asked about high-energy prices, "What goes up must come down," which indeed had been the historical experience of Alberta's volatile boom-and-bust economy.
Thus Canadians waited patiently, or in some cases impatiently, for energy prices to return to normal, and for the natural order of things to reassert itself. Over time, however, it began to sink in that the new normal was $70 a barrel for oil, and then $80, and then $90. The good old days of cheap energy, and with them the older model of the Canadian economy, were gone along with hot airline meals.
Now of course the Canadian economy was not alone in being hit by higher energy prices, and indeed in some ways was better off than most given that Canada was a net exporter of oil, natural gas, uranium and hydroelectric power. The problem and the political crisis came from the unequal regional distribution of those resources.
Slowly it became clear that the accumulation of wealth in Alberta, and to a lesser degree across the West, was the new reality. At the same time, the Ontario economy continued to be squeezed by competitors from China and India, by U.S. protectionism in the face of the same competition, and by weakening American markets as Washington grappled unsuccessfully with growing debt, a deteriorating balance of payments and international obligations that could not be shed.
In response, the western provinces were scrambling to find ways by which regional wealth could be used to positive national effect. The Alberta government, for example, generously endowed the Canadian Scholarship Fund to the point where it dwarfed the Rhodes and Woodrow Wilson funds, and where it was attracting the best and the brightest international students to universities across the country.
Similar endowments for medical research, wellness programs, clean coal and sustainable energy research were pushing Canada to the forefront of the international research community. Canada, led by the western provinces, was shedding its historical underperformance in the commercialization of university research. Furthermore, the western provinces collaborated to strengthen transportation linkages between Canada and the booming Asia Pacific economies, with positive effects that rippled across the country from sea to sea to sea.
And, in Alberta, the onslaught of prosperity gave residents both the opportunity and the luxury to manage the impact of energy developments on an increasingly stressed provincial land base. The pace of development was brought within the carrying capacity of the physical environment, and the province's vast energy endowment was not being exploited at the expense of its natural capital.
These steps, however, could moderate but not bridge the growing regional divide in the national economy. As oil prices crept past $100 a barrel, and then past $110, and then $120, the divide became even deeper. Every escalation brought more wealth to the West, and more cost-pressure to central Canadian firms. As energy prices continued their inexorable climb, the regional imbalance grew in step and all this took place against the backdrop of a troubled U.S. economy.
The growing divide
There was no question that the regional concentration of energy wealth was a source of strain for the federation as Ontario and Quebec faced significant out-migration of people and head offices, and had a harder time attracting immigrants. Not surprisingly, therefore, a political reaction was inevitable.
Although the western-led national government argued gamely that what was good for the Alberta economy was also good for the Canadian economy, it lost the election to a coalition of opposition parties running under the banner "Canadian resources for Canadians."
The equalization formula, funded as it was by federal taxpayers – the great bulk of whom lived outside Alberta and even outside the West – provided little counterweight for the public wealth piling up in Alberta. The province's Heritage Savings and Trust Fund, now worth well more than $150 billion, made Alberta an easy target.
Shortly before the pivotal election, renewed military conflict in the Middle East, nuclear weapons testing by Iran, and an outbreak of civil war in the Russian Caucuses drove oil prices close to $200 a barrel. Despite a surge of migration into the West, the majority of the national electorate still lived in Ontario and Quebec and swept into power a new government determined to arrest and even turn back the energy-led tide of prosperity in Western Canada.
Many in the West, particularly those with relatives, friends and business colleagues living in other parts of the country, had some sympathy for "Canadian resources for Canadians." Western Canadians, after all, were enjoying a great deal of prosperity, and thus the change in the national government alone was not enough to push them over the national unity edge.
Unfortunately, things did not go well politically. The new federal government, led by Ontario's first prime minister in more than 50 years, introduced a draconian series of tax measures to channel energy wealth into the national treasury. The need to address global warming was used as the rationale for sweeping carbon taxes, but the regional redistribution of wealth was the real driver.
Constitutional niceties were put aside as the federal government's responsibility for peace, order and good government was expanded to include the responsibility to reduce regional disparities. Energy resources, it turned out – although not hydro resources – were now in the national interest and under the jurisdictional umbrella of the federal government.
Even then, Albertans were not pushed to the breaking point. The straw that finally broke the province's back was the environmental disaster unleashed by federal management of Alberta's resource endowment. The province was quite literally out of sight and out of mind, and as the price of oil approached $200 a barrel, the focus of the national government shifted to more and more production. The collapse of an increasing fragile environment and the destruction of iconic landscapes were seen as an unfortunate but unavoidable price to pay as the rest of the country used petrodollars as a shield to protect their economies from ever intensifying international competition.
In short, Alberta became the Canadian cash cow, the bulwark against the economic effects of international competition and weak U.S. markets. Energy revenues were used to prop up an increasingly unproductive manufacturing economy, with petrodollars becoming the new tariff wall. In the near term, Canadians were therefore able to avoid the painful economic adjustments that other countries had to endure in the face of high energy prices, but in the long term the national economy was further weakened.
It turned out, of course, that while the concentration of energy wealth in one province had dramatic effects, the distribution of that wealth across a much larger national population had correspondingly more limited effects. The expectations held by supporters of "Canadian resources for Canadians' could only be met if energy production was pushed higher and higher, and pushed beyond the carrying capacity of Alberta's environment.
The call for environmental protection comes first and foremost from those who can taste, see, touch and breathe environmental degradation, and not from distant bureaucrats or voters. This meant that as control of Alberta's resource endowment shifted from provincial to national hands, concerns about environmental damage weakened. The standards of environmental stewardship and intergenerational equity that had come to shape the provincial policy architecture were abandoned by a national government intent on maximizing energy revenues.
The result was the emergence of a new and powerful political coalition in Alberta determined to lead the province out of Canada. Environmentalists locked arms with energy producers in defence of the province; ideologically moderate urbanities joined forces with ranchers and farmers as both the urban and rural environments became even more stressed. "Canadian resources for Canadians" came to be seen as environmental degradation for Alberta, and thus the fight was joined to save both the province's economy and environment.
And now, in 2020, where do we stand as Albertans prepare to go to the polls, and to strike out on their own? The nation's energy wealth has been dispersed and dissipated without strategic impact; there is no legacy except for unsustainable regional transfers and social programming. Canada is trailing rather than leading the technological race to wean the global economy from its dependence on hydrocarbons. Alberta's population has shrunk as people fled a growing ecological disaster. And, ironically, the rest of the Canadian economy, buffered by energy revenues, is now even less able to compete globally.
The Alberta Camelot that began to emerge in 2006 has come and gone. It was the Canadian curse that the Camelot created by high energy prices was located "in the regions," that it came to be seen as a national threat rather than a national asset.
What, then, could we have done differently? We could have recognized that regional swings in the national economy are inevitable and should be accommodated rather than resisted by public policies. We could have accelerated the transition to new energy sources instead of shielding Canadian industries and consumers from high energy prices. We could have built on the wisdom of "think globally, act locally" and recognized that the delicate balance between economic growth and environmental protection is better struck provincially rather than nationally. We could have built protections for regional interests and aspirations into the institutional architecture of the national government.
We could have done a lot, and instead we stand on the verge of losing so much. It should never have come to this.
Link ...
Roger Gibbins is president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation, a public policy research group based in Calgary. Prior to assuming the leadership of the Canada West Foundation in 1998, Roger was a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, where he started his academic career in 1973 and served as department head from 1987 to 1996. Roger has authored, co-authored or edited 21 books and more than 100 articles and book chapters, most dealing with western Canadian themes and issues. In 1998 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and was the president of the Canadian Political Science Association from 1999 to 2000.
Western separation, the time has come
Roger Gibbins Aug. 21, 2006
It should never have come to this. Tomorrow Albertans will go to the polls to vote on leaving Canada, and any doubt as to the outcome was removed last month when the British Columbia legislature resolved to hold a similar referendum within six months. It is likely that Saskatchewan will soon follow suit.
The legal technicalities are straightforward. Back in the late 1990s, when the Quebec sovereignty movement was still alive and well, the Supreme Court and later Parliament through the Clarity Act recognized that the Government of Canada had an obligation to enter into negotiations if there was "a clear expression of the will of the population of a province on whether the province should cease to be a part of Canada and become an independent state." Those negotiations could begin as early as next week.
Back in the 1990s, no one imagined that this option would be exercised by a province other than Quebec. The critical question, therefore, is how did we get to this sorry state of affairs? What went so wrong along the way?
Although there has always a small smattering of separatist support in Alberta, usually a very small smattering, the origins of our current mess date back to 2006 when oil prices first passed $70 a barrel. The Alberta government, having paid off its provincial debt, was then generating larger surpluses than the federal government.
At the same time, the Ontario economy was beginning to falter in the face of both intensifying international competition and weakening U.S. markets. A rising Canadian dollar, driven upwards by robust international markets for natural resources in western provinces, squeezed the vise even tighter on the traditional manufacturing sector.
For a while the growing regional divide was masked. On average, the Canadian economy was doing well, and thus regional disparities within the context of more general national prosperity attracted less attention. Unemployment rates were at record lows, and Canadians across the country were enjoying growing real-estate wealth.
It was also assumed by most Canadians that the regional disparities being generated by Alberta's energy wealth, and for that matter by the general wealth of the resource-based western Canadian economy, would largely disappear once resource markets returned to normal levels. The western boom was seen as a temporary blip, a one-off windfall analogous to a lottery win. As Ralph Klein, then premier of Alberta, noted when asked about high-energy prices, "What goes up must come down," which indeed had been the historical experience of Alberta's volatile boom-and-bust economy.
Thus Canadians waited patiently, or in some cases impatiently, for energy prices to return to normal, and for the natural order of things to reassert itself. Over time, however, it began to sink in that the new normal was $70 a barrel for oil, and then $80, and then $90. The good old days of cheap energy, and with them the older model of the Canadian economy, were gone along with hot airline meals.
Now of course the Canadian economy was not alone in being hit by higher energy prices, and indeed in some ways was better off than most given that Canada was a net exporter of oil, natural gas, uranium and hydroelectric power. The problem and the political crisis came from the unequal regional distribution of those resources.
Slowly it became clear that the accumulation of wealth in Alberta, and to a lesser degree across the West, was the new reality. At the same time, the Ontario economy continued to be squeezed by competitors from China and India, by U.S. protectionism in the face of the same competition, and by weakening American markets as Washington grappled unsuccessfully with growing debt, a deteriorating balance of payments and international obligations that could not be shed.
In response, the western provinces were scrambling to find ways by which regional wealth could be used to positive national effect. The Alberta government, for example, generously endowed the Canadian Scholarship Fund to the point where it dwarfed the Rhodes and Woodrow Wilson funds, and where it was attracting the best and the brightest international students to universities across the country.
Similar endowments for medical research, wellness programs, clean coal and sustainable energy research were pushing Canada to the forefront of the international research community. Canada, led by the western provinces, was shedding its historical underperformance in the commercialization of university research. Furthermore, the western provinces collaborated to strengthen transportation linkages between Canada and the booming Asia Pacific economies, with positive effects that rippled across the country from sea to sea to sea.
And, in Alberta, the onslaught of prosperity gave residents both the opportunity and the luxury to manage the impact of energy developments on an increasingly stressed provincial land base. The pace of development was brought within the carrying capacity of the physical environment, and the province's vast energy endowment was not being exploited at the expense of its natural capital.
These steps, however, could moderate but not bridge the growing regional divide in the national economy. As oil prices crept past $100 a barrel, and then past $110, and then $120, the divide became even deeper. Every escalation brought more wealth to the West, and more cost-pressure to central Canadian firms. As energy prices continued their inexorable climb, the regional imbalance grew in step and all this took place against the backdrop of a troubled U.S. economy.
The growing divide
There was no question that the regional concentration of energy wealth was a source of strain for the federation as Ontario and Quebec faced significant out-migration of people and head offices, and had a harder time attracting immigrants. Not surprisingly, therefore, a political reaction was inevitable.
Although the western-led national government argued gamely that what was good for the Alberta economy was also good for the Canadian economy, it lost the election to a coalition of opposition parties running under the banner "Canadian resources for Canadians."
The equalization formula, funded as it was by federal taxpayers – the great bulk of whom lived outside Alberta and even outside the West – provided little counterweight for the public wealth piling up in Alberta. The province's Heritage Savings and Trust Fund, now worth well more than $150 billion, made Alberta an easy target.
Shortly before the pivotal election, renewed military conflict in the Middle East, nuclear weapons testing by Iran, and an outbreak of civil war in the Russian Caucuses drove oil prices close to $200 a barrel. Despite a surge of migration into the West, the majority of the national electorate still lived in Ontario and Quebec and swept into power a new government determined to arrest and even turn back the energy-led tide of prosperity in Western Canada.
Many in the West, particularly those with relatives, friends and business colleagues living in other parts of the country, had some sympathy for "Canadian resources for Canadians." Western Canadians, after all, were enjoying a great deal of prosperity, and thus the change in the national government alone was not enough to push them over the national unity edge.
Unfortunately, things did not go well politically. The new federal government, led by Ontario's first prime minister in more than 50 years, introduced a draconian series of tax measures to channel energy wealth into the national treasury. The need to address global warming was used as the rationale for sweeping carbon taxes, but the regional redistribution of wealth was the real driver.
Constitutional niceties were put aside as the federal government's responsibility for peace, order and good government was expanded to include the responsibility to reduce regional disparities. Energy resources, it turned out – although not hydro resources – were now in the national interest and under the jurisdictional umbrella of the federal government.
Even then, Albertans were not pushed to the breaking point. The straw that finally broke the province's back was the environmental disaster unleashed by federal management of Alberta's resource endowment. The province was quite literally out of sight and out of mind, and as the price of oil approached $200 a barrel, the focus of the national government shifted to more and more production. The collapse of an increasing fragile environment and the destruction of iconic landscapes were seen as an unfortunate but unavoidable price to pay as the rest of the country used petrodollars as a shield to protect their economies from ever intensifying international competition.
In short, Alberta became the Canadian cash cow, the bulwark against the economic effects of international competition and weak U.S. markets. Energy revenues were used to prop up an increasingly unproductive manufacturing economy, with petrodollars becoming the new tariff wall. In the near term, Canadians were therefore able to avoid the painful economic adjustments that other countries had to endure in the face of high energy prices, but in the long term the national economy was further weakened.
It turned out, of course, that while the concentration of energy wealth in one province had dramatic effects, the distribution of that wealth across a much larger national population had correspondingly more limited effects. The expectations held by supporters of "Canadian resources for Canadians' could only be met if energy production was pushed higher and higher, and pushed beyond the carrying capacity of Alberta's environment.
The call for environmental protection comes first and foremost from those who can taste, see, touch and breathe environmental degradation, and not from distant bureaucrats or voters. This meant that as control of Alberta's resource endowment shifted from provincial to national hands, concerns about environmental damage weakened. The standards of environmental stewardship and intergenerational equity that had come to shape the provincial policy architecture were abandoned by a national government intent on maximizing energy revenues.
The result was the emergence of a new and powerful political coalition in Alberta determined to lead the province out of Canada. Environmentalists locked arms with energy producers in defence of the province; ideologically moderate urbanities joined forces with ranchers and farmers as both the urban and rural environments became even more stressed. "Canadian resources for Canadians" came to be seen as environmental degradation for Alberta, and thus the fight was joined to save both the province's economy and environment.
And now, in 2020, where do we stand as Albertans prepare to go to the polls, and to strike out on their own? The nation's energy wealth has been dispersed and dissipated without strategic impact; there is no legacy except for unsustainable regional transfers and social programming. Canada is trailing rather than leading the technological race to wean the global economy from its dependence on hydrocarbons. Alberta's population has shrunk as people fled a growing ecological disaster. And, ironically, the rest of the Canadian economy, buffered by energy revenues, is now even less able to compete globally.
The Alberta Camelot that began to emerge in 2006 has come and gone. It was the Canadian curse that the Camelot created by high energy prices was located "in the regions," that it came to be seen as a national threat rather than a national asset.
What, then, could we have done differently? We could have recognized that regional swings in the national economy are inevitable and should be accommodated rather than resisted by public policies. We could have accelerated the transition to new energy sources instead of shielding Canadian industries and consumers from high energy prices. We could have built on the wisdom of "think globally, act locally" and recognized that the delicate balance between economic growth and environmental protection is better struck provincially rather than nationally. We could have built protections for regional interests and aspirations into the institutional architecture of the national government.
We could have done a lot, and instead we stand on the verge of losing so much. It should never have come to this.
Link ...
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Canada 2020: part 6
Jennifer Welsh
Jennifer Welsh, one of Canada's most brilliant and accomplished young minds, has a provocative plan to remedy our diminishing international status and our lack of coherent direction for the future. She is the author of At Home in the World: Canada's Global Vision for the 21st Century. Welsh holds a master's and doctorate in international relations from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and is currently a university lecturer in international relations and a fellow of Somerville College at the University of Oxford.
Reviving the spirit of San Francisco?
Jennifer Welsh Aug. 1, 2006
July 17, 2020 (New York) – Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, Jasmine Basran, is taping up the last of her boxes as the movers empty out her large office on Manhattan's Second Avenue.
"We just couldn't justify such a large space, when our mission to the UN has been so reduced."
There was barely a whimper in Canada when the Department of Foreign Affairs announced in 2018 that staffing for Canada's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York would be cut from over 30 to just fewer than 10.
"Our diplomatic presence now needs to be concentrated elsewhere, particularly at the Canadian mission to NATO in Brussels," Basran explained.
Earlier in the day, the ambassador gave us a tour of the UN Security Council chamber, which looks more like a museum than a forum for active diplomacy. The council hasn't met formally in over a year due to the deadlock over Syria's testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Ever since the U.S. campaign to give newly independent Taiwan a non-permanent seat on the security council, there has been virtually no possibility of the permanent members agreeing to collective action. China, backed by Russia, vetoes most of the resolutions proposed by the United States and the European Union. Japan and India, the two new semi-permanent members of the council (added during the reform conference of 2012) also tend to be divided on U.S.-inspired initiatives.
Basran, however, seems philosophical about the council's lack of activity.
"The council was also marginalized during the Cold War. The 1990s were in many ways the exception rather than the rule. Really, for the past decade, the action has been happening elsewhere. NATO is now the primary focus of Canada's international diplomacy."
What a dramatic change from 30 years ago, when commentators everywhere were proclaiming the death of NATO after the fall of Communism. NATO's original purpose, as a diplomat once quipped, had been to "keep the U.S. in, the Germans down, and the Russians out."
But without the Soviet bloc to serve as an external enemy for the Western alliance, NATO was expected to crumble and give way to a revitalized United Nations.
Today, this prediction looks like a quaint piece of history. NATO has continued its process of expansion, which began in 1999 with the admission of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, and continued with the addition of 10 countries over the following decade. The latest successful applicants — Bosnia, Georgia, and Ukraine — have brought the total number in the alliance up to 32. Throughout the process, the United States has pursued its objective of transforming NATO into a global forum for democracies, which can act collectively to promote democratic values among and beyond its members.
NATO has also proved that it can intervene more quickly in trouble spots around the globe. Its Council for Peace and Security, created in 2012, has at its disposal a contingent of troops from each member state that can be sent abroad for humanitarian missions. The most successful operation of this kind occurred in 2015, when violence broke out in Zimbabwe following the death of Robert Mugabe. Close to 1,000 Canadian troops — taken from our new Standing Contingency Task Force — were deployed in Zimbabwe as part of the NATO mission.
For Canadians, the transition to this new world has been difficult and confusing. In a 2004 poll conducted by The Dominion Institute, just after the breakdown in diplomacy over the Iraq War, almost three-quarters of Canadians said that the UN was still a better venue in which Canada could make a difference in the world than alternative, regional organizations. Far from being a sign of the UN's failure, Canadians believed the crisis over Iraq demonstrated the pitfalls that would face countries if they acted without UN support.
A long-time supporter of UN
For 70 years, Canada was a staunch and consistent supporter of the UN's multilateral mechanisms, and was at one time the seventh-largest donor to the UN and one of the major troop-contributing countries to UN peacekeeping. Indeed, this last area of activity was a dominant component of the Canadian national identity during the second half of the 20th century. But this self-image has undergone significant evolution.
Long used to thinking of themselves as the "world's peacekeepers," who rarely fire a gun, Canadians over the past two decades have watched their men and women in uniform engage in direct and fierce combat in the countryside and towns of Afghanistan. (In fact, as a third of Canadians predicted back in 2006, there is still a small contingent of Canadian troops on the ground helping with security efforts in southern Afghanistan today.)
At the same time, the country's participation in UN peacekeeping operations continued to decline after 2000 — partly as a result of a shortage of Canadian human resources but also due to the fact that more developing countries (particularly from Asia and Africa) provide the horsepower for peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions.
To be sure, it has taken some time for Canadians to relinquish their hopes and dreams for the UN. In 2010, the vast majority still would have agreed with the words of their former Prime Minister Lester Pearson, who described the UN as "our best, and perhaps our last, hope of bringing about a creative peace if mankind is to end a savage tradition that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
But these dreams were already beginning to look unrealistic in September of 2005, when leaders from around the globe converged at the 60th Anniversary Summit of the UN in New York.
Despite some positive changes to the workings of the organization, the summit failed to reinvigorate the UN after its painful experiences during the Iraq War and the scandals associated with the Oil-for-Food Program. This failure was mainly a consequence of unreasonably high expectations — raised in particular by former Secretary General Kofi Annan's reform rhetoric prior to the summit. Annan heralded the gathering of leaders as a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity to transform the UN from a body established out of the ashes of the Second World War into a forum that could manage the threats and challenges of the 21st century.
Leaders salvaged some kind of agreement, and posed smiling for the cameras outside the UN's headquarters. Then prime minister Paul Martin proclaimed at the time that: "Canada cannot conceive of a world succeeding without the United Nations."
In the end, however, the negotiations did not succeed in building a consensus on a new conception of collective security — one that could encapsulate both the threats from weapons proliferation and the human catastrophe of underdevelopment. The summit's outcome only deepened the divisions between the developing world and the developed world (particularly the U.S.), and made ongoing discussions about the UN's role in the world even more fractious.
Powerful developed states continued to fear that the UN would not act decisively on the threats that concern them (terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and trans-national crime), while developing countries continued to insist that the greatest threats to their security reside elsewhere — in poverty, infectious disease, and collapsing state structures.
The first sign of malaise for the UN came with the failure to agree on a budget in 2007. This left the new secretary general, Sri Lankan diplomat Jayantha Dhanapala, without the resources needed to support ongoing UN peacekeeping missions in Liberia, Ivory Coast, Haiti, Burundi and Sudan. (Close to 90,000 military personnel and civilian police were serving in these missions, with an annual budget of over $5 billion US.)
Anyone reading the tea-leaves in 2006 could have predicted this impending train wreck. In May of that year, a majority of developing countries (led by the G77 and China) set up a roadblock to much-needed management reforms of the UN by refusing to approve the secretary general's reform proposals. But the United States had linked its backing for the budget to progress on these improvements in the UN's management and administration. The stage was set for a confrontation.
Things got worse
The crisis intensified in 2008, with the disastrous end to the UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur. It had taken two years for the secretary general to persuade the Sudanese government to accept 10,000 UN personnel on its territory to replace the mission of the African Union. By the time the UN finally took over, in the spring of 2007, a total of 300,000 civilians had died and close to three million were forced from their homes. In addition, the slow lead-up to an international deployment allowed Islamic militants in the region to mobilize, creating an environment of extreme danger for foreign troops. After a disastrous show down in which over 1,000 peacekeepers were killed, troop-donating countries airlifted their soldiers out of the country.
The final blow came in 2010, when Dhanapala's term of office was not renewed, due to diplomatic confrontation between the United States and China. That left the secretary general's office unfilled for two years, while an interim official headed up the secretariat. Hopes were raised when a candidate who could garner universal support was nominated, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai. But only four months after he was installed, in 2012, he was assassinated by Taliban terrorists.
That year saw the UN descend into an existential crisis. For a time it appeared as though its member states might rally. Encouragingly, states such as Germany, Brazil, and South Africa set aside their ambitions for security council membership, and allowed a more modest proposal for council reform (which added two new semi-permanent members and five new non-permanent members) to be endorsed by the General Assembly. But the UN has never really recovered from the events of 2008-2012, and the frontal assault on its vocation as a force for global peace and dialogue.
For so long, the biggest factor working in favour of the UN was the lack of alternatives. Defenders of the organization, when faced with criticism, would commonly reply: "If the United Nations didn't exist, it would have to be invented." After 2012, this rationale began to lose its punch.
Even in the realm of poverty reduction and health, alternative organizations and actors - whether the Gates Foundation or the Global Fund for HIV/Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis — began to outstrip the UN in terms of both funding and effectiveness. Without commitment, leadership, and new ideas from its member states, the UN could not maintain its status at the top of the global multilateral hierarchy.
Meanwhile, regional bodies were growing in strength and finding faster, more effective ways to engage in collective action. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the African Union (AU), and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) followed NATO's lead in developing co-operative approaches to security and defence. Today, an ad hoc body has been established to facilitate dialogue among these regional organizations on global crises. On the economic, health, and environmental fronts, the new "L20" (an expansion on the old G8) has taken centre-stage as a forum for managing global financial matters, threats to the environment, and potential outbreaks of infectious disease. Canada has been particularly active in this innovative body, and is playing a constructive bridging role between developed and developing countries.
All of these organizations operate with a lighter "footprint" than the UN, and have thus far been able to avoid the failures of management and oversight which dogged the UN during the first decade of this century. But then again, none of these regional alternatives is driven by the ambition and hope that characterized the founding fathers of the United Nations.
The more historically minded among us still think back wistfully to 1945, and the "spirit of San Francisco." Could such a spirit be revived again, to breathe new life into the United Nations?
Before we could hope for a new "San Francisco," we would need a new "Dumbarton Oaks" — the meeting at which the Allied Powers came together to agree upon a global vision and to lead the process of change. But this looks unlikely today. The scheme for the UN worked, according to the great historian Paul Kennedy, because the bigger and wealthier powers realized that they had to be "providers" of international security for others.
At the moment, this leadership and engagement from the great powers is lacking. So too is a collective sense of responsibility, or a consensus among them about the most important security challenges facing the international community. The United States, as so many predicted 15 years ago, is no longer the unrivalled superpower. And the new great powers, China, India, and Brazil, have yet to define their global vision.
So, in the meantime, the government of Canada is decorating its new suite of offices on the Rue de la Regence in Brussels, and sending the high profile Justin Trudeau to serve as Canada's new ambassador to NATO.
Link ...
Jennifer Welsh, one of Canada's most brilliant and accomplished young minds, has a provocative plan to remedy our diminishing international status and our lack of coherent direction for the future. She is the author of At Home in the World: Canada's Global Vision for the 21st Century. Welsh holds a master's and doctorate in international relations from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and is currently a university lecturer in international relations and a fellow of Somerville College at the University of Oxford.
Reviving the spirit of San Francisco?
Jennifer Welsh Aug. 1, 2006
July 17, 2020 (New York) – Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, Jasmine Basran, is taping up the last of her boxes as the movers empty out her large office on Manhattan's Second Avenue.
"We just couldn't justify such a large space, when our mission to the UN has been so reduced."
There was barely a whimper in Canada when the Department of Foreign Affairs announced in 2018 that staffing for Canada's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York would be cut from over 30 to just fewer than 10.
"Our diplomatic presence now needs to be concentrated elsewhere, particularly at the Canadian mission to NATO in Brussels," Basran explained.
Earlier in the day, the ambassador gave us a tour of the UN Security Council chamber, which looks more like a museum than a forum for active diplomacy. The council hasn't met formally in over a year due to the deadlock over Syria's testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Ever since the U.S. campaign to give newly independent Taiwan a non-permanent seat on the security council, there has been virtually no possibility of the permanent members agreeing to collective action. China, backed by Russia, vetoes most of the resolutions proposed by the United States and the European Union. Japan and India, the two new semi-permanent members of the council (added during the reform conference of 2012) also tend to be divided on U.S.-inspired initiatives.
Basran, however, seems philosophical about the council's lack of activity.
"The council was also marginalized during the Cold War. The 1990s were in many ways the exception rather than the rule. Really, for the past decade, the action has been happening elsewhere. NATO is now the primary focus of Canada's international diplomacy."
What a dramatic change from 30 years ago, when commentators everywhere were proclaiming the death of NATO after the fall of Communism. NATO's original purpose, as a diplomat once quipped, had been to "keep the U.S. in, the Germans down, and the Russians out."
But without the Soviet bloc to serve as an external enemy for the Western alliance, NATO was expected to crumble and give way to a revitalized United Nations.
Today, this prediction looks like a quaint piece of history. NATO has continued its process of expansion, which began in 1999 with the admission of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, and continued with the addition of 10 countries over the following decade. The latest successful applicants — Bosnia, Georgia, and Ukraine — have brought the total number in the alliance up to 32. Throughout the process, the United States has pursued its objective of transforming NATO into a global forum for democracies, which can act collectively to promote democratic values among and beyond its members.
NATO has also proved that it can intervene more quickly in trouble spots around the globe. Its Council for Peace and Security, created in 2012, has at its disposal a contingent of troops from each member state that can be sent abroad for humanitarian missions. The most successful operation of this kind occurred in 2015, when violence broke out in Zimbabwe following the death of Robert Mugabe. Close to 1,000 Canadian troops — taken from our new Standing Contingency Task Force — were deployed in Zimbabwe as part of the NATO mission.
For Canadians, the transition to this new world has been difficult and confusing. In a 2004 poll conducted by The Dominion Institute, just after the breakdown in diplomacy over the Iraq War, almost three-quarters of Canadians said that the UN was still a better venue in which Canada could make a difference in the world than alternative, regional organizations. Far from being a sign of the UN's failure, Canadians believed the crisis over Iraq demonstrated the pitfalls that would face countries if they acted without UN support.
A long-time supporter of UN
For 70 years, Canada was a staunch and consistent supporter of the UN's multilateral mechanisms, and was at one time the seventh-largest donor to the UN and one of the major troop-contributing countries to UN peacekeeping. Indeed, this last area of activity was a dominant component of the Canadian national identity during the second half of the 20th century. But this self-image has undergone significant evolution.
Long used to thinking of themselves as the "world's peacekeepers," who rarely fire a gun, Canadians over the past two decades have watched their men and women in uniform engage in direct and fierce combat in the countryside and towns of Afghanistan. (In fact, as a third of Canadians predicted back in 2006, there is still a small contingent of Canadian troops on the ground helping with security efforts in southern Afghanistan today.)
At the same time, the country's participation in UN peacekeeping operations continued to decline after 2000 — partly as a result of a shortage of Canadian human resources but also due to the fact that more developing countries (particularly from Asia and Africa) provide the horsepower for peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions.
To be sure, it has taken some time for Canadians to relinquish their hopes and dreams for the UN. In 2010, the vast majority still would have agreed with the words of their former Prime Minister Lester Pearson, who described the UN as "our best, and perhaps our last, hope of bringing about a creative peace if mankind is to end a savage tradition that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
But these dreams were already beginning to look unrealistic in September of 2005, when leaders from around the globe converged at the 60th Anniversary Summit of the UN in New York.
Despite some positive changes to the workings of the organization, the summit failed to reinvigorate the UN after its painful experiences during the Iraq War and the scandals associated with the Oil-for-Food Program. This failure was mainly a consequence of unreasonably high expectations — raised in particular by former Secretary General Kofi Annan's reform rhetoric prior to the summit. Annan heralded the gathering of leaders as a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity to transform the UN from a body established out of the ashes of the Second World War into a forum that could manage the threats and challenges of the 21st century.
Leaders salvaged some kind of agreement, and posed smiling for the cameras outside the UN's headquarters. Then prime minister Paul Martin proclaimed at the time that: "Canada cannot conceive of a world succeeding without the United Nations."
In the end, however, the negotiations did not succeed in building a consensus on a new conception of collective security — one that could encapsulate both the threats from weapons proliferation and the human catastrophe of underdevelopment. The summit's outcome only deepened the divisions between the developing world and the developed world (particularly the U.S.), and made ongoing discussions about the UN's role in the world even more fractious.
Powerful developed states continued to fear that the UN would not act decisively on the threats that concern them (terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and trans-national crime), while developing countries continued to insist that the greatest threats to their security reside elsewhere — in poverty, infectious disease, and collapsing state structures.
The first sign of malaise for the UN came with the failure to agree on a budget in 2007. This left the new secretary general, Sri Lankan diplomat Jayantha Dhanapala, without the resources needed to support ongoing UN peacekeeping missions in Liberia, Ivory Coast, Haiti, Burundi and Sudan. (Close to 90,000 military personnel and civilian police were serving in these missions, with an annual budget of over $5 billion US.)
Anyone reading the tea-leaves in 2006 could have predicted this impending train wreck. In May of that year, a majority of developing countries (led by the G77 and China) set up a roadblock to much-needed management reforms of the UN by refusing to approve the secretary general's reform proposals. But the United States had linked its backing for the budget to progress on these improvements in the UN's management and administration. The stage was set for a confrontation.
Things got worse
The crisis intensified in 2008, with the disastrous end to the UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur. It had taken two years for the secretary general to persuade the Sudanese government to accept 10,000 UN personnel on its territory to replace the mission of the African Union. By the time the UN finally took over, in the spring of 2007, a total of 300,000 civilians had died and close to three million were forced from their homes. In addition, the slow lead-up to an international deployment allowed Islamic militants in the region to mobilize, creating an environment of extreme danger for foreign troops. After a disastrous show down in which over 1,000 peacekeepers were killed, troop-donating countries airlifted their soldiers out of the country.
The final blow came in 2010, when Dhanapala's term of office was not renewed, due to diplomatic confrontation between the United States and China. That left the secretary general's office unfilled for two years, while an interim official headed up the secretariat. Hopes were raised when a candidate who could garner universal support was nominated, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai. But only four months after he was installed, in 2012, he was assassinated by Taliban terrorists.
That year saw the UN descend into an existential crisis. For a time it appeared as though its member states might rally. Encouragingly, states such as Germany, Brazil, and South Africa set aside their ambitions for security council membership, and allowed a more modest proposal for council reform (which added two new semi-permanent members and five new non-permanent members) to be endorsed by the General Assembly. But the UN has never really recovered from the events of 2008-2012, and the frontal assault on its vocation as a force for global peace and dialogue.
For so long, the biggest factor working in favour of the UN was the lack of alternatives. Defenders of the organization, when faced with criticism, would commonly reply: "If the United Nations didn't exist, it would have to be invented." After 2012, this rationale began to lose its punch.
Even in the realm of poverty reduction and health, alternative organizations and actors - whether the Gates Foundation or the Global Fund for HIV/Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis — began to outstrip the UN in terms of both funding and effectiveness. Without commitment, leadership, and new ideas from its member states, the UN could not maintain its status at the top of the global multilateral hierarchy.
Meanwhile, regional bodies were growing in strength and finding faster, more effective ways to engage in collective action. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the African Union (AU), and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) followed NATO's lead in developing co-operative approaches to security and defence. Today, an ad hoc body has been established to facilitate dialogue among these regional organizations on global crises. On the economic, health, and environmental fronts, the new "L20" (an expansion on the old G8) has taken centre-stage as a forum for managing global financial matters, threats to the environment, and potential outbreaks of infectious disease. Canada has been particularly active in this innovative body, and is playing a constructive bridging role between developed and developing countries.
All of these organizations operate with a lighter "footprint" than the UN, and have thus far been able to avoid the failures of management and oversight which dogged the UN during the first decade of this century. But then again, none of these regional alternatives is driven by the ambition and hope that characterized the founding fathers of the United Nations.
The more historically minded among us still think back wistfully to 1945, and the "spirit of San Francisco." Could such a spirit be revived again, to breathe new life into the United Nations?
Before we could hope for a new "San Francisco," we would need a new "Dumbarton Oaks" — the meeting at which the Allied Powers came together to agree upon a global vision and to lead the process of change. But this looks unlikely today. The scheme for the UN worked, according to the great historian Paul Kennedy, because the bigger and wealthier powers realized that they had to be "providers" of international security for others.
At the moment, this leadership and engagement from the great powers is lacking. So too is a collective sense of responsibility, or a consensus among them about the most important security challenges facing the international community. The United States, as so many predicted 15 years ago, is no longer the unrivalled superpower. And the new great powers, China, India, and Brazil, have yet to define their global vision.
So, in the meantime, the government of Canada is decorating its new suite of offices on the Rue de la Regence in Brussels, and sending the high profile Justin Trudeau to serve as Canada's new ambassador to NATO.
Link ...
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Canada 2020: Part 5
Don Drummond
Don Drummond joined the federal Department of Finance upon completing his studies at Queen's University. During almost 23 years at Finance, he held a series of progressively more senior positions in the areas of economic analysis and forecasting, fiscal policy and tax policy. He joined the TD Bank in June 2000 as senior vice-president and chief economist.
Whither the Canadian economy?
Don Drummond July 24, 2006
What will Canada look like in the year 2020? To encourage a debate about the major challenges Canada will face in the coming decades, the Dominion Institute and the Toronto Star have invited 20 leading thinkers to write about an issue or event that they think could transform the country by 2020.
Manufacturing accounts for more than one-sixth of Canada's output and is a source of well-paying jobs. The industry has survived a number of transformational events — North American free trade, the lapsed Auto Pact and the end of import quotas in the textile and clothing industries.
Now China and other emerging Asian economies present new competition just as the Canadian dollar is soaring. Can Canada's industrial base prosper under these challenges or will it wither by 2020? Will manufacturing wages be driven down to the low levels some of our competitors pay?
The challenges of emerging competitors and the stronger dollar are most acute for Canada's manufacturing sector. That largely means Ontario and Quebec, where manufacturing accounts for about 21 per cent of total output, double the average in the other eight provinces.
On the surface, the economies of these two provinces — Ontario's in particular — appear to be in good shape. Only five countries have a higher standard of living than Ontario's and it lags only the United States among countries of equal or larger population. Quebec's standard of living is smack in the middle of the 30 developed economies in the Organization for Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Dig deeper and you find that, relative to 14 comparable U.S. states, Ontario and Quebec are at the bottom of the pile, according to Ontario's Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity. Ontario's real GDP per capita was $6,000 below the median in 2004 while Quebec had a $13,000 deficiency. The main culprit? Inferior productivity.
As if a 90-cent dollar and Canadian private-sector productivity of 79 per cent of the United States weren't worrying enough, there is a growing factory base in the southern United States where workers accept low wages with few benefits. Increasing the threat even more is that Canada's trade balance in manufactured goods with China has deteriorated by one per cent of GDP over the past decade. Chinese imports are no longer just T-shirts and simple toys. The strongest increases have come in machinery and mechanical goods.
Ontario's economy has been hardest hit, with an increased deficit with China of two per cent of Ontario's GDP, most of it in capital-intensive goods. Quebec's minor deterioration in its trade balance with China in manufactured products masks a significant deterioration in trade in other goods and with other countries. In order to improve efficiency, manufacturers have shed nine per cent of the sector's jobs in Ontario and 13 per cent in Quebec since November 2002. But that can't be the sole response.
Will the strong survive?
So should we throw up our hands in despair? Advanced economies have faced new competitiveness threats from an emerging economy before. The United Kingdom has been through this many times with former colonies, most notably the rise of the U.S. economic empire. Yet the U.K. economy is still one of the wealthiest in the world.
Japan went from 29 per cent of U.S. real per capita incomes in 1950 to exceeding the U.S. level by 1986, while producing one-quarter of all U.S. imports. Despite predictions, the U.S. did not cede its economic supremacy to Japan. Since the early 1990s, U.S. output per capita grew twice as fast as Japan's. In general, advanced economies have shifted away from goods toward services and picked niches where their productivity advantage is greatest. At the same time, rising incomes in the emerging economies have created demand for the goods and services of the wealthiest countries.
There is no guarantee this experience will hold true today. The emerging economies are speedily reaping the benefits of the capital and brains of the advanced economies. They are embracing free trade and foreign investment, providing incentives for leading-edge technologies and massively investing in education and infrastructure.
Since 1997, Korea, China and India have improved their productivity by 81, 67 and 46 per cent respectively. In the same period, Canada's productivity advanced only 11 per cent. Even the U.S. outpaced us at 17 per cent. Real per capita incomes have risen more than 500 per cent in China and more than doubled in India since 1980, but Canadian companies have not taken advantage of that through higher exports, despite the commodity price boom. All the emerging economies are aiming production at a pretty high rung on the value-added ladder, and some, like India, are formidable competitors in key service industries.
One option for Canada, between now and the year 2020, would be to allow emerging economies to use their huge surplus savings to purchase our assets while we use the proceeds to maintain our consumption standards. But surely we have greater aspirations than this. To stay at the top of the world economic order we need ample, well-paying jobs matched to strong output growth. An economy can only sustain high wages if it has strong productivity.
Invest for productivity
So how do we tackle this challenge and ensure Canada in 2020 has a robust and competitive economy? We first need to understand how increases in productivity occur. The conventional view is that productivity rises as firms and workers find smarter ways of doing things. But as a Statistics Canada study shows, less than half of productivity gains occur this way. The bulk of productivity growth comes from shifting market share toward more productive plants — existing or new. Over a decade, plant closures or downsizing eliminated two out of every five jobs in manufacturing in Canada. The more dynamic industries differ from declining ones by their investment in new productive capacity (e.g., plants, factories, infrastructure).
Internationally, productivity gains have come from combinations of greater trade liberalization, increased investment, better education, and above all, rapid change. But change can be uncomfortable and has a disproportionate impact on the least educated and least skilled. So while fostering change you also need support mechanisms for those most adversely affected.
How can we use these experiences to raise productivity in Canada and in particular its industrial base in Ontario and Quebec by the year 2020?
Canadian firms need to invest more, particularly in machinery and equipment, where our stock per hour worked is only 55 per cent of that in the U.S. This is an excellent time to do so, because the strong Canadian dollar has slashed the cost of imported capital. Governments need to cut capital taxes, which in Canada are the second highest of 35 countries studied by the C.D. Howe Institute. Ontario's tax burden is the second highest in the country, with its high corporate income tax rate, its large capital tax, high industrial and commercial property taxes and inclusion of capital in the retail sales tax base.
Quebec's is not far behind and will rise with the increase in its corporate income tax rate from 8.9 per cent last year to 11.9 per cent by 2009. Ontario and Quebec both need to reduce marginal personal income tax rates. At almost 50 per cent for high-income workers and effectively much higher for modest-income families, they dull the incentives to work, save and invest. Both governments have appropriately been increasing investment in education and infrastructure in recent years and need to continue.
With an aging population, a particular worry in Quebec because of its low birth rate, immigration will be the source of most labour force growth to the year 2020 and beyond. The provinces must work with the federal government to improve the economic benefits of immigration.
This needs to go beyond the recent focus on improved credential recognition and settlement services to include a more active search for potential immigrants whose skills are needed. Companies and individuals in Ontario need to devote more time and money to lifelong learning and training. Both provinces need to complete the adjustment to market pricing for electricity and encourage new supply to limit price increases.
Demographics and taxes
Ontario and Quebec each have specific challenges that need to be addressed to ensure prosperity in 2020.
The Ontario economy and its taxpayers are handicapped because the federal government extracts more in taxes from Ontario than it spends in the province. Statistics Canada estimates the net outflow was $18.2 billion in 2003. That's a fiscal drag of 3.7 per cent of Ontario's economy, whereas, excluding Alberta, the other provinces had a net federal fiscal injection of 3.9 per cent. Similarly, most U.S. states have a net fiscal injection from their federal government.
The point is not that federal governments should run deficits. Rather, it is to ponder how much redistribution the taxpayers of provinces with above-average incomes can finance when they need to be competitive not only with other jurisdictions in Canada, but with the rest of the world.
The current situation also makes it difficult for the Ontario government to finance, at competitive tax rates, the services its residents and businesses need. In 2005 Ontario received $1,235 per capita less in federal transfers than the median of all provinces. Its own revenues were right on the provincial median, but excluding resource revenues — where Ontario is disadvantaged by not having the commodity base some of the other provinces enjoy — own-source revenues were almost 10 per cent above the median thanks to a combination of fairly high tax rates and strong incomes. The balancing item was that Ontario spent $1,109 less than the provincial median, putting it in 10th or last place among provinces. Education was one of the components that ended up in that last-place standing, compromising the province's ability to meet its competitiveness challenges.
Quebec's particular fiscal challenge is its debt burden, which per capita is the second highest in Canada, and relative to income is among the highest in the world. The cost of financing that debt leaves Quebecers facing the second-highest tax burden in Canada and impedes public initiatives that could bolster productivity. The recent commitment to reduce the absolute level of the debt burden is to be commended.
Progress needs to be made soon, as Quebec's labour force could come to a standstill by 2020; its population has been growing at half the rate of the rest of Canada and the gap is even wider with the U.S. Quebec has no option to raise its already high personal and corporate income taxes, but it should examine raising the cost of some public services such as cutting subsidies to electricity and post-secondary education and raising some consumption taxes.
History suggests that advanced economies like Canada's not only survive but actually benefit from emerging competitors. That may be particularly difficult to pull off between now and 2020 in the case of Canada's industrial base in Ontario and Quebec. The key will be whether they can bolster their dismal records on productivity. Attention is being paid to this requirement, but the fire seems to be missing. Somebody had better light the match soon.
Link ...
Don Drummond joined the federal Department of Finance upon completing his studies at Queen's University. During almost 23 years at Finance, he held a series of progressively more senior positions in the areas of economic analysis and forecasting, fiscal policy and tax policy. He joined the TD Bank in June 2000 as senior vice-president and chief economist.
Whither the Canadian economy?
Don Drummond July 24, 2006
What will Canada look like in the year 2020? To encourage a debate about the major challenges Canada will face in the coming decades, the Dominion Institute and the Toronto Star have invited 20 leading thinkers to write about an issue or event that they think could transform the country by 2020.
Manufacturing accounts for more than one-sixth of Canada's output and is a source of well-paying jobs. The industry has survived a number of transformational events — North American free trade, the lapsed Auto Pact and the end of import quotas in the textile and clothing industries.
Now China and other emerging Asian economies present new competition just as the Canadian dollar is soaring. Can Canada's industrial base prosper under these challenges or will it wither by 2020? Will manufacturing wages be driven down to the low levels some of our competitors pay?
The challenges of emerging competitors and the stronger dollar are most acute for Canada's manufacturing sector. That largely means Ontario and Quebec, where manufacturing accounts for about 21 per cent of total output, double the average in the other eight provinces.
On the surface, the economies of these two provinces — Ontario's in particular — appear to be in good shape. Only five countries have a higher standard of living than Ontario's and it lags only the United States among countries of equal or larger population. Quebec's standard of living is smack in the middle of the 30 developed economies in the Organization for Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Dig deeper and you find that, relative to 14 comparable U.S. states, Ontario and Quebec are at the bottom of the pile, according to Ontario's Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity. Ontario's real GDP per capita was $6,000 below the median in 2004 while Quebec had a $13,000 deficiency. The main culprit? Inferior productivity.
As if a 90-cent dollar and Canadian private-sector productivity of 79 per cent of the United States weren't worrying enough, there is a growing factory base in the southern United States where workers accept low wages with few benefits. Increasing the threat even more is that Canada's trade balance in manufactured goods with China has deteriorated by one per cent of GDP over the past decade. Chinese imports are no longer just T-shirts and simple toys. The strongest increases have come in machinery and mechanical goods.
Ontario's economy has been hardest hit, with an increased deficit with China of two per cent of Ontario's GDP, most of it in capital-intensive goods. Quebec's minor deterioration in its trade balance with China in manufactured products masks a significant deterioration in trade in other goods and with other countries. In order to improve efficiency, manufacturers have shed nine per cent of the sector's jobs in Ontario and 13 per cent in Quebec since November 2002. But that can't be the sole response.
Will the strong survive?
So should we throw up our hands in despair? Advanced economies have faced new competitiveness threats from an emerging economy before. The United Kingdom has been through this many times with former colonies, most notably the rise of the U.S. economic empire. Yet the U.K. economy is still one of the wealthiest in the world.
Japan went from 29 per cent of U.S. real per capita incomes in 1950 to exceeding the U.S. level by 1986, while producing one-quarter of all U.S. imports. Despite predictions, the U.S. did not cede its economic supremacy to Japan. Since the early 1990s, U.S. output per capita grew twice as fast as Japan's. In general, advanced economies have shifted away from goods toward services and picked niches where their productivity advantage is greatest. At the same time, rising incomes in the emerging economies have created demand for the goods and services of the wealthiest countries.
There is no guarantee this experience will hold true today. The emerging economies are speedily reaping the benefits of the capital and brains of the advanced economies. They are embracing free trade and foreign investment, providing incentives for leading-edge technologies and massively investing in education and infrastructure.
Since 1997, Korea, China and India have improved their productivity by 81, 67 and 46 per cent respectively. In the same period, Canada's productivity advanced only 11 per cent. Even the U.S. outpaced us at 17 per cent. Real per capita incomes have risen more than 500 per cent in China and more than doubled in India since 1980, but Canadian companies have not taken advantage of that through higher exports, despite the commodity price boom. All the emerging economies are aiming production at a pretty high rung on the value-added ladder, and some, like India, are formidable competitors in key service industries.
One option for Canada, between now and the year 2020, would be to allow emerging economies to use their huge surplus savings to purchase our assets while we use the proceeds to maintain our consumption standards. But surely we have greater aspirations than this. To stay at the top of the world economic order we need ample, well-paying jobs matched to strong output growth. An economy can only sustain high wages if it has strong productivity.
Invest for productivity
So how do we tackle this challenge and ensure Canada in 2020 has a robust and competitive economy? We first need to understand how increases in productivity occur. The conventional view is that productivity rises as firms and workers find smarter ways of doing things. But as a Statistics Canada study shows, less than half of productivity gains occur this way. The bulk of productivity growth comes from shifting market share toward more productive plants — existing or new. Over a decade, plant closures or downsizing eliminated two out of every five jobs in manufacturing in Canada. The more dynamic industries differ from declining ones by their investment in new productive capacity (e.g., plants, factories, infrastructure).
Internationally, productivity gains have come from combinations of greater trade liberalization, increased investment, better education, and above all, rapid change. But change can be uncomfortable and has a disproportionate impact on the least educated and least skilled. So while fostering change you also need support mechanisms for those most adversely affected.
How can we use these experiences to raise productivity in Canada and in particular its industrial base in Ontario and Quebec by the year 2020?
Canadian firms need to invest more, particularly in machinery and equipment, where our stock per hour worked is only 55 per cent of that in the U.S. This is an excellent time to do so, because the strong Canadian dollar has slashed the cost of imported capital. Governments need to cut capital taxes, which in Canada are the second highest of 35 countries studied by the C.D. Howe Institute. Ontario's tax burden is the second highest in the country, with its high corporate income tax rate, its large capital tax, high industrial and commercial property taxes and inclusion of capital in the retail sales tax base.
Quebec's is not far behind and will rise with the increase in its corporate income tax rate from 8.9 per cent last year to 11.9 per cent by 2009. Ontario and Quebec both need to reduce marginal personal income tax rates. At almost 50 per cent for high-income workers and effectively much higher for modest-income families, they dull the incentives to work, save and invest. Both governments have appropriately been increasing investment in education and infrastructure in recent years and need to continue.
With an aging population, a particular worry in Quebec because of its low birth rate, immigration will be the source of most labour force growth to the year 2020 and beyond. The provinces must work with the federal government to improve the economic benefits of immigration.
This needs to go beyond the recent focus on improved credential recognition and settlement services to include a more active search for potential immigrants whose skills are needed. Companies and individuals in Ontario need to devote more time and money to lifelong learning and training. Both provinces need to complete the adjustment to market pricing for electricity and encourage new supply to limit price increases.
Demographics and taxes
Ontario and Quebec each have specific challenges that need to be addressed to ensure prosperity in 2020.
The Ontario economy and its taxpayers are handicapped because the federal government extracts more in taxes from Ontario than it spends in the province. Statistics Canada estimates the net outflow was $18.2 billion in 2003. That's a fiscal drag of 3.7 per cent of Ontario's economy, whereas, excluding Alberta, the other provinces had a net federal fiscal injection of 3.9 per cent. Similarly, most U.S. states have a net fiscal injection from their federal government.
The point is not that federal governments should run deficits. Rather, it is to ponder how much redistribution the taxpayers of provinces with above-average incomes can finance when they need to be competitive not only with other jurisdictions in Canada, but with the rest of the world.
The current situation also makes it difficult for the Ontario government to finance, at competitive tax rates, the services its residents and businesses need. In 2005 Ontario received $1,235 per capita less in federal transfers than the median of all provinces. Its own revenues were right on the provincial median, but excluding resource revenues — where Ontario is disadvantaged by not having the commodity base some of the other provinces enjoy — own-source revenues were almost 10 per cent above the median thanks to a combination of fairly high tax rates and strong incomes. The balancing item was that Ontario spent $1,109 less than the provincial median, putting it in 10th or last place among provinces. Education was one of the components that ended up in that last-place standing, compromising the province's ability to meet its competitiveness challenges.
Quebec's particular fiscal challenge is its debt burden, which per capita is the second highest in Canada, and relative to income is among the highest in the world. The cost of financing that debt leaves Quebecers facing the second-highest tax burden in Canada and impedes public initiatives that could bolster productivity. The recent commitment to reduce the absolute level of the debt burden is to be commended.
Progress needs to be made soon, as Quebec's labour force could come to a standstill by 2020; its population has been growing at half the rate of the rest of Canada and the gap is even wider with the U.S. Quebec has no option to raise its already high personal and corporate income taxes, but it should examine raising the cost of some public services such as cutting subsidies to electricity and post-secondary education and raising some consumption taxes.
History suggests that advanced economies like Canada's not only survive but actually benefit from emerging competitors. That may be particularly difficult to pull off between now and 2020 in the case of Canada's industrial base in Ontario and Quebec. The key will be whether they can bolster their dismal records on productivity. Attention is being paid to this requirement, but the fire seems to be missing. Somebody had better light the match soon.
Link ...
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Canada 2020: part 4
Pierre Fortin
Pierre Fortin is a professor of economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal, and an associate of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Pierre Fortin is professor of economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), which he joined in 1988 after teaching at Université Laval and the Université de Montréal. In 1995 he was selected by the Quebec Association of Business Economists as "the most influential Quebec economist of the last decade." He is a past president of the Canadian Economics Association.
The baby boomers' tab
By Pierre Fortin, UQAM July 17, 2006
Just after the Second World War, from 1945 to 1960, there were about 28 births on average per 1,000 people in Canada: these were the children of the baby boom. But these baby boomers did not have many children of their own, and they did not have many grandchildren, either. By 1970, the birth rate in Canada had dropped to 17 births per 1,000 people. Since 2000, it has been hovering around 11 births per 1,000 Canadians.
This extraordinary flip-flop in the birth rate explains a number of key phenomena in our lives during the last 50 years. It will now have a determining influence on the economic and social change that we will witness during the coming decades, and certainly between now and 2020. As my colleague and friend David Foot of the University of Toronto likes to say: "Demographics explain two-thirds of just about anything!"
The Golden Age
The notable phenomenon of the years 1960 to 1980 was the mass entry of baby boomers into the workplace. The number of workers earning a salary and paying taxes grew at a breathtaking rate. The Welfare State experienced a rapid expansion. We successively implemented hospital insurance, health insurance, low-cost college and university education, social services, public pension plans, more generous old age pensions and employment benefits, etc. It was the Golden Age of social programs. Do you admire the politicians of the era - the Pearsons, Trudeaus, Douglases, Robartses, Lesages, etc. - for developing our great social programs? You are right in so doing, for they were great people. But remember that from a financial perspective, they had an easy time. Money was no problem. The huge addition to the tax revenue from the baby boomers was great food for their imagination.
The flip side
In the years to come, we are going to experience the flip side. Baby boomers born between 1945 and 1960 are today between 45 and 60 years old. In 2020, they will be 60 to 75 years old. Most of them will have begun their retirement. Just as they entered the job market en masse between 1960 and 1980, they will leave it in large numbers between now and 2025. They will hardly be doing any work and they will not be paying many taxes. (OK, the money they withdraw from their RRSPs will be taxable, but that really does not change the big picture.) The consequence is obvious: Our governments will be cash-strapped!
1) Less tax revenues
This year, 2006, 51% of Canada's total population are working. In 2020, when the baby boomers' departure will be underway, only 49% of the population will be working if the employment rates by age remain stable. The overall employment rate will thus have dropped 2 points from 51, the equivalent of a 4% drop. What will the impact be on the government tax revenues? Simply put, we can calculate how much tax revenue they would have lost today, in 2006, if the number of taxpayers had suddenly dropped by 4%. The ready answer is: Since Canadians will pay $500 billion in income and other taxes this year, our governments would have collected $20 billion less (4% of $500 billion). That's point No. 1.
2) More health-care spending
That's not all. The passage of this large group of baby boomers into their golden years will push the percentage of senior citizens 65 and older from 13% of the total population in 2006 to 18% in 2020. Now a senior citizen costs on average five times more in terms of health-care costs and social services compared to a younger adult. As a result, between now and 2020, there will be a 14% increase in annual provincial spending in health care and social services, this above and beyond the already extremely rapid increase in spending over the past several years (on average 7% per year since 2000).
Once again, a simple way to comprehend the financial import of this demographic shock is to calculate the impact of a 14% increase in provincial health-care and social-services spending in 2006. Given that total spending in these two areas will reach $112 billion this year, the 14% increase would add $16 billion to the pressure on provincial finances (14% of $112 billion). That's point No. 2.
3) More payments to seniors
Another government program that is going to suffer the effects of the aging baby-boomer population is federal payments to seniors, including the venerable "old-age pension" and the guaranteed income supplement for lower-income seniors. With 13% of the population now 65 or older, the federal government expects to spend $31 billion in payments to seniors in 2006. If this percentage were to suddenly jump 5 points to 18%, as is expected for 2020, Ottawa would have to come up with $12 billion more in 2006 (5/13 of $31 billion). That's point No. 3.
4) Possible savings
Will the aging of the Canadian population allow at least some savings? Yes, in the areas of children's benefits, child-care allowances and education funding. According to the average birthrate and immigration scenario put out by Statistics Canada, the relative weight of young people (0-19 years old) in the total population will drop by 13% between 2006 and 2020. School enrolment will decline accordingly. This will permit proportional reductions in federal children's benefits, and provincial education and day-care spending. In 2006, the combined value of all these expenditures on behalf of children and students is $79 billion. If these expenses dropped suddenly by 13%, governments would save $10 billion (13% of $79 billion). That's point No. 4.
Will the demographic transition threaten the viability of our public pension plans? No. To avoid any slips due to demographic shockwaves, the various levels of government proactively revised the structure of the Canada Pension Plan and the Régime des rentes du Québec some time ago. The general contribution rate was upped to 9.9% of insurable earnings in 2003. This rate will only need a slight increase to permit adequate financing for retirement income of baby boomers and their children for the foreseeable future.
The tab: $38 billion
Let's sum up. Baby boomers born between 1945 and 1960 are going to retire en masse but they will leave few children and grandchildren behind. Canada is thus going to undergo a major demographic transition. To highlight the financial consequences, I have presented a scenario that applied what may be the reality in the future to our current state of affairs. I have calculated the impact that demographic changes would have on public monies in Canada in 2006 if the age pyramid expected for 2020 suddenly applied today.
The result would be a marked deterioration of public finances. As we saw, tax revenues would drop by $20 billion; provincial spending in health and social services would increase by $16 billion; federal payments to seniors would rise by $12 billion; allowances for children, education spending and child-care spending could decrease by $10 billion. In total, if it were applied today, the age structure of 2020's population would make a hole of $38 billion in government budgets for 2006; this would be split about evenly between the federal government and the provinces. In other words, there would be a new kind of "fiscal imbalance," demographic in nature. But this time it will hit Ottawa as hard as the provinces. Even worse, after 2020 the problem will not disappear; it will in fact get bigger.
As of 2010, year after year, governments are going to see more and more disappointing tax revenues. The problem of health-care funding, which is already a hot issue today, will become absolutely dramatic as the baby boomers get older. Federal payments to seniors are going to see unprecedented growth. While provinces may realize some savings in education, these will only partially compensate for the drop in tax revenue and the explosion in health-care spending. As for pension plans, they will deal with the shock without too much difficulty.
Financially, governments have three options: go back into debt (the Japanese approach), cut or privatize public services (the U.S. approach) or raise taxes (the Swedish approach). Each government will choose the combination that best matches its political philosophy. But in Ottawa just as in the provinces, we cannot exclude the possibility of a new cycle of debt. A funding crisis could lead, more quickly than one might think, to a major transformation of our cherished health-care system. And we had better forget about major tax reductions for quite some time.
Growth and solidarity
Governments can implement two main kinds of policies to deal with the demographic shock: a policy of economic growth and a policy of intergenerational solidarity. They can accelerate economic growth in the usual ways: fight unemployment and poverty, support employment of older workers, accelerate the integration of immigrant workers and foster education, entrepreneurship, savings, investment, innovation and productivity. Stronger economic growth will reduce the effects of overall economic decline and tax-revenue losses due to the disappearance of the baby boomers.
Also, governments can try to protect new generations from debt, program spending cuts and tax hikes by convincing current generations to proactively share the tab. This policy of solidarity between generations would be based on the repayment of public debt. A reduction of debt financed by today's taxpayers will reduce interest charges paid by the taxpayers of tomorrow, who will therefore have more money to access the same level of public services as today, without being forced to overly add to their tax burden. To me it seems self-evident that after having treated themselves to a great party, baby boomers would want to not leave all the cleanup duties to their children.
Two governments in Canada have followed that path: the federal government and the government of Alberta. For several years now, each federal budget has set aside a sum to repay part of the debt. For its part, Edmonton has followed in Norway's footsteps and has actually finished reimbursing its debt through oil and gas royalties.
Other governments could follow their lead. Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia could sell their electricity at market price rather than massively subsidizing consumption. As well as being ecological, such a move would free up money to repay provincial debt. There is an obvious political obstacle to overcome: it is difficult to take the gift of cheap electricity away from taxpayers who are so used to it. But the citizens of these provinces might just be convinced to pay more for their electricity if they believed that the monies earned would truly be used to an end that is dear to them: the future of their children.
Eyes wide open
Those who think the above analysis is unduly alarmist are wrong. The passage of baby boomers to old age is not weather forecasting. It is for certain. And the amount of the tab that they are going to leave us with is both large and unavoidable - at least for anyone who has not forgotten how to cross-multiply. Our task is one of lucidity and solidarity. We must recognize the problem, create solutions and share the cost in an equitable manner. There is only one acceptable way to face the future: with eyes wide open.
Link ...
Pierre Fortin is a professor of economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal, and an associate of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Pierre Fortin is professor of economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), which he joined in 1988 after teaching at Université Laval and the Université de Montréal. In 1995 he was selected by the Quebec Association of Business Economists as "the most influential Quebec economist of the last decade." He is a past president of the Canadian Economics Association.
The baby boomers' tab
By Pierre Fortin, UQAM July 17, 2006
Just after the Second World War, from 1945 to 1960, there were about 28 births on average per 1,000 people in Canada: these were the children of the baby boom. But these baby boomers did not have many children of their own, and they did not have many grandchildren, either. By 1970, the birth rate in Canada had dropped to 17 births per 1,000 people. Since 2000, it has been hovering around 11 births per 1,000 Canadians.
This extraordinary flip-flop in the birth rate explains a number of key phenomena in our lives during the last 50 years. It will now have a determining influence on the economic and social change that we will witness during the coming decades, and certainly between now and 2020. As my colleague and friend David Foot of the University of Toronto likes to say: "Demographics explain two-thirds of just about anything!"
The Golden Age
The notable phenomenon of the years 1960 to 1980 was the mass entry of baby boomers into the workplace. The number of workers earning a salary and paying taxes grew at a breathtaking rate. The Welfare State experienced a rapid expansion. We successively implemented hospital insurance, health insurance, low-cost college and university education, social services, public pension plans, more generous old age pensions and employment benefits, etc. It was the Golden Age of social programs. Do you admire the politicians of the era - the Pearsons, Trudeaus, Douglases, Robartses, Lesages, etc. - for developing our great social programs? You are right in so doing, for they were great people. But remember that from a financial perspective, they had an easy time. Money was no problem. The huge addition to the tax revenue from the baby boomers was great food for their imagination.
The flip side
In the years to come, we are going to experience the flip side. Baby boomers born between 1945 and 1960 are today between 45 and 60 years old. In 2020, they will be 60 to 75 years old. Most of them will have begun their retirement. Just as they entered the job market en masse between 1960 and 1980, they will leave it in large numbers between now and 2025. They will hardly be doing any work and they will not be paying many taxes. (OK, the money they withdraw from their RRSPs will be taxable, but that really does not change the big picture.) The consequence is obvious: Our governments will be cash-strapped!
1) Less tax revenues
This year, 2006, 51% of Canada's total population are working. In 2020, when the baby boomers' departure will be underway, only 49% of the population will be working if the employment rates by age remain stable. The overall employment rate will thus have dropped 2 points from 51, the equivalent of a 4% drop. What will the impact be on the government tax revenues? Simply put, we can calculate how much tax revenue they would have lost today, in 2006, if the number of taxpayers had suddenly dropped by 4%. The ready answer is: Since Canadians will pay $500 billion in income and other taxes this year, our governments would have collected $20 billion less (4% of $500 billion). That's point No. 1.
2) More health-care spending
That's not all. The passage of this large group of baby boomers into their golden years will push the percentage of senior citizens 65 and older from 13% of the total population in 2006 to 18% in 2020. Now a senior citizen costs on average five times more in terms of health-care costs and social services compared to a younger adult. As a result, between now and 2020, there will be a 14% increase in annual provincial spending in health care and social services, this above and beyond the already extremely rapid increase in spending over the past several years (on average 7% per year since 2000).
Once again, a simple way to comprehend the financial import of this demographic shock is to calculate the impact of a 14% increase in provincial health-care and social-services spending in 2006. Given that total spending in these two areas will reach $112 billion this year, the 14% increase would add $16 billion to the pressure on provincial finances (14% of $112 billion). That's point No. 2.
3) More payments to seniors
Another government program that is going to suffer the effects of the aging baby-boomer population is federal payments to seniors, including the venerable "old-age pension" and the guaranteed income supplement for lower-income seniors. With 13% of the population now 65 or older, the federal government expects to spend $31 billion in payments to seniors in 2006. If this percentage were to suddenly jump 5 points to 18%, as is expected for 2020, Ottawa would have to come up with $12 billion more in 2006 (5/13 of $31 billion). That's point No. 3.
4) Possible savings
Will the aging of the Canadian population allow at least some savings? Yes, in the areas of children's benefits, child-care allowances and education funding. According to the average birthrate and immigration scenario put out by Statistics Canada, the relative weight of young people (0-19 years old) in the total population will drop by 13% between 2006 and 2020. School enrolment will decline accordingly. This will permit proportional reductions in federal children's benefits, and provincial education and day-care spending. In 2006, the combined value of all these expenditures on behalf of children and students is $79 billion. If these expenses dropped suddenly by 13%, governments would save $10 billion (13% of $79 billion). That's point No. 4.
Will the demographic transition threaten the viability of our public pension plans? No. To avoid any slips due to demographic shockwaves, the various levels of government proactively revised the structure of the Canada Pension Plan and the Régime des rentes du Québec some time ago. The general contribution rate was upped to 9.9% of insurable earnings in 2003. This rate will only need a slight increase to permit adequate financing for retirement income of baby boomers and their children for the foreseeable future.
The tab: $38 billion
Let's sum up. Baby boomers born between 1945 and 1960 are going to retire en masse but they will leave few children and grandchildren behind. Canada is thus going to undergo a major demographic transition. To highlight the financial consequences, I have presented a scenario that applied what may be the reality in the future to our current state of affairs. I have calculated the impact that demographic changes would have on public monies in Canada in 2006 if the age pyramid expected for 2020 suddenly applied today.
The result would be a marked deterioration of public finances. As we saw, tax revenues would drop by $20 billion; provincial spending in health and social services would increase by $16 billion; federal payments to seniors would rise by $12 billion; allowances for children, education spending and child-care spending could decrease by $10 billion. In total, if it were applied today, the age structure of 2020's population would make a hole of $38 billion in government budgets for 2006; this would be split about evenly between the federal government and the provinces. In other words, there would be a new kind of "fiscal imbalance," demographic in nature. But this time it will hit Ottawa as hard as the provinces. Even worse, after 2020 the problem will not disappear; it will in fact get bigger.
As of 2010, year after year, governments are going to see more and more disappointing tax revenues. The problem of health-care funding, which is already a hot issue today, will become absolutely dramatic as the baby boomers get older. Federal payments to seniors are going to see unprecedented growth. While provinces may realize some savings in education, these will only partially compensate for the drop in tax revenue and the explosion in health-care spending. As for pension plans, they will deal with the shock without too much difficulty.
Financially, governments have three options: go back into debt (the Japanese approach), cut or privatize public services (the U.S. approach) or raise taxes (the Swedish approach). Each government will choose the combination that best matches its political philosophy. But in Ottawa just as in the provinces, we cannot exclude the possibility of a new cycle of debt. A funding crisis could lead, more quickly than one might think, to a major transformation of our cherished health-care system. And we had better forget about major tax reductions for quite some time.
Growth and solidarity
Governments can implement two main kinds of policies to deal with the demographic shock: a policy of economic growth and a policy of intergenerational solidarity. They can accelerate economic growth in the usual ways: fight unemployment and poverty, support employment of older workers, accelerate the integration of immigrant workers and foster education, entrepreneurship, savings, investment, innovation and productivity. Stronger economic growth will reduce the effects of overall economic decline and tax-revenue losses due to the disappearance of the baby boomers.
Also, governments can try to protect new generations from debt, program spending cuts and tax hikes by convincing current generations to proactively share the tab. This policy of solidarity between generations would be based on the repayment of public debt. A reduction of debt financed by today's taxpayers will reduce interest charges paid by the taxpayers of tomorrow, who will therefore have more money to access the same level of public services as today, without being forced to overly add to their tax burden. To me it seems self-evident that after having treated themselves to a great party, baby boomers would want to not leave all the cleanup duties to their children.
Two governments in Canada have followed that path: the federal government and the government of Alberta. For several years now, each federal budget has set aside a sum to repay part of the debt. For its part, Edmonton has followed in Norway's footsteps and has actually finished reimbursing its debt through oil and gas royalties.
Other governments could follow their lead. Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia could sell their electricity at market price rather than massively subsidizing consumption. As well as being ecological, such a move would free up money to repay provincial debt. There is an obvious political obstacle to overcome: it is difficult to take the gift of cheap electricity away from taxpayers who are so used to it. But the citizens of these provinces might just be convinced to pay more for their electricity if they believed that the monies earned would truly be used to an end that is dear to them: the future of their children.
Eyes wide open
Those who think the above analysis is unduly alarmist are wrong. The passage of baby boomers to old age is not weather forecasting. It is for certain. And the amount of the tab that they are going to leave us with is both large and unavoidable - at least for anyone who has not forgotten how to cross-multiply. Our task is one of lucidity and solidarity. We must recognize the problem, create solutions and share the cost in an equitable manner. There is only one acceptable way to face the future: with eyes wide open.
Link ...
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Canada 2020: part 3
Daniel Stoffman
He has written for most of Canada's major magazines and has appeared as a guest on many television and radio programs, including Pamela Wallin Live, Canada AM, Diplomatic Immunity, Morningside and Sunday Morning. Daniel Stoffman is the co-author of Boom, Bust and Echo. His most recent book, Who Gets In: What's Wrong with Canada's Immigration Program and How to Fix It was a finalist for the Donner Prize and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize.
San Paulo of the North: The effects of mass immigration on our cities
Daniel Stoffman July 7, 2006
It's 2020 and the days in Toronto when everyone used the public health care system are gone. So is the time when a majority of affluent, middle-class parents sent their kids to public schools.
In 2020, vast tracts of suburban slums occupy what used to be good farmland on the city's outskirts. Traffic congestion and air pollution are unbearable. Toronto's reputation as one of North America's most liveable cities is a distant memory. It's now known as the "the Sao Paulo of the north."
This dystopian vision of the future of Canada's largest city is hardly far-fetched. Toronto is already suffering severe growing pains, the result of the federal government's insistence on maintaining the world's largest per capita annual immigration intake — around 250,000 people a year, of whom about 43 per cent come to Toronto. That's more than 100,000 newcomers, year after year after year. It is impossible for any city to maintain its social and physical infrastructure in the face of such relentless population growth. By 2020, Greater Toronto's population will have ballooned from 5 million to 7 million — or even more if immigration levels are raised higher still.
Too much of a good thing
Every year Mercer Human Resource Consulting ranks world cities according to their livability. Vancouver always places at or near the top of the list while the other big Canadian cities are among the top 30. Most of the top-ranked cities are relatively small — places like Copenhagen (500,000) and Zurich (340,000).
None of the world's vast urban agglomerations of 10 million or more, such as Sao Paulo and Seoul, are rated by Mercer as desirable places to live. Smaller big cities are more liveable because their residents can enjoy the amenities of urban life without the congestion, crime and pollution associated with sprawling megalopolises.
Canada's livable cities are an unsung national asset. One of the things that makes them special is the presence of immigrants from all over the world who have contributed new energy and cultural diversity. But, in immigration as in everything else, too much of a good thing isn't better. Ottawa's policy of mass immigration, for which no reasonable explanation has ever been offered, risks irreparable damage to our cities.
Too much too fast
This policy of rapid urban growth is being implemented by Ottawa even though it has no jurisdiction over urban affairs, and even though the policy has never been stated explicitly. Yet the impact is already evident. Highway 401 across Toronto has become the busiest road in North America, the city can't find a place to put its garbage, and its public schools can't afford to provide the English instruction newly arrived children need.
In Vancouver, meanwhile, controversy rages over the British Columbia government's plan to expand the Port Mann bridge that links the rapidly growing Fraser Valley suburbs to the city.
Amazingly, the local politicians who have to cope with the results never suggest that perhaps the immigration intake might be lowered from time to time, as was standard practice until the late 1980s. To listen to their silence, one would think the relentless influx of huge numbers of new residents was a natural phenomenon like the weather rather than a deliberate federal policy that easily could be changed.
Toronto magnet for immigrants
Ottawa might claim it is not to blame for unmanageable urban growth because it just lets the immigrants in — it doesn't tell them where to go. But this would be disingenuous, because the federal government knows that Toronto gets almost half of all immigrants while Vancouver gets 18 per cent and Montreal 12 per cent.
Many of those who settle elsewhere at first also eventually wind up in one of the three biggest cities. Attempts at dispersion are doomed, because immigrants want to live where the previous cohort of the same ethnicity are already established.
They also want to live in cities for the same reason Canadian-born people do — they are more likely to find jobs there.
The country most comparable to Canada is Australia.
Like Canada, it is an English-speaking Commonwealth nation settled in relatively recent history. Like Canada, it has an organized immigration program and has used immigration effectively to enhance population growth and increase the vigour and diversity of its major cities. Australia's current net migration rate (immigration minus emigration per 1,000 of population) is 3.85. Canada's is 5.85. Before the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney increased immigration levels and made them permanent during the latter part of the 1980s, a policy continued by the Liberals under Jean Chrétien, Canada had an intake similar, on a per capita basis, to Australia's.
There is no reason why Canada should have far more immigration than any other country. Canada's existing population is younger than those of most other developed countries and its ratio of working-age people to retired ones is higher. If Canada reverted to its traditional, more moderate, immigration program, it could continue to enjoy the benefits of immigration while sparing its cities the problems of unmanageable growth.
Immigrants would benefit too.
Their economic performance has been in freefall over the past 15 years. Previously the number of new immigrants varied according to labour market needs. Sometimes it would be cut to give the newly arrived a chance to be absorbed successfully into the economy without intense competition from more new arrivals.
Not any more. An endless stream of newcomers arrives in the big cities with few options but to work in poorly paid jobs such as cleaning houses and driving taxis. Wages of these jobs are thus kept low and the occupants of them have little chance to get ahead.
Immigrant poverty worsens
Previously, poverty levels among immigrants were about the same as those of the Canadian-born. Now they are much worse. According to a report by the Canadian Council on Social Development, whereas the poverty level of those who arrived before 1986 was 19.7 per cent, or slightly lower than that of the Canadian-born, the poverty level of those who came after 1991 was an alarming 52.1 per cent, while that of people born in Canada remained unchanged at around 20 per cent.
If this trend is not reversed, Toronto and Vancouver will be home, by 2020, to an entrenched underclass living in slums. Because of gentrification and rising property values in the central cities, these slums will be located in the suburbs, requiring long commutes for those fortunate enough to have employment. Fan Yang, a reader of the Toronto Star, shrewdly analyzed the impact of federal immigration policy in a letter to that newspaper in 2003. He accused the federal government of "dumping more cheaply acquired labour into the domestic labour pool, regardless of whether there is a healthy demand. Businesses welcome that enthusiastically as they bear no direct cost of unemployed immigrants and only garner the rewards of lower labour costs."
Even skilled workers are doing poorly. According to the 2001 census, male immigrants with a university degree who came to Ontario in the late 1990s were earning after six to 10 years in Canada only 54 per cent of what native-born Canadians with similar qualifications in that province earned. Even the youngest and presumably most employable immigrants are doing worse than in the pre-Mulroney era of moderate immigration levels. Employment in the 25-44 age group fell from 75.7 per cent in 1981 to only 65.8 per cent in 2002. During the same period, employment of non-immigrants rose to 81.8 per cent from 74.6 per cent
Matching skills to jobs
Remarkably, immigrant labour market performance has declined during a time of increasing shortages of skilled workers. But as the above data suggest, just bringing in huge numbers of people doesn't solve skills shortages. Mexico has a worse skills shortage than Canada, yet it has no shortage of people. The trick is to match immigrants to jobs, and our current immigration program doesn't do that well. Luckily, Canada doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. It merely needs to emulate the solutions that Australia's more successful immigration program has already found, such as requiring the credentials of skilled immigrants to be approved before they come and imposing strict requirements for language skills.
Strain on health care
In addition to creating poverty, mismanaged immigration is weakening our public health care and education systems. By 2020, the huge baby boomer cohort of Canadians will be entering its stage of heaviest reliance on the health care system. The boomers will not tolerate interminable waits for hip replacements and cancer treatment.
As if the challenge of caring for impatient boomers weren't enough, the presence of millions of new immigrants will intensify the demands on the system. Many of the newcomers will be old, because Canada is the most generous country in allowing immigrants to sponsor elderly parents and grandparents. There is no chance that our health care system can survive in its current form given the demands on it from these demographic changes. As a result, by 2020 a full-fledged parallel private health care system will be in operation in the major immigrant-receiving cities, which are also where most of the boomers live. Private health care will be relied upon not just by the wealthy but also by much of the middle class as well.
ESL shortage hurts entire school system
A similar transformation will occur in education.
A report last January conducted for the Elementary Teachers of Toronto said teachers were spending the equivalent of one day a week trying to make up for the lack of English as a second language support for their immigrant students.
"The more time the regular classroom teacher is having to devote to ESL students … it detracts from the level of service we want for all of our students," union president Martin Long told the Globe and Mail.
In other words, the lack of support for ESL students is hurting all students. This is certainly not the fault of the immigrant children. It is the fault of rash and ill-conceived federal policy.
As a result, by 2020 most middle-class families will have abandoned the public system. This will be an unfortunate development, because the public schools are where immigrants and the Canadian-born get to know each other.
They are an important force for social cohesion.
Rather than reform a broken program, the Chrétien government preferred to appease ethnic organizations it hoped would rally support for the Liberal party. These organizations wanted easy entry to Canada for unskilled family members of existing immigrants.
Compressing wages
This policy was justified by absurd arguments, one of the most prevalent being that "immigrants do the jobs Canadians won't do." In fact, Canadian-born people always have and still do the most dangerous and dirty jobs such as mining and garbage collection. But they expect to be decently paid for their work.
The "jobs Canadians won't do" argument is a euphemism for saying Canada should use immigration to compress wages — a sure formula for exacerbating urban poverty.
A seemingly plausible argument for boosting the population of at least one Canadian city to 10 million or more would be that the truly great cities of the world are very big.
But London and Paris grew to their current size gradually over hundreds of years, and their greatness is the result of the wealth of the empires of which they were the capitals. You don't build London and Paris by adding millions of bodies over a short period of time. That's how you build Mumbai and Mexico City.
Ontario's environment commissioner, Gord Miller, issued a warning last year about what the future holds for Toronto, given current trends.
"The environmental impacts of this magnitude of growth … will compromise the quality of our lifestyle to a stage where it will be unrecognizable," he said.
"We already have trouble dealing with our waste right now … What about another four million tonnes a year? What about another four million cars?"
The new Conservative government's immigration minister, Monte Solberg, told a House of Commons committee in May that he was concerned about the "huge burden" high immigration levels place on our major cities. He thus became the first immigration minister in at least two decades to show any sensitivity to the impact of immigration policy on the urban environment.
Now it's the turn of local officials to abandon their ostrich-like refusal even to mention immigration when discussing urban growth. Perhaps they fear being branded "anti-immigrant" if they do. But Pierre Trudeau, in his last year as prime minister, cut immigration by 25 per cent, and no one called him anti-immigrant. In that case, good management trumped politics. It's an example the Conservative government would do well to follow.
Link ...
He has written for most of Canada's major magazines and has appeared as a guest on many television and radio programs, including Pamela Wallin Live, Canada AM, Diplomatic Immunity, Morningside and Sunday Morning. Daniel Stoffman is the co-author of Boom, Bust and Echo. His most recent book, Who Gets In: What's Wrong with Canada's Immigration Program and How to Fix It was a finalist for the Donner Prize and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize.
San Paulo of the North: The effects of mass immigration on our cities
Daniel Stoffman July 7, 2006
It's 2020 and the days in Toronto when everyone used the public health care system are gone. So is the time when a majority of affluent, middle-class parents sent their kids to public schools.
In 2020, vast tracts of suburban slums occupy what used to be good farmland on the city's outskirts. Traffic congestion and air pollution are unbearable. Toronto's reputation as one of North America's most liveable cities is a distant memory. It's now known as the "the Sao Paulo of the north."
This dystopian vision of the future of Canada's largest city is hardly far-fetched. Toronto is already suffering severe growing pains, the result of the federal government's insistence on maintaining the world's largest per capita annual immigration intake — around 250,000 people a year, of whom about 43 per cent come to Toronto. That's more than 100,000 newcomers, year after year after year. It is impossible for any city to maintain its social and physical infrastructure in the face of such relentless population growth. By 2020, Greater Toronto's population will have ballooned from 5 million to 7 million — or even more if immigration levels are raised higher still.
Too much of a good thing
Every year Mercer Human Resource Consulting ranks world cities according to their livability. Vancouver always places at or near the top of the list while the other big Canadian cities are among the top 30. Most of the top-ranked cities are relatively small — places like Copenhagen (500,000) and Zurich (340,000).
None of the world's vast urban agglomerations of 10 million or more, such as Sao Paulo and Seoul, are rated by Mercer as desirable places to live. Smaller big cities are more liveable because their residents can enjoy the amenities of urban life without the congestion, crime and pollution associated with sprawling megalopolises.
Canada's livable cities are an unsung national asset. One of the things that makes them special is the presence of immigrants from all over the world who have contributed new energy and cultural diversity. But, in immigration as in everything else, too much of a good thing isn't better. Ottawa's policy of mass immigration, for which no reasonable explanation has ever been offered, risks irreparable damage to our cities.
Too much too fast
This policy of rapid urban growth is being implemented by Ottawa even though it has no jurisdiction over urban affairs, and even though the policy has never been stated explicitly. Yet the impact is already evident. Highway 401 across Toronto has become the busiest road in North America, the city can't find a place to put its garbage, and its public schools can't afford to provide the English instruction newly arrived children need.
In Vancouver, meanwhile, controversy rages over the British Columbia government's plan to expand the Port Mann bridge that links the rapidly growing Fraser Valley suburbs to the city.
Amazingly, the local politicians who have to cope with the results never suggest that perhaps the immigration intake might be lowered from time to time, as was standard practice until the late 1980s. To listen to their silence, one would think the relentless influx of huge numbers of new residents was a natural phenomenon like the weather rather than a deliberate federal policy that easily could be changed.
Toronto magnet for immigrants
Ottawa might claim it is not to blame for unmanageable urban growth because it just lets the immigrants in — it doesn't tell them where to go. But this would be disingenuous, because the federal government knows that Toronto gets almost half of all immigrants while Vancouver gets 18 per cent and Montreal 12 per cent.
Many of those who settle elsewhere at first also eventually wind up in one of the three biggest cities. Attempts at dispersion are doomed, because immigrants want to live where the previous cohort of the same ethnicity are already established.
They also want to live in cities for the same reason Canadian-born people do — they are more likely to find jobs there.
The country most comparable to Canada is Australia.
Like Canada, it is an English-speaking Commonwealth nation settled in relatively recent history. Like Canada, it has an organized immigration program and has used immigration effectively to enhance population growth and increase the vigour and diversity of its major cities. Australia's current net migration rate (immigration minus emigration per 1,000 of population) is 3.85. Canada's is 5.85. Before the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney increased immigration levels and made them permanent during the latter part of the 1980s, a policy continued by the Liberals under Jean Chrétien, Canada had an intake similar, on a per capita basis, to Australia's.
There is no reason why Canada should have far more immigration than any other country. Canada's existing population is younger than those of most other developed countries and its ratio of working-age people to retired ones is higher. If Canada reverted to its traditional, more moderate, immigration program, it could continue to enjoy the benefits of immigration while sparing its cities the problems of unmanageable growth.
Immigrants would benefit too.
Their economic performance has been in freefall over the past 15 years. Previously the number of new immigrants varied according to labour market needs. Sometimes it would be cut to give the newly arrived a chance to be absorbed successfully into the economy without intense competition from more new arrivals.
Not any more. An endless stream of newcomers arrives in the big cities with few options but to work in poorly paid jobs such as cleaning houses and driving taxis. Wages of these jobs are thus kept low and the occupants of them have little chance to get ahead.
Immigrant poverty worsens
Previously, poverty levels among immigrants were about the same as those of the Canadian-born. Now they are much worse. According to a report by the Canadian Council on Social Development, whereas the poverty level of those who arrived before 1986 was 19.7 per cent, or slightly lower than that of the Canadian-born, the poverty level of those who came after 1991 was an alarming 52.1 per cent, while that of people born in Canada remained unchanged at around 20 per cent.
If this trend is not reversed, Toronto and Vancouver will be home, by 2020, to an entrenched underclass living in slums. Because of gentrification and rising property values in the central cities, these slums will be located in the suburbs, requiring long commutes for those fortunate enough to have employment. Fan Yang, a reader of the Toronto Star, shrewdly analyzed the impact of federal immigration policy in a letter to that newspaper in 2003. He accused the federal government of "dumping more cheaply acquired labour into the domestic labour pool, regardless of whether there is a healthy demand. Businesses welcome that enthusiastically as they bear no direct cost of unemployed immigrants and only garner the rewards of lower labour costs."
Even skilled workers are doing poorly. According to the 2001 census, male immigrants with a university degree who came to Ontario in the late 1990s were earning after six to 10 years in Canada only 54 per cent of what native-born Canadians with similar qualifications in that province earned. Even the youngest and presumably most employable immigrants are doing worse than in the pre-Mulroney era of moderate immigration levels. Employment in the 25-44 age group fell from 75.7 per cent in 1981 to only 65.8 per cent in 2002. During the same period, employment of non-immigrants rose to 81.8 per cent from 74.6 per cent
Matching skills to jobs
Remarkably, immigrant labour market performance has declined during a time of increasing shortages of skilled workers. But as the above data suggest, just bringing in huge numbers of people doesn't solve skills shortages. Mexico has a worse skills shortage than Canada, yet it has no shortage of people. The trick is to match immigrants to jobs, and our current immigration program doesn't do that well. Luckily, Canada doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. It merely needs to emulate the solutions that Australia's more successful immigration program has already found, such as requiring the credentials of skilled immigrants to be approved before they come and imposing strict requirements for language skills.
Strain on health care
In addition to creating poverty, mismanaged immigration is weakening our public health care and education systems. By 2020, the huge baby boomer cohort of Canadians will be entering its stage of heaviest reliance on the health care system. The boomers will not tolerate interminable waits for hip replacements and cancer treatment.
As if the challenge of caring for impatient boomers weren't enough, the presence of millions of new immigrants will intensify the demands on the system. Many of the newcomers will be old, because Canada is the most generous country in allowing immigrants to sponsor elderly parents and grandparents. There is no chance that our health care system can survive in its current form given the demands on it from these demographic changes. As a result, by 2020 a full-fledged parallel private health care system will be in operation in the major immigrant-receiving cities, which are also where most of the boomers live. Private health care will be relied upon not just by the wealthy but also by much of the middle class as well.
ESL shortage hurts entire school system
A similar transformation will occur in education.
A report last January conducted for the Elementary Teachers of Toronto said teachers were spending the equivalent of one day a week trying to make up for the lack of English as a second language support for their immigrant students.
"The more time the regular classroom teacher is having to devote to ESL students … it detracts from the level of service we want for all of our students," union president Martin Long told the Globe and Mail.
In other words, the lack of support for ESL students is hurting all students. This is certainly not the fault of the immigrant children. It is the fault of rash and ill-conceived federal policy.
As a result, by 2020 most middle-class families will have abandoned the public system. This will be an unfortunate development, because the public schools are where immigrants and the Canadian-born get to know each other.
They are an important force for social cohesion.
Rather than reform a broken program, the Chrétien government preferred to appease ethnic organizations it hoped would rally support for the Liberal party. These organizations wanted easy entry to Canada for unskilled family members of existing immigrants.
Compressing wages
This policy was justified by absurd arguments, one of the most prevalent being that "immigrants do the jobs Canadians won't do." In fact, Canadian-born people always have and still do the most dangerous and dirty jobs such as mining and garbage collection. But they expect to be decently paid for their work.
The "jobs Canadians won't do" argument is a euphemism for saying Canada should use immigration to compress wages — a sure formula for exacerbating urban poverty.
A seemingly plausible argument for boosting the population of at least one Canadian city to 10 million or more would be that the truly great cities of the world are very big.
But London and Paris grew to their current size gradually over hundreds of years, and their greatness is the result of the wealth of the empires of which they were the capitals. You don't build London and Paris by adding millions of bodies over a short period of time. That's how you build Mumbai and Mexico City.
Ontario's environment commissioner, Gord Miller, issued a warning last year about what the future holds for Toronto, given current trends.
"The environmental impacts of this magnitude of growth … will compromise the quality of our lifestyle to a stage where it will be unrecognizable," he said.
"We already have trouble dealing with our waste right now … What about another four million tonnes a year? What about another four million cars?"
The new Conservative government's immigration minister, Monte Solberg, told a House of Commons committee in May that he was concerned about the "huge burden" high immigration levels place on our major cities. He thus became the first immigration minister in at least two decades to show any sensitivity to the impact of immigration policy on the urban environment.
Now it's the turn of local officials to abandon their ostrich-like refusal even to mention immigration when discussing urban growth. Perhaps they fear being branded "anti-immigrant" if they do. But Pierre Trudeau, in his last year as prime minister, cut immigration by 25 per cent, and no one called him anti-immigrant. In that case, good management trumped politics. It's an example the Conservative government would do well to follow.
Link ...
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