[I]f one takes seriously the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (to which Canada is a signatory), it makes no more sense to ask “what are the costs and benefits of preventing poverty?” than to ask “what are the costs and benefits of prohibiting torture?” If individuals have both the right to be free from torture and the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, than these are simply constraints which all other social and economic decisions must respect.

These words, written twenty years ago in Osberg’s 1990 working paper “The Costs and Benefits of Anti-Poverty Policy” (available here), made me wonder what it would take for the BC government to adopt a comprehensive poverty-reduction plan.

Is it a business case outlining the benefits of poverty reduction that will convince them? Or do we need a change in attitude, a new way of looking at social and economy policy that puts human dignity first?

What have we learned from last year’s pandemic?  Read on…

http://tinyurl.com/23otvdw

Of course that’s the thing about being an asylum-seeker –– you don’t get into a queue. When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Hell, my folks didn’t even know Montreal (where they landed) was a predominantly French-speaking city.

So they just showed up. The difference, however, was that in those days, they got landed immigrant status in 20 minutes at the airport. Imagine that!  Over the course of the Vietnam War, about 100,000 American war resisters came to Canada (many with less formal education than my folks and thus unlikely to score particularly well under today’s immigration point-system, and I suspect many had less education than many of these recent Tamil arrivals). Yet here we are setting our hair on fire about 492 people.

But those aren’t the only numeric comparisons I find curious.

Among the common reactions to the arrival of the MV Sun Sea is the proposition that Canada’s alleged lax immigration laws make us a global sucker –– a target for many of the world’s migrants. This is an absurd notion.

World conflicts, environmental disasters, and a global economic system that keeps billions impoverished has resulted in millions upon millions of refugees and displaced people. In Pakistan alone, the current flooding is producing, we are told, 14 million internally displaced people. Globally, there are, according to the UN, about 43 million “forcibly displaced people”, of which about 15 million are refugees.  (You can find good UN statistics on displaced people here.)

But the vast majority of these globally displaced people are being absorbed, not by wealthy countries, but either internally or by neighbouring poor countries –– the places least able to afford the costs and with the bleakest economic prospects.

Canada accepted fewer than 20 thousand refugees last year –– a drop in the global bucket (about 0.1% of world refugees) –– and our acceptance rate has been declining in recent years (and in contrast, Canada deported about 13 thousand people). As Stephen Hume notes in an excellent piece in the Vancouver Sun, Canada does not rank as on of the top recipient countries for refugees: “Other developed countries are the destinations for most refugees and many more are granted asylum in those countries… Measured as a ratio of refugee claims to population, Canada doesn’t even make the top 10 nations for asylum seekers.”

Surely, when a few hundred people arrive on our shores, we can afford to treat these people with respect and grant them due process.

And here’s another curious comparison: The real and much more significant Canadian immigration story of recent years (at least measured numerically) isn’t about refugees or people arriving by boats. It’s about the explosion in temporary foreign workers. Over the past few years, the number of temporary foreign workers coming into Canada each year exceeds 200,000, and now surpasses the number of immigrants.

But the Harper government hasn’t been sounding the alarm about this. On the contrary, the federal government has been promoting and facilitating the massive growth in this category of migrants. Why? Because unlike regular immigrants and refugees, these workers are being specifically requested by employers, their indentured status makes them unable to exercise key employment rights and leaves them highly vulnerable to exploitation and unsafe conditions, and they are unable to make the same claims to the social and economic rights that Canadians take for granted.

Immigration is central to the story of Canada –– waves of people who came, mostly to meet a domestic need for labour, and sometimes fleeing harm and conflict. But historically, once people arrived, either as immigrants or refugees, they were upon landing met with a social contract: they could avail themselves of the social and economic rights Canadians enjoyed (such as health care and education for their families, and workplace rights and protections), and in a few years could be granted the full rights of citizenship.

With the explosion of temporary workers (set against a tightening of regular immigration and refugees admissions, and reactions such as those we see directed towards the Tamils), the government is effectively saying, “that deal is off –– we’re happy to have temporary indentured labour, but don’t think you can be a Canadian.”

When my parents arrived in the ’60s, a small minority in Canada were keen to label the Vietnam war resisters will all manner of unwelcome labels (much as the Canadian government is currently doing with respect to the Tamil asylum-seekers today, quickly labelling them as terrorists, criminals and queue-jumpers). But for the most part, the Vietnam war resisters were welcomed, and went on to make a valuable contribution to Canadian society. Much the same can be said of the Vietnamese boat people who arrived in the late 1970s. Why can’t these better receptions be the norm, rather than the xenophobia that characterizes more recent arrivals?

And here’s what troubles me most. In a world still coming to terms with the reality of climate change, the truth is that the number of global climate migrants and displaced people will soon dwarf the UN numbers sited above  –– a lot more people are coming, and our recent record does not bode well. Will this recent ugliness mark each new unexpected arrival, or can we chill out and have a rational conversation about what our moral obligations and humanitarian response should be to the global realities ahead?

(The group No One is Illegal has produced an excellent fact sheet debunking six common myths about the Tamil refugee claimants. It can be found here.)

There is no question that the drubbing is well deserved. Whatever one thinks of the merits of an HST versus the PST it replaced, it was brought in by the Liberals right after the election to reduce the multi-billion dollar deficit they said they wouldn’t have, with a tax they said they had no plans of implementing. And, without any discussion or debate, they shifted over a billion dollars of taxation from business to households. Nasty stuff.

But here is the thing. It would be good if Opposition policy was more than simply opposing, as fun and politically satisfying as that might be. It’s time to start thinking about what to do with the HST in a post-Liberal world. Reverting to the old PST should be a non-starter. The fact is, the PST was an inefficient tax, both in the way it was collected, duplicating the collection of the GST, and in its impact on goods produced in British Columbia.

And, though Mr. Vander Zalm and his right wing allies might disagree, simply eliminating the HST isn’t viable either. We need more public investment in British Columbia, especially in education and families, not less. A credible alternative to the Liberals’ HST needs to recognize that.

So here are a couple of options that should be considered and discussed.

The first is the more modest policy option, something the Liberals should have done, and may yet be shamed into doing themselves. The HST could be reduced to a rate of 9 or 10%. At 9 or 10%, households would face a lower provincial tax on goods than they did with the PST, but this provincial tax would be applied to a broader base. There would be a change in what was taxed, but not the overall level of taxation on households.

The lower HST would reduce the amount of revenues collected by government, but this could be offset by an increase in the corporate income tax rate. Corporations, after all, were the big winners in all this, since they no longer pay sales tax on the goods they purchase. Their cost saving would make room for an increase in their income tax rate.

This option would not eliminate the HST, but it would at least move toward revenue neutrality in a much more meaningful sense than what the Liberals did. It would offer revenue neutrality, albeit in a rough way, for households as well as business.

The more radical policy option would be to do what the majority of British Columbians seem to want — eliminate the HST altogether, without reverting to the old PST. The challenge for a socially responsible government is to figure out how the revenues the HST would have generated can be replaced. One answer I believe, lies in being environmentally responsible at the same time.

We massively subsidize electricity use in this province, especially for large industry, selling power at less than half the cost of new supply.  An obvious and economically and environmentally beneficial way to raise government revenues would be to raise industrial power rates, with the extra revenues going to government.

We also subsidize private hydro power production, charging water rental rates to private run-of-river producers far below what we charge BC Hydro. Raising the private water rental rates to what BC Hydro pays would also generate revenues for government in an economically and environmentally responsible way.

We are reportedly embarking on a cap-and-trade system for large emitters of greenhouse gas emissions. Charging the large emitters for the quotas they need, instead of granting them pollution rights, would generate revenues in an arguably fairer and more appropriate manner than the HST or a general increase in corporate income tax rates.

We have a haphazard and clearly inequitable system of bridge tolls emerging in British Columbia. There isn’t a transportation planner I know that doesn’t recognize the benefit that systematic congestion tolls or road pricing, fairly implemented in all urban regions, could provide. It could not only help reduce gridlock, but generate badly needed revenues for government.

In short, there is a green option, using taxes and charges to complement our energy conservation, greenhouse gas reduction and transportation strategies. Nothing is easy, and protests would no doubt be heard. But government does need revenues, and it is time to start talking about better ways of raising revenues than with the Liberals’ HST.

This is especially true when the fate of vitally important, publicly owned assets such as water hangs in the balance. To have faith that water resources are managed responsibly, basic facts must be known. Who has approved access to water? How much do they have access to? And where do they get it?

As the gatekeeper for information on the booming water usage in British Columbia’s natural gas sector, B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) has the answers to such questions and a whole bunch more. That’s because the OGC has statutory authority to issue short-term water-use permits to natural gas companies. Because of that, the OGC can tell you which companies hold water rights, the name of the creek, river, lake or reservoir that the water rights pertain to, what the maximum daily water withdrawal limits are for individual permits, and even the coordinates that will allow you to find a particular water source (in many cases an unnamed creek) on a map.

But the OGC does not post such essential information on its website, and has actually suggested to members of the public that have requested such information that it may be difficult and costly to retrieve.

None of this makes sense. Far more complex data is maintained by other provincial government agencies and is readily available. If you go here, for example, you can learn more than you may care to about what is logged in British Columbia – by company, by type of tree, and by whether the trees were logged on public or private lands. You can even learn how much usable wood companies elect to leave behind at logging sites rather than truck to mills, or what individual companies pay in fees to the provincial government for the trees they log on public lands.

You may need a bit of guidance to search the database. But a helpful public servant – at a contact number listed on the webpage – will gladly guide you through the steps. That’s how seriously the provincial government views the public’s right to know when it comes to forests.

When it comes to simple, baseline information on water, however, such transparency is nowhere to be seen on the OGC’s website.

This does not inspire confidence, and at the worst possible time – when the fossil fuel-rich northeast corner of B.C. is experiencing unusually severe droughts.

The oil and gas industry is the only industry in British Columbia that gains access to water without Ministry of Environment approval. All other users – from municipal water plants, to aluminum and iron smelters, to pulp and paper mills, to farmers irrigating their fields – obtain short-term or long-term water allocations from the provincial ministry responsible for protecting our environment.

The preferential status bestowed to the energy sector inevitably breeds suspicion. Such suspicion only grows when information that ought to be readily available is not.

The OGC is more than aware that escalating water usage by natural gas companies has the potential to become a thorny public policy issue. Particularly as companies engage in increased usage of “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking” operations to unlock gas trapped in deeply buried shale formations. Such operations pump enormous quantities of water at thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure to fracture or break seams in the underground rock, thereby releasing the trapped gas.

To assuage concerns about such water usage, the OGC recently released a report on the topic. But reading the document simply reinforces the impression that the public is largely in the dark about the industry’s water consumption.

At one point, the OGC says that “a preliminary look” at water usage by natural gas companies operating in one shale gas-rich region of B.C.  known as the Horn River Basin found that the companies used “less than five per cent” of what they were allocated.

Putting aside what a “preliminary look” means, the report presents no figures on what water was assigned in the Horn River Basin versus what was actually used.

Once again, this does not inspire confidence.

As the regulator responsible for issuing water permits to energy companies, the OGC can easily post information on water allocations. It can also, if it chooses, post information on what the companies report using by way of the water assigned to them.

Such basic accounting information is an essential prerequisite to the sustainable management of water resources. As such, it properly belongs in the public domain.

The study, Global Employment Trends for Youth, outlines the devastating impact the recession has had on young people worldwide.  More than 80 million people aged 15 to 24 were unemployed at the end of 2009, the highest number ever recorded.

The impact of this is felt differently in the developed and the developing world.  Here in British Columbia the August 6, 2010 Labour Force Report from Statistics Canada shows young people have not escaped the ravages of recession.

The Stats Can report describes British Columbia as a good news story saying:

British Columbia posted gains [in employment] of 16,000 in July, bringing the province’s unemployment rate down 0.3 percentage points to 7.5%.

However, reading along further in the report shows that since 12 months ago while employment has gone up by 3 per cent for the whole population, it has gone down by 1.8 per cent for people between 15 and 24.  Although many young people are school age, as a group they are more than twice as likely to be working part-time.

Happily, unemployment has fallen among young people but in spite of this “recovery” while the population of young people has gone up by 3,400 there are still 6,000 fewer young people working now than a year ago.

The ILO report suggests there are long term consequences for coming of age during a recession:

Given the possible transition mechanisms between business cycles and youth employment, what are the potential costs in terms of future consequences for the youth who are unlucky enough to reach maturity at a time of economic crisis? A body of literature now exists on the topic of “scarring”. The premise is that there are longer-term consequences for young people whose first labour market experience is one of unemployment. Presumably, the unemployed youth will lower his reservation wage with the passage of time, and accept poorer quality jobs that are less secure, and thus, be more vulnerable to future spells of unemployment (the disorderly transition mentioned above). Results are mixed in terms of the existing analyses, with stronger evidence to support wage scarring than the unemployment scarring argument; for example, a recent study by Kahn estimated that a 1 percentage point increase in unemployment in the United States results in a 6 to 7 per cent decrease in the wages of college graduates and that, while the wage cost lessens with time, it still remains statistically significant 15 years later. The effects are believed to be more severe for youth entering the workforce with an education level below the tertiary level.

 What surprises me is how remarkably little attention seems to have been paid to the issue of youth unemployment in this recession.  No effort has been made to make higher education more accessible and less costly.  Virtually nothing has been done to target youth in employment programs.  The ILO report suggests we may see consequences for this inaction.

Cholesterol drugs don’t help the healthy

The ad carried the usual dubious arguments that transferring the cost of taxes from corporations to consumers will create vast economic activity.  What intrigued me was the line:

The Smart Tax Alliance is a non-partisan alliance of 30 business and industry groups formed to support the job-creating benefits of the HST.

I was curious what they meant by “non-partisan” so I turned first to my trusty Oxford Canadian dictionary which defines partisan as:

An adherent or supporter of a party, person, or cause, esp. a zealous supporter.

Now the ad makes it clear these guys are zealous supporters of the HST so I am pretty sure they are not talking about that.

No, I suspect what the ad is trying to suggest is that the group is “non-partisan” in the political perspective: In BC terms that means the choice between the NDP and the Liberals.

This made me more curious.  Fortunately Elections BC has just the tool on their web site to help me with that.  They have a search engine that allows you to find out how much people have donated and to whom they have made the donations.  The search engine can be found here.

It turns out that about half of the Alliance’s members had made direct contributions to political parties in 2009, the year of the last provincial election.  This came to a total of $529,000 to the Liberals, and $23,000 to the NDP.  The NDP got slightly less than 5% of the money that went to the Liberals.  The New Car Dealers gave $275,000 to the Liberals.  They also threw $10,000 the way of the NDP.

Some of the groups that had not made direct contributions to the Liberals in 2009 also had some fairly strong indications of partisanship.  The Business Council of BC, for example, spent nearly $100,000 advertising in support of the government in the run up to the 2009 election.  The Railway Association of Canada made no donations to the Liberals in 2009 but CN Rail, CP Rail and Southern Rail among them gave $50,000 to the Liberals.  Similarly, the Coal Association made no donation but separate coal companies did.  Initiative Prince George is a municipally owned economic development body.  They didn’t donate any money to political parties in 2009, but they did get $68,000 from the provincial government according to the Public Accounts.

Not surprisingly, six of the organizations involved in the “Smart Tax Alliance” are also involved in the legal action attempting to overturn the results of the Anti-HST petition campaign.  The Vancouver Sun reports these six organizations gave $162,000 to the Liberal Party since 2005 and nothing to the NDP.

Many business organizations have good reason to support the HST.  It’s natural that they would want to unload taxes they are paying onto consumers.  But let’s not kid ourselves.  Big business in BC has now become the advertising arm of an increasingly desperate Liberal Party.

In his column Dr. Paul Martiquet reports that in BC the minimum age for working a regular job is 12 – the lowest of any jurisdiction in North America.  This resulted from changes in the Employment Standards Act in 2003.  Before that anyone under the age of 16 required permission from the government to work.

Now the Employment Standards Branch no longer keeps track of where children work.  All that is required is the permission of one parent and most parents have little or no knowledge of the dangers on a work site.

WorkSafeBC does keep track of injuries and Dr. Martiquet reported a tenfold increase in injury claims among 12 to 14 year olds between 2005 and 2008.

This is not the first report on increasing injuries among children on the job.  Last October the BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition published a report on the subject.  Cuts are the most common type of injury for children followed strains, dislocations and fractures.  Most of the children are reported to be working in accommodation and food services but some work in genuinely dangerous industries such as agriculture, and construction.

WorkSafeBC told the CBC that the tenfold increase in injured children to 2008 had declined in 2009 to a fivefold increase thanks to the failing economy.  Apparently things were so bad in 2009 employers could no longer afford to hire as many 12 year olds at the $6 sub-minimum wage. 

The news about injured children should not come as a surprise.  In 2004 Helesia Luke and Graeme Moore published a report for the CCPA that looked at the implications of reduced regulation for child labour.  The report looked at education and the exploitation as well as health and safety issues.

Helesia and Moore pointed out that young workers between the ages of 15 and 24 were already far more likely to be injured than other workers for a variety of reasons including inexperience and lack of training.  They concluded:

It is logical to assume that children under 15 will be at least, if not more, affected by the same characteristics that increase the risk of injury to those 15–24. An increase in the number of children working, without an increase in training or supervision, may lead to many more job related injuries, especially when there are no prohibitions against children working in hazardous occupations.

Dr. Martiquet concluded his column with the following: 

It seems strange that children can be used to fill jobs in this way.  Age 12?  Age 13? When will they get to be children?  B.C. should honour the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: the minimum work age should not be lower than the age for finishing compulsory schooling (15 typically), children may do only light work as long as it does not threaten their health, safety or hinder their education and training.

Prosperity is not a coal deposit. It is gold and copper that the owners want to extract.  But like all mines it raises a number of serious issues, including the destruction of Fish Lake and the disregard of First Nation interests in the area. The Canadian Environmental Assessment panel that reviewed the project concluded it would do serious environmental and social harm. The question has thus become, especially for the philistines running this province: don’t the economic benefits of the mine outweigh these albeit nasty, but unavoidable environmental costs.

That might be a compelling argument if there were large and unambiguously positive net benefits that could be expected from the mine going ahead. But because of the way we price electricity in this province the mine in fact would impose a huge loss on BC Hydro, and ultimately you, me and every other electricity user in the province. There is no evidence to suggest the benefits of the mine would outweigh this cost.

The mine owners (and sadly their boosters in government) protest that it would pay the same rate every other industrial user of electricity pays. That, however, is the problem. BC Hydro’s industrial rate  averages less than $40 per megawatt hour. The cost of the new electricity supply BC Hydro would have to acquire to meet the mine’s power requirements would be at least $90 per megawatt hour, possibly over $100. So BC Hydro would lose at least $50 per megawatt hour on each of the 700,000 megawatt hours of electricity the mine would consume each year.

The arithmetic is simple. BC Hydro would lose, effectively subsidize the mine, at least $35 million per year.

To be sure there would be jobs, though where the workers would come from and what alternative opportunities they would have — in other words what the benefit would be to British Columbians — is not at all clear. Equally unclear is what the tax benefits would amount to. Mining Watch suggests, based on the experience of other mines, not very much.

So here is the thing that made me want to cry in my pint (though the ale was too good to let that happen). The mine would destroy a lake. It is fiercely opposed by the First Nation in whose territory it would be developed. It was found to have serious adverse impacts by a federally appointed environmental review panel. And it would impose a loss of at least $35 million per year on BC Hydro and therefore all ratepayers.

Here is an immodest proposal. Instead of promoting the mine the government should tell BC Hydro to give the Williams Lake region $35 million per year to invest in sustainable economic development. BC Hydro and all of us would be no worse off than we would be with the mine. The region would get a local economic stimulus that could be focussed on the needs of the community. And a lake wouldn’t have to be destroyed.

The report …  concluded 2000 to 2009 was the warmest decade ever, and the Earth has been growing warmer for 50 years. Each of the past three decades – 1980s, 1990s and 2000s – was the hottest on record … Of the 10 measurements, the report said seven are rising – air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and the temperature of the troposphere, which is the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining – Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. All of which point to a warming trend.

Also making news is the latest cap-and-trade planning from the Western Climate Initiative, which made the front page of the Vancouver Sun yesterday. I’m hesitant to reprint anything from that story as it gets some of the basics wrong, and makes some big assumptions about how the regional cap-and-trade system will play out in BC. While BC has legislative authority to enter a WCI system in 2012, there are still many details to be worked out about how permits will be allocated, what penalties would be applied, etc. BC was supposed to release some new regulations on how the system would play out today, but then pulled it at the last minute.

The WCI announcement comes on the heels of the demise of an American cap-and-trade program in the US Senate, an outcome that puts all of the onus for US greenhouse gas reductions on states and the Environmental Protection Agency (which, fortunately, has been found to have jurisdiction to regulate GHGs as a pollutant but has not moved due to developments in Congress). A good synopsis of these developments and possible short-term outcomes is here.

Like the poisonous politics of Congress, however, the reality is that the WCI has been creamed at the level of state legislatures. It is one thing for the WCI to state some parameters of a plan; another to win the political support to make a real cap-and-trade system a reality. Officially, there are seven US states and four Canadian provinces that are party to the WCI, plus a longer list of “observers”. But Washington and Oregon, in particular, have faced huge opposition in their state legislatures, and I suspect the others are also having misgivings. The Globe’s coverage of the WCI comments that Ontario and Quebec are uncertain about WCI, so it is anyone’s guess who’ll really be there when 2012 hits.

So on the surface this new announcement may be a step forward, but as always the Devil is in the details. And the details we have suggest that the current form of the WCI is pretty leaky in terms of actual emission reductions. Ian Bruce from the David Suzuki Foundation flags a few very important concerns:

First, the WCI partners shouldn’t weaken the shrinking yearly quota for industrial emitters by allowing companies to buy pollution permits for promised action in the future versus reducing their current emissions. (It wouldn’t be responsible to pass on a financial debt to future generations, and the principle is the same) Second, industry’s target or cap for reducing emissions should be in line with what leading scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic consequences of global warming, a reduction of about half over the next decade. Last, these provinces and states can ensure the environmental integrity of the cap-and-trade system by limiting the use of carbon offsets in the system, as this weakens the incentive for industry to take responsible action to reduce its own emissions.

The region-wide target is 15% below 2005 levels, not 50%; carbon offsets can be used for up to 49% of emission reductions; and other provisions allow more “flexibility” in meeting targets (see Figure 4 on page 13 for a list). When I see some meaningful commitments to stop the expansion of fossil fuels with a plan for real reductions, I’ll be the first to do a jig.

The tricky part is that changing these elements would render the program that is already getting a rough political ride virtually impossible. As Bill Rees says, “the ecologically necessary is politically infeasible but the politically feasible is ecologically irrelevant.”

This month the new coalition government cancelled the controversial Building Schools for the Future program.  Michael Gove, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education said the P3 school program had been hit by:

“massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy.”

He said: “There are some councils which entered the process six years ago which have only just started building new schools. Another project starting this year is three years behind schedule”

Earlier reports also suggest Britain’s National Health Service is having problems with the cost and inflexibility of P3 hospitals.  The Financial Times reported:

Traditionally, when spending is tough, NHS hospitals put maintenance on hold to retain doctors, nurses and other services.

But Nigel Edwards, head of policy for the NHS Confederation, said: “A hospital with a PFI scheme does not have that option. They are contractually bound to keep the maintenance up – and if you are spending 10 or 15 per cent on your buildings it means all the other efficiency and productivity gains you need have to come out of only 85 or 90 per cent of your budget.”

Not surprisingly, despite problems with the P3s, parents in areas where projects to replace substandard schools have been cancelled are furious.  They are even more furious because the government appears to be funding plans to convert schools to “academies” that can ignore national curriculum.  These academies were just one more form of privatization promoted by the Tony Blair’s Labour government.  With academies, companies and religious institutions invest in schools and get to control them.

The problems with these P3 projects in the U.K. are only coming to light years after they were initiated.  Here in BC, and in Alberta with its commitment to P3 schools, it gives us something to look forward to.

The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard

I watched the video along time ago, and even saw a live performance of it at the Oregon Country Fair a couple years ago. Now the book, which puts some much needed meat on the bones of those stick people. Which makes it a compelling popular primer on ecological economics, except while the latter tends to the abstract, Leonard tells the story of everyday Stuff, walking you through the processes of Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal. She also makes a compelling case that our ecological woes – of which climate change is just one – are systemically rooted in a little thang we call capitalism. But she does not stick to environmental problems, either; she reveals the injustices for workers at all stages in wages, hours and unsafe working conditions so that we can buy a toxic bauble for a dollar.

The Geography of Hope by Chris Turner

I saw Chris Turner speak at a conference last year at Harrison Hot Springs, and even got to chat with him in the hot tub. He was a pretty funny speaker and I committed to picking up his book. But then I assumed I would see it on the shelves in my occasional bookstore browsing, but never saw it anywhere. Which is a shame because this type of book is what we need to shake ourselves out of our fossil fuel addiction. Turner is a fantastic writer, and as a journalist he is able to tell compelling stories from a round-the-world journey in search of real examples of a zero-carbon economy that represents a plausible future – if we can just break the addiction. Working on climate change takes you to some pretty dark places, and this type of book shines some of the light I need to keep going.

The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

When I first heard the name The Spirit Level, it met with a roll of my eyes, kind of like when someone says Mother Earth during an environmental debate. But the book kept coming up from some sources I highly trust, and after picking it up I found it has little to do with the last known residence of Carlos Casteneda. In fact, it is the type of synthesis that is so rare these days, covering a wide range of empirical evidence, and weaving it together so nicely that at the end it just seems obvious. The sub-title gives it away: using cross-sectional international comparisons and states within the US (plus the occasional time series), the book makes its way through an undeniable link between higher inequality and adverse social and health outcomes. As someone who has spent a bit of time researching inequality, and advocating for policies to reduce it, I’ve noticed a tendency for researchers to sometimes fall into “statistical pornography”, or displaying data for its shock value (“just look at that growing gap”). What the Spirit Level does is provide the deep context for why that growing gap matters, linking it to real outcomes rather than ethical ideals, filling in the canvas with research on social determinants of health and life satisfaction. I’m pleased to say I got this one out of the library.

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan

Pollan’s follow up to The Omnivore’s Dilemma revisits some of the critique of the industrialized food system covered in that book, but focuses on our evolving understanding of nutrition. Pollan is a wry writer, and he deftly and humourously argues that the science of “nutritionism” has led us astray because of its reductionist tendencies that miss the big picture of healthy eating in practice, thus leading societies down one food fad after another, plus a lexicon of food-speak that few can relate to. The major lessons seem to be about avoiding the products of the industrial food system, fast foods but also most of the processed foods, especially ones that have health claims emblazoned on the package. Simply put, eat your fruits and veggies, ideally as locally produced as possible, and not too much meat. And slow down, dammit, and enjoy that meal with friends and family.

Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist with the CCPA was one of the first people to raise the issue in an open letter to the Minister of Industry who is also the Minster responsible for Statistics. 

Yalnizyan listed with concern many other areas where the government has simply stopped collecting information.  She said:

These have all been political decisions. The decision to stop inquiring about the world around us is as political as the decision to ask questions. The issues that are no longer being probed by the government or Statistics Canada are not going away.

Without a foundation of reliable, consistent information, evidence-based public policy is impossible. It is troubling to think that our elected leaders think decision-based evidence-making is preferable. This may work for a time, but it is not a durable strategy.

Her letter can be found here.

Since that time other people have started to weigh in on the issue.  The Federation of Canadian Municipalities letter can be found here.  Comments from the Statistical Society of Canada can be found here.  The comments from the former head of Statistics Canada are here.

There is an online petition to keep the long form census that can be found here.  As of now 5,300 people have signed.

If you know of any other groups opposing this decision please feel free to post their comments here.

British Columbia’s government spent $325 million more on the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics than originally promised. The $925.2 million bill to taxpayers was disclosed in an unaudited Friday report and included a $50 million bailout for the recession-rocked Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee. … The $925.2 million figure does not include costs borne by Crown corporations or government agencies that were VANOC sponsors or service providers.

… While the federal and B.C. governments contributed $580 million for venue construction, VANOC was supposed to fund its $1.76 billion operations budget primarily from private sources via broadcasting, ticket sales, merchandising and sponsorship. When the recession happened, all four revenue sources shrunk. Two sponsors — General Motors and Nortel — went into bankruptcy protection. VANOC was stuck with $12 million in unsold billboards that it gave to the province for a tourism advertising campaign.

VANOC’s final, audited report is expected in late fall. It stopped issuing quarterly reports last December, despite the 2002 Multi-Party Agreement with governments that said it must.

The Finance Minister, Colin Hansen, repeatedly claimed that the total bill to taxpayers would be $600 million. And it is worth noting that VANOC voted themselves bonuses on the order of $30 million last fall.

Back to the “we told you so” file, and I will quote myself back in 2006:

I should also point out, because the media have completely failed to, that the only cost-benefit analysis of the 2010 games was done by the CCPA. In a February 2003 report by Marvin Shaffer, Alan Greer and Celine Mauboules, the analysis used the 2010 Bid Book and some crafty calculations to estimate the net financial cost to British Columbians at $1.2 billion, and $2 billion if the new transit line to Richmond and the airport was included. The report stands the test of time quite nicely, I would say. And the authors at the time cautioned that “costs could be substantially higher, and are subject to numerous risks. The Province of British Columbia, as the sole guarantor of the Games, is assuming all the financial burden of what is, clearly, a risky business venture.”

And so it was. The 2003 report expressed its amounts in 2002 dollars, so add a bit of inflation and we were pretty close. In addition, the City of Vancouver has estimated that its costs of hosting the Games (additional to the BC government contribution) was $524 million in capital costs and another $30 million in operating costs, although some of this was for non-competition infrastructure that might have been done anyway. Similarly, provincial dollars do not include infrastructure investments like the Canada Line transit expansion and the Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion, both of which were pushed to the top of the queue by the Olympics but arguably might have happened at some point anyway. Nor does the provincial amount include the BC portion of federal government costs (BC has 13% of Canada’s population, so part of the party was financed by the rest of the country).

So were the Olympics worth it? It certainly was fun party, and Canada’s hockey gold medal may prove to many Canadians that costs were justified. If we call it $2 billion in net expenditures, that amounts to about 1% of provincial GDP. A fuller examination of the numbers is warranted, but whether you think the cost was worth it or not, you should be troubled by a government that is not honest with the public about the provincial finances.