alberta’s unpaid caregivers fend for themselves

1the Post • A P A R K L A N D I N S T I T U T E P U B L I C A T I O N SPRING/SUMMER 2010

EDITORIAL, page 2

LETTERS, page 2

thePostA P U B L I C A T I O N O F T H E P A R K L A N D I N S T I T U T E

thePostVolume XVII, N˚2,Spring/Summer 2010

INSIDE THE POST

Alberta’s unpaid caregivers fend for themselves

SARAH NEWMAN

MONEYFaith in privatization creates bigger provincial debts, page 3

Taxes: the price of civilization, page 4

When is enough enough? page 5

ENVIRONMENTBiofuel study comes too late, page 6

ALBERTAAlberta’s minimum wage falls short, page 8

CANADAUnderstanding the hot topics in Canada’s coldest region, page 9

Outrage is easy—real citizenship takes work, page 10

As Wildrose Alliance tries to court voters in Alberta, the fledgling party is doing its utmost to diminish the legitimacy of the Conservative government through populist generalities that speak against “intrusive laws” and for “small c” conservative governments. But many of the real policies that shape the everyday lives of working Albertans remain off the radar.

For instance, Alberta is the only province in Canada that does not offer job protection to care for a dependent with a serious illness. It is also one of the few provinces that don’t ensure unpaid, job-protected leave for employees caring for family members’ non-life threatening health needs. This means that employees in Alberta can often be dismissed, suspended, laid off or demoted if they call in sick to care for the health needs of themselves or their family members.

Just ask Andrea who works for a large retail chain in Calgary. “My hours got cut from 30 hours a week to eight because I’m supposedly ‘unreliable’. My son got sick. What am I supposed to do? The day home won’t take him when he’s sick and so I had to call in sick twice last month.”

Since she makes only $9 an hour, Andrea was scrapping by to begin with. Even with

Government, not business, should set policies that support this critical social service30 hours a week, her income left her below the poverty line and forces her to live in a shelter with her young two-year old son while she waits for a unit in Calgary housing.

Now without a regular income, “I’ve just stopped paying my bills and I’m relying on food from the shelter,” explains Andrea.

Women in Alberta, like Andrea, are disproportionally affected by this lack of legislation.

In a report published by the Government of Alberta in 2009, women continue to outnumber men employed in the service-producing industries, such as social assistance, retail trade, and food and accommodation services. Statistics Canada reports that these industries are the least likely to provide health-related benefits. Women also occupy over 70 per cent of the part-time workforce in Canada and, according to Statistics Canada, only half of all part-time workers have access to non-wage benefits, compared to three-quarters of full-time workers.

The sales and services sector in Alberta also provides the lowest average wage for women at $13.75 per hour, which leaves many of these women unable to save for anything, including medical emergencies.

Employers and children are also negatively affected by the lack of sick leave

legislation in Alberta. Sick children, left in daycare by parents fearful of losing their job, often do not get the care and attention they need to recuperate.

“Parents bring their children and say they are fine, but by the time the parent leaves the child starts screaming, coughing, has a fever and mucous is coming from its nose,” says Julie, a day-home operator in Calgary. “I try to call the parent, but not even five minutes after she leaves, she has turned off her phone. I try the emergency contacts and they can’t be reached either. And so, I am stuck trying to care for a sick child and five other kids.”

Some employers in Alberta do provide sick leave for a certain period of time without loss of wages, as a part of their benefits plan. These employers often recognize that sick leave can benefit the bottom line. When employees go to work sick, they often expose their co-workers to the risk of becoming ill, while providing less than optimal performance. As more employees become ill, productivity decreases and training and recruitment costs increase as employees need to be replaced.

Nevertheless, the private sector cannot be relied on to improve working conditions and benefits, particularly when companies bear the cost while their competitors often choose not to provide coverage.

We need our government to set the rules of employment because, at the moment, it is the taxpayer and communities that are carrying the majority of the burden. When employees are fired for calling in sick, they reach out to our strained social services, such as employment insurance, food banks, shelters, and distress centers and, unemployment also leads to complication with illness, which puts more pressure on our public health care system.

The rhetoric of allowing business to decide how to “have their affairs regulated” —as Wildrose Alliance leader Danielle Smith puts it—isn’t as great as it sounds when the idea is transferred into policy. Albertans needs a government that is committed to setting legislation that would, at a minimum, protect employees’ rights to care for themselves and their family members and set standards of responsibility for businesses operating in Alberta.

Sarah Newman is a Researcher in the Department of Health, Ethics & Society of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences Sciences at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

the Post • A P A R K L A N D I N S T I T U T E P U B L I C A T I O N 2 SPRING/SUMMER 2010

That old saying “Money can’t buy happiness” isn’t wrong—well, not exactly. Anyone who’s ever indulged in a little “retail therapy” knows that the pleasure of the new purchase (for me, usually craft supplies) is painfully fleeting; as quickly as it leaves, the malaise returns. Buying things is not a cure for much—except, perhaps, for too much money. For most of us, having too much isn’t really the problem.

But this tired phrase is as much a jab at the rich as it is an insult to low-income people. Sure, money may not buy happiness, but it’s hard to be happy when you don’t have enough to sustain yourself. It’s hard to see money as a corrupting force when you’re desperate to buy your kid school supplies in the fall or take a badly needed family vacation. After a splurge, some shrug “It’s just money,” while others cringe. Indeed, the point of money is buying products and services—and there’s no value in money as a number—but it’s never just money. There is, in fact, no such thing.

Money is always loaded with meaning. In many regards, money is personal freedom: a way to own or rent a safe home,

Randy Steinhauer analyzes the meaning of fair taxation and criticizes the anti-tax rhetoric that pervades both the working poor and middle class, who pay a disproportionate share. Parkland Executive Editor Ricardo Acuña looks at how Alberta’s privatization measures have made social services more expensive, not less. Sarah Newman examines the financial burdens faced by those caring for those with health issues, calling for government policies to support them as they care for others without pay.

Whatever your take on the meaning of money and how we as individuals and a society should be spending it, we hope you enjoy the summer issue of the Post. Any thoughts you’d like to share on this issue—whether praise or constructive criticism—are greatly appreciated. Feel free to start a web discussion on the Post’s new webpage or e-mail us at [email protected].

Caitlin Crawshaw is the coordinating editor of the Post and an Edmonton-based freelance journalist.

retire, go back to school, fix the car, get a bus pass, eat organic produce, afford child care. Life is expensive, after all, and very few of these things are supported by the government.

On the flip side, money can also be a freedom snatcher. Money-making can become an addiction, particularly when one is living slightly above one’s means or hungry for status and prestige. Material stuff can become a distraction from what matters, a barrier to understanding yourself and the World. Whatever your philosophy on happiness, few would argue that it’s possible to be truly content without a certain degree of self-awareness or peace. After all, these are things we need to interact with others and build relationships. No man is an island, and all that.

But whether we’re scraping by, making enough, or have more than we truly need, there’s no discounting the impact of money. We all need it to live and most of us probably think about it on a daily basis.

In this issue of the Post, money is an unofficial theme. Long-time contributor

letters to the editor

A great many Canadians are still deceived into believing that we have parliamentary democracy in Canada and that the majority of MPs we elect serve the best interests of their constituents.

In reality, if MPs did control Parliament, Canada would be very different. Foreign takeover of Canadian enterprises, land, and resources, would be banned. Canada’s wealthy corporate elite would also not be able to use tax havens and loopholes to dodge taxes. International petroleum corporations would pay fair oil and gas royalties. The list goes on and on.

Conservative government shows no compassion for farm workers

Parliamentary democracy a joke

This June marked four years since the needless death of Kevan Chandler—a husband, father and farm worker—at a High river, Alta. feedlot. Since that fateful Father’s Day, no changes have been made to prevent this tragedy from happening to another Alberta farm worker. It still remains that farm workers are not covered under Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHS).

If Chandler had worked in any other dangerous industry in Alberta or any other province, standards would have been in place to prevent his death. Alberta has laws to protect our cows, pigs, horses, dogs, cats etc., but no such laws for the men, women

and children who work as Alberta’s farm workers. Since 2001, five Employment Ministers have refused to provide Alberta’s farm workers with government services or health and safety protections, insisting they are striking a balance between worker and producer rights.

That is some scale of injustice they are using. In Alberta, the right to make a profit trumps the rights of these workers.

In 2001, Minister Dunford said he must consult with farmers, we got the Marz Committee. In 2009, after a rare fatality review into Chandler’s death, Judge Peter

Barley recommended OHS protection for these workers. The Conservative government launched their own one year review and consultation into this issue and determined that we must consult with farmers. Nine years of consultation has resulted in approximately 160 deaths and many thousands of injuries, and no improvement in protection for our farm workers.

Who is this government serving? Clearly it is not our farm workers and their families.

Darlene DunlopBow Island, Alta.

The real power in Ottawa lies with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), a non-partisan organization made up of about 150 chief executive officers of leading Canadian enterprises. They maintain a force of several thousand lobbyists in Ottawa who like to call themselves “government affairs consultants.”

Their function is to influence government policy in favour of their clients. They accomplish this by arranging “information” meetings with government representatives, their aids, senior civil servants, and their advisors. They may also “entertain” their

targets with a view to achieving their cooperation.

It is my conviction that the major decisions in Ottawa originate in private corporate boardroom. Parliament’s role is to merely to rubber stamp them and to create the illusion that power lies with the common people.

William DascavichEdmonton, Alta.

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Volume XVII, N˚2 , Spring/Summer 2010

editorial

Caitlin Crawshaw

Money, money, moneyBlessing or curse, there’s no minimizing the social impact of the green stuff


them-public funding, private delivery. This program yielded positive results in terms of reduced wait times, and the government and their acolytes celebrated this as an example of how the government and the private sector could effectively work together to ensure that everyone in the health care system wins-the private companies get their profits, waiting lists get shorter and the whole system is more efficient and costs less.

Except that it didn’t. Because there were still public facilities offering hip and knee replacements, it was very easy to track the comparative costs and advantages to each of the two delivery methods. And those advantages were crystal clear: surgeries at the private clinic were costing, on average, 10 per cent more than the same surgeries at public facilities. Had the Premier and the cabinet bothered, at any time since 1994, to look up from their song-books, they would have quickly realized that their mantra of private system efficiency was seriously flawed, and could have taken steps to reverse these privatizations.

If they did look up they refused to believe what they saw, because the government continued to present the relationship with HRC as an unmitigated success, and continued to look for ways to bring even more private service providers into the system.

If the higher costs were not enough proof that private delivery of health care costs more and is less efficient, at the end of April Albertans received another dose of reality as Alberta Health Services announced publicly that HRC’s parent company was in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, and the AHS would have to step in to make sure services didn’t suffer.

So how does a government that ostensibly believes in the power of the unfettered free market step into a situation like this? Well, by asking the courts to appoint a receiver and by forking out millions of taxpayer dollars to ensure that financial insolvency does not limit the private clinic’s ability to make money off Albertans with broken hips and knees.

By the time all is said and done, just keeping the facility operational through the period of receivership will cost Albertans at least $3 million, and possibly more. That, of course, is in addition to the cost of the surgeries conducted there during the receivership: surgeries that will still cost us at least 10 per cent more than those same surgeries at public facilities.

money

Faith in privatization creates bigger provincial debts

In 1994, Ralph Klein’s Minister of Municipal Affairs, Dr Steve West, made the following statement in the Alberta Legislature:

“I’ll make this boldest of statements: There isn’t a government operation, a government business, a Crown corporation that is as efficient as the private sector, and indeed they’re 20 - 40 per cent less efficient. You don’t have to do a study. You can guarantee it because of the structure in the way they run their economics.”

In many ways, that short statement perfectly encapsulated the attitude of the entire Klein government, and subsequently the Stelmach government, towards privatization of public services-they didn’t care what the evidence said, they didn’t care what examples from other jurisdictions demonstrated, they simply believed with all their hearts that the private sector was more efficient than the public sector, and as far as they were concerned, that made it so.

It was this faith-based policy making that ultimately led Ralph Klein’s government to try to privatize everything in sight during the 1990s: from liquor stores to private registries to hospitals and surgical facilities. It’s important to remember that in those days Ed Stelmach led the pro-privatization anti-spending choir as a member of the “Deep Six,” a group of rookie MLAs that daily urged Klein to cut deeper and privatize more.

It was within the context of this fundamentalist fervour that the provincial government and the Calgary Health Region decided to make health care in Calgary “more efficient” by shutting down three of the city’s seven hospitals-despite the waiting lists that already existed and the city’s looming population boom. If it couldn’t be sold off to private providers, it was blown up.

In 1996, Calgary’s Grace Hospital, which then specialized in women’s health programs, was sold off to a company operating as Health Resource Centre (HRC), a private, for-profit surgical corporation that set up shop selling hip and knee replacements in the formerly public hospital.

HRC proceeded to become a corner stone of the Alberta government’s pilot project to reduce wait times for hip and knee replacements in the province’s major centres (the Edmonton facilities that were part of this project were all still public). Essentially, the province would buy hip and knee replacements from HRC and give them to Albertans who needed

RICARDO ACUÑA

The challenge is that because the government got rid of so many of its public facilities in Calgary in the ‘90s, there is now no capacity left for the public system to re-absorb the surgeries being done by HRC. The Alberta government’s only two choices are to keep paying a ridiculous overhead to provide services at a company that is broke, or build new facilities so that the public system can go back to providing these services.

Ralph Klein and Steve West were fond of labeling groups like the Parkland Institute, who challenged their gospel of privatization with real facts and figures, as fear-mongers who were against innovation and improvement. Today, Albertans are literally paying the price for their government’s fundamental fanaticism with privatization despite all the evidence to the contrary. The problems with this should be evident to all Albertans. Now we just need to pass it on to the ones making the decisions.

Ricardo Acuña is the Executive Director of Parkland Institute.This article first appeared in the May 20, 2010, issue of Vue Weekly.

It was this faith-based policy making that ultimately led Ralph Klein’s government to try to privatize everything in sight during the

1990s: from liquor stores to private registries to hospitals and surgical

facilities. It’s important to remember that in those days Ed Stelmach led

the pro-privatization anti-spending choir as a member of the “Deep

Six,” a group of rookie MLAs that daily urged Klein to cut deeper and

privatize more.

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money

One of the prime strategies of advocates of neoliberal free-market supremacy is the demonization of taxes. Corporate-backed think tanks such as the C.D. Howe Institute and the Fraser Institute, with its “Tax Freedom Day,” as well as ideologically driven groups like the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, relentlessly attack taxes and government spending.

The appeal by the right wing to constantly cut taxes may resonate with some, but a disquieting reality underlies it. Working poor and middle class voters are prime targets for tax-cut rhetoric since they pay a disproportionate share. However, once the right-wing politicians are elected, their tax cuts favour wealthy people and the corporations that already pay too little. This is usually followed by a round of cuts in public spending, mainly to the detriment of the most vulnerable. Lower income earners are left awaiting tax relief and then primed for another round of illusory tax cuts. This is most blatantly obvious in Alberta with former Premier Ralph Klein’s flat tax rate. A recent Parkland Institute fact-sheet, Giving Away the Golden Egg, revealed that this has cost the provincial treasury over $5 billion this fiscal year alone. While a windfall for highest incomes, which are now taxed at by far the lowest rate in Canada, it has resulted in a tax rate above the national average for lower and middle-income earners. Paying more for less: the Alberta Advantage.

Canada’s top tax rate for the highest earners is only 29 per cent. A study by economist Marc Lee for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Eroding Tax Fairness: Tax Incidence in Canada, 1990 to 2005, found that tax cuts resulted in vastly disproportionate benefits for Canada’s wealthy, with the top 1 per cent of families paying a lower total tax rate than the bottom 10 per cent in 2005.

Additionally, regressive sales taxes such as GST place a heavier burden on the less

affluent. Conservative politicians tend to be big fans of cuts to capital gains taxes on profits from assets held mainly by the rich such as stocks or properties as well as income-splitting to reduce taxes for the high-income partner in a couple.

Since the economic meltdown, conservatives have been pushing for corporate tax reductions to stimulate job creation. However, direct government spending creates far more jobs than an equivalent amount in tax cuts. Canada’s supposedly high corporate taxes are below average for developed countries and the European Union. In fact, European countries such as Germany and England have higher corporate taxes but greater productivity than Canada.

Social programs: who needs them when we have capitalism?As former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes asserted, “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” An obvious statement - or, at least it should be. Decades of tax cuts at the federal and provincial level have taken their toll on our poor.

Over a million Canadian children live in poverty while nearly 800,000 Canadians depend on food banks. Reduced government services and stagnant or falling real wages for workers leaves many in precarious circumstances. Rather than adequately fund public pensions, the federal government emphasizes RRSPs, which many can’t afford to pay into. Instead of providing public services or subsidies to the working poor, many conservative politicians would rather give tax credits that only benefit those wealthy enough to afford private services.

Our employment insurance replacement rate is one of the lowest in the developed world. Reduced federal transfers to the provinces for post-secondary funding have left students with crushing debt loads. Canada’s spending on social programs is down to around 13 per cent of its Gross

Domestic Product, putting it near the bottom for developed nations. Taxes are increasingly paid by the working poor and middle class while benefits from subsidies, bailouts, and military spending go to corporations which are owned overwhelmingly by the wealthy. Some governments seem to have gotten this whole Robin Hood thing backwards.

One direct consequence of government tax and spending cuts has been the corporatization of our universities. With funding from government agencies drying up university research labs must turn to corporate funding. What should be public knowledge becomes proprietary (like gene patenting).

Beyond tax cuts, billions in lost revenue from corporations and wealthy Canadians disappear into tax havens yearly. Additionally, approximately 60 per cent of international “trade” consists of corporations selling raw materials, components, and finished products between their own subsidiaries and divisions. Since they are in effect selling to themselves the companies can declare whatever cost they want on the transaction. This transfer pricing scam shifts their profits to jurisdictions with little or no taxation.

The wrecking crew in actionA concurrent theme of conservative tax-cutters has been the futility of government attempts to do anything beneficial for its citizens. A major tenet of neoliberal market fundamentalism is the ability of the market to deliver virtually all goods and services more efficiently than governments, whose only function should be to facilitate business. For the political far right, this manifests itself in a denigration, and virtual abhorrence of, government, even when they are in power, particularly for those closely allied with the fundamentalist Religious Right. Governments that hate government. This was certainly evident during the Klein administration as well as the presidencies of Ronald Reagan

and George W. Bush. As Thomas Frank discusses in The Wrecking Crew, U.S. tax cuts for the wealthy and big business form part of the framework for eliminating federal government services for the general public. Although campaigning on the need for balanced budgets and eliminating the debt, these right-wing governments will often increase the debt by combining tax cuts with huge increases in military spending as well as generous corporate handouts. Not only do they eliminate public services and programs; by hamstringing future governments with gargantuan debt loads, they sabotage future efforts to restore these programs. Canada’s right-wing politicians do their best to follow this script.

Right-wing political parties and corporate media regale the public with tales of government mismanagement and overspending. What they often fail to mention is that the beneficiaries of these financial boondoggles frequently turn out to be big business allies of the government in question. Huge giveaways to the private sector - like Alberta’s $2 billion carbon-capture-and-storage green-washing program are given generally favourable coverage. Cuts to public programs are often portrayed as necessary for economic survival, yet there never seems to be a shortage of public funds for the next CEO with a sob story passing the corporate hat.

Public sector jobs such as nursing or teaching are often dismissed as being less legitimate than those in private enterprise. Corporate media love to highlight government inefficiency and tax waste but how much more would it cost if we had to pay private companies for the same services? The direct result of tax cuts is the privatization and outsourcing of government services, as we shall now examine.

A neoliberal’s favourite con: privatizationThe tired mantra of neoliberalism is that any function of government can be better served if outsourced to the private sector. Somehow a corporation—with its higher administration expenses, inflated executive salaries, marketing costs, and need for investor profits—is thought to deliver better service, cheaper. The result of this has frequently been the sale of government enterprises to wealthy investors at fire-sale prices, a one-off chump-change revenue injection to replace lost tax revenue. Meanwhile, the public often suffers higher prices and shoddy service as private corporations cherry pick the market to maximize profitability. Albertans continue to endure high rates under private auto insurance schemes. In the U.S., despite public support, many lawmakers, media and politicians continue to dismiss public health-care as an alternative to their private health-care nightmare.

With so many failures, corporations have had to repackage and rebrand their privatization schemes as Public-Private Partnerships (P3s).

Taxes: the price of civilizationFair taxation of people and corporations creates sustainable communities

RANDY STEINHAUER

continued on next page


moneyIn this maneuver, governments lease

facilities from corporations for extended periods with guaranteed profit margins to investors, while the public pays the extra cost. An article on P3s by Toby Sanger and Corina Crawley in the April 2009 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor thoroughly debunks the claims that they are less risky or less expensive than publicly owned and managed projects, and reveals that the claimed superiority of P3s is based on fraudulent accounting practices. Additionally, when these projects fail, the taxpayer is left to pick up the tab.

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Rather than adequately fund public pensions, the federal

government emphasizes RRSPs, which many can’t afford to

pay into. Instead of providing public services or subsidies to the working poor, many

conservative politicians would rather give tax credits that only benefit those wealthy enough

to afford private services.

Possible futuresCalifornia serves as a cautionary tale for neoliberals obsessed with tax cuts at any cost. Since the 1970s, California’s right-wing fanatics have zeroed in on cutting taxes to the point of a revenue collapse. Once possessing some of the best public schools, colleges, and highways in the U.S., California’s are now among the worst, with its health-care system ranked at the bottom. The eighth largest economy in the world has been reduced to issuing IOUs, with even California’s ‘Governator’ unable to flex his way out of this mess.

Tax cuts aren’t the solution. A better approach is a progressive tax system with far more taxes paid by high incomes, higher corporate taxes and royalty payments. This allows expanded public services instead of saddling us with the privatization schemes right-wing politicians have imposed. We don’t need any more tax cuts on the backs of the working poor or future generations. Thanks, neoliberals, but we can’t afford any more of your favours.

Randy Steinhauer (a.k.a ‘Radical Randy’) is an Edmonton activist and author of The Edmonton Social Justice/Activist Contact & Resource Handbook. More information on economic and social justice issues may be found at http://activistresources.raisemyvoice.com

continued from previous page

Perhaps no concept is more sacrosanct to “free market” neoliberals, especially here in conservative frontier Alberta, than that of the right to own and accumulate property and material wealth without any imposed limit. It is difficult to imagine any form of capitalism that isn’t absolutely dependent on the precept of the sanctity of property and ownership. This right to property is as axiomatic to conservatives as the right to control their own physical body: they would no more give up their wealth than they would an arm or a leg.

The 17th Century English philosopher John Locke originated the modern concept of property, writing that people are justified in its exclusive ownership because it is the fruit of their labour. Of course, what we own is most often not produced by our own hands, but workers elsewhere who weren’t compensated for the full value of their work. What’s more, both wealthy individuals and corporations accumulate massive amounts of wealth and property via the work of employees who aren’t paid for the true value of their work.

Nevertheless, while the massive accumulation of wealth may stretch the premises of Locke’s original arguments, most of society accepts this. The observation that people will work harder to care for and improve their own personal property is used to validate the extreme wealth of both the super rich and corporations. The idea seems to be that “society’s winners” are entitled to as much property and wealth as they can possibly amass on a first-come, first-served basis, rather like a game show contestant in a glass booth madly clutching fistfuls of money as it blows around in the air. Apparently, it’s not considered germane that the property may have been taken from its indigenous inhabitants or was previously communally held.

Contrary to the view of neoliberals, property rights weren’t handed down from on high, but evolved as a social construct, designed for overall social benefit rather than individual enrichment. Property use is often restricted by zoning or other regulations. As economist John Maynard Keynes pointed out, individuals

do not possess a “natural liberty” in their economic activities since private and social interests do not always coincide: no contract confers perpetual rights on those who have or acquire.

Success, Inc.The Right celebrates the individual’s freedom to pursue their own goals and dreams, motivated by material gain and unfettered by the hand of the state. Any alternative is treated as if it will drown individual talent in a sea of socialist collectivist mediocrity, creating an egalitarian dystopia where no one can rise above the rest. Thus, the only way to succeed is through the pursuit of personal affluence and advancement under the capitalist system. Success equals money.

As the Right would have it, only the opportunity to make a fortune (however remote) will motivate people to take risks, express their creativity, and strive to give that proverbial 110 percent. The possibility that someone may put forth their best effort simply for the joy of artistic creation or sport isn’t considered. The chance to make a good living instead of having an opulent lifestyle just isn’t incentive enough. Some may indeed be motivated by the chance at a pot of gold, but would the world really be the poorer if deprived of the contribution of hacks who are just in it for the money? Why should excellence in a field be a license for the accumulation of inexhaustible wealth?

People may be motivated to hoard money as protection against job loss or to provide for a secure retirement, but these fears would be irrelevant with decent unemployment and pension programs. Some may feel entitled to riches as a way

to improve their family’s lot, but why their family deserves to live in luxury while others suffer in poverty isn’t immediately apparent. It may be argued that only by earning high incomes can professionals such as doctors or lawyers hope to pay off their student loan debts, but this would be unnecessary with affordable tuition. Even those who see the fundamental futility and emptiness of avarice are hard pressed not to be caught up in the rat race, coerced into joining the system the capitalists have created for themselves just

to survive. Is it so surprising that many may turn to drug or alcohol abuse or other maladaptive behaviours to deal with the unrelenting pressure to “succeed” or to fill the hollowness of empty materialistic goals?

The investment argumentOne defense for concentrations of wealth advanced by conservatives is the need for large pools of capital to purchase corporate shares, thereby investing in companies and providing economic activity. This fallacy is used to justify the free wheeling profiteering of speculators in the stock market’s global casino. In reality, unless someone is buying an initial public offering or a new stock issue, the money used to acquire the stock goes to its last owner and their brokers, not the company. Furthermore, dividends paid out by corporations to shareholders represent a drain from the company and its ability to reinvest in the business.

Notwithstanding the economic crash, U.S. corporate profits and cash flow remain high, but business investment in their economy continues to fall. American banks wallow in huge excess reserves of cash rather than lending it to those industries and small businesses desperate for investment capital. Thus, the pretext of the utility of huge concentrations of wealth to provide economic stimulation is looking more dubious daily.

Tragedy vs. community resourceThe Tragedy of the Commons, Garret Hardin’s 1968 essay on uncontrolled population growth, has proven a useful cudgel for conservative crusaders seeking to enclose and privatize our common inheritance. The example Hardin advanced, that common pastureland would be ruined as everyone tries to maximize the number of cattle grazing the land for the highest personal profit, reveals a fundamental

When is enough enough?Why arguments for unfettered greed fail

RANDY STEINHAUER



environment

misunderstanding of the Commons. Far from an unregulated free-for-all opportunity for individual enrichment, the Commons was a shared heritage used by generations of villagers with a system of allocation and protections designed to allow sustainable use of a resource all depended on for their survival, as depicted by Linda McQuaig in All You Can Eat. Just as the enclosure of the village Commons by English nobles for their gain threatened the very livelihood of the populace, as we now face the corporate privatization of the Global Commons of our water, education, medicare, genetic diversity, and scientific knowledge.

A recurring theme of capitalism is the need for profit and wealth creation to drive creativity, requiring patent and copyright protection for innovators. This monopolistic pretext is flatly contradicted by the most ubiquitous symbol of modern innovation: the World Wide Web. Created by a researcher at CERN, the European particle physics research centre, it was given freely to the public domain, resulting in the current wide open information exchange vehicle we now enjoy, unencumbered by copyright or proprietary dead weight. Additionally, as related by Judy Rebick in Transforming Power, Linux, the open source operating system, was developed by volunteer programmers motivated by the creative satisfaction of their work rather than for financial benefit, unlike the bloated behemoth Microsoft.

As recounted by copyright lawyer William Patry in Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, the concept of copyright

was never intended to protect some abstract right of owners to profit from a work. Rather, it was a utilitarian tool providing the minimum protection necessary to promote the production of new works for overall social benefit. Corporations such as those in the music and movie industries restrict Internet downloading, copying, or other distribution, maintaining a monopolistic drag on consumer access in a futile attempt to fence in the new Electronic Commons. Intel lectual Property Rights, relentlessly pushed by corporations and enshrined in the World Trade Organization and other “free trade” agreements, are primarily mechanisms to further restrict competition in and public access to pharmaceuticals and other new technology for even greater enrichment of transnational corporations.

Rags to ragsUnconstrained accumulation of wealth is frequently rationalized by showcasing a few individuals and their Horatio Algeresque tales of rags-to-riches success. This illustrates what may be referred to as capitalism’s double con: first, that anyone with the right education, ambition, and a little luck has a reasonable chance to join the financial elite when in reality the overwhelming majority of these people will be lucky just to struggle to make ends meet. Second, that those who have achieved great wealth (even at the expense of their family life or personal values) are happier or more fulfilled.

Psychological studies have found that, past a certain point of satisfying

basic needs, increased prosperity is not correlated with increased happiness. Those who stockpile enormous riches and ever more toys may not be any the happier for it, but the resulting maldistribution of wealth comes at the expense of impoverishing many others of their basic daily needs for life. Hardly a sensible tradeoff.

Governments frequently stress lifestyle or behavioural factors in campaigns aimed at improving public health but strangely never mention that social determinants of health such as poverty or income inequality play a far larger role. The Spirit Level, a study of inequality within developed countries by two British epidemiologists, reveals that social problem indicators such as isolation, lower life expectancy, mental health problems and drug abuse, violence and imprisonment, and teenage pregnancy have a higher incidence in more unequal societies, not just for the poorest but throughout these societies.

Limits? What limits?Those espousing the right to accumulate boundless wealth frequently posit an ever-expanding economic pie with more than enough for the truly deserving who are willing to work for it. This frontier mentality collides with the reality of our finite planet. Knowledge, information, and technological innovation may all increase but, regardless of wishful thinking, there is only a finite amount of useable real estate and needed resources to go around. Ultimately it is a zero sum game.

The affluenza promoted by advertisers and our consumer society has resulted

in resource wars, poverty, and the unparalleled destruction of the natural world. The concept of an individual right to property and material wealth can no longer be extended to allow accumulation without limit and widening inequality. The planet can’t afford it and neither can increasingly impoverished masses of humanity. The obsession of governments and the corporate media with inflating the already unsustainable GDP illustrates how far removed capitalism is from creating real wealth. Mark Anielski’s The Economics of Happiness reveals that the real indicators of quality of life and genuine well being have been stagnant or declining in the last few decades even as GDP spirals upward.

In the final analysis, does anyone need - or deserve - a level of income or wealth that would allow them to live beyond a middle class lifestyle? William Wordsworth’s reflections regarding those scrambling for ever-more riches while alienating themselves from the real world are even more apropos today:

“Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours.”

Randy Steinhauer (a.k.a ‘Radical Randy’) is an Edmonton activist and author of The Edmonton Social Justice/Activist Contact & Resource Handbook. More information on economic and social justice issues may be found at http://activistresources.raisemyvoice.com.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse. In January of this year, the Harper Tories earmarked $100,000 to study whether biofuels do more damage to air and land than gasoline. This comes about two years after Bill C-33, which requires that gasoline contain 5 per cent ethanol by 2010 and diesel and heating oil contain 2 per cent renewable fuels by 2012. The May 2008 bill paved the way for $2 billion in agro-fuel subsidies.

The study doesn’t just come too late - it’s redundant. Numerous studies have already answered Harper’s $100,000 question. Environment Canada sent a briefing note to former environment minister Rona Ambrose in May 2006 warning that biofuel

impacts could outweigh benefits. Even conservative pundit Lorne Gunter has raised an eyebrow.

In his April 13, 2008 column in the National Post he declared: “Biofuels [are] nothing short of disaster.” If Harper had listened to any of this, the taxpayers would have saved $100,000 for this latest study in addition to $2 billion gifted to the agro-industry (including a Vegreville canola biodiesel plant). Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, the lobby group lubricating such deals, includes Suncor Energy Products, General Motors of Canada, Agricore United, Monsanto Canada, Shell Canada Products, and so on.

But the dangers of biofuel extend far

beyond our local environment. Biofuels force farmers and urban populations of the Global South to pay much more for agricultural inputs and food. In the a 2007 issue of Britain’s the Guardian, journalist and environmentalist George Monbiot quoted the International Monetary Fund’s warning. Using food to produce biofuels “might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further.”

In 2008, the world food crisis reached unprecedented levels. In many parts of the world grain prices doubled—even tripled. The World Bank attributed three-quarters of this dramatic rise in global food prices

to increased agrofuel production. In 2009 alone, 105 million more people went hungry. For the first time in the history of humanity, the number of hungry people reached one billion. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, one child dies every six seconds because of malnutrition. Canadian consumers can be expected to pay roughly $400 million more for food annually due to ethanol supports. Most of us won’t notice, but those who already spend 60 per cent or more of their income on food, will.

In 2008, 11 per cent of the world’s corn production went to agrofuels.

Biofuel study comes too lateHarper’s plan to study the environmental impact of biofuels follows expensive efforts to push the technology forward in Canada and years of havoc in the southern hemisphereCECILY MILLS




environmentOver 30 per cent of the 2008 US corn

crop was destined to go into cars. President George W. Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address called for reducing US gasoline consumption by 20 per cent over ten years, replacing it with 35 billion gallons of renewable fuels. Because it is not economically viable, the ethanol industry is supported by the government with a direct subsidy of $0.59 per gallon of ethanol blended with gasoline. In 2008, the total subsidy for US ethanol production cost $9-$11 billion, or $1.10-$1.30 per gallon of ethanol produced.

Fossil fuel consumed to grow, harvest, ferment corn, distill and transport ethanol produces from 20 per cent less to 20 per cent more greenhouse gases (GHG) than burning gasoline. Official estimates of GHG production often ignore the contribution of the nitrogen fertilizers that

the Right to Food, called this “a crime against humanity” and called for a five-year moratorium on all government targets and incentives for biofuels. This message clearly didn’t get through to Harper.

Biofuel has also had a huge impact on Brazil. The country was the largest producer of ethanol as motor fuel until 2006 when it was overtaken by the US. Ethanol accounts for one third of all fuel used in Brazilian cars. Ethanol yields from sugarcane are nearly eight times those from corn, but to protect their own corn-derived ethanol and to keep its price high, the U.S. placed a $0.54-per-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol. Rapidly increasing production of sugar cane displaces people and food crops from the land and drives up the price of land. In 2012, burning sugar cane fields before harvest will be banned. Mechanization of the harvest will result in

by 2010, half of the farmland now used for corn would be required. Frankly, I prefer my Taber corn on the cob, not in my tank.

In Asia and Latin America, government-supported schemes for large-scale plantations of crops for bio-diesel result in the destruction of entire villages, forced displacements, assassinations, massive destruction of tropical forests, and contamination of water with fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. The European Union and North America’s need for African palm oil perpetuates colonial patterns, increasing the ecological debt the over-consumers of the North owe to Southern peoples.

Canada’s bilateral free trade agreement with Columbia (an agreement Canada should not have signed given the human rights crisis in Columbia), a few weeks after the passage of Bill C-33, facilitates imports of palm oil for fuel. The production of African palm in Columbia’s indigenous communities leads to dire socio-economic, human rights, cultural and environmental impacts. After decades of growing African palm for export as edible oil, most of Columbia’s Afro-Colombian communities remain mired in poverty. African palm brought with it grave environmental, social and cultural damage. Agricultural zones, dominated by monocultures intended for export, lose their biodiversity, natural ecosystems and food sovereignty.

In Ketapang, an area the size of Belgium in Indonesia’s Borneo district, around 90 fast- track permits with a total area of 1.4 million hectares were issued from 2005-2008 without proper Environmental Impact Assessments. At least 39 of these oil palm permits fully or partially overlap with some 400,000 hectares of protected forest. No less than 70 per cent of Ketapang’s land area was licensed to corporate plantation developers in the past decade. Typically, local communities discover that the land on which they depend has been allocated to oil palm companies only once the bulldozers move into their lands. Plantation development in Ketapang is a massive land grab resulting in loss of biodiversity, massive carbon emissions from illegal destruction and burning of forests and peat, and loss of sustainable livelihoods for Indigenous people. Indonesia is now the third biggest emitter of GHG after China and the United States. Palm oil industry is the most forceful driver of Indonesia’s rampant forest loss. It is expected that 98 per cent of Indonesia’s rainforest will be gone by 2022.

Next door, in Malaysia’s Borneo region, new palm oil plantations account for 87 per cent of the deforestation that took place between 1985 and 2000. The Indonesian/Malaysian Borneo region has 50-60,000 orangutans, 80 per cent of the world’s population. Deforestation and expansion of palm oil plantations are taking a heavy toll. Orangutans’ habitat is so fragmented they can’t migrate or find mates. Today’s population is perhaps only 10 per cent of the populations seen a few decades ago.

Even the production of biofuels from

inedible plants has negative repercussions on the poor. In India and Africa, biofuel efforts are focusing on jatropha, a tough tropical weed with oily seeds. Large-scale, water-intensive jatropha monocultures erode biodiversity and reduce access to water. Moreover, the land on which jatropha is grown is essential for grazing and firewood collection. Fourteen million hectares of jatropha plantations will devastate peasant farmers driven off the land to make way for them.


release nitrous oxide, a GHG 296 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Of the U.S.’ 110 ethanol production facilities in 2006, 101 burned natural gas and seven burned coal. Projected annual air emissions for a new Archer Daniels Midland plant include 540 tons of volatile organic compounds, 1.5 billion tons of sulfur oxides, 1.2 billion tons of carbon monoxide, 840 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 150 tons of hazardous air pollutants. The fermentation mix needs five gallons of new water to make one gallon of ethanol and creates five to thirteen gallons of polluted wastewater.

Ethanol production drives up the price of corn and of most grains. Mexicans once grew most of their corn but since NAFTA, corn imports have more than doubled, undercutting the market for 15 million poor Mexican campesinos whose livelihood comes from cultivating corn. The price of tortillas tripled - and in some places, quadrupled - since white corn used to make Mexico’s staple food is indexed to the international price of yellow corn used for animal feed and ethanol production. A Mexican family trying to subsist on a minimum wage devotes a third of its income just to buy tortillas. Filling an SUV with 25 gallons of 85 per cent ethanol fuel consumes about eight bushels of corn, enough calories to feed one Mexican for a year. The U.S. will soon be pumping billions of bushels of corn into gas tanks. Jean Ziegler, a UN special rapporteur on

greater fossil fuel use and dramatically cut harvesting jobs. Sugar cane is responsible for deforestation, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation and contamination of water. It is one of the thirstiest crops in the world, taking 600 to 800 tons of water to grow one ton of sugar cane. Between August 2007 and August 2008, 8,200 sq-km of Brazilian Amazon forest were razed - a 64 per cent increase in the rate of deforestation. Sugarcane production and destruction of forests, makes Brazil the world’s fourth largest GHG producer.

In 2008, only 2 per cent of the world’s arable land was used for agrofuels. With new mandatory targets for ethanol and biodiesel, land use is likely to increase six-fold by 2050. To meet Canada’s current target of 5 per cent ethanol in gasoline

Mexicans once grew most of their corn but since NAFTA, corn imports have more than doubled, undercutting the market for 15 million poor Mexican campesinos whose livelihood comes from cultivating corn. The price of tortillas tripled—and in some places, quadrupled—since white corn used to make Mexico’s staple food is indexed to the international price of yellow corn used for animal feed and ethanol production.

Globally, agrofuels worsen GHG emissions by deforestation. Food and edible oils should not be used for bio-energy. The humanitarian impact of going ahead with biofuels will, in the words of Monbiot, “be greater than that of the Iraq war. Millions will be displaced; hundreds of millions more could go hungry. This crime against humanity is a complex one, but that neither lessens nor excuses it.”

Farmers worldwide, but especially peasant farmers of the Majority World, demand food sovereignty. “We cannot let transnational corporations decide what food will get produced and how it will be distributed, where and to whom,” proclaims Vía Campesina, an international organization of small farmers and peasants. The World Forum for Food Sovereignty in Mali in 2007 declared that food sovereignty is “the right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food policies rather than markets and corporations.” Food sovereignty is the ability for people to choose what and how to produce and to trade their food. It is the right to produce one’s food on one’s own land, a right lost in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when structural adjustment programs imposed on the Majority World by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank promoted cultivation for export: coffee, tea, mangos, tomatoes, cut flowers, and permitted First World countries to dump their highly subsidized grains on countries once self-sufficient in rice, corn and wheat. The Majority World now depends on imported basic foods while exporting food and agricultural products. Even before the food crisis, food import prices for developing countries had risen by 90 per cent since 2000.

Typically, local communities discover that the land on which

they depend has been allocated to oil palm companies only once the bulldozers move into their lands.

Plantation development in Ketapang is a massive land grab resulting in

loss of biodiversity, massive carbon emissions from illegal destruction

and burning of forests and peat, and loss of sustainable livelihoods for

Indigenous people.



environment

alberta

Food sovereignty means food systems that are less dependent on fossil fuels, agrochemicals, machiners. It means systems free from genetically modified organisms, and food produced close to where it is consumed. But food sovereignty is on a collision course with international capital and free markets. Across Canada and the rest of the World, ecological areas must be kept safe to grow food in perpetuity.

At the height of the food crisis, the world’s largest grain traders, fertilizer and seed producers made a bloody killing. Cargill was making a $471,000 profit per hour; Canada’s Potash Corp’s profit in 2007 was 70 per cent higher than 2006. April 2008, Mosaic and Potash hiked the price of potash fertilizer by 40- 227 per cent for its Southeast Asian, Latin American, Indian and Chinese customers. Programs to deal with the food crisis were seized upon as opportunities to advance corporate profits. National emergency programs subsidized big seed companies, providing farmers with hybrid seeds that cannot be saved from year to year. In addition to land for biofuel production, land grabs for large-scale offshore food production, to profit from high food prices and to provide food security for cash-rich, land-poor countries, have become this century’s form of piracy. Corporations rule the land.

GRAIN, a small international NGO, pleads for a real shift in power. The only


completely forgotten: • Think of theUN’s 2000Millennium

Summit where governments promised to halve the number of hungry people by 2015 and eradicate hunger in the world by 2025.

• June 2009, where under the warmItalian sun, G8 leaders stood in unity to announce a $20 billion pledge to help farmers in developing countries. They smiled, posed for pictures, and heralded their plan as an important step in the battle against hunger but avoided questions - namely how their own farm subsidies and support for biofuels will render that $20 billion essentially useless.

• TheUN summit onworldhunger inNovember 2009, hailed to pledge new funds or set a timetable to beat the scourge affecting more than one billion people. It ended with a declaration “totally uncosted, unfunded and unaccountable.” No word of the G8’s pledge a mere five months earlier.

• Latein2009,Canadacommittedtomorethan doubling investment in sustainable agricultural development with an additional $600 million in funding over three years. Was there additional money towards agriculture in the last budget? Will the money be invested in truly “sustainable,” culturally appropriate development for the bottom?

credible way is to rebuild from the bottom up. At the bottom, comprised of 75 per cent of the World’s poor, people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture to survive. These are starving farmers who only 5 per cent of global development aid for agricultural projects. To put this in perspective: the planet’s agricultural subsidies amount to $300 billion, more than six times the world’s annual development assistance budget.

Last fall, Stephen Harper and members of parliament began receiving postcards from Canadians with the message: “Hunger and poverty can be reduced by giving priority to small-scale farmers, to local food production for local markets and to the needs of future generations.” The cards exhort Prime Minister Harper, as host of the G8 and G20 in June 2010, to use his influence to ensure that these countries increase their support for small-scale, sustainable agriculture in the Global South. It takes a lot of faith to expect truly global solutions from the G8: eight countries controlling two-thirds of the global economy, defining World Trade Organization policies and largely controlling the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, despite representing only 14 per cent of the world’s population. These eight countries frequently contradict UN decisions and completely lack accountability. More often than not, the promises they make are

On March 18, 2010, Harper addressed top officials representing the leaders of the G20: “Open global markets have been responsible for the growing world-wide prosperity of the past generation. If we lost our commitment to open markets - for however understandable the short-term political reasons - then we will lose that prosperity.” There’s little hope that the G8 and G20 will adopt food as a basic human right under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Instead, food will continue to be firmly entrenched as a commodity - food or fuel - whichever promises more corporate profit in open global markets for global prosperity.

Since 1980, the exclusive model of development has been the neo-liberal model leading to a decrease in the level of life in the lowest economic level of society. The production of agrofuels is the latest insult to those who proclaim: “Our World Is Not For Sale.”

Cecily Mills, who holds a PhD in Microbiology from U of A, had a varied career in teaching in high school, college and university, in English, French and Spanish. Among her present activist activities is lobbying to keep Alberta Nuclear Free.

There are approximately 300,000 working poor in Alberta, many of whom are working for as little as $8.80 per hour: Alberta’s minimum wage.

Minimum wage is nowhere near enough money to live on in Alberta. Half of children living in poverty are in a household where one or more adults have worked full time for a full year.

While there are some who argue the necessity of freezing the minimum wage, there are many reasons why this is not in the best interests of Albertans.

Poverty costs taxpayersAccording to a study by the Ontario Association of Food Banks, poverty costs each household between $2,299 and $2,895 every year. Given that minimum wage in Ontario is $10.20 per hour, Alberta’s $8.80 is bound to be creating an even bigger financial burden for taxpayers.

No one earning this meager amount can possibly afford the cost of living here in Alberta, which leaves taxpayers to bear the brunt of costly social programs. We need only look to the Low Income Cut

Off (LICO) to realize this stark economic reality: LICO for an individual without dependants is $22,171 per year (before tax), an individual working 35 hours per week at minimum wage in Alberta makes $16,016/year (before tax). Further, these minimum wage jobs very rarely have benefits, sick leave, and other supports. Linking the minimum wage to LICO to create a Living Wage is a logical move as it provides an established and timely assessment of the bare minimum income needed to live.

Alberta’s minimum wage comes nowhere near a safe, decent, and dignified standard of living. Twenty-five per cent of working Albertans make a wage that ensures reliance on costly social supports. Over half of these people are over the age of 25 which fundamentally disproves the assumption that the only people working for a minimum wage are youth.

Although some argue that businesses succeed when wages are depressed, Alberta taxpayers are subsidizing this strategy. Businesses should not be allowed to shift the burden of taxes to hard-working Albertans by paying poverty wages.

Higher wages are an important way to reduce poverty Manitoba recently conducted a review of their minimum wage policy and found that there was no likelihood that an increase in the minimum wage would decrease employment.

This finding is consistent with a national study done in 2007 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In fact, increasing the minimum wage is a way to reduce taxpayer costs in health and social spending, stimulate the economy, and promote vibrant communities.

In addition to raising the minimum wage, providing supplemental wages for low-income earners, people with children, new immigrants, and people with disabilities, would create incentives to work and remove the limitations of accessing costly social supports while employed.

Allowing poverty to continue, from a true fiscally conservative view, makes no sense; it costs the taxpayers significantly more to provide services to those living in poverty than to make the courageous decision to end poverty today. The first step in ending poverty is to address the

appallingly low wages in Alberta that perpetuate the costly cycle of poverty. A provincial minimum wage that is a Living Wage will save the taxpayers money by eliminating band aid services and finally addressing root causes of poverty in our province.

Innovative poverty reduction plans are a growing trend in entrepreneurial provinces Alberta is falling well behind other provinces in the minimum wage standard and in a targeted approach to poverty reduction. Alberta has one of the lowest minimum wages in the country, even though we have one of the highest costs of living and boast the province as a land of opportunity.

Nearly all other provinces have adopted poverty reduction plans that include living wages as a strategy. There is more and more recognition that poverty hinders growth, the economy, and innovation. Alberta should not be left behind but instead take initiative to eliminate poverty and create an economically sustainable province.

Dan Meades is the director of Vibrant Communities Calgary. Learn more about the organization by visiting www.vibrantcalgary.com.

Alberta’s minimum wage falls shortSuppressing wages only perpetuates poverty and cost taxpayers

DAN MEADES


canada

Canada, the United States, Russia and the Nordic nations all have territorial claims in the Arctic, a fact that’s been recently exacerbated by global warming’s impact on the region.

Leading Arctic expert and international lawyer Michael Byers tackles this complicated subject in his latest book, Who owns the arctic? Understanding sovereignty disputes in the North (Douglas and McIntyre, 2009). For anyone else, it might be an ambitious project, but Byers is well versed in northern issues. Since 2004, he’s held the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. He’s also led two research projects for Canadian government-funded research consortium Arctic Net: the first on the Northwest Passage, the second on competing claims to oil and gas reserves below the Arctic Ocean. He is also an accomplished author, having penned the Canadian bestseller Intent For A Nation: What is Canada For? (2007) and War Law: Understanding Law and Armed Conflict (2005).

Byers does an excellent job in presenting the roots of Canada’s sovereignty claims in the Arctic. In 1880, the British government transferred title over the North American Arctic Archipelago (excluding Greenland) to Canada, after almost three centuries of exploration of the region. Britain’s presence in the Arctic began with English seaman Martin Frobisher in 1576, who landed in the North while attempting to find a navigable route around North America to Asia. Britain’s interest in the region waned after Royal Navy Officer John Franklin was lost while attempting to navigate and chart a section of the Northwest Passage in 1845. Dozens of rescue expeditions were sent afterwards in search of Franklin and his men. Like previous explorers, Franklin’s team faced the challenge of sea-ice, which has almost always filled the straits, even in the summer. With their ships trapped in the ice, many explorers - including Franklin and his men - died.

It might seem that this history guarantees Canada’s sovereignty, but the issue is more complicated. Canada claims that the Northwest Passage is internal waters, while many Europeans and Americans contend that it’s an international strait. Byers argues that Ottawa’s exercise of its

Understanding the hot topics in Canada’s coldest regionAuthor unravels Arctic disputes and calls for greater international cooperation

sovereignty over the Northwest Passage lacks teeth. The test of its sovereignty took place in 1985, when the U.S. Coastguard icebreaker Polar Sea sailed through without Ottawa’s consent. This sovereignty challenge resulted in the signing of the Arctic Cooperation Agreement between Canada and the United States three years later. This agreement-to-disagree removed U.S. icebreaker voyages from the legal dispute between the two countries. Byers writes, “At that point, with the ever-present ice preventing other kinds of vessels from using the passage, Canada adopted a strategy of letting sleeping dogs lie.” He adds that the country hoped that without further challenges to sovereignty, Canada’s claim to the area would be accepted over time. However, climate change has added a new dimension to the issue. For the last four years, the passage has been ice-free in the summer. Byers thinks it’s likely that Canada’s sovereignty will be challenged again.

As a result of the rapid and dramatic loss of Arctic sea-ice, Canada must be prepared to face a new reality: It’s more than likely that the Northwest Passage would offer an attractive and alternative route between East Asia and the Atlantic Seaboard for foreign ships. This route is 7,000 km shorter than the one through the Panama Canal, saving time, fuel and transit fees. What Canada needs as a result of a changing Arctic, is to control shipping through the passage. Ottawa needs to establish standards (we won’t accept rusting junk vessels, for instance) and regulate traffic (who is sailing where and what are they carrying). Time is of the essence in the sense that the federal government must seriously consider passing the necessary laws to protect our northern environment and citizens without any delays.

Since Byers has worked with Americans on international commissions, he argues that we should be able to gain their support, if only because Canadian control of the passage would serve their security interests: Do they really want terrorists sailing freely in the Canadian Arctic? What we have to do to gain our southern neighbor’s trust and confidence is to demonstrate that we can enforce whatever laws we make. To that end, Byers urges that Ottawa immediately begin building “three or four mid-sized, multi-purpose Coast Guard icebreakers...with a light machine

gun mounted on each forward deck.”In Byers’ view, Canada has a strong

claim to the area by virtue of the historical occupation of the Inuit, who’ve lived on the Northwest Passage for thousands of years. “When I speak about the Northwest Passage at universities and foreign ministries around the world, the thousands of years of Inuit use and occupancy of the sea-ice is the only dimension of our legal position that resonates with non-Canadians,” he says.

Byers argues that Ottawa can strengthen Canada’s sovereignty claim to the Arctic by gaining the support of the Inuit. The government can do this by working with them, investing in social programs, building infrastructure and creating economic opportunities.

He also points out that Canada needs to resolve the matter of Hans Island, a 1.3 sq-km barren islet between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, an autonomous country within Denmark. Since about 1973, both Canada and Denmark have claimed the small island as their own. Occasionally, people from both nations have visited the rock to leave a flag and claim the turf in their country’s name. However, in 2005, the Canadian defense minister made a secret visit to the island and stirred up controversy again. Even after officials from Canada and Denmark met in New York a few months later to agree on a process to resolve the dispute, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew insisted the territory belonged to Canada.

Byers figures that if this conflict can be resolved, Canada and Denmark might also resolve the disputed 220 sq-km boundary between the two countries in the Lincoln Sea.

Then, there’s the matter of the Beaufort Sea, a long-running legal spat between Canada and the U.S. The territory in question is a part of the ocean about 14 times the size of Lake Superior. The disputed area is vital to both countries, because they believe that as polar sea-ice continues to melt because of climate change, there is potential in the area for oil and gas exploration.

This controversy again brings up the rights of Canada’s First Nations people. This zone falls within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, established by the 1984 Inuvialuit Final Agreement on the basis of the Canadian position concerning the international boundary. The pie-shaped

disputed sector is specifically located in the Yukon North Slope, an area where a special conservation regime protects wildlife and aboriginal harvesting interests.

These specific sovereignty disputes are only part of the picture. In Byers’ view, it’s just as important to consider that the climate change affecting the Arctic is primarily the result of greenhouse gas emissions produced in the South. It is very important to note that many Arctic species have evolved specifically for life under or on the now-disappearing sea-ice. The fate of these species is very critical. A very important question must be asked: Do the countries that have sovereignty claims in the Arctic have the political will to address the environmental crisis? Another question arises: Can these countries work closely together in focusing on the environmental crisis without any conflict? The indigenous peoples of the Arctic must be involved in the political process, since they are the ones most affected by the impact of climate change, Byers points out. Their livelihood is dependent on hunting and fishing and could be further devastated if various Arctic species are wiped out. It would be a tragedy for these countries to overlook the indigenous peoples and their dependence on the environment.

For those who want to develop an understanding of Canada’s position in the Arctic, Who owns the Arctic? serves as a timely and focused guide. Perhaps this book will inspire greater interest in the region by Canada’s politicians. As Edmonton journalist Ed Struzik argues in a recent Canadian Geographic article on the topic, politicians are relatively indifferent to northern issues. “Maybe it’s because there are few voters up there. Politicians have a difficult time appreciating that half of Canada’s real estate is Arctic and that two-thirds of its coastline is in the Arctic.”

For more on arctic issues, visit Michael Byers’ blog: http://byers.typepad.com.

Jamal Ali is a writer residing in Calgary.

JAMAL ALI


canada

On April 3, many readers of the St. Albert Gazette were shocked to read a letter-to-the-editor asserting that a proposed Habitat for Humanity project would reduce the quality of life of current residents. Within a few days, the story had attracted national media attention and prompted the letter writers to publicly apologize.

The letter, written by a local husband and wife, argues that St. Albert’s appeal lies in its affluence. The community’s “good schools and programs...low crime, a higher standard of living, great recreational possibilities and numerous other aspects” are all the result of the abundance of families with above-average incomes, in the authors’ estimation. Building residences for low-income people in St. Albert will result in the perpetuation of social ills, they claim.

“Current residences will have to deal with the likeliness of children influenced by crime in our schools and adults in our community,” the letter states. “Our cost of living will increase as we will have to pay

for low-income subsidies due to higher school fees or other taxes. We won’t feel comfortable taking our kids to activities like movie night in the park or other St. Albert events for fear that there will be unruly families.”

On the St. Albert Gazette’s website, outraged readers from St. Albert and beyond attacked the prejudice and false logic inherent in the letter. One reader remarks, “Its scurrilous use of the phrase “low-income households,” denoting criminality, drug use, and other unsavory activities, is offensive in the extreme.” Another argues, “There have always existed hateful and discriminating individuals and your decision to post such commentary is no different than an individual who chooses to spout racist slurs.”

O pt i m i s t s m i g ht c ons i d e r t h e community’s outcry to the letter a positive sign. It may appear that Albertans are maybe more socially conscious than some left-wingers (like this author) assume.

There is, of course, no litmus test

Outrage is easy—real citizenship takes work

CAITLIN CRAWSHAW

for tolerance. However, it’s one thing to publicly attack blatantly prejudiced comments, and another to be truly tolerant of diversity.

While we all love a little passion now and then, it takes minimal effort to be outwardly indignant. In a minute or two, you can post a few comments online attacking blatant prejudice. It’s just as easy to write the tuition cheque for your kid’s private Christian school a few hours later.

While we’d like to think people live what they preach, it’s easy to do lip service to fashionable ideals while living your life in quiet accordance to another set of values. Perhaps you invite your gay neighbours over for supper, but secretly wonder whether it should be legal for them to raise children. Perhaps you rant about the oilsands, but vote Conservative—or do not vote at all.

It is, of course, impossible to live without any contradictions. Sometimes, money’s tight and the Walmart version will have to do. Sometimes you can’t justify the financial cost of the organic, socially sustainable alternative. Sometimes ethics collide: tofu’s environmental impact might clash against its benefits as an animal-free meat source. At the best of times, living a good life requires clumsily weighing consequences with benefits. As much as we like to believe in objective morality, if it does exist, it’s bogged down in emotion, politics and the pressures of day-to-day living.

Small wonder that some people are progressive on the surface, but self-

absorbed privately. Even reasonably kind, productive people can be outright lazy. It’s easy to move to a community with a fairly homogeneous population; conflicts between kids and parents will probably be minimal. Of course, it’s doing a disservice to the children, who won’t be prepared for life outside of the bubble, but it could mean fewer tough conversations and social questioning while they grow.

Recognizing that some seemingly progressive people are actually very flaky can make you cynical—even self-righteous. But this is not grounds to persecute friends and family for not taking their construction refuse to the ecostation or coming to the rally last Saturday.

Knowing that people are, at best, stumbling through a quagmire of ethical considerations and, at worst, outright lazy and self-absorbed, should be motivation to step up our own social contributions. Volunteer work, conversations with family and friends, education of children, small acts of kindness. It all counts.

While you can’t expect to change people, you can do good in your own corner of the world and, hopefully, inspire others to do good when no one’s watching.

Caitlin Crawshaw is the coordinating editor of the Post and an Edmonton-based freelance journalist.

Featuring: Margaret Atwood, Marci McDonald, Murray Dobbin and many many others

November 19 - 21, 2010University of Alberta,Edmonton

Rewriting a Country: Toward a just and peaceful Canada

14th Annual Fall Conference


about the Parkland

In addition to reports and books, Parkland’s staff, speakers and research associates write numerous op-eds, articles and presentations. Here is the list of what has been posted on our website www.ualberta.ca/parkland since the last Post. These items can be downloaded for free. Many have been emailed to our list-serve. If you do not have access to these electronic resources, please contact the Edmonton office for copies of articles you are interested in.

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No Free LunchFinancing the Priorities of Calgariansby David Thompson, June 15, 2010

Based on stated infrastructure and social priorities of Calgarians, the report considers the various options available to the City of Calgary for paying for those priorities in a just and sustainable way. The report also highlights the benefits of infrastructure and social spending, the costs of privatization and public private partnerships, and the problems with raising property taxes as a way of financing expenditures.

Rewriting Alberta’s Health Laws: A Trojan Horse for Expanding For-Profit health Care by Colleen Fuller, June 07, 2010

Alberta’s provincial government has embarked on a new initiative to reform existing health legislation and create a new Alberta Health Act (AHA). There is a danger that the government is using the process to increase the role of private for-profit health care in Alberta.

The New Alberta Health Act: Risks and OpportunitiesReport 1, Risks of the Alberta Health Actby Colleen Fuller and Diana Gibson, June 02, 2010

An assessment of the risks associated with the Alberta government’s current initiative to reform existing health legislation and create a new Alberta Health Act.

Democracy

From Rhetoric to Reality - Protecting Whistleblowers in Alberta By:Keith Archer, 2005*+ $5.00

Trouble in Paradise? - Citizen’s Views on Democracy in Alberta By:Trevor Harrison, Johnston and Harvey Krahn, 2003*+ $10.00

Shredding the Public Interest - Ralph Klein and 25 Years of One-Party Government By: Kevin Taft, 1997 $5.00

Economy

Breaking the Cycle: Stimulus with Responsibility, Stewardship, and SustainabilityBy: Greg Flanagan and Diana Gibson, 2009*+ $10.00

Saving for the Future: Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Discipline in Alberta By: Thompson, David, 2008*+ $10.00

The Spoils of the Boom - Incomes, profits and poverty in Alberta By: Diana Gibson, 2007*+ $5.00

Taming the Tempest - An Alternate Development Strategy for Alberta By: Diana Gibson, 2007*+ $10.00

A Time for Vision - A Sustainable & Equitable Economy By: Parkland’s Standing Budget Committee, 2005*+ $5.00

A Time to Reap - Re-investing in Alberta’s Public Services By: Parkland’s Standing Budget Committee, 2004*+ $5.00

Alberta’s Good Enough Approach - Alberta’s “good enough” approach to fiscal management By: Parkland’s Standing Budget Committee, 2003*+ $5.00

Making it Work: Kyoto, Trade and Politics By: Ian Urquart, 2002*+ $8.00

Advantaged No More - How Low Taxes Flattened Alberta’s Future By: Parkland’s Standing Budget Committee, 2002*+ $4.00

Advantage for Whom? - Declining family incomes in a growing Alberta economy By: Patricia Lawrence, 2001*+ $5.00

Energy Policy

Over a Barrel: Exiting from NAFTA’s Proportionality Clause By: Gordon Laxer and John Dillon, 2008*+ $10.00

Freezing in the Dark: Why Canada Needs Strategic Petroleum Reserves By: Gordon Laxer, 2008*+ $10.00

Selling Albertans Short - Alberta’s Royalty Review Panel Fails the Public Interest By: Diana Gibson, 2007*+ $5.00

Greening the Fleet - National Trends and Opportunities for the City of Edmonton By: Allan Bolstad, 2007*+ $5.00

Fuelling Fortress America By: Hugh McCullum, 2006+ $10.00

Selling the Family Silver - Oil and Gas Royalties, Corporate Profits, and the Disregarded Public By: John W. Warnock, 2006*+ $10.00

Back to Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water - Energy, Trade and the Demise of Petrochemicals in Alberta By: Terisa Turner and Diana Gibson, 2005*+ $10.00

Toward an Energy Security Strategy for Canada - A Discussion Paper By: Dave Thompson, Gordon Laxer and Diana Gibson, 2005+ $4.00

BC Advantage - Lessons from AB on the De-regulation of the Electricity Industry By: Rick Wallace, 2001*+ $5.00

Energy: Free Trade & the Price We Paid By: Larry Pratt, 2001*+ $5.00

Change and Opportunity - EPCOR in a De-regulated Electricity Industry By: Kevin Taft and David Cooper, 2000*+ $5.00

Giving Away the Alberta Advantage - Are Albertans receiving maximum revenue from our oil and gas? By: Josee Johnston, 1999+ $10.00

Health Care Policy

The Bottom Line - The Truth Behind Private Health Insurance in Canada By: Diana Gibson and Colleen Fuller, 2006 $10.55

Public Remedies, Not Private Payments - Quality Health Care in Alberta By: Tammy Horne and Susan Abels, 2004*+ $5.00

Reclaiming Medicare - A response to the Mazankowski misdiagnosis By: Gillian Steward, Tammy Horne and Trevor Harrison, 2002*+ $10.00

Public Bodies, Private Parts - Surgical Contracts and Conflicts of Interest at the Calgary Regional Health By: Gillian Steward, 2001*+ $5.00

Clear Answers - The Economics and Politics of For-Profit Medicine By: Kevin Taft, 2000 $10.00

Other Issues

Youth Crime and Justice in Alberta - Rhetoric and Reality By: Timothy Hartnagel, 2002*+ $5.00

Writing Off The Rural West - Globalization, Governments and the Transformation of Rural Communities By: Roger Epp and Dave Whitson, 2001 $30.00

Privatization

EPCOR: A Study of Ownership, Accountability and the Public Interest By: Diana Gibson, 2005*+ $5.00

Sobering Result - The AB Liquor Retailing Industry Ten Years after Privatization By: Flanagan, Greg, 2003*+ $5.00

Un-accountable - The Case of Highway Maintenance Privatization in AB. By: Lisa Prescott, 2003*+ $5.00

* this report can be downloaded free as a pdf on our website at www.ualberta.ca/parkland+ this report is free upon request for sponsoring members (who donate more than $120/year)


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Parkland Institute’s 14th Annual Fall Conference

Featuring: Margaret Atwood, Marci McDonald, Murray Dobbin and many many others

November 19 - 21, 2010University of Alberta,Edmonton

Rewriting a Country: Toward a just and peaceful Canada

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