Students in Quebec don’t like where educational reform is taking them. Citizens of Greece don’t want their quality of life sacrificed to the banks. Those in the Occupy movement denounce a system that rewards the 1% at the expense of the 99%. They’re all acutely aware that the standard economic indicators aren’t enough, and that the traditional approach of governments just isn’t serving their needs.

The economic crisis that followed the meltdown caused by the financial services industry brought many of these longstanding issues to the forefront, accelerating a 30-year decline in our standard of living and the attack on the middle class.
Canadians were hit less hard than many others, but we’ve not been exempt from the austerity measures. Nor has the federal government been a friend to the average citizen. That might help explain why we dropped to sixth place this week from second spot last year on the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s quality-of-life index.

Life satisfaction measures how people evaluate their life as a whole rather than their current feelings. It captures a reflective assessment of which life circumstances and conditions are important for subjective wellbeing. When asked to rate their general satisfaction with life on a scale from 0 to 10, Canadians gave it a 7.4 grade, higher than the OECD average of 6.7. That put us behind Australia, Norway, the United States, Sweden and Denmark.

Part of the drop can be explained by changes to the way the index is compiled, but there’s reason to be wary. As the Canadian Index of Wellbeing found last year, our wellbeing is lagging behind economic growth. While GDP rose 31 per cent between 1994 and 2008, the index of wellbeing rose by just 11 per cent, with the lion’s share of the benefits going to the wealthiest 20 per cent.

Beyond simple economic indicators, the index (CIW) takes into account eight factors: living standards, healthy populations, community vitality, democratic engagement, education, environment, time use and leisure and culture. The latter three all are getting worse according to last year’s report, with a new study due in October.

The short form explanation for the situation is that we’re working longer hours but not enjoying the fruits of our labours. For Linda McKessock, CIW project manager based at the University of Waterloo, the measurements are part of a growing international trend to put hard, scientific numbers to quality of life issues that have long gone unquantified. Such reports provide a more balanced approach to judging our standard of living, going beyond simple economic numbers.
“Studies like this are trying to get a handle on what their citizens value,” she explains, pointing to the OECD report and national efforts like the CIW being carried out in other countries.

With all the talk of austerity, much of the debate has focused on traditional economic data – GDP, unemployment and similar indictors – but the range of protests and movements emerging show citizens have broader priorities.
“There are other things that we need to keep our eye on.”

Reports such as the CIW and the OECD Better Life Index allow us to see things through a much broader prism rather than the traditional economic measures. That in turn fuels local, grassroots movements that push for more focus on wellbeing. Ideally, the federal government eventually takes note, says McKessock.

While rankings such as those in the OECD index aren’t necessarily helpful, it does help to look at what other countries are doing so that we can adopt those practices here – essentially we’re always learning from others.
In Canada, where the political direction is counter to our quality of life, it’s especially important to take note of the successes of more progressive, citizen-friendly policies. That’s certainly the case in the Nordic countries.
They are great examples of civil society setting the agenda rather than just focusing on the message of the elites.

Canada may not be moving in the right direction on all fronts, but reports based on objective data help us understand the choices we’re making , she notes.

Since we live in a system of our own making, every policy and direction is a choice. Ideally, those choices are made to benefit the average citizen, though that’s often not the case.
So, what would get us moving in the right direction? Focusing on people, says McKessock.

“This is all about doing the best for our people,” she argues of measuring wellbeing and putting supportive policies in place. That in turn will boost the traditional economic numbers.  “If we invest in our people, it will be good for our economy.”

Chances are if you have a cell phone – and 77 per cent of Ontarians do – that you feel like you’re being treated poorly, with high rates and unfair contracts. The reason you feel that way is because that’s just what’s happening: studies consistently show we pay among the highest fees – for regular monthly charges, roaming and data, among others – in comparisons with Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

The reason? Lack of competition, with the bulk of the market cornered by the Big Three: Bell, Rogers and Telus.

That, says the advocacy group OpenMedia.ca, has led to many unfair practices that hit Canadians in the wallet.

“We don’t have enough choice in our wireless market,” says the organization’s Lindsey Pinto from its Vancouver headquarters, noting the group is pushing for regulations that encourage more competition.
“If Canadians have somewhere to turn outside of the Big Three, then the Big Three will make changes that benefit consumers.”

One way to do that, she notes, is to ensure small companies get access to the wireless spectrum in the auction expected next year.

“What we really need is a bold move to allow small companies to get a foothold in the market,” said Pinto. “We have to put a check on big telecom’s power.”

OpenMedia is lobbying for great competition, along with regulations that put the interests of consumers ahead of profits for the oligarchy that controls almost 95 per cent of the market. Caps on wireless rates and measures, such as warning messages, that protect consumers from massively inflated roaming charges, for instance, would be a good first start.

Pinto points to Ontario’s plans, announced last month, to protect cell phone customers as a good starting point for a national policy.

The Ontario bill, which includes measures originally introduced by MPP David Orazietti, would make contract terms clearer and cap cancellation fees, among other things.

“Millions of Ontarians subscribe to wireless phone services and, given the unwillingness of the federal government to protect consumers from costly one-side contracts, we are moving forward with important legislation that reaches the same objectives as those proposed in two bills I previously introduced,” says Orazietti, MPP for Sault Ste. Marie. “This is a pocketbook issue that consumers want addressed, and our government bill contains measures that will reduce costs, cap cancellation fees, prevent automatic renewal and make cell phone contracts considerably more fair and transparent.”

The Wireless Services Agreement Act, 2012 contains measures to bring greater fairness to agreements for wireless services. Specifically, the bill will allow consumers to cancel agreements at any time, with limits on cancellation charges; require the express consent of the consumer to renew, extend or amend a contract; and require greater disclosure and clarity in contracts for wireless services. Also included are provisions to force companies to use all-included prices in their advertisements and a prohibition against charging customers for services while their phones are in for warranty repairs, for instance, and they clearly aren’t using the service.

The legislation will affect new contracts for wireless phone and data services and would take effect six months after being passed. The legislation will also cover existing agreements that are amended, renewed or extended after that date.
“For too long large telecom companies have been gouging consumers on their cell phone bills,” Orazietti says.

These kind of controls, coupled with real competition, would make cell phone usage cheaper and more consumer-friendly, Pinto argues. Full disclosure and transparency are a good first step, as all too often the companies rely on consumer ignorance to run up their bills and keep them tied to unfair contract provisions – “keeping us out of the loop is their way of doing that.”

While some new entrants have emerged – the last spectrum auction in 2008 saw the debut of Wind Mobile, Public Mobile, Mobilicity and Quebec-based Videotron – the reality is those companies account for less than six per cent of the market. The emergence of a bona fide fourth national player would be helpful.

In Ontario, the Big Three account for 97 per cent of the market, with six others sharing the remaining three per cent. We’ve got a long way to go before real competition has an impact on the pricing and business practices of those who dominate the cell phone market.

For now, we cheer on the likes of Celia Shankar and her lawsuit that takes aim at just one of the many unfair ways the Big Three do business.

Breaking with tradition, the Harper government has funneled its budget into an omnibus bill, joining it to a range of measures, including gutting the environmental assessment process, in an all-or-nothing format. As it’s done many time before, the Conservatives are limiting debate and attempting to do an end-run around Parliament and its committees.

More than 70 different acts are to be amended, largely without public input or political debate. It’s Stephen Harper’s way or the highway.

Omnibus bills are not unheard of, having been employed by past governments, but typically link legislation with a common thread – see, for instance, this government’s ill-considered crime bills. In this case, however, there is no common ground, only the government’s intent to push through sweeping changes while stifling debate. That’s hardly democratic.

Much of the focus has been on the environmental provisions, which take up some 150 of the bill’s 420 pages. Critics say the changes will destroy five decades of environmental oversight. The impetus, it appears, is streamlining the environmental assessment process for tar sands projects, especially pipelines that would carry raw  bitumen for processing in U.S. or overseas markets. It’s a hewers-of-wood-and-drawers-of-water, resources-first strategy, which has thus far proven detrimental to Canada’s long-term economic health.

Harper argues the changes are needed to keep “foreign-controlled” environmental groups, natives and others from holding up megaprojects that are, ironically, typically carried out by foreign-owned companies.
Environmentalists, not surprisingly, have been critical of the move. This week, they launched a counterattack in the form of a national campaign.

Known as Black Out Speak Out, the campaign invites organizations, businesses and citizens from across Canada to darken their websites on June 4, and speak out against changes introduced in the federal government’s budget act (C-38).
“These changes – hidden in a budget bill in the hopes that Canadians wouldn’t notice – are threatening the core values all Canadians hold dear: nature and democracy,” says Sidney Ribaux, executive director of Equiterre. “We are compelled to speak out and we’re inviting Canadians from all walks of life to join us.”

Opposition to the gutting of oversight provisions has brought together a variety of organizations, including the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecojustice, Equiterre, Environmental Defence, Greenpeace, Nature Canada, Pembina Institute, Sierra Club Canada, West Coast Environmental Law and WWF Canada.

The groups argue the government is putting the future of our land, water and climate at risk with its budget implementation bill. More than a third of the budget is dedicated to weakening Canada’s most important environmental laws, including measures to make it more difficult for environmental charities to participate in the public policy process. The groups are asking Canadians to join them in speaking out and letting the government know that silence is not an option for those who care about what could be lost.

“The attacks on environmental charities and gutting of environmental review processes aim to silence Canadians of all sectors and many backgrounds who participate in decision-making about large-scale industrial developments,” says Peter Robinson, CEO of the David Suzuki Foundation. “This is not only undemocratic – it will undermine the government’s ability to make sound policy decisions and to protect the environment.”

“Powerful oil interests aren’t just changing the rules, they’re disqualifying any player not on their team,” argues Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence. “We’re going black for a day, but we’ll be speaking out for as long as it takes.”

The budget bill, C-38, replaces the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, empowers the federal government to crack down on charities, including environmental groups, that advocate for better laws and policies, overrides National Energy Board decisions, rushes projects through a weakened environmental review process to speed up approvals, and shuts citizen groups out of environmental reviews for pipelines.

While the circumventing of environmental checks and balances warrants action, the omnibus bill is more troubling for its attempt to bypass our Parliamentary system. This is no anomaly, as the Harper government has shown itself willing to use chicanery, bullying and, when all else fails, prorogation to avoid debate in the House of Commons. The government’s disregard for our system of democracy led to the leveling of contempt of Parliament charges against the Conservatives, a first in the long history of the Westminster system.

The circumstances that caused the charges, including the withholding of budgetary information such as the cost of the F-35 fighter acquisition and the full price of the government’s law-and-order program, were also identified as problems by the Parliamentary Budget Officer and later upheld by the Auditor General.

The omnibus bill shows contempt for Parliament yet again, and extends that sentiment to all Canadians.

If those people won’t give up even the tiniest conveniences of their cars, what hope do we have for a less car-centric society? Not much, at least not anytime soon. And what hope is there for Waterloo Region’s grandiose plans for a train-centered transit scheme? Pretty much zero.

That has not, of course, dampened the enthusiasm of a handful of proponents leading the mad dash to spend hundreds of millions of dollars – well in excess of a billion, certainly. They were at it this week, committing to spend $17 million simply on one group of consultants, forging ahead despite the fact beleaguered taxpayers have been offered no reassurances that the non-inclusive $818 million budget will not balloon – almost a dead certainty – nor any guarantees those responsible will be held legally and financially accountable if (well, when) the budget is exceeded and ridership numbers fail to materialize.

What we’ve got is lots of nice theories, but no evidence and no plan B for dealing with failure.

And failure is very, very likely. It’s common with government projects, and especially with politically-motivated ones. That’s even more the case when the project in question goes against the tide and counter to how the public actually behaves – wishful thinking never trumps reality.

Take, for instance, the ongoing traffic issues outside of John Mahood Public School in Elmira, discussed again this week at Woolwich council. The township has introduced bylaws, offered up parking areas and called in the police to battle the unsafe confusion that erupts daily as parents drive their children to the school, jockeying to get as close as possible to the entrance before dropping off or picking up their little darlings, a scene reminiscent of the health club drivers.
The school board and region’s public health department have long encouraged walking and cycling to school as an alternative, but still the parents come behind the wheel. Every reaction and solution offered up by the township countered by the urge for speed and convenience, no matter how often parents are reminded of the safety risk. Or the health benefits of letting their kids get to school under their own steam.

The township passed another bylaw this week – “no stopping” provisions on a stretch of Snyder Avenue – but, as Coun. Julie-Anne Herteis noted, that will just move the congestion elsewhere. Human nature at work, despite the best wishes of administrators and politicians.

That’s not to say advocates of walking to school should give up, unlike the train’s proponents. Groups such as the Active and Safe Routes to School Workgroup, which held events in the region earlier this week, should continue to press for their cause, as should advocates of a more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly city, despite the uphill battle. Even supporters of the train should join their cause, as success there will do far more to get people out of their cars and, perhaps one day, help support greater use of public transit.

Unlike Waterloo Region’s ill-fated light rail transit proposal, a push for proper bike lanes and, in the bigger picture, for more people-friendly communities has the possibility of benefits far beyond safer cycling. Just visit most European cities to see what that payoff is.

Along with cars tucked into anything resembling a parking spot, bicycles and scooters can be found in uncountable numbers. On a single stroll, you’ll likely see more bicycles, parked or in transit, than you’ll see all year around here.
There are many reasons for this, of course. Denser cities make getting around by foot and by bike much easier, as does the more temperate climate. The price of cars and fuel make alternatives more desirable. Crowding means smaller is better when it comes to a vehicle for getting around. Theirs is a culture accustomed to walking, biking and public transit. And the older cities were not built around automobiles, as opposed to what we find in North America. Policies actively discourage automobile use, particularly in city centers.

In Germany and Holland, for instance, you’ll find bicycle lanes, complete with traffic signals, line many of the streets adjacent to sidewalks.

Because of sprawl and car-centric design, our communities are largely unfriendly to pedestrian and bicycle traffic. While I’m as car dependent as the next person, there is something attractive about the lay of the land of most European cities (of course, they’re also generally far more aesthetically appealing than anything you’ll find here, but that’s another issue).

We walk and bike less often here, largely because it’s neither safe nor convenient to do so. And that’s not just perception: our car-centric planning in North America makes it much safer to travel by car than by foot or bicycle.
In the U.S., statistics show fatalities are 36 times higher for pedestrians and 11 times higher for cyclists than car occupants per kilometre travelled. Car-meets-pedestrian accidents have that kind of outcome.

While Canadians are more active than Americans – we cycle about three times more often than they do south of the border, for instance – the numbers are nothing like what you’d see in Europe. Where walking and cycling account for about six per cent of trips in the U.S. and about twice that number in Canada, the figures compare poorly to the likes of Germany and Austria (35 per cent) and to front-running Netherlands, at almost 50 per cent.

We’ll walk more and cycle more when there are places to walk and cycle to. This means undoing decades of poor planning, mixing residential with commercial, installing separate bike lanes akin to sidewalks to make people safer and downplaying the need to get in the car to go anywhere farther than your backyard.

Provide the incentive, make it safe and convenient, and people just might change some of their habits. That includes parents who insist on driving their kids to school to the detriment of public safety. Achieve a major swing in that direction, then think about expanding transit.

Peak and mid-peak rates are expected to rise by more than eight per cent May 1, courtesy of the Ontario Energy Board. Off-peak rates will rise by 4.8 per cent.

“Ontario’s power system is fuelled by consumers to the tune of about $16-billion a year,” says energy expert Tom Adams. “That number is headed for $23-billion or $24-billion soon, by 2016.

“By the end of 2013, Ontario is on track to have the highest electricity prices of any jurisdiction in North America.”

That’s hardly music to the ears of the McGuinty government, already being lambasted for its energy policy.

A budget that calls for the merger of the Ontario Power Authority and the Independent Electricity Sector Operator, touted by the government as a cost-saving measure, is less than a drop in the bucket. The savings amount to 16/100ths of 1% of our total electricity bill, notes the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

The government has also appointed Murray Elston, former president of the Canadian Nuclear Association (nuclear being the source of many of Ontario’s electricity woes), to search for ways to reduce the costs of electricity distribution companies such as Waterloo North Hydro, which are responsible for 11 per cent of our total electricity bill.

The producers responsible for more than 80 per cent of the ever-rising electricity costs get a free ride.

Consumers and taxpayers, as always, will pay the freight.

Methods for getting out from some of that burden, at least on a bi-monthly billing basis, will be front and center at the Green Living and Tech Fair on today (Saturday) at the St. Jacobs arena. Part of Woolwich’s Healthy Communities Month, the event focuses on energy-saving tips, from little changes right through to the alternative technologies at play in the province’s much-maligned Green Energy Act.

Among those manning the booths in St. Jacobs will be Glen Woolner, general manager of Community Renewable Energy Waterloo (CREW), an advocate for alternatives and a supporter of Ontario’s support for sustainable energy.

“We’re on the right track. We’ve covered so much ground in the past two and half years, it’s phenomenal,” he says of the measures taken thus far, acknowledging there will be growing pains on what he sees as the inevitable path for our energy future.

A long-term investment, green energy projects lead to energy security and a thriving economy, he maintains. In the short-term, there are hurdles.

“We have to get over that hump somehow. We have to allow ourselves a transition time.”

The big picture aside, CREW also focuses on what individual homeowners can do to reduce their energy use, and the bills that follow.

Woolner points to his group’s Power $aving Network (P$N) electricity self-audit toolkit, which can be borrowed free of charge from libraries in Waterloo Region. Equipped with meters, instructions and charts, the kits provide homeowners the chance to get a comprehensive picture of their electrical use and how to reduce it.

The average user finds savings of 25 per cent, he notes, just through eliminating power-wasters he or she didn’t even know about, for instance.

“It helps you find things that are wasting your money, and everybody’s money because overall demand drives … more spending on things like nuclear plants.

“It does make a difference.  If we all did that, it would make a huge impact,” he adds of the changes identified by the audit and the subsequent lowering of demand.

An all-volunteer, non-profit group, CREW is essentially the creation of energy-saving enthusiasts, many of them engineers who were early adaptors of technologies that became advocates for conservation and renewable energy sources.

Woolner, for instance, has spent years making his Kitchener home a model of efficiency that employs geothermal, solar hot water and photovoltaic systems.

He and other CREW members would like nothing more than to see others hop on the energy-saving bandwagon.

“If you have an interest in doing that, we’re happy to help you.”

The more people that get involved, the sooner Ontario – and, indeed, everywhere else – can put costly non-renewable power options behind them. Instead, we’ll have free energy. Oh, the tools needed to generate that electricity cost something, but the price is falling all the time. That, of course, is the rationale behind the government’s green energy strategy: spend upfront to foster an industry and watch the production costs fall even as more jobs are created.

We’re not there yet, but it’s only been a couple of years. Enthusiasts have been applying techniques and technologies for decades, but it’s only recently that we’ve seen a concerted, government-level approach. The benefits won’t be obvious for a while.

Perhaps in another decade we’ll look back and wonder what all the fuss was about – and why we didn’t go green sooner. Dalton McGuinty might prefer to see dividends sooner – it’s all about re-election, after all – but the widespread application of what people like Woolner have known for years is still in its infancy.

Following a presentation by Steve Sachs of the Waterloo Region Labour Council who was in Woolwich Monday and Wellesley Tuesday, councillors were asked to join some 40 other Canadian municipalities that have called on their provincial governments to keep municipalities from CETA’s grasp. What’s at stake is municipal autonomy in purchasing decisions, as well as yet another threat to local drinking water systems.
Wellesley councillors immediately backed the request, while their Woolwich counterparts were looking for more information before deciding.

As Sachs notes in his presentation, as the deal now stands, municipalities would lose some of their ability to control who bids on contracts for goods and services – CETA would open the process to international companies, disallowing any buy-local provisions.

Far more worrying is the access-by-stealth aspects of the deal: European designs on Canada’s resources, including water.

The Council of Canadians, working with leaked documents from the trade negotiations, reports that Canada and the provinces have failed to protect drinking water and wastewater services from trade rules that would encourage and lock in privatization.

The documents, made public in January, show Canada’s initial services and investment offers to the EU in ongoing CETA negotiations. They list policy areas or sectors that are to be spared from liberalization, which can be understood as deregulation or re-regulation on market-based terms favourable to multinational investment. Water services are not on the list, which means they are automatically included in the deal.

“The two biggest private water utilities in the world are European and eager to use CETA to gain access to Canada’s still public water systems,” says Maude Barlow, national chairperson with the Council of Canadians. “Harper’s message to these companies is that Canada is ‘open for business’ when it comes to water privatization. The very notion of water as a public good and a human right is at stake.

“CETA will open up the rules, standards and public spending priorities of provinces and municipalities to direct competition and challenge from European corporations,” she adds. “Europe is seeking a comprehensive and aggressive global
approach to acquiring the raw materials needed by its corporations. At its heart, this deal is a bid for unprecedented and uncontrolled European access to Canadian resources.”

Other groups see equally damning consequences of this trade deal, compounding the ill-effects of those already in place.

The Centre for Civic Governance, for instance, reports CETA posts a threat to local economies. Economist Jim Stanford found that CETA would create a huge trade deficit for Canada, resulting in the loss of up to 150,000 Canadian jobs.
CETA would give big European drug companies extended patent rights, resulting in massive cost in-creases for Canadian drug plans, including $1.3-billion per year on taxpayer-funded public drug plans and $1.5-billion on private drug plans.
Hydro Quebec’s Research Institute warns that CETA’s procurement chapter could limit the ability of government agencies to use public spending to achieve goals such as economic development and regional employment. If CETA had been in place in 2003, Quebec would likely not have been able to insist on 60 per cent provincial content in wind projects. Local content requirements under Ontario’s Clean Energy Act could face similar problems under CETA.

Even the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the national organization that represents municipalities such as Woolwich, has reservations about this deal, though it does generally support free trade, which is reason enough for the township not to rely on the FCM to make wise policy decisions in this regard.

The FCM estimates that Canadian municipal governments collectively purchase more than $98 billion per year in goods and services. By opening up this sector to foreign corporations, the CETA would make it harder to keep these dollars circulating in Canada’s local, regional and national economies.

The FCM supports maintaining local autonomy, but does back the free trade agreement, which purports to boost trade to Europe by 20 per cent and create 80,000 jobs. The reality, of course, will be otherwise, as other trade deals have served only to weaken the middle class.

Trade agreements have failed Canadians time and time again, yet we’re moving into another one – quietly, as is usually the case, so as not to draw attention to the process. NAFTA in particular has been hugely detrimental to the middle class in Canada and the U.S., while even further eroding Mexico’s economy.

It can be argued that liberalized monetary policies and trade deals that favour corporate interests over the well-being of citizens – policies that have eroded our standard of living for three decades – culminated in the recent financial meltdown. The cure, we’re told, is yet more deregulation and globalization, essentially offering a drowning man more water instead of a lifejacket.

Woolwich councillors say they want more information before taking a stand on the CETA talks. Research will show them there’s only one conclusion to be made.

With a Taste of Woolwich, the organizers hit on a range of issues at play for a healthier and more sustainable future, as food comes with economic, health and environmental impacts. Generally, the more local the food, the better the outcomes on all fronts.

The goal of the event is to showcase what’s available locally, to demonstrate how incorporating local food into our diets needn’t be a chore and to have some fun doing it.

“People will be able to get a sense of what’s available in the township and in the region,” says Anna Contini, manager of Foodlink Waterloo Region and a Taste of Woolwich planning committee member.

From a marketplace through to cooking demonstrations, the emphasis will be on what local food can do for you. While it’s early yet for local produce, except for greenhouse operations such as Floralane Produce, there are meats, grains and dairy products available year-round.

“It’s about getting people primed and tuned in to local foods,” she notes, adding “cooking with good local food and with whole foods doesn’t have to be time-consuming.”

In that vein, and part of the fun component, chef Ryan Terry of Flow Catering in Elmira will hosting a workshop in which he’ll prepare “an egger-potatowich” using a recipe devised by the Elmira Girl Guides. That group was the winner of Local Youth Recipe Challenge, which called on youth groups in the township to make creative use of local ingredients.

Another of the workshops will focus on “What Should We Pay for the Benefits of Local Food?”

Ellen Desjardin and Steve Martin will talk about the costs associated with producing food in Canada and how this impacts the prices we pay.

Local food does tend to cost a little more, but consumers benefit through fresher food and there’s a multiplier effect on the economy, as every local agricultural job support another four jobs, says Contini.

“The more educated people are about the benefits of local food, they’re more likely to pay a bit more for it.”

On the whole, we’re increasingly conscious about the quality of food we buy for ourselves and our families. We’re also more aware of what it costs the environment to have food transported thousands of kilometres to appear at local grocery stores. Then there’s the direct cost: soaring fuel prices have been reflected in what we pay at the checkout counter, not to mention the biofuels debate and the impact on grain prices.

As well, we know farmers are under incredible financial pressures, and that even as retail prices climb, that doesn’t always translate into more cash for producers.  In this climate, projects such as the Buy Local! Buy Fresh! program, Local Organic Food Team Co-operative (LOFT) boxes, and community shared agriculture (CSA) programs are offering consumers food that is local, organically grown and offered up through a co-operative that sees farmers get paid directly for their goods.

Public response to such campaigns has been strong.

The local angle jibes with Waterloo Region’s Buy Local! Buy Fresh! campaign, Foodlink and community shared agricultural programs (in which people purchase a “share” in the crops at the beginning of the season and then receive regular deliveries of farm products).

Through its Public Health department, the region has been pushing the health, environmental and economic benefits of local food.

A report compiled by the department shows much of our food travels very long distances before it reaches our tables. In fact, imports of 58 commonly eaten foods travel an average of 4,497 kilometres to Waterloo Region. These imports account for 51,709 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, contributing to climate change and declining air quality.

“Since all of the studied food items could be grown or raised in Waterloo Region, a significant opportunity exists to reduce our contribution to global climate change and air pollution by replacing imports of the studied food items with food items sourced from Waterloo Region or southwestern Ontario. Replacing all the studied food items with products of south-western Ontario would produce an annual reduction in GHG emissions of 49,485 tonnes, equivalent to taking 16,191 cars off our roads. Strategies to strengthen the local food system and make purchasing local food more convenient for consumers have the potential to reduce the environmental impact of food miles in Waterloo Region,” the department reports in Food Miles: Environmental Implications.

Facts like that, along with a desire to know more about the food we eat, have helped drive the local-food trend. Events such as Taste of Woolwich put the issue into context: the focus is on fun, with the educational factor a nice fringe benefit, says Contini.

Oil futures represent a contract between a buyer and a seller in which the buyer agrees to purchase a set amount of oil at a fixed price. An airline, for instance, might want the stability of knowing what its costs are going to be months down the road, agreeing to pay today for oil that has yet to be produced. Similar deals have existed for years with other commodities such as wheat. In the case of food, a farmer could plant a crop knowing what he would be paid at harvest. The buyer, say a large cereal producer, would know the cost, without being subject to the ups and downs of the market.

Commodities trading was a fairly small undertaking, involving the industry players themselves. But that was before the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup got in on the action. Drawn by the betting aspect, they pumped billions of dollars into commodities trading. Deals were no longer about real goods – oil, wheat, barley, whatever – but about bits of paper and simply bits of information being bought and sold, traded and hedged. The speculation outstripped the real investments in commodities many, many times over.

What can be done? Since much of the speculation originates in the U.S., that’s the place to start. Americans, however, have spent decades weakening controls over commodities speculation, though there is some pushback at this point given the high cost of gasoline and the country’s poor economy.

Controls were loosened considerably in 2000, leading to a massive build-up of money in the commodities market leading up to the economic collapse of 2008. A report by the U.S. Senate points to correlations between the influx of money in oil futures markets and the rising cost of oil. The price of oil doubled, tripled and eventually quadrupled in step with the increase from $13 billion to $260 billion in the market from 2003 to 2008.

The crisis created by the financial services industry didn’t stem the tide, however. Quite the opposite: with equities in turmoil, yet more money flocked to future. Despite the same kind of actions that created past bubbles, including the housing bubble still plaguing the U.S. economy, little has been done.

That said, last month some 70 members of the U.S. Congress signed a joint letter that said federal regulators should curb speculation in crude oil markets which has artificially pushed up gasoline prices.
The lawmakers – 23 senators and 47 members of the House – said in a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that the regulators must stop Wall Street futures traders from dominating the oil market. The commission has flouted a provision in the 2010 Wall Street reform law that required regulators to put tough new trading limits in place by Jan. 17, 2011. “We are disappointed that, more than a year later, the commission has not fulfilled this important regulatory duty,” the letter reads.

“It is one of your primary duties – indeed, perhaps your most important – to ensure that the prices Americans pay for gasoline and heating oil are fair, and that the markets … operate free from fraud, abuse, and manipulation.”

They stressed that gasoline pump prices are up despite high supplies and low demand. According to the Energy Information Administration, the supply of oil and gasoline is greater today than it was three years ago, when the national average price for a U.S. gallon (3.78 litres) of gasoline was just $1.90. Today, the national average is more than $3.70 a gallon at a time when the demand for oil in the U.S. is at its lowest level since April of 1997.

The Dodd-Frank Act to reform Wall Street of 2010 should be limiting the worse of speculative excesses. Instead the rules have yet to be fully implemented in the two years since the law was passed. And Wall Street has no intention of stopping, as witnessed by legal action in federal courts as those making money at everyone else’s expense look to delay or block the new rules.

As many critics have noted, it’s as if the industry and the government learned nothing from the folly of deregulation, nor from the futility of chasing the latest bubble.

You can thank greed and the money that greases the political system for that pain you’re feeling at the pumps.

Whatever Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government comes up with, however, will only be tinkering at the margins. He, like all other politicians, has no stomach for the conversation that’s really needed, namely the huge amounts of money spent on what could be deemed marginal cases: extending end-of-life dates of the seriously ill by weeks or months, often with the elderly and those with terminal diseases. Also on that list, with some crossover, are expensive drug therapies that provide little extra benefit and the payment structure for doctors that tends to reward interventions, no matter how useful, over preventative medicine.

Some of those points easily lead to the death panel hysteria seen with Obamacare debates in the U.S.

Even without that kind of hyperbole, some will argue that the system shouldn’t be rationing services like that, perhaps deciding who lives and who dies. Fact is, however, that we already do that. There are waiting lists, it can take ages to see specialists and patients are prioritized based on their conditions.

Then there’s the issue of prevention versus emergency care, somewhat touched on in the budget. Advocates of reform have argued for years that we’re better off spending money upfront to prevent illness – promoting healthier lifestyles, smoking-cessation, obesity-avoidance – than to essentially bail people out of the poor health choices they’ve made all along by pumping much more cash into acute care at the end of their lives.

Unable to make basic cuts, or even compensate for the billions wasted on the likes of eHealth and ORNGE, the government is certainly not going to consider, let alone make the tough decisions. Much easier to keep on spending, putting off the issue until the crunch comes … ideally long after someone else is in office. But just like pension reform, changes must be made now to avoid crises later.

And the fewer crises the better, as they are invariably used by anti-government organizations, typically on the right-wing, as an excuse for changes that benefit the few at the expense of the rest of us. Every boondoggle and every mismanaged situation serves to undermine the legitimacy of government, in turn opening it up to the threat of would-be reformers. Ontarians suffering from tax fatigue and becoming fed up with the exorbitant cost of public sector wages, benefits and pensions, could easily reach the breaking point, becoming willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces.

With that in mind, public sector unions already moaning and complaining about the budget would be wise to shut their mouths, duck their heads and prepare to give back after years of overly-generous contracts from the McGuinty government. Many of the jobs could see wages cut in half and still have a long line of people waiting to take them: remember, inclusion on the sunshine list puts someone in the top five per cent of wage earners, and represents more than twice the average income.

Given that wages make up more than half of government costs, serious rollbacks would be an enticing way to deal with deficits. The public appears poised to go along with that line of thinking.

And the sentiment isn’t contained just to the province. The federal government plans employment cuts to its civil service, with no public outcry. Municipalities, too, are ripe for an overhaul. As a recent piece in the Waterloo Region Record notes, spending driven by wage increases has fueled huge property tax increases locally even as real-world incomes have declined in the last few years.

Local politicians interviewed trot out the old chestnut about everybody wants services to continue not face cuts. Costs increases because they don’t contain them. They also have no appetite for making tough decisions: it’s much easier to say yes. In reality, there are supporters for every program where money is spent, no matter how few people are served – see the extension of bus service to Woolwich, for instance.

Politicians must learn to say no, learn to sell the benefits of not spreading resources so thin such that many things are done but done poorly. The current cast of characters at all levels can learn to do that, or be prepared to make room for those who can.

Leaving aside the issue of why exactly people feel compelled to post the up-to-the-second minutia of their lives, there’s a danger of what you post being used against you. The riotous behaviour on St. Patrick’s Day in London, for example, saw some ill-advised social-media postings – Facebook , Twitter and the like – by those involved. The police, no doubt, will find this beneficial. A similar thing happened during last year’s Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver, proving instrumental in the pursuit of vandals.

That’s an obvious peril, brought about by, well, stupidity. A less obvious risk was in the spotlight in another news report, this one having to do with employers demanding access to the Facebook pages of prospective employees. People going in for interviews are now sometimes asked for login names and passwords right on the spot so that the interviewers can poke around their online lives.

“It’s akin to requiring someone’s house keys,” says Orin Kerr in the Associate Press wire story. A George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor, he calls the practice “an egregious privacy violation.”

Lori Andrews, a law professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law specializing in Internet privacy, raises concerns about the pressure placed on applicants, even if they voluntarily provide access to social sites: “Volunteering is coercion if you need a job.”

The practice is definitely invasive, and there should be laws to protect people against it. Some states are in fact looking into the legality of such requests, much like there are some personal questions – age, marital status, racial background, etc. – that can’t be asked today.

It’s common already for prospective employers to search online for information about applicants. That’s reason enough to be very careful with what you make public about yourself … or allow others to post about you. Demanding access to private information is simply beyond the pale.

In the bigger picture, the Internet’s increasing presence in our lives means we have to set up rules that prevents abuse of technology that can track our every movement online. The marketing purposes behind much of what’s done today is a poor reason to allow it. The prospect of far more sinister motives means action is needed in short order.

To that end, the Obama administration in the U.S. has been working on the online-tracking issue. Last month, it unveiled the “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” as part of its blueprint to improve consumers’ privacy protections. The plan will drive efforts to give users more control over how their personal information is used on the Internet and to help businesses maintain consumer trust in the rapidly changing digital environment. The Commerce Department is charged with bringing together companies, privacy advocates and other stakeholders to develop and implement enforceable privacy policies.

Along with the privacy bill, Internet companies and online advertising networks are being asked to commit to “do not track” technology in most major web browsers to make it easier for users to control online tracking. Companies that represent the delivery of nearly 90 per cent of online behavioral advertisements, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL have agreed to comply when consumers choose to control online tracking. Notable by its absence is Facebook, which has stepped up its lobbying efforts against controls even as critics decry the company’s increasingly porous privacy guidelines. Essentially, the popular online site can pretty much do whatever it wants with your information.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg argues today’s young users don’t have the privacy concerns of past generations – putting your information out there and being tracked is the norm.

“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time,” he said at tech conference in 2010.

He’s fine with tracking users, and he assumes everyone else is, too.

Aside from the issue of being treated solely as data points for advertising purposes, you should be concerned about what Internet sites do with your information. Beyond potential embarrassment and employment troubles – the result of posting your bar-hopping escapades for all to see – access to your personal details is a fraudster’s dream: two words, identity theft.
If you don’t look after your privacy, you can be sure someone else is glad you didn’t.