My first YouTube appearance!

A wonderful video about Moving Planet Montreal was created by Alex Pritz of Developing Pictures. The video features me in my first-ever YouTube appearance! I invite you all to take a look, as it is less than two minutes long. It should be visible just below this paragraph, but if not then you can find it on YouTube: Moving Planet Montreal YouTube Video

I am rather pleased that I sound like I know what I am talking about in this video. The interview that was excerpted for the video was probably less than two minutes long and included a number of interruptions due to helicopters flying over Montreal.

I am also pleased that Moving Planet helped me to start branching out into other forms of media. Thanks to this YouTube video and my appearance on CKUT Radio, I am slowly getting used to seeing my own face and hearing my own voice. It is also interesting that I began posting audio posts or podcasts on Vision of Earth when I was helping to plan Moving Planet Montreal.

Related posts:

1. Moving Planet Montreal
2. Ben’s Interview on Radio CKUT 90.3 FM
3. John Klein: Social involvement and sustainability in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Canada

Moving Planet was a worldwide event that took place on September 24th, 2011. It was conceived by the folks over at 350.org as an effort to help the world transition away from fossil fuels.

The Moving Planet event in Montreal (which took place in Parc Jeanne-Mance) was planned by local volunteers. All we got from 350.org was the name and the logos. We did get some very significant help from the David Suzuki Foundation (Montreal chapter) with regards to planning and execution of the event as well as media releases.

Kilometer Drive

The event included what we called a ‘kilometer drive’ in which people could contribute their green-transport kilometers to a collective total. A green kilometer would be one achieved on foot, bike, skateboard, roller blades, unicycle, etc. The goal of the kilometer drive was to demonstrate the power of active transportation.

Our group achieved a total of 496 kilometers by the end of the day, using some unconventional methods such as:

• Juggling
• Juggling a soccer ball with just feet
• Passing a Frisbee between three people
• Singing
• Hand-in-hand
• In another person’s shoes
• Dancing
• Carrying a toddler in ‘airplane’ position the whole way.

Moving Planet Montreal organizers and friends. Photo by Alecska @ followthestory.net

I think it is sufficient to say that we had a great time with the kilometer drive. Next year we think it would be an excellent idea to get active transport groups involved in the planning and execution of the event. Montreal definitely has communities of cyclists, skateboarders, joggers, rollerbladers, etc. We think it is reasonable that some of these groups might be interested in showing off the capabilities (and fun) of their chosen mode of transport.

I like to think of the kilometer drive as a celebration of the tremendous human capability to achieve active transportation. By doing so, we are improving the long-term health of both our environment and ourselves. A transition towards less energy-intensive transportation is a must in the decades to come. It seems extremely unlikely that we as a society will be able to continue to spend such incredible amounts of energy on our personal transportation systems. This seems likely to be true even if we do not factor in the broad and substantial costs of continued fossil fuel usage by our societies.

Grand Picnic

More worthwhile things

After the event, the planning volunteers got together and brainstormed ideas for a media release about the event. I think it is fair to say that Nadine Légaré of the David Suzuki Foundation did the vast majority of the work on this front, but we did help a bit! A quote from me appears in our completed media release, which you can find here (in French): Le rassemblement mondial Planète en mouvement, un succès au Québec

I am also rather proud of a sheet I circulated containing what I think are the ten most important things you can do to live a ‘Green Life’ and help our society towards genuine sustainability. I made a distinct effort to keep the list concise and clear, so hopefully you will find it to be a good read. You can find it at: Envisioning a Green Life: 10 ways you can make a difference

Lastly, a couple weeks before the event, CKUT Radio interviewed me about Moving Planet Montreal and Vision of Earth.

Happy Movement!

Related posts:

1. Moving Planet Montreal video by Developing Pictures
2. Ben’s Interview on Radio CKUT 90.3 FM
3. Envisioning a Green Life: 10 ways you can make a difference

I brainstormed this list for the Moving Planet Montreal event on Sept 24th, 2011. I think that if a person can do all of these things, they are well on their way to living a very ‘green’ life!

Envisioning a Green Life

1. Walk, jog, bike, skateboard, or rollerblade to commute or for fun. Be healthier and live longer!
2. Take metro, bus, or rail. Not possible? Carpool. Not possible? Drive a moped or another micro-vehicle.
3. Own a vehicle with a block heater? Get a block heater timer! (Can pay for itself in a couple months of use.)
4. Winter: Wear heavier clothes indoors. Insulate. Pile snow against house during extreme cold. Build outdoor freezer. Leave hot water from shower or bath in tub till it cools, then drain.
5. Summer: Open windows and roller shades for cool nighttime, close during midday and afternoon. Hang dry clothes. Wear light clothes.
6. Eat more vegetables and less meat. Energy, water and land inputs for 1 kg of meat ~= 10 kg of vegetables. Eat socially. Have potlucks. Buy organic.
7. Buy local foods, furniture, clothes, etc. Strengthen the local economy. Reject consumerism by focusing on what you truly value. Spend ethically.
8. Renovate your home to be more energy efficient using healthy materials. Building? Build green, focusing on solar heat and light. Google: “Annualized geo-solar”
9. Question all media you consume. Be conscious of propaganda, logical fallacies, and advertising. Educate yourself about what you care about!
10. Get involved in your society. Democracy does not end at the ballot box. Learn and grow – bringing your society with you into a better future.

If this list has your curiosity piqued, you should definitely check out our much more thorough list here: Personal and social change for a green energy future

Now my version in broken French:

Imaginer une vie vert

1. Marchez, courez, vélo, skate, ou roller de commuer ou pour le plaisir. Meilleure santé et vivent plus longtemps!
2. Prendre le métro, le bus ou le train. Pas possible? Covoiturage. Pas possible? Conduire uncyclomoteur ou un autre micro-véhicule.
3. Propriétaire d’un véhicule avec un chauffe-bloc? Obtenez une minuterie chauffe-moteur!(Possibilité de payer pour lui-même dans quelques mois d’utilisation.)
4. Hiver: Porter des vêtements plus lourds à l’intérieur. Isoler. Accumulation de neige contre la maison pendant une période de temps très froid. Construire congélateur extérieur. Laisser l’eau chaudedans la baignoire jusqu’à ce qu’elle refroidisse, puis les égoutter.
5. Eté: Ouvrez les fenêtres et stores pour la nuit fraîche, fermer pendant midi et après-midi. Suspendre les vêtements secs. Portez des vêtements légers.
6. Mangez plus de légumes et moins de viande. L’énergie, l’eau et des terres utilisées pour 1 kg de viande ~ = 10 kg de légumes. Mangez socialement. Avez potlucks. Acheter bio.
7. Achetez des aliments, des meubles et des vêtements locaux. Renforcer l’économie locale. Rejeterle consumérisme en se concentrant sur ce que vous avez vraiment de valeur. Acheter éthique.
8. Rénover sa maison pour être plus économes en énergie en utilisant des matériaux sains. Construire vert, en se concentrant sur la chaleur solaire et la lumière. Google: “annualisé de géo-solaire”
9. Question tous les médias que vous consommez. Soyez conscient de la propagande,erreurs logiques, et la publicité. Renseignez-vous sur ce que vous vous souciez!
10. Impliquez-vous dans votre société. La démocratie ne s’arrête pas à l’urne. Apprendre et grandir - ce qui porte votre société avec vous dans un avenir meilleur.

Si cette liste vous intéresse, vous pouvez également être intéressé par: Personal and social change for a green energy future

Related posts:

1. Curtis Dorosh: Green living, building, and volunteering
2. Moving Planet Montreal
3. John Klein: Social involvement and sustainability in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Canada

The high point of my week was being invited by Ryan Young for an interview on Ecolibrium on CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal on Tuesday, Sept 6th.

The 25-minute interview was slated to cover both Vision of Earth and an upcoming event that I am helping to plan in Montreal: The Moving Planet Picnic and Kilometer Drive.

You can download or listen to a copy of the radio show here, the interview starts at about 4 minutes 20 seconds. It then lasts for about 26 minutes.

Interview topics

• Cradle to Cradle ideas and Regenerative Design, including William McDonough’s TED Talk, and the excellent book Cradle to Cradle.
• The Moving Planet Montreal event. – discussion of picnic and active transportation celebration.
• The book that Vision of Earth is writing about Saskatchewan Energy Future. (Basically we are trying to write up years worth of research on Saskatchewan and thought into a cohesive narrative for the interested layperson.)
• Discussing some sustainability issues in the Saskatchewan context, including the rapid urbanization, the rise of corporate farms, and the possibility of seeing tar sands development in Saskatchewan as well as Alberta.
• Concerns about mainstream media coverage of sustainability issues in North America. Brief discussion about false and misleading news in Canadian media vs that in the US.
• Sustainability movements in Montreal and at McGill University in particular.
• *My favourite: The peer review culture we have created (and continue to refine) at Vision of Earth.

“If a person reads Vision of Earth, what I can guarantee is we are doing our very best to knit these strands of experience and knowledge together to form what is hopefully a very cohesive and complete picture of the world.” – Ben Harack

Related posts:

1. Curtis Dorosh: Green living, building, and volunteering
2. Moving Planet Montreal video by Developing Pictures
3. John Klein: Social involvement and sustainability in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Canada

Answer: Not that much actually.

In his book, The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs made some careful estimates as to what it would cost to end extreme poverty in the world in about twenty years.

If you are unfamiliar with what the term ‘extreme poverty’ means, check out our piece on defining poverty.

Ending world poverty

To end extreme poverty worldwide in 20 years, Sachs calculated that the total cost per year would be about $175 billion. This represents less than one percent of the combined income of the richest countries in the world.

In fact, this cost is 0.7% of the total income of the 30 countries who comprised the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2005 when Sachs wrote The End of Poverty. For his calculations, he used the 2002 values for their collective wealth. This is relevant because while there have been some rough economic times since 2002, OECD total income is still somewhat higher now than it was then.

ODA as percentage of gross national income (Wikimedia Commons)

This level of aid has in fact already been promised by the developed nations through the Monterrey Consensus. This consensus guarantees 0.7% of gross national product (GNP) as official development assistance (ODA) ¹.

However, fiscal commitments have lagged far behind the agreement. For example, the US only gives 0.18% of GNP as ODA, a much lower value that the Scandinavian countries.

In order for poverty to be ended in the next few decades, the US needs to ramp up to about $75 billion per year in ODA. This would be their contribution if they deliver 0.7% as promised.

The US could end poverty

The United States is spectacularly wealthy. With a GNP in 2009 of about $14 trillion, the US is a huge chunk of the total GNP of the OECD, which is about $40 trillion ². The sheer size of the US economy means that even though they only give 0.18% of their GNP as ODA, they still give the most total money of any nation on the planet.

US Military spending

ODA by country

The military budget in the USA is about $680 billion per year ³. A large amount of other funding is directly connected to military spending in the states, bringing the total closer to $1 trillion per year ⁴.Even if we assume the lesser of these numbers, annual defense spending in the US is about four times as much money as is needed to begin rapidly ending extreme poverty in the entire world. If some of the US military’s monstrous budget could be channelled towards humanitarian goals, then extreme poverty in our world could quickly become a thing of the past.

Total US Gov’t spending

In 2011, the US Gov’t will spend about $3.4 trillion. Ending world poverty would require about 5.1% of the current US federal budget.

We certainly acknowledge that the US government is facing problems with their budget recently. To put it bluntly however, their problems are primarily political and ideological rather than monetary. The US economy is gigantic and currently has very low tax levels for many of the richest segments, including corporations and extremely wealthy people. If corporations and the extremely wealthy are made to cough up their fair share, the US will be well on its way to fixing their budget issues.

Bush Tax Cuts

Over the decade from 2010 to 2020, the continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts for only the super-wealthy (who make more then $250,000 per year) will cost about $700 billion. Considering all income levels, these cuts will cost about $3.7 trillion. ^{5 6}

Even just repealing the Bush-era tax cut on the extremely wealthy people would pay for about 40% of what is needed to end extreme poverty in the world.

Repealing the entirety of the Bush tax cuts would raise about $370 billion per year, or about twice as much money as would be needed to end world poverty.

It is our hope that the people of the United States take back control of their country from the corporations and the ultra-rich. We then believe that the natural humanitarian inclinations of the American citizenry will then be more free to help the world achieve prosperity.

The United States could become a humanitarian superpower by helping to build the world of tomorrow and sowing deep international goodwill in the process.

Related posts:

1. What keeps communities locked in the extreme poverty trap?
2. Capitalism’s Labour Transitions – An Argument for Social Welfare
3. Jeffrey Sachs on the high price of ignoring poverty

The audio versions are read by the authors of the post.

Our first post offered in this format is Wage reduction through inflation. We do plan on adding audio versions of more of our content rather soon.

Our current plans are to provide audio versions for some new material as well as some of the most popular posts on Vision of Earth. Do our readers have any posts that you would particularly like to see in audio format?

Related posts:

1. Vision of Earth in social media
2. Vision of Earth has a newsletter!
3. Software tools that we use to collaborate across the world

Around the year 2000, I was sitting in a high school history / social studies class taught by my father.

We were in the middle of a couple-week stint in which he was focusing on the events in Afghanistan during the 1980’s. (Some of you may be wondering what happened in Afghanistan during the 1980′s. We will get to that.)

A student raised their hand and asked how these events could possibly matter to us. This was the proverbial “Why should we care?” statement.

A couple months later we were all shocked by the events of September 11th, 2001.

To this day, this series of events continues to intrigue me.

I admit to being rather proud that my dad is knowledgeable enough about the world to have accurately narrowed in upon some of the salient issues of our age in his teaching.

Also, this highlighted the general sentiment that whatever doesn’t seem to directly affect you does not matter. Prior to his classes, and even during them, students were seriously questioning the relevance of some of what we were learning to their own lives. The attacks of 9/11 brought some of these issues into the public eye. I expected that the knowledge that my dad had been teaching would become widely known in the US and Canada.

And yet that is not what happened. As far as I know, very few people, even among the very educated, are aware of what happened in Afghanistan in the 1980’s.

Hopefully this post will help a bit with that.

Afghanistan in the 1980′s

This story is rather well-told in the excellent movie Charlie Wilson’s War (starring Tom Hanks – my respect for his work continues to grow).

At the height of the cold war, the Soviet union invaded Afghanistan. The invasion lasted from 1979 until 1989.

Fearing a Soviet victory, the United States began covert funding of freedom fighters in Afghanistan early in the conflict. Early on in the program, the budget was $5 million dollars.

The US struck a deal with Saudi Arabia such that any funds sent by the US to support the mujahideen would be matched by the Saudis. The freedom fighters were eventually supplied with surface-to-air rockets that could destroy Soviet helicopters. The tide of the battle began to turn.

Funding was increased, and then increased again. It eventually reached $500 million from the US alone. This was matched by the Saudis. This was the biggest covert war in history. A billion dollars was pumped into weaponry that would be used against the invading Soviet army.
The Soviets lost appalling numbers of helicopters and tanks. They were forced to retreat from Afghanistan.

This is recognized as one of the more major conflicts of the cold war, and is thought by many to have been instrumental in the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union.

Aftermath

Once the war was over, the US immediately stopped sending money to the Afghans. With no military incentive, the funds went from $500 million to zero. The Afghans were left with an utterly destroyed country and a spectacular amount of weaponry and guerrilla warfare knowledge. Their country descended into chaos for a number of years, eventually coming to be ruled by the Taliban.

Fast forward to the 2001-present Afghanistan war.

Is it surprising that the war in Afghanistan still smolders now in its tenth year? Is it surprising that the Afghans have managed to destroy large amounts of military hardware. Is it in any way surprising that they are incredibly effective guerrilla fighters?

Is it surprising that they do not thank the US for the help against the Soviet invasion? At this point it is worth noting for clarity that the US’s help was covert, that is, it was hidden. It was hidden by funneling the armaments and money through third parties. It is reasonably likely that many Afghans did not know how much the US helped them in the 80′s. Even if they do know, that is not the whole story. After the Soviets left, the US simply stopped funding anything. They did not even send token support for building roads, schools and infrastructure.

In my opinion, this demonstrated tremendous disregard by the US. The Afghans were, after all, the ones who fought and beat the Soviets in an incredibly bloody and destructive war. The Afghans had served essentially as front-line soldiers in a conflict between the US and the Soviet Union. One would think that they deserved some humanitarian support to rebuild their shattered society after they had served their purpose.

This story must be known more widely. By paying no attention to the humanitarian crisis of the Afghans, the US is complicit in the eventual rise to power of the Taliban. By buying so many weapons for the Afghans, the US is partially responsible for the immense amount of violence that has taken place since the Soviet army left Afghanistan.

Humanitarian action must become one of the primary elements of foreign policy.

Neglect of the world’s humanitarian problems, when we could easily solve them, will cause us continual global grief for decades to come.

Related posts:

1. How much would it cost to end extreme poverty in the world?
2. Voted for Koch on the Corporate Hall of Shame
3. Capitalism’s Labour Transitions – An Argument for Social Welfare

This piece is intended to answer some of people’s questions about how inflation affects what they are being paid.

First of all, what is inflation? Inflation means that money is worth less and less over time.

Example: You live in a country that has inflation (as most countries do, for good reasons which we will not discuss here). If you have $100 dollars right now, you have an incentive to spend it now. If you wait for a year (or a few years), that same $100 will not be able to buy quite as much as it could when you first got it.

The value of a dollar goes down slowly over time.

Inflation and wages

What does this mean for wages? Well, if you are not getting raises that are equal (or higher than) inflation, then you are actually earning LESS each consecutive year.

Examples: Both of these theoretical people live in the same country. Let us assume that this country has a 2% inflation rate per year. (This is a good assumption since most countries aim for an inflation rate around this value.)

Alfred manages to negotiate a raise of 1.5% for this year. Since he doesn’t know what inflation is, he doesn’t realize that at the end of the year, he is actually being paid less value than he was at the beginning of the year. This is because his wage raise of 1.5% is lower than the inflation value of 2%.

Tina understands inflation, and has used this understanding in her negotiations with her employer. She has thus negotiated a wage increase of 3% for this year. She knows that her real wage increase is 1% because 3% – 2% = 1%.

Every wage earner should know this. It is crucial for understanding how much you are really being paid.

Real Wage

We used the concept ‘real wage’ above. A real wage takes into account the effects of inflation.

Real wages in the United States. Image from the Wikimedia Commons.

Example: Joe the boot maker earned $30,000 last year. He managed to get a raise of 2%, so this year he is making $30,000 times 1.02 = $30,600. It looks like he is earning more than last year, but since inflation is 2%, he is actually earning the same amount of value. His real wage has not changed because his raise and inflation are the same amount. He has the same amount of buying power that he had last year.

Wage Stagnation

This is what can happen when inflation rises about as fast as wages do. While people are earning more dollars, they are not earning more purchasing power.

This is really important to understand in the United States. The US has experienced over 40 years of real wage stagnation.

This means that in the last couple decades, the real wage paid for an average hour of work in the US has not increased.

These facts help us understand why it is important for us to begin addressing the growing inequality in American society.

For more information on economics concepts, take a look at our post about Key terms and definitions in economics.

Related posts:

1. How much would it cost to end extreme poverty in the world?
2. Capitalism’s Labour Transitions – An Argument for Social Welfare
3. Voted for Koch on the Corporate Hall of Shame

Upon hearing of this poll, I went in and voted for Koch Industries. My recent studies of the US political and media scene have shown that they are behind much of what I dislike in American politics and media.

Coincidentally, I also learned today that Charles Koch has issued a response to the excellent piece by Warren Buffett about how the USA should stop coddling the super rich.

Koch’s response, which has been written about by Lee Fang over at Nation of Change, was:

Much of what the government spends money on does more harm than good; this is particularly true over the past several years with the massive uncontrolled increase in government spending. I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.

So…basically Mr. Koch is saying that it is fine for him to only pay a fraction of the tax percentage that is paid by the middle class. Why? Because he thinks his business and investments do a better job than the government. This is certainly one of the most arrogant statements I have ever heard come out of a businessman – and that is saying something!

Koch’s non-profit investments tend to be partisan think-tanks and other actions that further his political agenda. All this while the middle class tends to foot most of the bill for keeping the country running while he and his super-wealthy friends make billions of dollars off the other 99.8% of the population.

One would think that a wealthy business owner would realize the tremendous importance of stable and reliable government as a basis for economic prosperity. However, it is clear that Koch would vastly prefer furthering his own interests and growing his own personal wealth than considering shouldering some of the fiscal burden that is increasingly falling on the middle class – the people who are finding it harder and harder to pay.

This is just one incident involving one extremely wealthy person. The entire corporate world tends to systematically abuse people – and get away with it. Unfortunately, there are political and economic ideologies in this world that tolerate and even applaud such behaviour from corporations. I think that each of us has the responsibility of honestly looking at what these actions are doing to our societies.

We need to make some changes to humanize the role that corporations play in our lives. We need to ratchet back the madness and focus on learning about (and doing) those actions that truly serve our collective long-term prosperity.

If you are new to the subject of the problems caused by corporations in our world, then I highly suggest the excellent documentary The Corporation, which is available on YouTube in 23 parts.

Related posts:

1. How much would it cost to end extreme poverty in the world?
2. Applying free market ideas to politics: How fares the US?
3. Capitalism’s Labour Transitions – An Argument for Social Welfare

The last three federal elections in Canada have been quite clearly polarized as the Conservatives vs. everyone else. Progressive voters tend to have three or four parties to choose from while conservative voters only have one.

The Conservative Party currently holds a majority position in the House of Commons and thus has all of the decision-making power until the next election in 2015. It may thus sound strange to say that it is the conservative voters whose choices are being taken away from them the most in this political market.

A fiscal conservative would probably like to have a fiscal conservative party to vote for. They might even be bothered by the social conservative baggage (male chauvinistic, anti-gay, militaristic, prisons instead of the more effective paths of prevention, rehabilitation, and social programs, etc) demonstrated by the actions of the Conservative Party.

This voter has an ideology but no clear party to support. They either have to stomach the social conservatism of the Conservative Party or they have to abide by the less drastic fiscal conservatism of the Liberals or the other left-leaning parties.

It seems to us that according to almost any measure, every major party in Canada is quite fiscally conservative when compared to world averages. the Liberal party in particular has demonstrated the highest degree of fiscal conservatism of all the Canadian parties. They are the party that showed tremendous fiscal discipline in the 1990’s during Canada’s worst debt crisis. By the time the Conservatives took power in 2006 the debt had been steadily paid down for about a decade. However, without deep reading into government history, a voter would likely not know that. They would likely believe the self-labelling of the Conservative Party as a force for fiscal moderation (when in fact their political actions are not in line with that ideology).

Canada’s two party system?

People have said that in 2011 Canada made a huge shift towards a two-party system (Conservatives and NDP). This is because the Bloc Quebecois were effectively destroyed and the Liberals were smashed down to 34 seats from their previous 77. This is particularly important because the Liberals were the de-facto ruling party of Canada for decades prior to the last three elections, having always been in government or the official opposition.

In our current system in Canada, we need meaningful options at the ballot box, not a polarized and deadening standoff like that currently found in the US. Even at its best, the party-based representative democracy (without proportional representation) can only approximate the voter’s choices in government policy, but 5-10 parties is much better than two.

Vote-splitting is what has led to Canada’s current majority government when the Conservatives received 39.6% of the votes cast but gained 54% of the seats. It is an interesting situation because the conservative voters are technically getting far more power than they should (compared to a parliamentary result that is actually representative of voter’s choices), but they are also unable to meaningfully choose the policies that their party implements. They are unable to show at the ballot box what sort of conservatism they support.

The Conservative Party is currently attempting to appease both social and fiscal conservatives to some extent. This is very likely to leave both groups somewhat disgruntled by the results because these two ideologies cannot be fully reconciled with one another. A good example of this would be the socially conservative moves of this government to:

• pursue a ‘tough on crime’ stance, which includes a war on drugs,
• include a lot of mandatory minimum sentencing for crimes,
• invest heavily in US-style mega-prisons, ¹
• step up military spending,
• shift power into the hands of Ministers and the Prime Minister’s Office and away from Parliament,
• make many government meetings and decisions secret rather than open.

A genuine fiscal conservative is likely to disagree with some or even all of these decisions. A truly fiscal-conservative party would minimize government spending quickly, especially on money hogs like the military and prison system. If they were unshackled from the limitations of the social conservative values, a fiscal conservative government might even consider drug law reform including the legalization of marijuana. They are also relatively likely to conduct their business in the light of day because fiscal conservatism tends to value government transparency and accountability very highly.

The addition of a strong national fiscal conservative party would effectively double the options for voters who currently believe their best choice is the Conservatives.

What Canada needs is not a united left, it needs more options on the right.

The current dominance of the Conservative party is due in part to our antiquated electoral system. The ‘first past the post’ system lends itself to substantial distortions in the results of elections. With non-conservative votes split among three or four parties, the Conservatives currently win a far higher percentage of seats than their percentage of the popular vote.

There is currently a substantial push for electoral reform in Canada, including it being officially endorsed by the NDP, the current Official Opposition party. A transition towards proportional representation is reasonably likely in the next decade or two of Canadian politics. In such a case, much of the discussion here will be moot because the barriers to entry into the political market will be vastly lowered. Parties with no regional strongholds but some nationwide support will be able to establish a presence in the ruling chambers. Such a transition will certainly improve the health of the political market in Canada and make the advent of a primarily fiscal conservative party very likely.

To conclude, Canada has a political market that is relatively healthy compared to the United States. On the so-called ‘left’ the market is quite strong and has a number of meaningful options. On the ‘right’ the only major party is the Conservatives. For a socially or fiscally conservative voter, the market is thus not very kind. The Conservatives are attempting to hold a monopoly on those ideologies in Canadian political discourse. So far they are doing so successfully. No competing conservative parties have challenged them in a number of years. The Conservative movement has sacrificed choice in order to dominate the ‘first past the post’ system.

They have solidified their base to such an extent that my only current hope for the creation of a fiscally conservative party would be a break within the ranks of the current Conservative Party. This is rather unlikely in the near future due to the intense party discipline instituted by Stephen Harper and the other leaders of the Conservatives.

In short, we can hope that electoral reform (likely spearheaded by the NDP) will eventually give conservative voters more real choices in future elections, but for now the ‘right’ is stuck with the awkward alliance of fiscal and social conservatism in the Conservative Party.

Related posts:

1. Applying free market ideas to politics: How fares the US?
2. Politics in the 11th hour: The Canadian Cons
3. John Klein: Social involvement and sustainability in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Canada

While the title of this publication is the Renewable Energy Review, today we are going to talk about natural gas – a distinctly non-renewable energy resource. Why are we doing this? The reason is simple: It has become increasingly clear to us that natural gas is going to play a major role in global energy systems for several decades to come.

Today, the transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy resources is already underway. However, all of the best authorities on the subject agree that this process will not be completed overnight. A wholly renewable energy grid, even in just the developed nations, will take at least a few decades to build.

Here we will discuss the particular properties of natural gas that make it the fuel of choice to interim generation during these key periods of transition towards renewable sources. We will attempt to give our readers an understanding of the broad issues surrounding the accelerating use of natural gas in our world.

What is natural gas?

Natural gas is a gaseous fossil fuel, extracted from deposits in the earth using techniques somewhat similar to those used to recover oil. Natural gas primarily consists of methane, one of the simplest hydrocarbons.

Since the natural gas wells are often remote, there can be vast distances between the point of extraction and where the gas will be stored or used. Continent-spanning networks of pipelines carry the gaseous fuel on these journeys.

Undesired constituents of raw natural gas such as sulphur, water vapour, and carbon dioxide must be removed prior to usage to produce a high quality combustible fuel.

Non-renewable extraction

Natural gas can often be found along side other fossil fuels. Thus many natural gas wells exist near oil shale and coal beds. As with all resource exploration, new techniques have been developed over the years to find and develop deeper, smaller, and more remote reservoirs.

The story of the history of natural gas exploitation is much the same as that of other fossil fuels and resources. It was initially found along with other desirable products such as coal. It proved to be a cheap and plentiful source of energy in its own right. Development sped up over the years as many uses were found for natural gas in areas such as fertilizers, electricity, and home heating.

Just like all other nonrenewable natural resources that humanity has tapped into, natural gas has become harder to find and harder to access over time. We have depleted many of the easiest to access reservoirs and are now searching farther afield to meet our growing demand.

Natural gas extraction is a major discussion point today. The advent of hydro fracturing or ‘fracking’ has led to rapid growth in both the extraction industry and its environmental effects. Debates are currently raging around the world as to the safety of this technique. We will look at the fracking debate in more detail later in this piece.

Renewable sources of natural gas?

Curious what we literally mean by ‘renewable’? Check out our piece about what renewable really means.

Renewable sources of combustible gases exist. These gases are not identical to natural gas, but they share many of the same primary properties. As an example, biogas is composed of methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide. Biogas can be produced from a variety of sources, refined, then used in a manner almost identical to natural gas.

How can we make biogas? Almost any system that decomposes (in the absence of oxygen) produces a form of biogas. Thus, there are a variety of potential renewable sources we might tap into. Systems have been set up to harness biogas from animal waste, landfills, and waste water treatment plants to name a few. Cleaning these biogases up to natural gas purity can be a challenging and costly technological effort.

It would be wise for our society to economically encourage the maturing of various biogas technologies so that a cost effective alternative exists in the near future when natural gas supplies will be falling further behind demand. As demand continues to grow, and extraction becomes more difficult, prices are definitely going to climb. A major question facing our society will be whether we will choose to be ready to make a smooth transition to a renewable fuel gas or a suitable substitute such as electricity produced from renewable sources.

Why is it so important?

Natural gas is used to heat millions of buildings in North America alone. About half of US households get their heating energy from natural gas. ¹ In Canada the number is around 56% of all households. ²

The world’s supply of ammonia fertilizer is heavily reliant on natural gas for its low cost production. This fertilizer is primarily produced through the Haber-Bosch process which process utilizes about 3-5% of world natural gas production and is responsible for feeding approximately 40% of the human population. ³ Therefore, a cheap and abundant natural gas supply is a cornerstone of humanity’s food production system.

In short, it is clear that natural gas is currently responsible for keeping large portions of humanity fed and warm.

Natural gas is also seeing increasing use in the area of electricity production. We will now discuss in some detail why natural gas has been so popular recently for new power plants.

Interim power source

While transitioning to a larger share of renewable, clean power sources, we will likely be using natural gas more heavily than ever before. Why is this so?

For those so inclined, a previous issue of the Renewable Energy Review was written about all of the important properties of power system technologies. This is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in attaining a solid understanding of electric power systems in general.

A proven technology

Natural gas turbines are an existing and proven power production technology. They have been adapted to a variety of scales, from small district heat and power systems to multi-megawatt turbines capable of providing a large portion of the grid power.

Low Cost

When compared to other sources of power, natural gas turbines tend to have the lowest setup cost. A turbine can also be purchased and installed in a matter of months, making natural gas one of the fastest power systems to set up.

The majority of the cost of natural gas power comes from the cost of the gas itself. This makes the cost of power highly dependent on the daily, monthly, or yearly price of natural gas. Many power companies will own and operate natural gas storage facilities so that they can avoid some of this price uncertainty.

Cost-effectiveness is not true everywhere. The costs of transporting natural gas long-distances can be very substantial. Natural gas is quite expensive in California for instance. We discuss the particular situation in California in much more detail later in this piece.

The cost effectiveness of natural gas power has another major limitation. The turbines that can respond quickly to demand (which we discuss in the next section) are inefficient compared to their slower-responding brethren. This means that their cost of operation can be very high for a given amount of power. This typically means that natural gas peaking power generation cannot compete very well in terms of cost against established hydroelectric power if it exists locally.

Dispatchable power

Natural gas power can be implemented in such a manner that it can be ‘turned on’ in a relatively short amount of time. Thus natural gas power is regarded as being ‘dispatchable’. In another piece we go into a lot of detail about why dispatchable power sources are so important and the many niches that need to be filled in a functioning grid.

In short, natural gas power is there when you need it.

However, as we mentioned earlier, the natural gas turbines that can turn on and off the fastest are the ones that are the least efficient. That is, they produce less electricity from burning the same amount of natural gas as their slower-responding cousins. Turbine designs thus face an inevitable trade-off between responsiveness and the price per unit of energy produced.

Natural gas power plants are designed to fill particular roles in the power grid. There is a lot of flexibility with regards to what those roles can be at the design stage. However, once a plant is built and operating, it is essentially locked into its role. This is why natural gas power plants need to be designed carefully, keeping in mind the nature of power that they are expected to provide.

Less C02 emission than coal

Power production using natural gas produces 45% lower carbon emissions than coal per unit energy. This is because coal is almost pure carbon while natural gas contains a lot of hydrogen in addition to carbon. Both of these elements combine with the oxygen in the air to produce energy as they burn.

These lower C02 emissions are an important reason why natural gas has been an attractive choice in the developed nations as the evidence of climate change continues to mount. Readers interested in the climate change debate may be interested in the climate change section of our deliberate societal change publication.

Cogeneration / waste heat

Since natural gas power is thermal in nature, it produces a lot of waste heat. This waste heat cannot be effectively used for more electricity production, but it can be economically used for heating buildings and running industrial processes. This use of ‘waste heat’ for productive purposes is known as cogeneration, and it is possible with all thermal power plants including coal, nuclear, solar thermal, biomass, biogas, and geothermal.

Storage

It is very hard to store electricity. This is such a difficult and important problem that we devoted an entire issue of the renewable energy review to looking at why energy storage is useful.

Natural gas can be stored rather easily in certain geological formations (including those from which natural gas was first extracted). It can then be piped out and used when it is needed. This is a form of energy storage.

Natural gas can be extracted throughout the year and stockpiled for use during times of great energy need. This is currently the case during the winter in North America for example. During this time, natural gas is burned much faster than it is extracted.

Synergy with renewable power sources

One of the key weaknesses of renewable energy is the highly variable nature of wind and solar energy production. For more information, see our renewable energy review issue on the variability and dispatchability of renewable energy sources.

Some of this variability is relatively predictable such as daily tides, daily / weekly wind forecasts,  monthly river flow estimates, or annual direct sunlight. Each resource has its own level of predictability.

Similarly, different forms of electricity demand (such as heating, lighting, or industrial usage) can be somewhat unpredictable on different time scales. Uncertainty both in supply and demand of power is currently met primarily using dispatchable power sources, such as natural gas turbines.

The flexibility of some natural gas power plant designs allows them to fill in when renewable energy sources are producing low amounts of power. A popular version of this is the idea of leveraging dammed hydro to use wind power.

Additionally, natural gas can be used in conjunction with heat-based green power systems like biogas, biomass, or solar thermal. Solar thermal can provide the heat to run a power plant during times of steady sunshine. When the sun is hidden by clouds, or at night, natural gas heating can kick in to keep the power production smooth and steady. These ‘solar-gas’ power plants may soon be widespread in the sunniest regions of the globe.

The fuel supplies for biomass/biogas can be somewhat uncertain. If natural gas can affordably fill in the gaps in their supply, then biomass/biogas power plants will be possible in many more locations than they are currently. This increased reliability would certainly also help with the acquisition of venture capital for these renewable projects.

We are fortunate that natural gas power has a healthy mix of the advantages of coal power and strong synergy with renewable power sources.

Better than coal, but…

Better than coal isn’t saying much. Of all major electricity production systems in existence, coal is the most damaging to humans and ecosystems. For a more complete picture of this subject, see our piece about just how bad coal really is.

We will now begin to look at some of the major downsides of our societal shift towards natural gas.

In the next section we will attempt to spell out a number of adverse effects that we think should be considered when a natural gas power plant is being proposed. It is important to note that many of these are systemic rather than local concerns. A single natural gas power plant in one place might not pose that much of a problem either locally or regionally. However, a national or international shift towards natural gas as a fuel for electric power generation will create a number of major problems and exacerbate others.

Volatile prices

Before dealing with some of the other effects of our increased natural gas usage, we will first discuss the volatility of natural gas prices. A variety of factors contribute to the instability of natural gas prices. One of the more obvious ones is weather. A cold snap across North America could increase demand immensely in only a few days.

Pipelines are another important concern. If a region begins to demand more than the capacity of the pipelines into that region, then the price can skyrocket. A rather telling example is that of California in the last dozen years or so. In 1999, California produced about 50% of its electricity using natural gas. In 2009, it produced 60%! ⁴  Now, take a glance at these natural gas prices in California over the last couple decades. You can see the cost of a standard unit of natural gas (1000 cubic feet) go from between $2 and $3 in the late 1990’s to $6 to $8 in 2004-2008.

This is a rather spectacular change in price for a major commodity. Demand was going up and the pipelines did not have the capacity to match. It is important to note that the California example is not a small incident. California has a population of about 37 million people and is the 8th largest economy in the world. ⁵ What happened to California can also certainly happen to other regions with limited local resources and a constrained ability to import.

The high volatility of natural gas prices in Canada is also startling. Canada produces far more natural gas than it consumes. In Canada, the most major issue is its extensive connections to other markets. Much of this natural gas is exported to the United States for their heating and electricity needs. A relatively small change in demand in the United States is likely to mean a relatively large change in the amount of natural gas that Canada can export. Thus demand volatility is driven to a great extent by the price volatility in the much larger market of the United States.

Staying warm

We mentioned earlier that natural gas is already used very heavily for heating buildings. Extensive infrastructure already exists to deliver it directly to most of these buildings. If natural gas prices are pushed high(er) by electricity production, then it may hasten the end of the usefulness of this infrastructure. We must be aware that this is a definite effect of greater use. Greater demand of a resource with a constrained supply leads to an increase in price of the resource.

North America is currently importing some liquefied natural gas from overseas to serve current demand on this continent. ⁶ The price is likely to go up quite a bit if demand continues to increase quickly. Home heating will become more expensive. The brunt of this cost increase will be felt by the people who live in the coldest climatic zones of North America. Similar problems exist in some other regions of the world such as Europe.

As natural gas becomes more and more expensive, using it to heat buildings becomes less and less economical. This can create an additional burden on those regions that are heavily reliant on it for heating. Transitioning to a different form of heating is expected to be quite costly. This transition will likely be extremely expensive as well as disruptive to the economy. Unless another cheap gaseous fuel can be produced in spectacular quantities, there will have to be substantial new infrastructure to handle the form(s) of heating energy intended to replace natural gas.

Even if there is simply a transition towards electric heating, there will be very substantial costs. Most cold regions of North America utilize a lot of natural gas heating currently, so their electric grid connections are not currently designed to handle the tremendous additional electrical load needed to heat homes in addition to powering them. Upgrading power transmission infrastructure tends to be very expensive. Also, this transition would increase demand for electricity immensely. This is a non-trivial problem in its own right, and an extremely expensive one at that.

We are consuming the natural gas that is easily recoverable. Burning even more of it to produce electricity will hasten the end of cheap natural gas. We as a society may want to think long and hard about what we plan to do about heating our homes a few decades from now.

Compound effects

Because natural gas is a such a popular form/source of energy, increases in its price will cause compounding effects on the prices of other vital goods and services. For example, the prices of natural gas and electricity are correlated. When natural gas prices spike, people consider using electricity for heating instead. However, since much electricity is derived from natural gas (more in some regions than in others), then the cost of this heating substitute goes up as well.

We see similar effects in the world economy when one of the world’s other major energy sources increases substantially in price, oil. Because the world transportation infrastructure is  so highly dependant on oil, increases in the price of oil drive up the cost of everything that relies on our cheap globalized economy. Not only does the price of shipping plastic goods from Southeast Asia increase, but the cost of raw materials used to produce those goods increases as well. Therefore, an increase in the price of one important form of energy can have an alarmingly inflationary effect on prices in general.

In Canada, very large amounts of natural gas are used to heat bitumen in the Alberta oil sands project. A rise in natural gas price would cause an increase in the cost of oil produced through this method. This could lead to a rise in oil prices in North America that will lead to a corresponding rise in fuel prices.

If the price of natural gas were to rise sharply the price of your electricity, your home heating, your car fuel, and your food would increase as well. These are likely outcomes if our society continues to rely more and more heavily on natural gas in the coming decades.

Geopolitical concerns

Many areas of the world do not have substantial domestic natural gas resources. Some of these, such as the United States and Europe, do not extract nearly enough natural gas to meet their domestic needs. These places need to import substantial amounts to meet their demand. Due to this effect, a number of nations and regions are gaining increased geopolitical influence through their control of natural gas exports.

North America

The United States currently imports natural gas from a number of places including Canada, South America, and the Middle East. North American supply is increasing (thanks mainly to fracking, discussed below), but it is not expected to meet the rapidly growing domestic demand. It is expected that overseas imports will increase to around 11% of all natural gas consumed in North America by the year 2020. ⁷

Europe

Another important geopolitical situation is that of Europe. About one quarter of Europe’s natural gas comes from Russia. ⁸ On Jan 1st, 2009, Russia cut off shipments to Europe. Note that this date is during the European winter, so temperatures were quite cold across the region. Thus gas demand was quite high and inflexible – people don’t like being cold! This move set off a series of intense negotiations and technological scrambles as Europe desperately tried to make ends meet. This situation highlighted the tremendous bargaining power that Russia now wields over the EU in particular. ^{9 10}

Interestingly, many predictions state that European reliance on Russian natural gas will continue for at least a decade. European domestic production is expected to fall while demand continues to rise. It is also worth noting that Europe draws a tremendous amount of natural gas out of Northern African countries like Algeria. The future of natural gas in Europe appears to one of high prices driven by demand that far outstrips domestic production. It is expected that their supply will rely heavily upon overseas trading as well as Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Russia.

Hard to replace

If we are going to invest spectacular amounts of money in heating, industrial, and electric power infrastructure, we definitely want to use it as long as we can. It seems reasonable to assume that some of the natural gas infrastructure that exists today will outlive the era of affordable natural gas. In a few decades time, natural gas will no longer be a cost-effective solution for all of the things we currently use it for.

What will we replace it with? Ideally we would have a fuel that is very similar so that we could use much of the existing infrastructure. Biogas is certainly a candidate for this job, but it is very unclear how much biogas we are capable of producing, and how cost-effectively it can be done. On a planetary scale, if we are limited to current technologies then it does not seem possible for biogas to literally pick up where natural gas leaves off. We consume too much natural gas to feasibly replace it with any similar gaseous fuels that we can make today.

Monopoly corporations

The middle steps of the natural gas system (refinement and distribution for example) are controlled by a few corporations. In most locations, natural gas pipelines are a natural monopoly. That is, it is infeasible for there to be multiple players on the market. The costs of building and maintaining a pipeline network are simply too high for redundant infrastructure to be feasible in most places. Only in densely populated or highly industrialized areas is there genuine competition among pipeline networks.

This centralization of power can be problematic. The energy industry is often very carefully regulated to ensure that natural monopolies cannot overly misuse their power. However, the push for deregulation has in some cases been successful. Deregulated energy markets are the prime cause of some major problems such as the California energy crises of 2000-2001. In these situations, corporations exploited the weak regulation to make enormous amounts of extra money off the society that they were supposedly serving. In a practical sense, it is very clear that the California crisis cause enormous damage to the Californian economy and inconvenienced tens of millions of people.

Dangers of Production

Natural gas kills more people per unit energy than wind, solar, and nuclear, but far fewer than coal and oil. ¹¹ These statistics include workers and civilians who die in accidents as well as members of the general public who die from pollution. While the claim ‘better than coal’ can still be made, it can be sobering to think that our energy system choices have a fairly predictable effect on the number of deaths that our energy system as a whole will cause.

Fracking

Much of the recent increase in natural gas production can be attributed to the exploitation of new drilling and extraction techniques. Primary amongst this new set of technologies is hydro-fracturing, or ‘fracking’.

Natural gas in the ground is often found to be bound up in disconnected, non-porous rock formations. Some of these pockets are quite large but most are small. Natural gas drilling has traditionally targeted and extracted from these large, economically attractive reserves. Hydro-fracturing is used to connect these small pockets and increase the amount of natural gas that can be extracted from a single site.

Hydro-fracturing is the pumping of water, sand, and a variety of chemical agents at high pressure into a natural gas site. The rock formations shatter and pockets connect, allowing for the natural gas to flow more easily. The natural gas can then be extracted more economically and for a longer time. Sometimes this is done at new sites, and sometimes at natural gas extraction points that were previously abandoned as uneconomic due to the geological properties of the remaining reserves. With hydro-fracturing, new and old reserves alike can produce large quantities of natural gas in addition to the gas that could be extracted conventionally.

So, hydro-fracturing sounds awesome!

Not quite, there are a number of major concerns about its use.

Concerns

A number of communities and citizens in areas near hydro-fracturing sites have complained that the process is contaminating their land, streams, rivers, and aquifers. It is claimed that this contamination consists both of hydro-fracturing chemicals, as well as natural gas itself.

Legally, it has been claimed that whether or not contamination is occurring is a moot point in the United States. The Safe Drinking Water Act of 2005 contains a loophole, sometimes called the “Halliburton Loophole” which stripped the EPA of its authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing. The regulatory battle over fracking bears many similarities to the current regulatory battle over coal fly ash in the United States. These regulatory wars could be summarized as follows: Relatively weak regulation of the byproducts of fossil fuel extraction, refinement, and usage is creating a situation in which long-term harm is being done to both human and ecosystem health. Some of the more obvious problems are contaminated water and air as well as giant quantities of fly ash. On the economic end of things, this lack of strong regulation acts as an effective subsidy for these industries since they do not have to pay for the full ‘costs’ of their activities. These costs will continue to be paid in human lives, health bills, and ecosystem destruction now and into the future.

Here we will try to focus on the relevant physical concerns and not the broader governmental and regulatory issues that have prevented effective regulation of fracking. We plan to discuss this subject in much more detail in a future publication.

The process of contamination

Natural gas and the chemicals used in fracking are contaminants for drinking water. However, this has been particularly difficult to prove (in the case of the fracking chemicals) because drilling companies claim that their mix of chemicals is proprietary knowledge, therefore they refuse to divulge the list and proportions of chemicals used. Despite this, studies have been conducted on contaminated water, looking for distinctly man-made pollutants. This process has been aided by some court cases which have forced drilling companies to reveal some information about what chemicals they use in their formulas.

Drilling companies also claim that it is impossible for these chemicals to migrate from the deep reservoirs where they tap natural gas into the near-surface aquifers used for drinking water. Despite there being some practical merit to these claims, there are some good reasons to believe that contamination is possible. Conventional drilling does not generally shatter large quantities of rock and rupture the barriers between sealed underground formations. Hydrofracturing however does both, so it is reasonable to expect that the dangers of groundwater contamination are much higher than with conventional techniques.

Natural gas reserves are generally far below the fresh water aquifers used for drinking water supplies. Hydro-fracturing can affect these aquifers in at least two ways.

1. The fracturing process can create routes by which natural gas can migrate upward through other rock formations into the aquifer.
2. As with all natural gas wells, poor cement work can sometimes allow natural gas to migrate back up the original well shaft. Even if the drillers produce the first and only connection between these deeper gas-bearing formations and near-surface aquifers, this connection can form a migration path for natural gas to enter the aquifers.

Conclusion

A perceptive reader will have noticed that one of the underlying themes of this piece has been cautioning against over-investment in natural gas infrastructure. Shifting a large proportion of our energy demands onto natural gas is not a long-term solution and it is likely to cause a number of major problems. Instead, we should make wise use of our natural gas resource in transitioning towards long-term energy solutions. With intelligent use of the natural gas that remains, we should be able to transition relatively painlessly into a renewable energy future.

Natural gas can be a useful platform that will help us build the next generation of energy infrastructure. A wholly renewable energy grid is the only true long-term solution, and that is where we must aim with our policy decisions.

If we fail to take note of these burgeoning problems with regards to our increasing reliance on natural gas, we will be driving our society towards a painful and costly period of rapid and intense adjustment that will destabilize almost every aspect of our lives. It is our firm belief that these concerns should lead our societies to begin actively planning for the end of the age of natural gas and how to gracefully incorporate it into our transition towards renewable energy sources.

Related posts:

1. Power system performance metrics
2. A renewed look at 2010, a sustainable vision for 2011
3. How can renewables deliver dispatchable power on demand?

1. Low barriers to entry
2. Large number of both buyers and sellers

What if we apply these ideas to politics? What sort of market would our political systems be? Imagine that the sellers are elected officials and parties while the possible buyers are all citizens who can vote.

We are ‘buying’ the society that we (in theory) want.

How does the USA look from this perspective?

The United States has a very unhealthy political market. As most of us know very well, there are only two major parties. In economics terms, this could be termed near-monopoly or even monopoly situation for each party. Together they are certainly an oligopoly. There is also no effective regulation that could limit their ability to work together against their ‘buyers’ since they control all regulation. The only option in this case is market entry of a third-party.

Attempts to create third parties in the US have been consistently blocked by the enormous barriers to entry into their political market. A notable and relatively recent example was when Ralph Nader ran for President as the head of the Green Party in 2000. He was completely ignored in the media, and was even barred from even attending the debates as a ticket-holding guest. The split nature of US politics also meant that the 2,883,105 votes (2.74 percent of the popular vote) that the Green Party garnered represented vastly more votes than the difference between Republican Bush and Democrat Gore, especially in swing states. This led to the active blaming of Ralph Nader for the Bush presidency since a greater number of his supporters would have otherwise voted democrat. (See the great documentary “An Unreasonable Man” for the whole story of Ralph Nader.)

Moral of the story: Third parties will be stonewalled in the media as well as politically as much as possible. Also, if you succeed at all, you will be attacked for the ills perpetrated by one of the monopolistic / oligopolistic two parties.

My only real hopes for US politics are:

1. both the big parties shatter into several smaller ones, or
2. wealthy philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett invest billions of dollars into the creation of a meaningful third party including the necessary support structure and media outlets.

Choose one of two ideologies

In a more democratic system, voters would choose their positions on individual issues (direct democracy). In a system as unhealthy as that in the US, the best a voter can do is try to support the party that has a general ideology that agrees with them.

A huge amount of effort in the US is expended on connecting every political issue to the party lines. Every issue is framed so that it can really only be approached in two ways. This leads to the false dilemma of voting for one of two parties. You may agree with neither.

This is similar to the concept of the overton window, which is basically the range of politically acceptable positions to take in a discussion. In the US, the overton window is effectively limited to whatever positions the two major parties take. Anything outside of that is regarded as being extremist and not contributing to the discussion. This is very important in many areas of governance, where the people in fact disagree vehemently with the positions of both parties.

An unhealthy political market also leads to voter apathy. If there are no meaningful choices at the ballot box for the voter, what is their incentive to vote? This is one of the reasons why voting numbers are relatively low in the US and elsewhere.

What is needed

What is desperately needed in the US is a major movement towards breaking the hegemony of the two parties. Perhaps the gang of 70 (a large group of progressive democrats) will break off from the right-drifting democratic party. Perhaps the fiscal conservatives, and/or libertarians will break away from the increasingly socially conservative GOP. Perhaps the Tea Party will forge out on its own. Hopefully several of these will happen. Even a transition from two to four major parties would inject a tremendous amount of life into the decaying American political spirit.

It is my hope that the people of the United States embark on a new push for freedom. I hope that Americans everywhere make incessant demands for positive changes in their political market. When sufficient demand exists, we can only hope that market forces will be allowed to act so that more ‘sellers’ will appear on the market. I believe I speak for much of the world when I say that I truly hope that Americans succeed in gaining for themselves more political freedom in the coming years.

Related posts:

1. How healthy is Canada’s political market?
2. Voted for Koch on the Corporate Hall of Shame
3. Politics in the 11th hour: The Canadian Cons

The Canadian House of Commons was recently locked in an entrenched debate regarding the back-to-work legislation for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).

We at Vision of Earth encourage readers who are short on time to use the table of contents on the left to navigate this document to those sections of interest to them.

This document is intended to be a go-to fact sheet regarding this extremely important debate. We have done our best to examine all of the facts and arguments presented. We present our executive summary of the major issues, followed by a point-by-point discussion of major issues of contention and interest.

Executive summary

The Conservative government created a situation that caused enormous problems for Canadians. They then tabled a bill that severely undercut the rights of workers and set a dangerous precedent for labour relations in Canada. They forced the hand of the Opposition, and we have seen the results.

During their filibuster, the Opposition made a number of very reasonable suggestions with regards to changes to the legislation. In the debate, the Conservative MPs defaulted to attacking the Opposition and the Unions. The Conservatives paraded the pains of the Canadian public, claiming that it is the fault of the Opposition and CUPW that these pains are being felt, despite the fact that the Canada Post lockout occurred with the government’s blessing.

It is very clear to us that the Opposition had the moral high ground and more accurate facts on their side. It is also clear that the Conservative members of parliament were either unwilling or unable to deviate even slightly from their party lines. They presented a common face in the debate – a face completely devoid of the ability to genuinely respond to the major concerns that the Opposition continually put forward. We are profoundly struck by just how unresponsive the Conservative members were to the extremely eloquent and fact-based arguments put forward by the Opposition. The Conservatives merely kept pushing for the opposition to ‘step aside’.

The Conservatives have always had the power to end the lockout through the Ministers in charge of Canada Post. They chose not to. They are holding the mail hostage, causing incredible economic and social harm in the process. We believe that Canadians everywhere should know that the Conservative government has deliberately held the mail hostage so that they could push through legislation that sets a precedent of decreasing real wages and rights for workers.

Timeline of events

1. June 2nd, 2011. CUPW set up rotating strikes that are legal and within their collective bargaining rights. ¹
2. June 10th, 2011. Union agrees to end the rotating strikes if they can go back to work under their previous collective agreement. Canada Post refused. ^{2 3}
3. June 14th, 2011. Air Canada goes on strike just after midnight.
4. June 14th, 2011 (during the day). The Minister of Labour states later that day that the government is introducing back-to-work legislation that very evening to resolve the Air Canada dispute. ^{4 5}
5. June 14th, 2011 (evening). Canada Post locks out its workers, causing complete disruption of postal services, except for social services checks.
6. June 20th, 2011. Conservatives introduce back-to-work legislation for Canada Post, Bill C-6.
7. June 23rd, 2011. Opposition raises a ‘hoist’ motion asking to move Bill C-6 discussion forward six months. ⁶
8. June 24th, 2011, 12:20pm. Hoist amendment was rejected 160-74, so the bill moved to second reading.
9. June 25th, 2011. NDP quits filibuster and brings in proposed amendments to the bill. All amendments are rejected. Bill C-6 is passed through the house.

June 23rd

During the media scrum on June 23rd, 2011, Ralph Goodale explained that the Conservative government had passed a resolution stating that the Parliamentary day of Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 would not end until Bill C-6 had been dealt with. Thus, according to Parliament, it remains June 23rd until the bill was voted upon. ⁷ This is particularly important considering that Thursday was supposed to be the last day of the parliamentary session. The next day, Friday June 24th, was St. Jean-Baptiste Day, a national holiday in Quebec.

Major Issues

Damage caused by the rotating strike

The Conservatives have been attempting to describe the rotating strike as being incredibly damaging to the Canadian public. A number of them have even gone so far as to claim that: “a rolling strike is essentially the same thing as a complete strike.” ⁸ This claim is so obviously inaccurate that we will not consider it further.

We will turn our attention to the claim of the rotating strike causing harm to the Canadian public. It is educational to look at what the government was saying about the situation before the lockout.

Here is a quote from a June 16th article by the CBC:

Until Tuesday, the Conservative government had said it was not going to intervene because postal workers had been engaged in 12 days of rotating strikes that didn’t really seem to significantly impact the public.

In that same CBC article, Lisa Raitt (the Minister of Labour) said,

We’ve had 11 days of workers of Canada Post having rolling strikes and we really haven’t had a lot of public outcry. It’s different than ’97, when we saw a lot of people concerned about a general mail strike. Now we have email, we have package services and that was the issue of a rolling strike. This is different — this is now a lockout.

Here is Raitt again in this article at HeraldNet.

Raitt said the lockout, which suspended mail service in urban centers, changed the situation fundamentally.
“It is now affecting the Canadian economy and it has an effect on third-party Canadians who are not part of this dispute, but are the ones who are suffering from the hardship,” Raitt said.

CUPW members haven’t voted on the offers

The Conservatives consistently claim that the Union is run in an undemocratic fashion. This is both inaccurate and a red herring.

Many responses by the NDP have clarified how CUPW runs on a democratic process. Similarly to how the government itself runs, members are elected to the CUPW board, receiving a democratic mandate to serve their members. Before the strike, there was a secret ballot among the entire CUPW which gave the board the ability to negotiate on behalf of them all and to take action including strikes. It is customary for the board of the union to negotiate for the best deal possible then take that deal back to its members.

This can be compared to the fact that the Canadian public do not get to vote via referendums on every piece of legislation in the government. The principle of a democratic mandate is identical.

Additionally, the strike-action democratic mandate was affirmed by 94.5% of CUPW members. ⁹ This is an incredibly powerful majority, demonstrating the level of confidence that the members have in their union. The Conservative argument simply does not have any genuine ground to stand on.

It is also interesting to note the Conservatives’ glaring hypocrisy in making this statement. One of their major efforts during their time as government has been to abolish the Canadian Wheat Board against the express wishes of a substantial majority of farmers. ¹⁰ Despite continuing majority support among farmers for the existence of the Canadian Wheat Board, the Conservatives are pushing for its abolition. ¹¹

The rotating strike was legal

Before starting the rotating strike, CUPW workers gave notice of the intent to strike May 30th, to go into effect June 2nd. This is in line with their legal requirement to give notice of intent to strike 72 hours in advance of a strike. The union has been in a legal strike position since May 25, 2011. The contract between CUPW and Canada Post has been expired since Jan 31th, 2011. As stated earlier, the union received a vote 94.5% in favour of a strike by its members. ¹²

Legislation offers lower wages than were on the table

This is the single largest point of contention on the proposed legislation. Bill C-6 includes a section that stipulates that Canada Post workers will receive wage increases of 1.75%, 1.5%, 2%, and 2% for the next four years. This is lower than what Canada Post was offering (1.9%, 1.9%, 2% and 2%). Both of these sets are lower than the target rate of inflation of 2%, and significantly lower than the current inflation rate for 2010-2011 of 3.3%. ¹³

This is the primary point that the NDP are making. This is basically the government slamming the workers for not simply accepting what Canada Post had offered before. The Conservatives are deliberately punishing the workers in addition to taking away their collective bargaining rights.

The CUPW calculated that the difference between the Canada Post offer and the government’s legislation works out to be $857 per worker over the course of the contract. ¹⁴ Vision of Earth confirmed this number with our own calculation of the difference.

The NDP asked that the government at least remove the stipulated wages from the bill and allow the arbitrator the power to work that out. ¹⁵

Binding arbitration and final offer selection

Bill C-6 severely ties the hands of what and how the Arbitrator is allowed to negotiate between CUPW and Canada Post. Not only does this legislation specify a number of specific outcomes that the final agreement must contain, it also specifies the manner in which it must be reached. Rather than allowing the Arbitrator to use their own judgement as to what method(s) of arbitration will work best in this scenario, Bill C-6 stipulates that a method called Final Offer Selection must be used to select a contract, despite the disagreements between Canada Post and the workers.

Prior to final offer selection, Canada Post and CUPW must list all of the issues on which they have reached agreement as well as those which remain contested. Each side must then make their final offer on the issues in dispute and submit them to the Arbitrator. The Arbitrator must then select one of the final offers, and that will be the final agreement used in the contract.

Final Offer Selection is supposed to make both sides of a negotiation attempt to make an offer as agreeable to the other side as they can manage, while still serving their own interests. This has the goal of avoiding a long period of incremental offers and posturing by requiring both sides to quickly put forward their “Final Offer”. With the knowledge that the Arbitrator can only select the offer of one side or the other, both sides are under great pressure to quickly put forward an agreement as reasonable as possible.

In the case of the dispute between CUPW and Canada Post, this method is unlikely to yield a contract that is equitable to both interests (easy for both sides to swallow). With the Minister of Labour selecting the Arbitrator, this further loads the negotiations against the union. CUPW quite reasonably fears that the Arbitrator will select the final offer made by Canada Post over that of the CUPW. Knowing this, Canada Post is not compelled to provide the best possible offer to the union. Instead, the union must make as many concessions as possible in the hopes that the slightly better offer they propose will be selected over that of Canada Post.

Given how Canada Post and the Conservatives treated the union recently, especially in light of the fact that CUPW offered to go back to work under their old contract until an agreement was reached, it is clear that the government (and their selected Arbitrator) is not likely to sit in neutral judgement of the Final Offer negotiations.

The Conservatives repeatedly claimed that this method of binding arbitration must be used to avoid a long period of contract negotiations. However, under these circumstances, an agreement unjust to workers is likely to be reached via Final Offer Selection, and reached quickly.

Alternatives to Final Offer Selection

There are a wide variety of possible alternatives to be used in contract negotiations, but one in particular was repeatedly brought up by the NDP members. Rather than using an “all or nothing” final offer selection, Canada Post and the workers could be instructed to select a final offer on each discrete/individual issue and use piece-by-piece final offer selection to produce the final contract.

Rather than having to select all of Canada Post’s or the worker’s proposal, the Arbitrator would have much more flexibility to select a more equitable solution using this method. Additionally, this method would be roughly as time effective as final offer selection. This suggestion was one of the many positive changes put forward by the NDP during debate on BIll C-6. Unfortunately, the Conservatives refused to hear any of the suggested changes to the bill put forward by the Opposition.

Legislation deliberately squeezes the workers

A careful reading of Bill C-6 makes it clear that this piece of legislation is designed to entrench in law the removal of rights and pensions from CUPW workers. The Arbitrator is bound (in section 11, part 2a&b) to select the final offer that must not decrease the solvency of the pension plan. Part b states that the Arbitrator must also choose the final offer that allows the following:

“The Canada Post Corporation must, without recourse to undue increases in postal rates, operate efficiently, improve productivity and meet acceptable standards of service.”

This limits the ability for either Canada Post or CUPW to propose changes in employee management that would lead to higher prices for postal rates. This is important considering that this bill also stipulates that the solvency of the pension plan must be improved. Where is the money going to come from? Since this legislation has to do with the collective bargaining agreement between Canada Post and the CUPW, it means that the cuts needed to improve the solvency of the pension plan must be taken from the worker’s salaries and benefits.

To state this more plainly, it is legislating that the changes to the CUPW collective bargaining agreement must be able to pay for all the expected change in the solvency of their pension plan. The money must be pulled out of the CUPW agreement, and is thus not coming from anywhere else. You might be thinking, where else could it come from? Here are some things we can think of immediately:

1. Efficiency increases. (The efficiency of Canada Post workers has been consistently increasing in recent decades.)
2. Reducing the amount of money that Canada Post makes in profit (and thus gives to the Government of Canada). It has made a profit for 16 consecutive years and in 2009 alone made 281 million dollars in profits that were returned to the government coffers. ¹⁶
3. Postal rate increases. Canada’s postal rates are lower than most comparable systems in developed nations. ¹⁷ There is definitely room for increase if it is needed. Also note that in early 2011 the government approved a 20% rate increase before 2014 for Canada Post. ¹⁸
4. Giving management the same wage increases as workers. This is very relevant since management has consistently been getting much higher wage increases than workers in recent years. ^{19 20}

The Liberals did a similar thing in 1997

One of the issues that is continually referred to in this discussion is that a similar situation happened before. In 1997 there was a strike by the CUPW that shut down postal service for two weeks. The Liberal government at the time, along with a number of conservative MPs, voted for back-to-work legislation that punished the Union with slightly lower wages. ²¹

The Liberals claimed that this action was justifiable because it was a general strike. However, this does not justify their legislation of lower wages for the workers. This is an unfortunate precedent that the Conservatives are attempting to use to justify their even more draconian back-to-work bill.

Canada Post is not run with tax money

We would like to take this opportunity to address a common misconception regarding Canada Post. A fairly large percentage of Canadians seem to believe that Canada Post is subsidized through taxes. This is incorrect.

Canada Post does not rely on subsidies from the government. It has turned a profit for sixteen consecutive years. In fact, over the past fifteen years it has paid an estimated $1.5 billion to the government in taxes and dividends. ²²

Conservatives not hurrying, not negotiating

The main Conservative talking point was the claim that the Opposition was delaying the date when Canadians will get their postal service back. While this appears to be true on the surface, it was in fact a clever deception.

First and foremost, Canada Post is a crown corporation. The cabinet has extensive powers over the management and actions of crown corporations. If the Conservative cabinet ordered Canada Post to end the lockout, it would have to comply.

Secondly, it was made rather clear by the Opposition that they would end the filibuster if the bill were amended so that it did not force the CUPW to accept lower salaries than the last Canada Post offer. However, the government refused to change this at all. The opposition was making a stand for the wage increases that the CUPW had successfully negotiated from Canada Post. The Conservatives remained intent on slamming the union with lower wages and locking them into a distorted version of binding arbitration (which we discussed above). This uncompromising attitude by the Conservatives ensured that the NDP would remained strongly against the bill. It is thus clear that the Conservatives share a large part of the ‘blame’ regarding the slow passage of the back-to-work legislation.

This is made very clear again through statements made by Lisa Raitt. This is a quote from a CBC news piece entitled Canada Post debate shows no sign of ending

Layton’s comments came around the same time as those of Labour Minister Lisa Raitt, who also maintains she’s looking for an agreement. But the Conservative government is prepared to sit until its legislation passes to send Canada Post back to work, Raitt said Friday after the House sat through the night.

Though they claimed to be looking for agreement, the Conservatives never made any genuine efforts to negotiate any changes to the bill. It is clear that they were content with the fact that they would eventually be able to pass bill C-6 unchanged, regardless of what that would cost Canadians.

The Conservatives repeated again and again the mantra that the fastest way for the public to get their mail was for the Opposition to support the back to work legislation. The NDP replied many times that they had no problem with the back-to-work legislation by itself. It was the additional constraints such as the lowered salaries and constricted arbitration that they had big problems with. This is a major point that we think Canadians should be made aware of.

Conservatives allowed the lockout

During the debate, one of the most interesting statements came from John McCallum of the Liberals who was formerly the Minister responsible for oversight of Canada Post. He said that Canada Post would definitely have contacted the Ministers in charge of Canada Post before locking out its employees. He also said that it is entirely possible that the ministers told Canada Post that it would be fine to lock out its members.

The current Minsters of Canada Post are Denis Lebel and Steven John Fletcher. ²³

The Conservatives thus definitely knew about the lockout before it happened. If they were serious about making sure that Canadians would keep getting their mail, they would have ensured that Canada Post would not lock out it’s employees. While Canada Post has some autonomy, it is to a great extent controlled and managed at the highest levels by the government. It is rather clear that the Conservatives allowed the lockout to happen and continue.

For a more clear look at this issue, we read the Canada Post Corporation Act. We found that section 22, subsection 1 to be the most enlightening on this specific issue:

22. (1) In the exercise of its powers and the performance of its duties, the Corporation shall comply with such directives as the Minister may give to it.

There is, of course, much more to it than that, but the rest of that subsection merely lays out some specific regulations regarding this oversight via directives. It is clear that the Ministers have great power over Canada Post.

Taking sides

The Conservatives routinely claim that they are not taking sides in this dispute. They always seemed to follow this statement with something akin to: “Unlike the NDP, who are beholden to union bosses.” Let us examine this claim carefully.

It is well known that the NDP tends to champion the rights of worker unions more than the other parties. This isn’t really in dispute. The NDP has made it clear for decades that it will attempt to be the voice of workers and the common person.

Similar common knowledge exists regarding the Conservatives. It is well known that they favour big businesses and the wealthy far more than the common working people or unions. We suggest that anyone disbelieving this claim should take a look at their legislative and executive history with regards to corporate tax cuts and anti-union behaviour.

These two pieces of common knowledge would certainly indicate that we could expect these two parties to be on opposite ends of this dispute. How do their actions stack up?

Conservatives are pro-management and anti-worker

On June 14th the Air Canada customer service staff went on strike at midnight. That same day the Conservatives promised to immediately begin the process of passing back-to-work legislation to force these workers back on the job. This is interesting for three major reasons:

1. Firstly, the strike was already expected to be a failure since the other workers at Air Canada had successfully kept the business working and there were relatively few problems with air travel. ²⁴
2. Secondly, the legislated end of a strike takes away the most powerful bargaining tool that a union can legally wield. Without this bargaining chip, power would shift substantially from the employee to the employer.
3. Thirdly, this action sends a clear message to employers, as well as employees and unions in major industries. Employers can bargain harder than ever, forcing unions to either agree to deals that are bad for them or try to strike. If the strike happens, the Conservatives will be there immediately to legislate the workers back to the job, taking away their rights. This is particularly important in the case of Air Canada. Air Canada is a corporation, not a crown corporation like Canada Post. Air Canada is also not a monopoly like Canada Post is; there are many other airlines such as WestJet who can provide similar service. Thus, Air Canada itself cannot be considered an ‘essential service’ like water, power, food, etc. Additionally, the strike was not even having that much effect on Air Canada service.

Overall, this is an incredibly clear demonstration of the Conservatives definitively taking the side of the employer.

On the evening of June 14th, Canada Post locked out its workers. As we stated above, the Ministers in charge of Canada Post would definitely have known that this was happening, and could have acted to change this outcome. At the earliest possible opportunity the Conservatives introduced back-to-work legislation for Canada Post. Let us note again that prior to the corporate lockout there had been minimal disruption of postal services and that most Canadians were completely unaffected by the rotating strikes. As outlined above, the legislation reduces the negotiated wages offered by Canada Post and takes away a number of important rights from CUPW. Again the Conservative actions have been definitively pro-corporate and anti-worker. The Conservatives have clearly taken the side of management and then lied about that stance to the Canadian public.

NDP defends right of workers to negotiate with employer

What side are the NDP on? It is clear from their speeches and their voting positions that in this discussion they are clearly on the side of CUPW. Does this mean that they are unjustly biased and merely serving the ‘union boss thugs’ whom Conservative Dean Del Mastro says are the only beneficiaries of the NDP’s actions? Again, to answer this question let us look at their actions carefully.

Upon the presentation of the back-to-work legislation, the NDP immediately condemned it on the grounds of:

1. It renders collective bargaining useless.
2. It legislates lower wages than Canada Post was offering.
3. The crisis was instigated by Canada Post Corporation and not the workers. Canada Post is under the control of the government. Thus the government is ‘solving’ a problem that they created.
4. The government could simply end the lockout by phoning Canada Post and telling them to unlock the doors.
5. CUPW already agreed to go back to work with no rotating strikes as long as they could do so under their old collective agreement.
6. It puts severe restrictions on the freedom of the Arbitrator to make decisions for building the new collective agreement.

All of these major concerns are based on solid factual evidence. The NDP is certainly acting primarily for the sake of the workers in CUPW in this matter. However, it is important to remember that the deck has already been heavily stacked in favour of management prior to the beginning of the NDP filibuster.

The NDP have said that they believed there was little hope of reaching an agreement with the Conservatives, but they tried anyway. The many hours of debate let them elaborate on exactly why they were opposing the bill and implored the Conservatives to make some amendments to make the legislation more just. As we all know at this point, all of the amendments were voted down by the Conservatives. They showed no signs of having listened to 58 hours of debate filled with concerns about the legislation.

The NDP made it clear that if they were unable to convince the Conservatives to change anything in the bill, they would do their best to a) give CUPW more time to negotiate with Canada Post and b) make sure that they did their job of commenting on these very major issues so that the Canadian public would have a better chance of learning what the government was actually doing.

The NDP did not go all-out on their filibuster. They could have dragged it on for several more days at least, according to most sources. They chose to cut short the debate because CUPW had informed them that Canada Post refused to budge on negotiations and asked the NDP to simply try to amend the bill. The NDP filed their reasonable amendments which were all voted down by the entire Conservative party.

The NDP stood up for what the facts told them and refused to be cowed by the Conservative majority government who held all of the cards the entire time. In these actions they served CUPW and the Canadian public who deserved to know about the corrosive nature of this legislation. As a final point we would like to reiterate that it was the Conservatives who allowed the lockout to happen and didn’t act directly to end it using their powers over Canada Post (as explained in an earlier section of this piece).

Taking everything into account, we believe that the NDP were truthful when they said that they stood for genuine collective bargaining. We also believe that the Conservatives were flat-out lying when they said that they were not taking sides in this issue.

NDP training exercise

It is also true that this situation provided a valuable opportunity for the NDP to give their new members a crash-course in speaking in the House of Commons. After this ordeal, we expect that the new members of the NDP will be unafraid to stand up and give voice to their concerns.

The fact that this filibuster doubled as a training exercise for their new MPs does not at all invalidate it in our opinion. We believe it underscores how the NDP is acutely aware of the fact that a number of their members are inexperienced, and how they are unafraid to admit that they are taking steps to rectify the situation.

The filibuster was not just a training exercise. There are much easier and less politically risky ways to have accomplished similar training. The NDP stood up for their concerns, but they also acknowledge that this effort was a very good experience for their new members.

It also gave the Canadian people an opportunity to hear some of the new, vibrant, and intelligent voices of the NDP. Indeed it was largely the great oration by new NDP members that made this debate watchable for us.

Conservative party lines

We watched a total of about twenty hours of the debate, so we became pretty familiar with a number of the speakers and questioners. This immense amount of exposure to Canadian politics left us feeling like we really need to say something about how the Conservatives treated this whole thing.

In addition to all the problems we have gone through in this article, the vast majority of Conservatives showed no unique or genuine thought in the House during the debates that we saw. Every single response was formulaic.

1. They would thank the member opposite.
2. They then state that they had been listening intently to the member opposite.
3. They then state that the member opposite does not have their facts straight or is confused about the matter. They do not go into detail on how the member opposite is wrong, they just say that they are.
4. They would then ask if the member opposite would agree that the fastest way to stop the pains of the Canadian people would be to support this back-to-work legislation.
5. They sit down as the rest of the Conservatives applaud them for their genuine contribution to the discussion.

This formula was used at least dozens of times, perhaps hundreds of times, during the debates.

The Conservative members were in fact not listening to the members opposite. The vast majority of their questions and comments had absolutely nothing to do with the actual statements made by the Opposition. The responses via the formula included just enough of the same words to make it seem like they might actually have been paying attention in the eyes of a viewer who simply watched a few minutes of the debates.

Only a very few Conservatives showed any semi-original thought. These original thoughts generally included an imaginative red herring built off of the NDP’s statements. At best the Conservative comment or question would hint at addressing one of the many issues discussed in this piece, and would usually include a veiled or unveiled jab at the NDP.

As for most of the Conservatives that we saw speak, we were greatly disappointed to see them waste such an opportunity to engage the opposition meaningfully on such an important issue. They merely stuck to the formula, repeating party lines all night and day. We felt it was a waste of their talent and representative position to entrench along their party line and turn a deaf ear to discussion for 58 hours.

The NDP were very different. Every member presented their own perspective on the major issues at hand. They took the opportunity to express their own personal views, not just those of their leader. We were very impressed with a number of their speeches and especially with a number of their new members, particularly from Quebec.

Debate highlights

These highlights are in no way exhaustive, and are definitely not chronological.

The good

We saw a number of excellent speeches by NDP members. We will attempt to briefly list the best we saw here:

1. Tyrone Benskin delivered a lucid and fact-based speech demonstrating a number of the major problems with the legislation.
2. Thomas Mulcair’s speech was what first piqued our interest in the debate. He provided an amazing, wide-ranging speech on Thursday that hit on all cylinders, providing not just a blueprint for resolving this issue but for good economic governance in general.
3. Paul Dewar delivered an excellent speech in which he clarified precisely how the wages stipulated in the legislation are lower than Canada Post’s last offer.
4. Wayne Marston cleared up some of the facts about union laws and how they function. This was an excellent response to the continual harping of the Conservatives about what they call undemocratic unions. He also makes it very clear that the CUPW agreed to go back to work under the old contract, without the rotating strikes, but Canada Post refused.
5. Pat Martin spoke a number of times at some length, and his contributions are very good. One thing in particular that he clarified was how the current back-to-work legislation differed substantially from what is known as ‘final offer selection’.
6. Ève Peclet delivered an excellent and impassioned speech between about 12:45am and 1:05am on June 25th. (At the time of this writing, the CPAC video that will contain the speech has not yet been published.) We were truly impressed to see such energy and dedication from a new and very young member of the NDP Quebec caucus. This speech was full of enough fire to reach right through the video monitors and grab our attention immediately. We thank Ms. Peclet for showing us that genuine passion exists in the House of Commons and it refuses to be stamped out by the monotone Conservative majority.
7. Charlie Angus contributed calm and well-reasoned statements to the discussions. His discussion of the history of collective bargaining in Canada was very helpful. His manner was exactly what we would expect from an experienced parliamentarian who has the best interest of Canadians in mind at all times.

We also saw Elizabeth May of the Green Party make two excellent speeches during the debates. The positions she took as neither an NDP or a Conservative are educational for all of us. She made it clear that political parties should not be mere proxies for the employees and employers who can’t be at this bargaining table. She stressed that they should act with the best interests of all Canadians in mind. She stressed that the situation was entirely fixable if the Conservatives removed the unacceptable sections of Bill C-6. She said that she hoped that they could surprise the people of Canada by actually listening to one another and coming to a mutual understanding on the issue. She made it clear that the house was essentially an echo chamber at that point in time, but it definitely shouldn’t be. In her second speech she accurately commented on a number of red herrings being thrown around by both sides of the debate. She accurately stated that these red herrings were politicizing the debate and thus undermining what effectiveness it had. Overall, we think her contributions were excellent, and we wish the entire house had listened to her.

The bad

Unfortunately everyone who made our bad list was from the Conservatives. We realize that this makes us look biased against them. We believe that any candid observer of the debates would have drawn similar conclusions. Opposition members made mistakes and bad arguments, but none of them did so to such an extent, or with such consistency.

1. Lynne Yelich: “There is no repetition on this side of the house.” – This is after several dozen iterations of the same formula we discussed above.
2. Bev Shipley delivered a red herring question which was excellently responded to by Tyrone Benskin of the NDP.
3. Joy Smith brought up the fact that one of her constituents talked to her, saying that she has health tests in the mail that included mammograms. ²⁵ Obviously a roundabout reference to breast cancer. This was her way of parading the pains of the Canadian public before the house. We thought this was a particularly low move by the Conservatives, demonstrating their utter lack of remorse about causing the situation in the first place.
4. Dean Del Mastro was viciously polarizing and inflammatory in his remarks. He showed no respect for the NDP, the CUPW, or its workers. He paid no attention to the facts during his speeches, questions and comments. His insults and prescriptive accusations made us feel like we were watching a blustering Republican from south of the border. We felt that the Honourable Mr. Mastro was the most disingenuous and inflammatory member of the entire House.

Aftermath

After the bill passed the House of Commons, the CUPW published a press release condemning the Harper government for its ‘unjust and punative bill’, and thanking the NDP for defending free bargaining for 58 hours straight. Lastly they state that while the filibuster gave them time to resume talks with Canada Post, the push for back-to-work legislation by the Conservatives had led to Canada Post being uncompromising in its dealings with CUPW. ²⁶

The CUPW has also mentioned that they will be challenging the constitutionality of the bill in court, seeing as it impinges on the rights given in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. ²⁷ This could prove to be a very interesting court case because the current court precedent seems to be on the side of the unions. It is also interesting because Bill C-6 specifically stated that it is not possible to challenge some of the decisions (such as the choice of the arbitrator, or the decisions made by the arbitrator) in court.

Before closing, we would like to point out a few excellent pieces of writing on this subject. The first is at Chronicle Herald by Laura Penny entitled Harper to Canada Post workers: Suck it up. We feel that she makes excellent points and sums up the broader implications of this whole ordeal clearly and concisely. The second is by Brian Topp at the Globe and Mail, entitled This is what a real parliament looks like. Both of these pieces provide eloquent fact-based descriptions of this situation aimed at the interested layperson.

We refer those readers looking for a ‘conclusion’ back to our executive summary in which we attempt to concisely knit together the most major themes of this piece.

We hope that you the reader have enjoyed this article. If there are any questions, comments or criticisms, we invite you to participate in the discussion through the comment system below.

Related posts:

1. How healthy is Canada’s political market?
2. Politics in the 11th hour: The Canadian Cons
3. John Klein: Social involvement and sustainability in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Canada

1. Social Mobility
2. Reducing government to improve social mobility
3. Rising tide lifts all boats
4. Tax cuts ARE expensive
5. General attack on White House credibility
6. Laffer curve does not support their conclusions
7. Rich don’t pay high taxes
8. Reagan added new taxes and closed loopholes
9. Conclusion: This video is designed to be misleading

This piece is a critique of a video featuring Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute created by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a flat-tax lobbying group from the United States. This video was brought to our attention during a discussion about tax rates in Canada even though the video itself is discussing taxes in the USA.

Our conclusion is that this video utterly fails to demonstrate the truth of its claims, and instead relies on psychological manipulation to try to ‘win’ the argument in the minds of viewers. We believe that this group deliberately distorts and misrepresents these issues because it is their job to promote these positions regardless of their validity. As contributors to Vision of Earth and relatively informed citizens, we consider it our job to combat misinformation wherever we find it. In the following analysis we will sketch out why we believe the statements in this video to be false and misleading.

The video, available on YouTube, is called “Debunking White House Pro-Tax Increase Propaganda”.

Social Mobility

As far as this video goes, it is not clear why they brought up social mobility in the first place. The creators of this video apparently thought it would be something they could critique in the White House’s video. Transforming the relatively straightforward discussion put forward by the White House into a discussion about social mobility is a red herring, which is a type of logical fallacy. That is, social mobility is a subject of questionable relevance to the discussion at hand. Still though, we will examine these claims carefully.

The Economic Mobility Project has come up with a set of detailed findings regarding social mobility in the United States. In the US, people have relatively little ability to climb to higher income brackets. The US has very low social mobility for the highest and lowest portions of society. Economic mobility in the states is actually falling, and is very ‘sticky’ at the ends. This means that those people who are already at either end of the income distribution are quite likely to remain there regardless of their abilities, effort, and economic choices.

The video cherry-picks statistics that seem to indicate great social mobility in America, while ignoring the greater body of statistics that suggest the contrary. They thus build a conclusion that appears to be incorrect when the real facts are studied carefully. We suggest that the reader examine literature on social mobility in the states so that they can see how deliberately misleading the video is on this point.

Reducing government to improve social mobility

“There would be even more [social mobility] if we reduced the burden of government.” This is an utterly unfounded statement that runs counter to the best facts we have available to us. A large portion of government spending goes to helping the people on the lower end of the income spectrum in the form of subsidized housing, social welfare, and other social programs. Additionally, much of government spending is spent on all citizens, regardless of income. This sort of spending includes law and order, education, physical infrastructure, national security, medicare, etc. Government acts substantially to improve social mobility through these expenditures. Statements to the contrary, such as those portrayed in this video, seem to rely on ideological reasoning, not facts.

Rising tide lifts all boats

Illustration based on Congressional Budget Office Data, drawn from an article at Mother Jones (click picture to access). Many useful high-quality references available throughout that piece.

“If the pie gets larger, then everyone can have a bigger slice.” – While sounding like a truism, this is a specific framing of the economic growth discussion to make it seem like our #1 goal as a society should be expanding the economy, whatever the cost. This glosses over the fact in the past thirty years, as tax rates for the rich have declined, the share of economic growth that goes to the lower 80% of earners has stagnated.

That is, the rich have made spectacular gains in the last few decades, while the rest of the nation was left with the same amount of pie. This also glosses over the fact that the share of the working class can even shrink on a per-capita basis, even as the pie grows.

Tax cuts ARE expensive

They state that tax cuts are not expensive, this is a lie. Tax cuts can be incredibly expensive to a society. Think of municipalities that can’t upkeep roads and bridges (ie. Minneapolis) because they lack the tax income to do it. Think of the currently ballooning debt in the US, Canada, and many other nations. Every area of government investment or regulation can suffer from tax cuts. Decisions on tax structure and government expenditure must be made together. No credible claims to truth or real-world validity can be made without a full description of both sides of that equation.

They criticize the White House presentation’s viewpoint that the tax cuts are ‘costs’ for the government. This phrasing, however, is technically valid. It is often used in discussions of government tax policy. To be clear it is often stated that “tax cuts cost money”. Also, this phrasing is very appropriate at the time this video was made because the Bush-era tax cuts were slated to expire. When the tax cuts had been passed into law during the Bush administration, there had not been sufficient support to make them permanent. Very likely the taxes were thought of as a relatively temporary measure intended to get the economy rolling with a few years of theoretically higher investment from the rich. This means that the current plan was that the tax cuts for the rich would end at a predetermined time, thus taxes would increase for the rich. Government planning during the interim years would have assumed that these taxes would have returned to previous levels in 2008 – since that was the plan.

From this perspective, it is completely valid to state that new tax cuts to replace the ones that are ending would cost the government money. In this case, costs are defined as deviations from the budgetary plan as it has been laid out into the future. They have nothing to do with the government thinking that it owns 100% of everyone’s labour. This is another red herring intended to distract us from the actual discussion at hand. The speaker in this video is from the Cato Institute –  a well-known right-wing libertarian think-tank. They certainly know that this is standard terminology, yet they are making a big deal out of it. We believe they are doing so because they have relatively few genuine arguments to raise on this subject, so they are instead trying to attack the White House’s video by attempting to nit-pick their language.

General attack on White House credibility

He claims that the administration has done ‘simplistic estimates’. That is almost certainly a lie considering the care and attention that the Obama administration has put into its economic policies. The Obama administration relies heavily on the knowledge of the best economists that they can find for their predictions and policy proposals. This video uses this statement as an ad hominem attack. It is an attack against the originator of an idea or statement, presented as a rebuttal of the statement itself. This is a widely used logical fallacy that is particularly common in statements from right-wing thinkers and politicians in North America. The video presents no genuine argument as to why the White House’s estimates are ‘simplistic’, thus this is purely an ad hominem attack with no basis in fact.

Laffer curve does not support their conclusions

The claims regarding simplistic estimates and the Laffer curve attempt to dodge around one of the central underlying facts about this discussion. The Obama administration obviously believes that the economy is on the left side of the Laffer curve, and/or that these tax cuts are still morally justifiable even if they might be at the top of the Laffer curve or slightly to the right. However, the location of the tax system on the Laffer curve is something that has been extensively studied by economists. So what are the answers that they have come up with?

The existing data does not agree with this video. Only the very highest tax rates, those paid by the richest people in the States, are nearly the same as some of the estimates of the Laffer peak at around 35%. We will discuss below how there is a giant difference between the marginal tax rates of around 35% and the actual tax rates paid by the rich. Regaring the Laffer peak, we suggest to the doubtful reader that they look at the empirical evidence underlying these claims that is summarized well in the Wikipedia page about the Laffer curve.

Rich don’t pay high taxes

At this point it is important to note that the richest Americans actually pay nowhere near the marginal tax rate for their tax bracket. A good illustration of this fact is this IRS report from 2007 for the 400 people who paid the most income tax that year. The richest people in the US actually only paid an average of 16.62% income tax in 2007! That is about half of the marginal tax rate for people in their income bracket. To put this into perspective, Warren Buffet popularized the fact that he pays a far lower overall tax rate (17.7%) than his secretary (30%). You can read about how Buffet criticizes the US tax system using this fact as his central point. Why is it the case that the rich pay so little? The answer is a combination of effects such as tax loopholes, capital gains, and tax breaks. The actual tax rate paid is far below the estimates of the Laffer peak for the US. Thus the argument presented in this video is invalid.

We mentioned capital gains above because it is an important factor in the low tax rates that the rich tend to enjoy. Income that can be classified as ‘capital gains’ is taxed at a much lower rate than normal income. The wealthy naturally make a lot of their money through capital gains compared to the poor or middle class because the wealthy tend to own a lot of stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. The lower tax rate on capital gains is also an incentive for the rich to reorganize their income so that as much as possible can be regarded as capital gains and not standard income.

Reagan added new taxes and closed loopholes

This video also claims that by reducing taxes in the early years of the Reagan administration, the government made way more money in taxes from the rich later in the administration. We will now discuss the truth behind this statistic, and how this video attempts to misuse this fact for its own ends.

Tax collection from the rich during the 80′s increased for many reasons. One small contributing factor is that income disparity between that highest tax bracket and the rest of the United States increased massively starting at the beginning of the Reagan era. The rich were again claiming a bigger and bigger portion of the pie.

The most important factor in the Reagan-era tax income changes for the rich appears to be the closing of tax loopholes and the creation of new taxes. The rich were hiding their money using techniques that left it untaxed, such as offshore accounts or intertwining their assets closely with corporations. In this way, they were primarily taking advantage of loopholes in the tax system. Related tactics and loopholes were, and are, used by corporations, which represent the wealth and income of their stockholders. Corporate stock tends to be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.

The net effect of all of these changes was that many wealthy people actually paid much higher net tax rates after these changes than they had before. This video glosses over these very important facts relating to the general context of the Reagan tax changes. With this closer evaluation, the claims made in this video regarding the magical increase in the government’s tax income due to lowering of the tax rate appear to be completely false.

It is important to note that this video claims a cause-and-effect relation between lowering tax rates and corresponding increases in government income from those taxes. This claim can be true in some specific circumstances, but it definitely not true in general. We refer the reader again to the Laffer curve discussion above for details on the relationship between tax rates and government income.

Despite what Dan Mitchell might think, quoting Kennedy about tax cuts doesn’t mean he has actually made a rebuttal of any kind. This is yet another red herring and an appeal to authority.

Conclusion: This video is designed to be misleading

Overall the video fails to demonstrate the truth of its claims. Also, it deliberately misleads the viewers on a number of major points. This is certainly done deliberately, since think-tanks as well-funded as these have access to the real facts as well and have employed educated people who can understand them as well as we can. It is thus our conclusion that this video is intended to mislead the general public about these very important issues.

Related posts:

1. How much would it cost to end extreme poverty in the world?
2. Capitalism’s Labour Transitions – An Argument for Social Welfare
3. Voted for Koch on the Corporate Hall of Shame

You can follow John at his blog “Saskboy’s Abandoned Stuff”, focusing primarily on local and regional events, opportunities, and issues in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Canada. However, his interests are broad enough that his blog has been known to wander into every subject from high-tech development to economics to religion. Just as on Vision of Earth, readers there are encouraged to voice both their support and criticism of ideas presented.

Well-informed readers will note that this interview refers to a minority government in Canada. This interview dates to early 2011 before the Conservatives gained their majority.

We hope you enjoy the interview and perhaps tell us what you think!

We contacted you for this interview because we know that you have been involved in community efforts towards sustainability.  Can you tell us a bit about your background and experience in this area?

I’m involved in as much as I make time for, everything from blogging about environmental sustainability, to participating on the executive of a car sharing co-operative, to ad-hoc recycling and reuse projects. I’ve always been interested in recycling. When I was a kid, I’d pick up discarded drink bottles to collect the deposit money. When I lived on my own, I’d sometimes make a trip around the neighbourhood to collect and flatten boxes out of dumpsters so they could be recycled, and more recently I’ve rescued hundreds of kilograms of reusable items out of Regina’s dumpsters and found new homes for the goods. Tonight I saved a large coffee table for a friend, and have recently repaired a clothes drying rack, which can be used by someone to further reduce their carbon footprint by eliminating some clothes dryer cycles.

What initially sparked your interest in these topics?

My family has recycled various things for as long as I can remember. My parents inspired me to care about other people, animals, and our environment. I think you have to take care of the environment as best as you can, to show you sincerely care about the future world that next generations will live in. Do we want it to look like Blade Runner, or like Star Trek?

What do you think is the greatest challenge, or set of challenges, facing our society today?

Why do you think these issues are so important?

It would be morally wrong to do nothing when there is so much suffering caused by pollution that is entirely preventable through legislation, a bit of education, an improved economic system, and a little hard work and ingenuity. The fate of the future literally rests on the policies we support and the articles we purchase today.

How much awareness do you think the general public has of this issue?

There is low awareness of this issue. I’m not sure why my education was so different from so many other peoples, and I find it almost maddening that most people don’t see the crises that are looming in the next decade.

What work are you involved with that is trying to help better our society, and how successful have you been?

I work at a university, which I feel is my best contribution to making the world a better place, even though it’s an indirect way of doing so. I also volunteer as the president of the Regina Car Share Co-operative, which is an organization that is attempting to have a direct impact on improving the environment and transit system of Regina. When elections roll around I volunteer with political parties that I feel have a grasp on reality and oppose the current government’s candidates (and others that don’t have environment and citizens at the top of their priorities list).

I feel I could do more to make my workplace a more earth-friendly institution. For instance, years ago I envisioned convincing the local McDonalds restaurant to recycle their many cardboard boxes that their wrapping comes in. After working there a few months, I saw it’s difficult to change a workplace, both due to logistics, and corporate culture.

As a New Year’s resolution, I aimed at spending more of my money at businesses I want to see succeed, and less at those I want to shrink. As a result, I’ve shopped no times at Walmart in 2011 thus far, I’ve been to Superstore once with my fiancé, and I’ve done most of my grocery shopping at Eat Healthy Foods, and Nature’s Best (organic and local foods stores). I feel better about the food I’m eating, places I want to see stay open have hundreds of dollars more in their win column, and thoughtless corporations get less of my money. It’s a triple win from my perspective, with just one small change.

What do you think is the best way for an interested member of the general public to help bring about positive change in our society?

Be the change you want to see in the world. Ghandi said that; Google tells me so. He was an expert on change, and getting what he wanted. Most people don’t need to go on a hunger strike or lead a nation to make big changes, they simply have to start respecting themselves as an agent of change for either right or wrong. If after an evaluation of yourself, you find some action lacking in good taste, take a step to change it right away. You don’t need money for change, you need determination, friends to encourage you, and time to evaluate your direction.

Thank you very much John for your time and insight!

Related posts:

1. Curtis Dorosh: Green living, building, and volunteering
2. Jim Elliott shares his thoughts on sustainability, community, and living green
3. Ben’s Interview on Radio CKUT 90.3 FM