Economic Development Should Focus on Sustainability, Not Growth for Growth's Sake

Recently, I took Dick De Stefano's advice and cracked open the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation's new economic development plan, “From theGround Up, 2015-2025”. De Stefano, writing in the Sudbury Star last week, said the Plan “could change the face of the community for the next 10 years if all sectors actively participate and contribute their energy and insights" into the Plan's recommendations.  He also referred to the over-arching “Everest Goal” on which the plan is based – the creation of 10,000 new jobs in the City over the next 10 years (see: "Column: Sudbury's way to the future," the Sudbury Star, December 31, 2015).

I participated in the public consultation process for the creation of “From the Ground Up”, but it looks like the feedback that I provided took a back-seat to the vision which has emerged in this plan. That's not to suggest that the Plan isn't chock full of good ideas, because there really are an abundance of those (approximately 115 goals are identified, including the Everest Goal, along with numerous smaller goals broken down under 9 separate priority subheaders). Many of the Plan's goals are absolutely worth pursuing, for numerous reasons. But the context in which these goals are identified is, to me, somewhat problematic.

Getting It Wrong – Plan Focus

“From the Ground Up” unapologetically focuses on job creation as the ultimate economic development goal for the City. While this may sound like a sensible measure to some, my question back to the Plan administrators has to do with why this goal was chosen. Shouldn't a goal of an economic development plan for a City be one in which the City emerges more economically healthy in the future than it is today? Again, one might argue that job creation facilitates that outcome – but we know that' based on the evidence, it isn't true. There are a number of factors which contribute to economic health, and they all have to do with sustainability.

What happens if we create those 10,000 jobs in the midst of a feverish boom period over the next 10 years, but we all end up paying higher levels of property taxes and new user fees to cover the costs of unsustainable growth? Is our City better off if it has to take on debt or raise taxes to pay for new infrastructure to accommodate this growth?

And that's why “From the Ground Up” is so problematic – because it is premised on the notion that the pursuit of growth alone justifies the pursuit of growth as an economic development tool – in fact, as the only economic development tool that really matters. And that's just not the case.

Climb Mount Everest

The Plan's use of an “Everest Goal” as a starting point – the creation of 10,000 jobs over 10 years – exemplifies this misguided approach to planning. The Plan describes an “Everest Goal” as being, “beyond normal goal setting. It represents an ultimate achievement or an extraordinary accomplishment and it requires everything one can give.” Clearly, the idea here is to create a target which is aspirational, but which should nevertheless be striven for – at all costs. To me, this seems like a very bizarre way of setting an over-arching goal for any plan. Shouldn't goals be realistically achievable? Otherwise, they represent one-in-a-million chances on which an abundance of resources are wasted trying to achieve.

“As on Mount Everest, not every expedition is successful, but every step upwards moves us in a positive direction,” states the plan. And yet, as on Mount Everest, those unsuccessful upward expeditions based on poor planning usually end in downward retreat at best, or complete and utter disaster at worst. If you're going to climb a mountain – any mountain – your ability to do so should match your ability, because anything else is simply not sustainable. And that's why “Everest Goals” make incredibly poor benchmarks for planning purposes. If we've no realistic expectation of meeting the goal, why are we wasting all of our scarce resources on achieving it? Perhaps a more realistic destination ought to have been chosen.

Evidence-Based Planning vs. Counterfactualism

A man's dream should always exceed his grasp – I agree with that sentiment, but I think there's a question of how we determine an appropriate size for that gap. There's something to be said for having the audacity to dream big – but I think most taxpayers prefer a degree of realism when it comes to public spending and the use of public resources in the pursuit of shared goals. That's why it's so important for plans, including economic development plans, to set achievable, measurable, implementable goals based on clear evidence, and not pie-in-the-sky dreaming.

In this specific case, the Everest Goal – 10,000 jobs, representing a growth in the City's population of 30,000 new people in the next 10 years – isn't one based on anything like evidence. In fact, while the Plan acknowledges the recent Hemson Consulting report which looked at the City's expected population and job growth over the next 20 years (just 10,500 people over that period), it nevertheless rejected the good work which Hemson has done based on realistic, evidence-based growth modelling, and has instead chosen a counterfactual and unrealistic starting point for it's over-arching goal. Keep in mind, the Everest Goal is the one from which all of the other 114 goals flow. Starting in an unrealistic place – a place lacking in evidence – significantly diminishes the Plan and leads to sincere questions about the Plan's long-term sustainability.

Sustainability Should Be the Focus

But sustainability doesn't really seem to be something that the Plan is ultimately concerned with anyway. We're talking about growth for the sake of growth here, because growth has been always equated with economic development, at least in the past. Of course, new theories of economic development have been around for a few decades now – ones which aren't based on the old, failed growth paradigm, but rather use a suite of markers to determine success (markers such as happiness, environmental sustainability, and social equity).

It's 2015. It completely amazes me that a Plan developed from the guidance of steering committee consisting of 24 members from the business community, academia, government, labour and the arts community, could lack a focus on what's really important to Greater Sudburians – sustainability. Yes, Greater Sudburians are concerned about sustainable development, whether they know it or not. All that griping about our roads, or burst watermains? That's because we can't pay to the costs to maintain our current physical infrastructure. Despite never having budgeted for long-term maintenance of our infrastructure, we continue to hear that property taxes are too high, and user fees are gouging residents. Again, those aren't matters which “growth” is going to address. It hasn't elsewhere, and it hasn't in Greater Sudbury.

Growth clearly isn't the answer. And if it's not the answer, why are we pursuing it? And not just pursuing it – “From the Ground Up” would have us pursue it in a single-minded manner, almost as automatons, with “everything one can give” - even when it's not based on evidence or reality.

Implementation Matters

Dick Di Stefano urged every citizen in our City to embrace this Plan as a way forward. I think that would be foolhardy, although I have to acknowledge that Plans like these will most often sit on the shelves, collecting dust – trotted out only rarely for some moribund annual reporting exercise. This isn't a “living plan” - it's a snapshot in time, viewed through a 1980s Danny Gecko-type lens.

Plans ought to identify responsibility for implementation. While there are “partners” identified for the 114 goals of the Plan (most of which are organizations in our community), there's a clear lack of ownership of the specific goals. The Plan calls for monitoring and report-backs quarterly to the public, and annually to Council, but those are all to be done by the Development Corporation. If Laurentian University, for example, doesn't want to play ball “maximizing partnerships to promote more innovative and globally connected entrepreneurship start ups, and to leverage and compliment existing entrepreneurship structures and programming,” as per Goal 1.3.5, then what are the consequences?

Ownership of goals is critical for implementation. So is plan monitoring and review. That a plan is monitored is important, but how it is monitored is just as important. What are the benchmarks for success? What are the timeframes for implementation? Yes, From the Ground Up does identify timeframes for each goal – short, medium and long, but that's it. Where's the implementation plan to accompany the goals? What actions specifically will lead to these goals being achieved? Who needs to undertake them? We can have as much reporting back as we want, and undoubtedly some of the goals identified here will end up being met – but if they do, it won't be because the Plan provided a lot of direction. It will be because the goal made sense and those involved in working towards the outcomes went and figured out a way to do it outside of the Plan.

If we're serious about wanting the success of specific goals, we should be serious about developing a path forward in which there's a realistic and detailed way of achieving the goal. That's called an Action Plan – and it's something which is clearly missing in From the Ground Up.

We Measure What We Value

The Plan does identifies “Key Performance Indicators” on which report backs will be prepared. These indicators are very telling, as they intend to measure the Plan's success based on what's important, or valued. The success of the Plan will be determined by counting things: the number of jobs (presumably “more” will be better than “less”, although it's not specified); the number of students enrolled; the number of products tested; the value of building permits; the number of unemployed individuals (and other numbers).

None of the Key Performance indicators measure those things which are actually important to Greater Sudburians – the livability of our City; the rate of municipal property taxes vs. earnings; the sustainability of our municipal infrastructure. Again, let me be clear: we can have all of the growth we can get, but if we're worse off as a City as a result, what was the point?

That being said, these Performance Indicators may be well-suited to the Plan prepared by the Economic Development Corporation, because the measure of primary importance to the Plan is simply the creation of jobs. If we have more jobs tomorrow than we do today, that'll be a success from the Plan's point of view.

And that's just not good enough.

Economic Development = Long Term Sustainability

The point of any economic development stratetegy should be to prioritize the health and well-being of citizens, along with long-term fiscal sustainability. The Province of Alberta here provides a prescient object lesson. Throughout the 2000's, Alberta's economy boomed, but the Province failed to invest in the infrastructure needed to make cities more livable. Only later did it realize that health care and social services, long neglected, were not meeting the needs of Albertans. Rather than using revenues from the boom economy to invest in Alberta, and to generate additional revenues, Albertans were left to muddle through the boom economy, which may have worked well for those in the midst of the boom, but for others outside, no so much.

Well, now that the boom is over, what does Alberta have to show for all of that growth? Not as much as it might have otherwise have leveraged for sure – along with a provincial fiscal deficit of about $7 billion dollars. Alberta had the chance to leverage growth there in a way which left average Albertans better off than they were in the past. Largely, this hasn't really happened. When growth for growth's sake is your priority, that's what you get. When you plan to make the long-term health and well-being of people your economic priority, that's what you'll get. And that's why it's astounding that our City is being urged to embrace an economic development plan which actually doesn't prioritize our health and well-being, but rather simply pursues growth as if growth were all that mattered.

Good Goals

Yes, I know – what I've written there doesn't acknowledge all of the good which will come from achieving many of the goals identified in the Plan. Who wouldn't think that attracting academic and industry leaders to our City is a worthwhile endeavour to undertake, or that development a program to retain skilled workers and graduates would benefit our City? Again, I acknowledge that there are many good goals in the Plan that we ought to be pursuing, despite the growth paradigm in which the Plan was developed.

But what about goals like, “ensuring that Greater Sudbury's roads network meets the needs of current and future economic growth”? On the surface, that seems reasonable – sustainable, even. But what are our “needs”? Are they based on Hemson (10,500 people over 20 years), or From the Ground Up (30,000 people over 10 years)? And why single out our roads when there are other components of our transportation system which we ought to be focusing on – likely as even a greater priority?

And are the other 114 goals identified realistic in the context of reality, or just in the context of the counterfactual Everest Goal? Likely, many of them are – but to what degree? Can they actually be achieved in our existing context, or is success contingent upon achieving a completely unrealistic goal?

Again, if you start your plan in the wrong place, these are the sorts of traps that you'll fall into.

Thinking More Broadly About Economic Development

And what about goals not mentioned? What about developing tools to better achieve housing affordability for everybody? Or what about the bold step of achieving economic development goals by ending homelessness, as they've done in Medicine Hat? Not only are these measures potentially ones which would contribute to greater economic stability (although not necessarily growth or job creation), they're also ones which are likely to lead to greater livability in our communities and the happiness of residents. Those are just two examples.

The Plan's Appendix A, Consultation Summary, actually identifies numerous items which could have been made Plan goals, but weren't. In many cases, items identified from the community conflict with one another (some want more roads like Maley Drive, while others want to curb sprawl and intensify development), but many would be worthwhile pursuits for economic reasons (example: ensure drinking water quality remains high; moving downtown rail lines; more green space). However, the lack of focus on jobs (which are, after all, what the Performance Indicators will measure), probably doomed these valuable suggestions to the Appendices rather than the body of the Plan.

Going Forward – Making Economic Development Work For People

A lot of good work went the development of “From the Ground Up”, but the Plan's lack of basis in reality, coupled with a poor implementation strategy and performance measures which aren't based on sustainable or even necessarily positive outcomes will lead to this Plan taking up space on the City's shelves, collecting dust. That it also contains important goals which we can all work towards achieving is besides the point. The 10,000 job Everest Goal, for example, won't be translated into the City's Official Plan, or Infrastructure Plan, because those Plans are based on evidence, and not on counterfactual aspirations.

Going forward, let's make economic development initiatives and strategies work for the betterment of our City and its residents, rather than simply pursuing growth for the sake of growth. Let's develop a real economic development strategy, based on evidence, with long-term sustainability at its heart, to better help guide our way forward in the 21^st Century.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the positions and policies of the Green Parties of Ontario and Canada)

After 2015, NDP Must Reject Mulcair, Notley and Embrace True Progressive Leadership

2015 will undoubtedly go down in history as a disastrous year for Canada’s New Democrats.  A series of events, followed by selective blunders on the part of the Party, damaged the federal NDP to an extent that it may not be possible to salvage the Party going forward – at least not as presently constituted.

It all started with Bill C-51.  The NDP’s initial hesitancy and waffling saw it cede the moral high ground on opposing the bill to the Green Party.  Ultimately – and likely after being shown the way by focus groups – the NDP decided to oppose the bill, which proved to be the right decision with its base, and with a growing number of Canadians.  But it was during those dark days when the Green Party stood alone against Bill C-51 that the NDP’s credibility took a hit, leaving many of its base scratching their heads with regards to just where their party stood on important, progressive issues.  

This would be a pattern which played itself out again and again throughout 2015, right up until NDP leader Tom Mulcair took a strong, principled position on the niqab during the election period – a position with many have suggested cost him the election.  Personally, I’m not so sure that the niqab was what lost the NDP the election.  Instead, the NDP’s lack of clarity on important issues of the day appeared to cast a longer shadow with Canadian voters looking for progressive change.  Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was able to articulate specific promises for action in a way that Mulcair never did – and on election day, Trudeau was awarded with a majority government, while Mulcair’s NDP lost more than half their seats and went back to third party status.

The Victorious Alberta NDP

Things really started to go wrong for the NDP in May, when Rachel Notley’s provincial NDP won an unexpected victory in Alberta.  Yes – you read that correctly: Notley’s majority government victory will likely prove to be one of the significant nails in the coffin of the federal NDP, going forward.  Here’s why.

Notley’s NDP government probably faces some of the most significant challenges that any provincial government is facing at this time, or any other in Canada’s history.  After 4 decades of Progressive Conservative rule, Albertans were looking for an alternative – and a slim majority of them turned to Notely and the NDP.  This slim majority – just a little over 40% of 54% of voters who bothered to vote – ended up handing the NDP a majority government – but one facing incredible economic challenges unparalleled in Alberta’s history. 

To succeed, Notley has the almost impossible task of steering an economy powered by non-renewable resources, while simultaneously implementing progressive policies which ought to transform Alberta into a more progressive society.  Much more likely, Notley's NDP government will enter the pantheon of one-term failures, taking its place beside Ontario’s NDP government under Bob Rae.  As the Alberta NDP’s failure unfolds in slow motion over the next 3 or 4 years, it is likely to tank support for the federal NDP, especially if Notley’s ideological soul-mate, Tom Mulcair, stays at the helm, as he said he will.

NDP In the Back Seat on Climate Change

At the end of 2016, Alberta may be the only jurisdiction in federation led by a New Democrat. What happens in Alberta matters to Canada, and to New Democrats in a way that other provincial efforts in Manitoba or Nova Scotia don’t or never did.   Notley’s party is supposed to the play the role of the shiny new government on the hill – a veritable beacon for progressivism.  It’s already not playing itself out that way, and by this I’m not referring to the death threats she’s receiving from idiot right-wing partisans over Notley’s desire to provide better safety for agricultural workers.

With a growing concern among Canadians about climate change, and with the Liberals at least starting a discussion about what Canada is going to do to lower our greenhouse  gas emissions, New Democrats are increasingly taking a back seat.  No – change that.  The NDP has long taken a back-seat on climate change, much to its shame and discredit. 

Climate change was yet another issue that NDP leader Tom Mulcair refused to allow himself to be pinned down on during the federal election.  New Democrats in Alberta and the west were advocating building more pipelines, while those in Quebec appeared to be against that approach.  Mulcair appeared to be endorsing this confusion during the campaign, by saying different things in different parts of the country (see: "Thomas Mulcair walking a fine cross-country line on Energy East," the Globe and Mail, July 16, 2015).  At the end of the day, though, the NDP’s evolving policy position landed on tentative support for the Energy East and Trans Mountain pipeline, as long as the NEB review process was reformed to take into consideration climate impacts.  In short, the NDP adopted the position which Justin Trudeau had been articulating for months.

Alberta NDP's Plan to Fight Climate Change By Expanding the Tar Sands

Notley has been a much more enthusiastic supporter of building pipelines and expanding the tar sands (see: "Notley wows business leaders with pro-oilsands speech," the Calgary Herald, July 8, 2015).  The centrepiece of her so-called climate change initiative, unveiled after the federal general election, and just before COP 21 in Paris, will see greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands continue to rise for the next 15 years until they are roughly 43% higher than today (see: "Notley's climate change marketing triumph," the Globe and Mail, November 24, 2015).  Simply put, this means that Alberta will remain on-target to expand the tar sands industrial enterprise, climate be damned.  

Of course, this initiative was spun as a climate-positive – “Oh look – Alberta is going to put a cap on tar sands production”, but this cap will do little good to help meet Canada’s short and medium term emissions targets – and those targets are likely to get even more stringent under Trudeau and Environment and Climate Change Minister, Catherine McKenna – especially if the Liberals are as serious as they appear to be about holding warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

While Notley’s NDP are proposing to do some good in the struggle against climate change, by putting a rising price on carbon emissions and eventually closing coal plants - measures which should have been undertaken before now - the overall plan only appears to be progressive in the context of the woeful efforts made by every other province.  Ultimately, Alberta’s NDP has provided the tar sands with a license to pollute, and the potential environmental cover to lobby for the bitumen pipelines will be needed to ship product from the expanded enterprise.  And you can bet that the NDP will not be revisiting this weak effort for the remainder of their mandate – unless it’s to backslide in a manner that we’ve seen from Christy Clark’s Liberals in B.C.

A Pro-Pipeline NDP Has No Future in a Climate-Conscious Canada

I don’t believe that a pro-pipeline, tar sands-expanding NDP has much of a future in Canada – particularly if the federal Liberals and their counterparts in Ontario and Quebec really do get serious about tackling climate change.  And although I’m not holding my breath that the Liberals will actually will do that (see: "Sudbury Column: Trudeau is no climate champion," Steve May, the Sudbury Star, October 24, 2015), it looks like the best outcome for the NDP would be to find itself on the same page as the Liberals are with regards to climate change, and that’s hardly the sort of leadership that progressive Canadians are looking for.

Make no mistake.  Since Harper’s government went down in flames this past October, climate change has been one of the biggest stories of our times.  #COP21 in Paris clearly had a little something to do with that – but the energy and momentum which has been built up around this issue over the past few months isn’t likely to dissipate.  Throughout 2016, climate change will continue to make political headlines, as Trudeau and provincial leaders meet to hammer out a process for an agreement this spring, which will no doubt remain in the headlines until some of the details get sketched in.  Kathleen Wynne’s government will be telling Ontarians the specifics around their #OnClimate plan, and we can expect the issue to remain front and centre for other provincial governments as well.

And of course, south of the border, we may very well see climate change become one of several defining election issues, especially if Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders gets the nod from the Democratic Party.  Since most of the Republican Party's front runners refuse to acknowledge the reality of climate change or outwardly call it a “hoax” as Donald Trump has (see: "6 of Donald Trump's most outrageous tweets on climate change," EcoWatch, December 19, 2015), we can expect the Democrats, especially under Sanders, to make hay with the scientific ignorance of the Republican leadership.  I can’t think of any better way of keeping climate change front and centre in our news media than an all-out war between Presidential candidates over whether climate change actually exists.  Elsewhere, the war between the know-nothings and those who believe in reality was fought years ago, with predictable results.  While many Conservatives in Canada may be keen to use Trump or Cruz to re-fight that war here at home, a significant majority of Canadians already understand that the climate is changing, and most of them want our governments to do something about it.

Whither Tom Mulcair on Climate Change?

Which takes us back to the NDP, and Rachel Notley and Tom Mulcair.  Both Notley and Mulcair are clearly standing in the way of the sort of progressive and aggressive positioning that the NDP ought to be taking on climate change.  As an example, over the past few months, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May – the leader of a party with but one seat in the House – was all over the national media, talking about climate change and equity.  Admittedly, May is a bit of a niche expert on the subject in a way that no other elected MP in the nation is.  But I heard from many progressives, and couldn’t help but wonder myself – just where was Tom Mulcair?  Ultimately, he showed up in Paris with the multi-party delegation put together by Trudeau – but his and his party’s contribution to the national dialogue on climate change was missing in action.

Today, Mulcair says that one of the things the NDP will be doing going forward is to hold Justin Trudeau’s feet to the fire on climate change (see; "How Tom Mulcair plans on opposing Trudeau's Liberals," Maclean's, December 22, 2015).  Just how the NDP plan to do that when their own party is largely in agreement with where the Liberals are today is unclear.  Going forward, it may very well be that the Liberals in government end up completely outflanking the NDP on climate change.  The Liberals have a lot of room to maneuver on climate at this point, as they’ve not even begun to form a national plan.  The NDP, on the other hand, have very little room to move their party on this issue, thanks to Rachel Notley’s NDP government sitting on top of what’s been called North America’s “carbon bomb”.

Any policy changes which the rank and file NDP might be thinking of calling for which would end up offending the sensibilities of Albertans are likely to be no-go’s for the federal party.  Divesting public sector pension funds of tar sands stocks?  Not likely.  Slow down pipeline approvals?  Only until climate is built into their review, but then it’s full steam ahead.  A moratorium on tar sands development?  No way.  Allocating provincial carbon budgets? Not going to happen.

At one time, the NDP occupied the moral high ground on climate change.  The Climate ChangeAccountability Act, first introduced by the NDP in 2006, would have established what were at that time considered to be very aggressive emissions reductions targets. Unfortunately, the NDP hasn’t moved at all since then, and has failed to develop anything resembling a plan on how Canada can achieve those targets.  By sitting still on climate change, they’ve been overtaken by the Liberals.  And like World War II convoys, since the NDP can only move as quickly as its slowest component – in this case, Rachel Notley – it’s not likely at all that they’ll be able to play catch up.

That is unless the NDP takes drastic action.  And they might just do that.

Time for the NDP to Get Serious About Climate Change

Already, discussions inside the Party have percolated out to the public.  One of the matters being raised as a concern for the federal Party is just how closely the federal and provincial parties are tied to one another.  The NDP is the only political party in Canada which requires its members to join both the federal and provincial parties when they’re buying a membership.  If you want to be a New Democrat in Alberta, you’re going to have to be a federal member too.  And although the various parties like to claim that they are independent from one another, this multiple membership practice really does bring the provincial and federal elements of the NDP together in such a way that it stretches credibility to suggest that true independence exists. 

For the federal NDP to regain the moral high ground on climate change, and to reduce the future impacts of guilt by association, they’re going to need to sever their ties with Notley’s sinking ship.   Severance itself might not go far enough – outright repudiation may be necessary.  Repudiation is, in fact, just what Canada needs right now, because Canada’s largest emitter, the province of Alberta, has locked itself in to an emissions "reduction" strategy which continues to condemn Canada to rising emissions, or forces the other provinces to pick up the slack in a way that may seriously damage their economies.

Purging Tony Blair

Jettisoning Notley will give the federal NDP the room that it needs to get serious about embracing a carbon neutral economy.   But she’s not the only one that will have to go: NDP Leader Tom Mulcair is clearly not cut out for the job of leading the NDP away from it’s mush-middle, focus-grouped populism.  Under Mulcair, the NDP has lost its principles.  This was entirely evident throughout the recent election:  Mulciar ran on a platform of not running deficits, effectively eliminating opportunities for fiscal flexibility and setting his government up for Jean Chretien-style cuts.  The non-position on climate change, coupled with lacklustre opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership found voters scratching their heads in wonderment about just what the NDP actually stood for.  And of course, who can forget the Party sinking its own candidates because they had dared question Canada’s unwavering support for Israel, or  spoke about the reality of having to leave fossil resources in the ground?

To a significant degree, Margaret Thatcher-loving Tom Mulcair owns these mistakes, from which he can’t escape.  As long as he leads his Party, he holds it hostage.  Mulcair remains more Tony Blair than Bernie Sanders – and it’s the latter that Canada needs a lot more of, and the former we could use a little less of (after all, we already have one Justin Trudeau!).

Why Should Orange Listen to a Partisan Green?

It may be easy for readers to brush this critique aside.  After all, I’m not a New Democrat, and I am instead invested in another political party.  Further, I have always been tough on the NDP in a way that I have not been on the Liberals – although I have always acknowledged that toughness and explained to my readers that it’s because I have largely given up hope on the Liberals and can’t be bothered wasting much time with them, whereas I continue to believe that a strong NDP is in Canada’s interests – if the NDP could become more like the Green Party.

Partisanship aside, it’s hard to deny where the future is heading – and I am certain than many of my New Democratic friends experience some unease with the direction that their Party has been taking lately.  Just as other left-wing political parties are starting to find the courage to denounce Blair-ism (see: Jeremy Corbynn in the UK, and Bernie Sanders in the US), Tom Mulcair’s vow to stay the course and lead the NDP into the 2019 election must create a feeling of unease – one which will assuredly grow as Notley’s New Democrats continue to wither. 

B.C. and Ontario may offer some optimism, but again provincial NDP leaders in those two provinces may find that they are unable to offer voters a principled, progressive vision.  Ontario might be the better bet for New Democrats, as Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals are doing everything that they can to make themselves the most hated government in Canada.  But if NDP leader Andrea Horwarth fails again to articulate a cohesive vision to voters, Ontario could find itself with a new PC government in 2018. 

In British Columbia, the NDP will be face a minor challenge from the BC Green Party on its flank – a position that will undoubtedly make BC NDP leader John Horgan contort like a pretzel, which could sink his chances for the Premier’s chair just as Adrian Dix before him was sunk.   Horgan and Horwarth are part of the NDP old guard anyway – they’re browns at a time when greens are coming into style. 

I believe, though, that unless the federal NDP ditches Tom Mulcair and opts for a new, progressive voice – say a Linda McQuaig or a Naomi Klein – come 2020, New Democrats will look back at 2015 in order to pinpoint when everything went wrong for their party.  In 2016, however, rank and file NDP will have a chance to right their sinking ship through a leadership review.  Let’s hope they’re up to the challenge, because Canada needs a principled New Democratic Party at this time in our history.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the Green Parties of Ontario and Canada)

Get Ready for a Global Transformation

The Paris climate summit went into overtime last weekend, but the results were worth the wait. Just about every national government on Earth put their names to a binding agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees C.

Canada, for a change, helped break down barriers between nations by championing a 1.5 degree C target, which ultimately worked its way into the agreement as an aspirational goal.

Appropriately, Canada's delegation to Paris included First Nation and municipal leaders. First Nation communities, especially those in northern regions, are finding that they are on the front lines of climate impacts. Municipalities are discovering that, like it or not, they're going to be the ones to do much of the heavy lifting to limit warming.

Climate models consistently show that northern regions are the most vulnerable to climate impacts. Globally, we've already experienced average warming of almost 1 degree C since pre-industrial times, but that warming hasn't been uniform throughout the Earth's climate system.

#ONclimate, Ontario's Climate Change Strategy, released by the provincial government shortly before the Paris climate summit, estimates that Northern Ontario could see a rise in average winter temperature of 4 to 9 degrees C by 2050.

Indigenous peoples living in Ontario's north are already feeling the effects of a warmer world. Warmer winters mean a shortened season for ice roads that many First Nation communities rely on for the transport of goods.

With more moisture in the air, severe weather events such as ice storms are expected to become more frequent. Melting permafrost in the Hudson Bay Lowlands - one of the world's largest wetlands - could alter significant northern ecosystems and release a considerable amount of new greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, exacerbating the crisis.

Although the international community agreed to limit warming between 2 and 1.5 degrees in Paris, we don't yet have a road map to get us there. When international commitments to limit warming were plugged into computer modelling before the Paris talks, it was found that the world was on a path of approximately 2.7 degrees C of warming by the end of the century (see: "INDC's lower warming to 2.7 degrees: significant progress, but still above 2 degrees C," climateprogresstracker.org, October 1, 2015.)

Clearly, nations like Canada, which promised only a 30 per cent reduction in emissions from 2005 levels by 2030, have lacked the ambition required for success.

If Canada is to demonstrate a serious willingness to limit warming to the 1.5 degrees our government championed in Paris, it will require embracing system-wide changes impacting governments, businesses and the economy. Pricing carbon pollution and prohibiting new fossil development in the tar sands won't be enough. We'll need to electrify our transportation and home heating systems, while aggressively pursuing energy conservation.

This task should not scare Canadians. Instead, we should embrace this challenge as an opportunity to create a healthier, more prosperous society. A serious commitment to reduce warming will lead to job creation, as we undertake the task of retrofitting our energy and transportation systems and our built environment.

In this emerging environment, cities are strategically positioned to be leaders. Ontario's transportation sector is responsible for 35 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, and our buildings account for an additional 19 per cent. Complete communities that encourage transit, walking and cycling, and built at higher densities, use scarce resources more efficiently.

Cities are already finding that low-carbon, people-centred communities are driving local economies in a way that suburban sprawl never did.

Our vulnerable northern communities are counting on global action in line with the Paris agreement. If we are serious about limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C, the world we'll create by 2050 won't be recognizable to us today.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the Green Parties of Ontario and Canada)

Originally published in the Sudbury Star as "Sudbury Column: We must be part of transformation," on December 19, 2015 - without hyperlinks.

Beg Buttons in Downtown Sudbury Bad News for Pedestrians

This may be problematic. Right now, at most downtown Sudbury intersections, pedestrian crossing signals are activated automatically when the lights change. This set-up is generally a good one for pedestrians, as there's no need to go hunting for a button to push before crossing. Buttons can be difficult to locate, or located in areas which aren't accessible for all pedestrians.

However, it seems that "beg buttons" are starting to pop in places where they've never been before, including Elgin and Ste. Anne Road, and most recently at Elgin and Elm Street. If this is the City's response to the recent rash of pedestrian collisions, many of which have happened in the downtown especially on Elgin Street - this is the wrong response.

Beg buttons make it more difficult for pedestrians - and easier for vehicular traffic. Besides issues of accessibility, what often happens with traffic flow is that a higher volume street will experience a longer duration for traffic - unless and until a beg button is activated by a pedestrian (see: "How 'Push-to-Walk' reduces the quality of walkable neighbourhoods," Transitized, December 30, 2012). Higher volume flow tends to mean greater rates of speed - which is something that our downtown certainly doesn't need more of, especially along Elm Street.

All of the good work that the recent Elm Street pilot parking project has accomplished could be wiped out by making the pedestrian environment along Elm and Elgin less friendly at the expense of moving motorized vehicles through the downtown more quickly.  Of course, the City's Roads staff have always been opposed to allowing on-street parking on Elm Street, out of concern that it would affect the flow of traffic.  A recent report showed that traffic in fact has been slowed travelling through this corridor - albeit only by about 24 seconds.  That's not nearly enough to have had a significant impact on Elm Street, in my opinion - it's still one of the least desirable streets for pedestrians in our core, although it has been getting a little better.

It may be that these Beg Buttons are showing up now because Roads staff are concerned that pedestrians aren't obeying traffic signals in the downtown core.  If you make someone press a button to cross the road, chances are they're going to wait for a signal that they themselves just activated.  But as far as safety goes, Beg Buttons just don't cut it, because ultimately they end up frustrating pedestrians who then in anger often cross intersections against signals (see: "Letter to Stephen Buckley, General Manager, City of Toronto," Walk Toronto, January 20, 2015).

Rather than focusing on making traffic flow more quickly through our downtown, we ought to be focusing on making our downtown community more pedestrian-friendly.  From a safety perspective, that makes sense - and it makes sense from an economic perspective as well, as pedestrians tend to spend more money in our downtowns that people travelling through them to get to other destinations.

Progressive jurisdictions are moving away from Beg Buttons. As a citizen and taxpayer in Greater Sudbury, I can't help but wonder why it is that we are seeing new Beg Buttons installed in our downtown core.

(opinions expressed in this blogpost are my own and should not be considered consistent with the policies and positions of the Green Parties of Ontario and Canada).

Thanks to Sudbury Move's Matt Alexander for much of the local information contained in this post.  You can find Sudbury Moves on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCojhHCoETabtq_BHO39H2pQ

Fossil Fuel Divestment Ramping Up

Green energy continues to grow by leaps and bounds, as we begin the massive undertaking of decarbonizng the global economy.  It’s been thought that making the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy would take generations, but reports released this week suggest that the writing really is on the wall for fossil energy.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a report that shows how major Canadian public pension fund managers are losing money by backing fossil fuel industries (see:“Pension Funds and Fossil Fuels: the Economic Case for Divestment,” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, November 2015).  Clean capitalism research company Corporate Knights also released a report which concluded that by betting on fossil fuels, some of the world’s largest pension funds have collectively lost out on $22 billion since 2012 – the year the divestment movement began (see: “What kind of world do you want to invest in?” Corporate Knights, November 16, 2015).

Back in 2012, 350.org founder Bill McKibben wrote a now famous piece for Rolling Stone magazine calling on University endowments, pension trusts and other fund managers to divest their holdings in fossil fuel companies (see: “Global warming’s terrifying new math,” Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone Magazine, July 19, 2012).  McKibben suggested  the aims of fossil fuel companies to derive profit from their resource holdings were incompatible with limiting warming to just 2 degrees Celsius – the international target established in the 2009 Copenhagen Protocol.

McKibben drew the parallel with the 1980’s divestment movement aimed at South Africa’s apartheid government, linking fossil fuel divestment with a moral imperative to stop harming the planet. This moral imperative was loudly echoed earlier this year by Pope Francis, who alerted all global citizens and our leaders to the need to be better stewards of the planet and the global economy.

Many have doubted that a moral case alone would be enough to motivate financiers to move away from profitable fossil fuel holdings.  In the world of high finance, return on investment often trumps just about every other consideration.  But It’s because ‘money talks’ that optimism is growing for green investment initiatives, due to their high rate of return.  For example, last year’s government of Ontario $500 million Green Bond option for transit quickly became oversubscribed with bids totalling $2.5 billion. 

As for fossil fuels, investors have numerous reasons to abandon ship, as green energy infrastructure becomes more competitive with fossil sources. The latest slump in oil prices has meant that new production from expensive tar sands projects will be delayed.  If the world decides to take real action to hold warming below 2 degrees Celsius, those delays could become permanent, as the best available science says as much as 80% of Canada’s proven oil resources will need to remain safely sequestered in the ground (see: “Canada’s Carbon Liabilities: The Implications for Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets for Financial Markets and Pension Funds,” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, March 2013).

Those proven reserves represent real value to shareholders.  If reserves can’t be exploited due to market pricing condition or climate initiatives (or both), whomever is left holding the fossil fuel hot potato when the carbon bubble bursts is going to get burned.  And that’s why public pension fund managers need to make sure their members are safely insulated from the coming shock by passing on risky, money-losing fossil holdings.

Climate liability is another factor investors are starting to consider.  Will our children hold the world’s fossil energy companies legally culpable for the damages done to the planet, in the same way that we’ve made tobacco companies pay for some of the public health costs attributable to their products? While that may seem an abstract question right now, pension fund managers who take a longer view of investment risks should take note.

Divesting from fossil holdings is consistent with the fiduciary responsibility of investment fund managers.  As financial backers increasingly flee bad investment choices in the fossil energy sector and embrace green economic initiatives, a decarbonized economy will likely be upon us sooner than we think.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the Green Parties of Ontario and Canada)

Originally published in the Sudbury Star as "SudburyColumn: Fossil fuel becoming bad investment," on November 21, 2015 - without hyperlinks.

Letter to Greater Sudbury Council Regarding the Maley Drive Extension and Widening Project

To: Mayor Brian Bigger and Members of Council,

I am writing to you today with regards to the Maley Drive Widening and Extension project.  As you may know, I have written about this matter publicly through different media, including my blog (available at www.sudburysteve.ca – see below).   

I have reviewed publicly-available information pertaining to this project, and I have noted how this project has changed in scope and scale over time. Based on the information recently provided to Council at its meeting of November 3, 2015, it appears that the changes made to the Maley Drive Widening and Extension project (“the project”) have never been approved by Council through by-law or Resolution.  As a result, the current version of the Maley project which is now proceeding should be discussed at the Council table and Council should make a decision whether to proceed with the revised project or not.

History of the Project – Scope & Scale

According to the 1995 Environmental Assessment, the Maley Drive project was originally proposed as:  a two-lane upgrade to the existing portion of Maley Drive between Barrydowne and Old Falconbridge Road, and a 4-lane upgraded road from Old Falconbridge to Road to Flaconbridge Road; the creation of a new two-lane road between Barrydowne and Lasalle Blvd; and an upgraded to Lasalle Blvd. rom approximately College Boreal to Frood Road (see page87, “Maley Drive Extension/Lasalle Blvd. Widening Municipal Class EA Addendum,” Earth Tech Canada, May 15, 2008).

Further to the City’s review of its transportation system through the 2005 Transportation Study Report, in 2008, the scope and scale of the project was expanded to include that section of Lasalle Blvd. between Frood Road and MR 35 (Elm Street), with that section between Falconbridge Road and Lasalle Blvd. at College Boreal going to 4 lanes in its entirety.

A brief history of the Maley Drive project before Council is summarized here:

•  May 2006: Council adopts resolution #2006-644 identifying Maley Drive as a priority for federal and/or provincial infrastructure funding.
• April 2009: Council adopts a resolution that, “Council supports and will fund the Maley Drive Extension project, and direst staff to submit the Maley Drive Extension Project Proposal to the Building Canada Fund”.
• May 2009: application to the Building Canada Fund submitted.
• January 2011: via Council Resolution #2011-23, Council resolves, “that Council confirms that the Maley Drive Extension Project be identified as the No. 1 priority for Provincial and/or Federal infrastructure funding as part of the Build Canada program.
• August 2012: 3-part phasing of Maley Drive project proposed.
• August 2012: Through resolution CC2012-289, Council resolves that, “Mayor and staff continue to pursue senior levels of government for funding to support the entire project and staff prepare additional applications for phased funding.”

The Project Before Council

Since August, 2012, the Maley Drive project appears not to have returned to Council, despite significant changes proposed to scope, scale and costs.  Specifically, the project in 2012, according to the Report prepared jointly by the City of Greater Sudbury and AECOM, identified a 3-part phased approach to project completion, totalling $93 million in construction costs along with an additional $36 million in Associated Costs, for total project costs of $129 million.  Timelines for the completion of each phase were provided to Council in the August 8, 2012 Report prepared by David Shelsted, Director of Roads and Transportation Services. Timelines for completion of all 3 phases were estimated to be between spring 2013 and fall 2016.

The scope and scale of the Maley Drive project, the phasing of the project, and the project’s anticipated costs have all changed since the August 2012 phasing presentation and its endorsement by Council.  According to the series of documents submitted to Council on November 3, 2015, phasing for Maley Drive is now being considered in two parts, rather than three; and costs appear to have risen to over $150 million (up from $129 million in 2012).

With regards to phasing, Phase 1 of Maley Drive is now identified as being that section of Maley between approximately College Boreal on Lasalle Blvd. to Barrydowne Road, with the existing section of Maley to be “rehabilitated” between Barrydowne Road and Falconbridge.  It is unclear exactly what “rehabilitation” is to occur, but this “rehabilitation” will not include upgrading this stretch of Maley to 4 lanes as contemplated in the 2008 Environmental Assessment Addendum to the 1995 Assessment.

Significant Changes to the Project - Costs

Phase 1 of the Maley project is estimated to cost $80.1 million, and is intended to be funded by the federal, provincial and municipal governments at one-third of the costs each, or $26.7 million each.  At this time, only the provincial government has committed the entirety of its 1/3 funding share, contingent upon the municipality and the federal government providing their one third shares.  It is widely rumoured that the federal government may be about to make a decision regarding its one-third funding of Maley.

That leaves the City of Greater Sudbury to find its one-third share of funding.  According to documentation available on the City’s website, the City currently has $12.2 million set aside for our one-third funding, and that options for financing will be presented to Council with regards to the remainder of the City’s one-third share ($14.5 million).

Phase 2 of the Maley project will consist of: widening Lasalle Blvd. between College Boreal and MR 35 (Elm Street); upgrading the recently rehabilitated section of Maley between Barrydowne and Falconbridge to 4 lanes, along with reconstructing a railway crossing in this area; and, installing roundabouts on Maley at Lansing, and on the newly built section of Maley Drive at Montrose.  Currently, costs estimated for Phase 2 total $70 million.  At present, there are no funding commitments from any level of government for Phase 2.

Revised Maley Drive Project Needs Council’s Direction

Given that the scope, scale, phasing and costs of the Maley Drive Extension and Road Widening project have changed significantly since August 2012 – the last time our Municipal Council affirmed its support for this project – it appears to me that the current version of the Maley project has not been one which has received Council’s explicit endorsement.

These changes to scale, scope, and phasing have led to a much different Maley project than what was originally contemplated by Council in 2009 at the time of initial requests for funding under Building Canada, and in 2011 when Council first identified Maley as it’s “No. 1 priority” project.  The phasing of the completion of the Maley project does not correspond to what was presented to Council in August, 2012.  And the costs of the current 2-Phase project have increased by approximately $30 million since 2012.

Not only has Council not authorized the phasing approach to the Maley project, it has not yet identified a means of funding for the entirety for our 1/3 share of funding for Phase 1 of the project, or how Phase 2 will be funded, if at all.

It is also entirely clear to me that the public at large have not been informed of what, exactly, the City will be getting for $80.1 million dollars – especially given the fact that at the time of the August 2012 resolution of Council, the Maley project in its entirety (from MR 35 to Falconbridge Road) was on the table and endorsed for completion by Council (albeit in 3 phases).

Does Maley Drive Project Still Make Sense?

Given this information, I believe it is incumbent upon our Municipal Council to revisit its support for a significantly revised Maley Drive project – one now consisting of two phases (only one of which has funding committed).  Council should review new assumptions with regards to whether this phased approach to funding makes sense, especially given the fact that some of the work scheduled to occur in Phase 2 will be on that part of the roadway intended to be built at the time of Phase 1. 

Council should ask whether or not it would make more sense to build the road right the first time, rather than returning to re-do the road at some point in the future.  Council should also determine whether Phase 1 continues to make sense given that 4-laning of the existing Maley Drive between Barrydowne and Falconbridge, along with grade-separation to the existing railway crossing, will only occur at some point in the future, presuming that funding should be available for the estimated $70 million in costs.

Council may also wish to consider the need for this project in its entirety, given much of the criticism which has been made in the public realm with regards to the project, along with the lack of benefits to the City of Greater Sudbury identified in the recently completed “Cost-Benefit Report” by AECOM (while monetized benefits for Maley Drive were identified by AECOM, they almost entirely will accrue only to owners of motorized vehicles, with the lion’s share going to the trucking industry – no monetized benefits to the municipality were identified in this report).

Council may also wish to consider whether proceeding with a road project of this scale based on an Environmental Assessment report prepared in 1995 and updated in 2008 continues to make sense, as it is probable that many of the assumptions related to growth and development at these times will have changed over the past 20 years.

Moving Forward

What is clear is that our municipal Council has never authorized the Maley Drive Extension and Widening project as it is presently contemplated.  As elected officials I believe that it is incumbent upon Council to provide – or not provide – a social license for this project through a further resolution of Council.  Indeed, this matter should have returned to Council some time ago, prior to changes being made to the project’s phasing.  Why Council was not requested to endorse this revised project is unclear, especially given the resolutions of Council from 2009, 2011 and 2012.

I sincerely hope that Council brings this revised project forward for discussion and decision in the very near future – and that the City keeps the public informed with regards to what, exactly, the Building Canada funding application for a portion of the Maley Drive project is expected to cover.

Sincerely,

Steve May, Val Caron

Background:

“Maley Drive Extension/Lasalle Boulevard Widening MunicipalClass EA Addendum,” Earth Tech, May 15, 2008.

“Taking a Closer Look at Maley Drive, Part 1: Costs,” Steve May, April 21, 2015.

“My Comments on Greater Sudbury’s Draft TransportationMaster Plan,” Steve May, June 26, 2015.

“Taking a Closer Look at Maley Drive, Part 2: ProjectSuburbia,” Steve May, July 22, 2015.

“Request for Recommendation: Maley Drive Extension andWidening Project – Background,” City of Greater Sudbury, November 3, 2015.

“Some Initial Observations on the New Cost / BenefitAnalysis for the Maley Drive Extension,” Steve May, November 3, 2015.

“The Incredible Shrinking Road: Staff Pulls a Fast One onCouncil with Shorter Maley Drive,” Steve May, November 5, 2015.

“Maley Drive: How Not To Do A Cost-Benefit Analysis,” Dr. David Robinson, Economics for Northern Ontario, November 6, 2015.

“Taking a Closer Look at Maley Drive, Part 3: Expectationsfor Growth,” Steve May, November 12, 2015.

“Taking a Closer Look at Maley Drive, Part 4: Time to Endthe Subsidies,” Steve May, November 13, 2015.

(opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be considered consistent with the policies or positions of the Green Parties of Ontario and/or Canada)

Taking a Closer Look at Maley Drive, Part 4: Time to End the Subsidies

Growth and congestion go hand in hand.  The more roads we build, the more congested they become.   But for decades, traffic engineers have told elected officials and the public that we need bigger, wider and more abundant roads to ease congestion.  After decades of experimentation, it’s now become quite clear that the more roads we build to accommodate growth, the more congested our roads become (see: “California’s DOTadmits more roads means more traffic,” the Atlantic CityLab, November 11, 2015).

Building new roads doesn’t come cheap – but you might be able to justify the initial expense if there is a strong case that the benefit of having a new road will outweigh the costs.  As with any new infrastructure project, taxpayers will need to derive a good bang for the buck, usually in multiple ways. A new road can connect two or more previously unconnected areas to increase their economic interaction.  The presence of a new road could open up additional lands for development – important in areas of high growth.  And of course, a new road might help alleviate congestion, even if just for a little while.  New roads are also often touted as providing an additional level of safety for road users, although this last claim is almost always dubious, given that most new roads are built to standards which facilitate a higher level of speed – and that almost always leads to conditions which are less safe than other alternatives.

Here in Greater Sudbury, the talk of the town is the Maley Drive Extension.  This new road - running between Municipal Road 35 (Elm Street) in the west and Falconbridge Road in the east -  is to be developed in two phases, and will come with a price tag of about $130 million.  Right now, the City is seeking funding for Phase 1 of the project, and the Province has promised to chip in 1/3 of Phase 1’s $80.1 million in costs.  The federal government may very well follow suit with a 1/3 share under the Build Canada fund in the very near future.  That will leave the City to come up with about $16 million more to add to its $10+ million already in the bank to fund our 1/3 share for Phase 1.  Phase 2 is estimated to cost about another $50 million, and it remains unfunded.

For this $130 million, Greater Sudbury will get a road which will not connect currently unconnected areas to increase economic interaction (except perhaps for saving ore trucks a couple of minutes of time); will not open up any new areas to development (see: “Taking a Closer Look at MaleyDrive, Part 3: Expectations for Growth,” Sudbury Steve May, November 12, 2015); will not alleviate congestion in the long term; and will not increase safety in any measurable way.

Fighting Congestion

Regarding congestion, we might get lucky with Maley for a little while because it will essentially be a highway on the fringe of our City – similar to the under-utilized southeast and southwest by-passes are today.  But if you really want to fight congestion, there’s just one tried and true method for doing it: don’t grow.  Better yet, contract.  But that scenario doesn’t appear to be in the books for Greater Sudbury – we are expected to grow by 10,500 people over the next 20 years.

If growth is in you’re future, you’re going to have to take congestion along with it.  There are things you can do to alleviate that congestion, but studies have shown time and again that despite what the traffic engineers tell us about building bigger, wider, more numerous roads, that’s not the answer (see: “Building roads to curecongestion is an exercise in futility,” Tanya Snyder, Property and Environment Research Centre, undated).  If you want to mitigate against the impacts of congestion, especially while growing (but not only when growing), you’ve got to get people out of their cars and put them on buses, on bikes or on their own two feet.

Right now, transit, cycling and walking options are more akin to a sick joke in Greater Sudbury than they are a viable alternative to vehicular transportation for most of us.  And yet – the 2010 Sustainable Mobility Plan identified that up to 1/3 of Greater Sudburians do not have access to a car (see: “Sustainable MobilityPlan for the City of Greater Sudbury,” Rainbow Routes Association, June 2010).  Although the report’s economic analysis did not pinpoint who exactly, on an income scale, these car-less people were, I think it’s fair to suggest that largely these are people who are existing on lower incomes than the City’s median, and who may be living in poverty.

Who Benefits, Who Pays?

That’s important for a number of reason, but let me just point out one thing regarding Maley Drive here: the Cost-Benefit report which identified $11.1 million worth of benefit also says that people who don’t drive won’t receive more than a few cents of that benefit, period (see page 4 of this document, “Cost-Benefit Analysis of Maley Drive Extension,” AECOM, October 29, 2015).  The lion’s share of that benefits identified by AECOM come from a reduction in vehicular travel time – and if you don’t own a vehicle, you won’t get the benefit.  And yet people who don’t own car will see their tax money going to pay for the costs of the project.  This certainly raises some questions about the vertical equity of the Maley project in my mind – and I hope it does in yours.

The "benefit" of reduced travel time and maintenance costs for vehicle owners/operators described by AECOM can also be called a "subsidy". 

Alternative Transportation the Key to Reducing Congestion

Getting back to transit, cycling and walking – what we’re calling “alternative transportation” (which is funny if you think about it, because the very first form of transportation was walking – shouldn’t driving a motorized vehicle be the alternative?  But I digress).  We know that if we’re going to reduce congestion, the best way to do it is to get people engaged in “alternative transportation”.  And yet we have consistently failed to invest much in the way of time or treasure in facilitating these forms of transport. 

Since we don’t see people in our communities walking, we presume that there’s no need for sidewalks.  Ditto for bike lanes.  And buses, for that matter.  And it’s true: we have fairly low incidences of alternative transport use in our City.  So the perception becomes the reality. Especially when you factor in the fact that building and maintaining pedestrian and cycling infrastructure costs money – as does running buses. 

Truth is, as recently  as the 1970s, are streets were filled with people walking, especially in the

vibrant downtown part of the City.  What happened?  Well, suburbia happened – and decision-makers made driving a government-subsidized activity.  Yes, our governments actually paid people to drive their cars, and gave hand-outs to rich land developers to build subdivisions which provided people with a disincentive to walk, ride their bikes or take transit.  Folly, you say?  Well, we’re still doing it today.

Subsidized Roads

Who pays for roads like Maley Drive?  For the most part, taxpayers do.  At the municipal level of government, the revenues which pay for our roads come largely from property taxes and provincial revenue transfers.  Yes, it’s true – user fees also make up some of those revenues, including taxes collected on gasoline.  But when it comes to roads, road users are nowhere near paying the full costs of use.  Throw free parking into the mix, and it quite quickly it becomes apparent that society subsidizes road use.

We like to think that government subsidies are going towards things which make society better for most people.  Good roads make life better for everybody, no?  For the drivers who use the roads, for people who take the bus, for anyone who shops at a grocery store where goods are trucked in.  Clearly, there’s a public good inherent in roads.

But at the same time, the proliferation of roads has led to a more sedentary society with contingent higher health-related costs.  More roads has led to congestion in our communities which takes time away from our families, leading to unhappiness.  Roads have led to building cost-ineffective low density suburban communities where the provision of services by governments isn’t sustainable. And of course roads have led to a transportation system comprised almost entirely of fossil-fuel burning motorized vehicles that contribute more to Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector.  With this in mind, it’s difficult to make the case that roads are actually a net good to the public.

Net Public Good

That’s not to suggest that we shouldn’t build roads.  It is, however, to suggest that perhaps its time we, as a society, began evaluating whether it’s in our public interests to continue to subsidize the users of our roads to the extent that we’ve been doing for quite some time now.  If a net public good can’t be demonstrated, why are we continuing to throw tax dollars at the project?  Maybe it’s time for users to pay more for what they’re using, and to give the rest of us a break.

As taxpayers will be on the hook for the capital and operating costs of Maley (in other words, all of the costs), whether those costs are just the $80 million identified in AECOM’s Cost Benefit Report, or whether they are the approximately $130 million needed to actually complete Maley from MR 35 to Falconbridge Road, the fact is that all of the beneficiaries that AECOM has identified will be receiving their benefits in the form of a subsidy from the government – except those who will benefit from lower greenhouse gas emissions (which, frankly, is a complete joke.  See what Laurentian University Professor of Economics, Dr. David Robinson, has to say about Maley’s benefits on emissions: “Maley Drive: How Not to do a Cost / Benefit Analysis,” Economics for Northern Ontario, November 6, 2015).

Cost Sharing

With Maley Drive, AECOM’s biggest beneficiaries are going to be the trucking industry.  While motorists will receive a slightly larger share of those costed benefits ($8,464,000 in travel time and vehicle operating cost savings – about 51%), that share will be distributed among a much larger pool of participants.  Truckers will receive about $4,168,000 in savings, or 49% of the benefit, - but those savings will be split among a much smaller group – only about 1,000 to 1,500 users a day (and likely much fewer at peak times – maybe only 100 or so during rush hour).  Those are individual trucks, of course.  Many of these trucks are owned by just a small number of operators – so that’s where the benefit will accrue.

Given that the local trucking industry will be receiving about half of the monetized benefit of the public’s subsidy of Maley Drive, and given that the remaining benefits are of questionable utility to the public, perhaps it’s time that the public turned to the beneficiaries to help pay for some of these costs.

Preposterous, right?  We can’t ask the trucking companies to pay for the Maley Drive Extension.  We can’t ask users of our roads to pay for their use.  Who would ever think of such a thing?  They may do that in Europe or the United States, or maybe even in Southern Ontario with the 407, but this is Sudbury – we’re different.

Well, actually, we’re not that different after all.  As for who would ever think about asking users to pay for new infrastructure from which they will primarily benefit – guess what?  Greater Sudbury contemplates doing just that with specific regard to Maley Drive.  Or at least we did at one time.  The September 2005 City of Greater Sudbury Transportation Study Report, item #12 on page 112, indicated that funding will be provided through negotiated cost-sharing agreements with major industries when those industries benefit from the transportation improvement being proposed.  Right now, it’s the 2005 Transportation Study which is in effect in our City, as the more recent Transportation Master Plan has yet to be accepted by Council.

Maley - Those Who Benefit Should Pay

So, AECOM produced a Cost-Benefit report which showed that the trucking industry will receive a significant monetized benefit from the construction of the Maley Drive Extension.  Given that the City has since 2005 contemplated entering into cost sharing agreements with major industries where those industries receive a benefit from a transportation improvement, one can’t help but wonder what the status of those negotiations might be.  How much are the beneficiaries of Maley chipping in for the costs? They’re going to receive a benefit – what are they going to pay for that benefit?

Or, despite what’s written in the 2005 Transportation Study Report, does our City expect that taxpayers alone will be on the hook for this major infrastructure project which will provide limited benefit to taxpayers, and a more significant benefit to a narrow set of business users, namely the trucking industry?  Why should taxpayers subsidize this road when the identified benefits to the community will be marginal compared to costs - and probably non-existent when you factor in opportunity costs (what we'll be missing out on doing because we're paying for the Maley folly).

Greater Sudbury - Future Development

Some believe that Maley Drive may be the lynchpin for other new roads, such as widening MR 35 to Chelmsford and building the Barrydowne Expressway from New Sudbury to Hanmer.  In these grand visions, a multitude of new lane kilometers will open up the Valley (East and West) to new residential, commercial and industrial development.

Unfortunately, that development just isn’t going to come.  With enough lands already set aside to

meet our development needs for half a century, we don’t need to build more roads to facilitate new development.  Yes, the outlying areas of the City will grow – in fact, the Hemson Consulting report forecasts that those areas will continue to grow through to 2036 at the same rate that they’ve been growing, and approximately two thirds of new residents will reside outside of the former City of Sudbury.  But in terms of real numbers, we are talking about just 10,500 people – and only several thousand new households.  These aren’t big numbers, and they can easily be accommodated on lands already set aside for development in both the former City of Sudbury and in the outlying areas.  The presence or lack of presence of Maley Drive will not change a thing.

However, should we really expect two thirds of new residential growth to 2036 to occur outside of the former City of Sudbury? This assumption may need to be tested, although I understand why Hemson has included it in their report.  If the future was going to be like the past, then the trend seems a logical one.  But the future isn’t going to be like the past – we know that.   As we become even more concerned about the costs of development, are we going to continue to subsidize a suburban built form? 

Prosperity: Getting Prices Right

We would be wise to take a closer look at where the lion’s share of anticipated growth in our City should be occurring – with an eye to making our City more livable while simultaneously keeping our collective costs down.  Right now, there’s a prevalent misunderstand at large in our community in which citizens believe that property taxes from the outlying areas are subsidizing the former City.  This misunderstanding, arising from an extremely limited discussion around area rating back at the time of amalgamation, has led to considerable resentment from those living in the outlying areas.

At the time of amalgamation, it was decided that property taxes would be area rated depending upon the level of service that parts of the new City would be receiving for fire protection and transit.  At the time, it was recognized that it would be prohibitively expensive to extend the level of service enjoyed by the former City of Sudbury to the outlying areas for these two services, and as a result, a formula was developed whereby outlying area property taxes were – and remain to this day – lower than those of inner city taxpayers.

Some – mainly those in the outlying areas – have always believed that this area rating didn’t go far enough, given the perceived lower level of services that they continue to receive from the City. 

Others recognize that the chances are the opposite is happening: that inner city ratepayers are subsidizing those living in the outlying areas.  This observation is not based on any specific study of the City of Greater Sudbury, but rather based on studies from a multitude of areas which compare the costs of suburban and exurban living to those of urban areas, and which show on per capita basis, the servicing costs of suburban and exurban living are much higher for municipalities.  So unless Greater Sudbury is different from just about everywhere else, our reality is that our municipality experiences higher costs servicing the outlying areas than the inner city – but taxpayers in the inner city are paying a higher share of taxes than those in the outlying areas!

This is an example of perverse pricing.  And it is examples like this which we can expect to see turned on their heads going forward into the 21^st Century.  Getting the price right is going to become extremely important to decision-makers.

For Whom The Road is Tolled

For Greater Sudbury, that means that we will likely see a shift away from the desirability of developing in the outlying areas in preference to areas within the former City.  With new policies promoting second suites, and smaller, denser and (in theory) more affordable built form in locations which are transit supportive and include cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, we can expect the former City’s predicted share of development will be more than the 1/3 forecast by Hemson.  And this will especially be true if we end the subsidies for suburbia and move to a user-pay system for servicing – particularly for roads.

While municipalities in Ontario do not currently have the authority to institute road tolls (only the province can do this), you can bet at some point in the not-too-distant future, as part of a larger suite of municipal revenue-generating powers, cities will get these powers.  We often think of tolls as being collected in person or electronically at a booth or gate of a highway, but there are many ways in which users of road infrastructure can be made to pay for the actual costs of their use (see: "We Can't Get There From Here: Why Pricing Congestion is Critical to Beating it," Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, November 2015).  New technologies finding their way into vehicles right now will be able to facilitate the collection of fees for each lane kilometre driven, and raise and lower those fees depending on the time of use.

We’re already smart-metering our energy use – one day soon it may very well be that we’ll have smart meters in our cars as well.

Turning the Future on Its Head

Let’s be clear: this approach to paying for our roads will turn the current situation on its head, because it will end the subsidy which road users have enjoyed.  By having users pay for their use, we’ll actually likely decrease congestion, as our roads are currently experiencing excess demand thanks to the subsidy.

When you pay people to drive, that’s what they’re going to do.  And that’s what we’ve been doing. We can’t afford to keep doing this – not only is it not equitable, but the “net public good” which we derive from subsidization is questionable at best, and likely non-existent (see: “The True Costs of Driving,” the Atlantic, October 25, 2015).

Those looking at Maley being the first in a series of new roads in our City, ostensibly to fuel suburban growth in the outlying areas, need to consider what the future is going to be like.  The pursuit of a 1950s-style dream of high-speed roads that open up vast tracts of new land for low-density single-family homes isn’t in the cards for the future we’re going to have.  That’s not to say it couldn’t happen – if our decision-makers want to make foolish and fiscally ruinous decisions to build more roads and maintain them over time when none are demonstrably needed, than it very well could happen.

But if we really want to get our financial house in order, and maximize our opportunities for prosperity going forward, we have to change the way that we spend public money.  If we choose to subsidize a project, program or activity, we have to be certain that we receive a net public benefit from our subsidy.  Making the case for new roads, particularly in a low-growth environment, is one which will fail time and again the test of net public benefit.

Getting Our House in Order

We here in Greater Sudbury are already going to be facing numerous, difficult challenges going forward, many as a result of past land use decisions which created our sprawling City.  As much as we might like, we can’t go back and change time – or wipe the map clean like you can in Sim City.  We’ve got to live with what we’ve got, and retrofit suburbia as best as we can.  But there are a number of things which we know we must not do – and perpetuating an unsustainable, fiscally unsound built form has to be at the top of that list.  One of the ways of accomplishing this is to stop new roads that we don’t need.

Maley Drive, like many of the road projects City engineers have talked about for decades, has no future – or rather, our future should not have Maley Drive in it.  If there actually is a benefit to be derived from Maley, it’s one which will accrue almost entirely to as specific industry.  Taxpayers should not be asked to foot the bill – upwards of $130 million – for a road that we don’t need and can’t afford, and is in the wrong place for development which isn’t going to happen anyway.  If the beneficiaries of the road believe that there is value in its construction, let’s figure out a way to make sure that they are the ones on the hook for the lion’s share of the costs – either through cost-sharing agreements as contemplated by the City through the 2005 Transportation Study Report – or through user fees.

(Opinions expressed in this blog are my own and should not be considered consistent with the views and policies of the Green Parties of Ontario and Canada)