If the Green Party Can't Count on Environmentalists...

What the hell?  The CBC reported yesterday that anti-Kinder Morgan pipeline protest uber-group, Forces of Nature, has decided to throw its support behind the Liberals and the NDP – and is specifically supporting the NDP candidate in the riding of Burnaby-North Seymour, which is a pretty big deal (see: "Kinder Morgan pipeline protesters back NDP and Liberals over Greens," CBC, October 14, 2015).  The Green Party is running Simon Fraser university professor Lynne Quarmby in Burnaby-North Seymour – who was arrested in the riding for protesting Kinder Morgan’s plan to run its pipeline through Burnaby Mountain.

Forces of Nature is apparently endorsing Elizabeth May to win in Saanich-Gulf Islands, but everywhere else in BC, it’s telling its supporters to vote for the Liberals or the NDP in a strategic voting effort to oust Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

Force’s of Nature’s pro-NDP, pro-Liberal announcement is actually a pretty big deal.  Here’s how I see it:

1)      It shows that grassroots pro-environmental organizations which are concerned about climate change and pipelines can engage in hypocritical activities by publicly supporting organizations which are at odds with their core issues.  In this case, that’s pipelines and climate change.  Both the NDP and Liberals want to build more pipelines and expand the tar sands, which will exacerbate climate change.  Seems to me like a no-brainer for an organization like Forces of Nature to oppose that thinking, but Forces of Nature has apparently bought into the strategic voting hype.

2)      Left-leaning organizations continue to believe that “strategic voting” works despite the monumental evidence that it doesn’t.  This is especially true in new ridings like Burnaby-North Seymour, and at times of dramatically shifting voter loyalty as we’re seeing now with the Orange Crash well underway.  Let me repeat: guessing the way the voters will cast their ballots on e-day in a particular riding is often a mug’s game.  You can’t use a point in time snapshot from a month ago (as Leadnow is doing) on which to base a “logical” outcome.  The Left needs to get its act together on the crazy idea of strategic voting and toss it in the trash once and for all.

3)      A party can do everything it can to create policies which appeal to a certain voting block – only to be abandoned by those whom should be their natural supporters at the last minute.  Does Forces of Nature’s defection to the pro-pipeline crowd signify its own hypocrisy, or a glaring overwhelming weakness of the Green Party in BC and throughout Canada? Probably, it’s both.  It’s really not all that different than so much that I’ve heard during this election campaign, from climate change crusaders and ordinary Canadians: “You guys have the best policies – they align with my values.  But I’m still going to vote for the Liberals or the NDP, because you’re hopeless.”  However, I think it’s one thing for an individual to act this way, but quite another for an organization like Forces of Nature, whose very existence is due to its anti-pipeline stance.

Rift Between Greens and Environmentalists

What I think this might signal is a growing rift between the environmental movement and the Green Party. In many respects, grassroots organizations that have coalesced around particular issues have gone out of their way to remain non-partisan, in order to attract the widest range of support possible.  In many cases, these ad-hoc initiatives are spear-headed and supported by people who are apolitical – or have given up on Canada’s political system to the point that they’re going to lump all of our political parties together on a list with the heading “Failing Canada”.  I understand that this says something more about our political system – but it’s a system that we in the Green Party have chosen to act within.  And maybe that’s been to our detriment.

NDP - Not Taking Climate Change Seriously

Some in the NDP have been trying to make the case that the Green Party is actually detrimental to environmental and climate change action in Canada because Greens are perceived as having a monopoly on the issue.  That monopoly means taking the environment and climate change largely out of the realm of political discourse amongst the other parties.  While they may talk a little of these things, there is no sense of issue ownership – the climate crisis becomes just another single-serving tid-bit on the dim sum tray, rather than a main course.

Personally, I don’t think the presence of the Green Party on Canada’s political scene should deter any other party from talking about important issues and adopting appropriate policies to address the climate crisis.  I don’t believe that “issue ownership” should have any legs – and when an issue gets to be very important to voters (like health care, for example), all parties get in on the action with solid policy development that differs from one another more in nuance than substance.  The same should be true of climate change – but the fact is, it’s not – and while that sort of justifies the NDP’s critique of the Greens, I think it says a lot more about their poorly developed, poll-driven populist policy-making.  I’ll continue to blame the NDP for falling down on the job on this issue.

But clearly there’s resonance out there.  Many just don’t trust the NDP to do the things that they’ve said they want to do.  They don’t trust the NDP to build more pipelines, and to expand the tar sands.  They believe that the NDP (and to a lesser extent, the Liberals) will actually act in the best interests of Canada and reverse its course on climate change should they come to power.  Sort of like a conversion on the road to Ottawa.  Well, I’m sorry, but Tom Mulcair is not Saul/Paul – I, for one, believe he’ll remain true to his convictions (and to his union backers) and find a way to get those pipelines built.

(as for the Liberals, well, while there are some who continue to believe that the Liberals are a party of the progressive left, I’m not one of them – and I’m not going to waste my time here writing a whole heck of a lot more about that).

Ideological Compatibility Does Not Translate into Support for the Green Party

The release of the Leap manifesto should have scored us some points, but once again, Leap authors wanted to remain non-partisan, even though their manifesto most closely aligned with the Green Party’s vision.  Leap, too, failed to inspire much of a conversation about their issues during this election campaign – probably because the NDP had to ignore them, because the mainstream media painted them with the brush of the “disgruntled dipper” – and as “champagne socialists”.  That’s not to say that Leap might not find its legs after the election campaign – but it is to suggest that what it’s proposing is out of alignment with the old line political parties, and likely with a majority of Canadians.  The fact that even Leap in the circumstances that it found itself in couldn’t say anything positive about the Green Party spoke volumes to me.

This May Be It

So, whither the Green Party? After this election, a lot is going to be written about how my party failed (once again) to inspire Canadians to actually vote for them, despite throwing a lot more money into the campaign and having a very popular party leader in parliament for the past 4 years.   Sure, Greens were squeezed throughout the campaign due to other 3 parties having been bunched up in the polls for so long (the Greens needed some room to grow – we didn’t find any).  And yes, Elizabeth May not being in the debates was massively problematic for the party, because her absence reaffirms with voters that the Greens aren’t a serious political party (and clearly this isn’t just an issue about the debates – a lack of national news coverage from the mainstream media hurt us equally or more).  I said before this election that a number of things needed to break our way for the Greens to make an impact – frankly, none of them have.

So if the Green Party can’t inspire new voters, and we can’t inspire those voters who should make up our core (like Forces of Nature and Leap) to vote for us, how much longer will there be a Green Party?

I don’t like the idea of abandoning my principles just so that I can make a little headway in my opposition to “the other” (in this election, that would be Stephen Harper).  I understand that politics is the art of the compromise, but for me at least, there are certain core principles which simply can’t be set aside.  Support, even tacit, for organizations which are working at odds to one’s core well-being and beliefs is one of them.  That’s why I can’t support the NDP or the Liberals in the way that Forces of Nature has so publicly and hypocritically. 

The Victory of Progressive Incrementalism

But maybe that’s just me.  I also understand the power of incrementalism – I did study urban planning as my undergraduate, after all.  Incrementalism is a powerful force.  But unfortunately, when it comes to the climate crisis, it’s also an impediment.  The incrementalist approach espoused by the NDP (and to a lesser degree, the Liberals, whom I don’t believe are in any way actually serious about climate change) isn’t going to get us to where we need to be in the time that we need to be there. 

But if incrementalism seems to be the best that we can do, who am I stand in its way?  Well, perhaps I’m just too much of an idealist – because I don’t believe it’s the best that we – that Canada – can do.  And it angers me to no end when people and organizations who know better instead hypocritically champion incrementalism and mediocrity. 

Yet, maybe the Green Party’s policy ambition has ultimately proven to be its downfall.  There’s something to be said about “neither left, nor right, but out in front” – but if we’re so far out in front that when we look behind we can’t see the next float in the parade, perhaps we’ve let ourselves get away a little too much.

If the environmental movement isn't ready to embrace the Green Party, maybe it's time to think about packing it in as a political party.

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

On Climate, the Times Are a-Changing

Three stories out of the United States this week offer hope to those concerned about the climate crisis.

Pope Francis visited the United States, where he interjected himself firmly into the 2016 Presidential election narrative.  After meeting with President Obama at the White House, Francis addressed both houses of Congress with what was surely for some Republicans, an unsettling message: our generation must be the one to take serious and responsible action to address climate change (see: “Read Pope Francis’ speech that he gave at the White House,” ABC News, September 23, 2015). While many Republican Presidential hopefuls continue to deny the reality of human-made climate change, they are increasingly finding themselves offside with an American public that understands how science works.

Earlier in the week, Democratic Presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton announced her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.  Clinton cited her belief that approving the pipeline, which would see dirty Alberta bitumen pumped to Gulf coast refineries, was not in keeping with the need to combat climate change (see: “Hilary Clinton breaks silence on Keystone XL pipeline: ‘I oppose it’,” the Guardian, September 22, 2015).  Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the other Democratic frontrunner, have formed a united front on Keystone XL.

And, in what is turning out to be one of the worst corporate scandals of this century so far, German auto manufacturer Volkwagen was caught by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for installing “defeat devices” in their vehicles (see: “How a minor emissions experiment put Volkswagen in hot water,” the Globe and Mail, September 23, 2015).  The U.S. has some of the most stringent vehicle emissions standards in the world.  VW’s defeat devices were used to trick emissions tests, allowing as many as 11 million vehicles to emit hundreds of thousands of additional tonnes of nitrous oxide - a potent greenhouse gas. Consumers who turned to VW for a “greener” vehicle purchase are up in arms (see: “Overview of Greenhouse Gases, Nitrous Oxide,” the United States Environmental Protection Agency). Since the scandal broke, Volkswagen has lost around US$28 billion of its market value (see: “Volkswagen emissions scandal – as it happened on Tuesday,” the Telegraph, September 22, 2015).

As Bob Dylan sang about a different shift of perspective that washed over America in the 1960s, ‘the times they are a-changing’.  In the lead-up to critical international climate negotiations in Paris this December, a new sense of optimism is in the air, thanks to what’s happening south of the border.

The United States of America is the world’s foremost economic powerhouse.  Where the U.S. leads, other nations are often forced to follow.  If the U.S. chooses to take the Pope’s exhortations to heart and begin the process of vigorously decarbonizing its economy, climate laggards like Canada may have little choice but to do the same – or potentially face retaliatory border tariffs for exports that don’t have built-in costs for carbon pollution.  The choice may become one of getting with the program, or paying the price for our obstinacy.

The sheer size of the U.S. economy means that if anyone wants to sell a product in the States, they’re going to have to follow U.S. rules and play ball with regulators.  While some multinational corporations like Volkswagen might try to game the system to their advantage, as VW is now finding out, scandalous corporate trickery can have multi-billion dollar consequences.  Major corporations will now think twice about playing similar games with the EPA.

President Obama visited the front lines of the climate crisis on a recent trip to Alaska.  As Air Force One over-flew the island of Kivalina, and the President had a chance to see first-hand how the rising ocean is slowly swallowing the island – along with its human inhabitants (see: “Obama Takes on Climate Change: The Rolling Stone interview,” Rolling Stone, September 23, 2015).  In 2008, Obama claimed that his election to the Presidency signaled the moment when the rise of the seas started to slow.  While that hasn’t happened yet, Obama remains keen to leave behind a legacy of climate action.  It is widely expected that the President will show an iron resolve to push forward a meaningful climate treaty in Paris.  Our children and grandchildren will benefit from his efforts.

(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 without hyperlinks, September 26, 2015 - print and online - as "Times are a-changing"

Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas Sides with Bigots to Score Cheap Political Points

Whether one thinks that there may be problems with Ontario's proposed sex-ed curriculum or not, what is clear is that there are many who oppose the curriculum based on bigoted, and frankly, homophobic ideas. In this article, one of my fellow citizens, Paulette Bonin, is quoted as saying that she wants to protect children from "certain lifestyles" which is newspeak for homosexuality. That's disgusting to me, and it absolutely detracts from what otherwise might be legitimate concerns of those who oppose parts of the new curriculum.

It's also an embarrassment to my community that attitudes like this continue to persist in the year 2015.

What's also a real embarrassment, however, is my MPP tacit support for these bigoted protesters who were outside of her office on Wednesday. Instead of condemning their homophobic attitude, in her statement to the Sudbury Star, France Gelinas acts as their apologist, claiming that the Liberals brought this homophobic attitude on themselves because they failed to follow through on a commitment to consultation.

There are two things wrong with that. First, no level of consultation is going to ever change the mind of a bigot. France should know this.

Second, where our NDP MPP ought to be leading the condemnation of this backward attitude, she instead decides to use the episode to score cheap political points by bashing the Liberals - with whom she agrees with on the sex-ed curriculum by the way - instead of making a point to her constituents that bigotry and homophobia have no place in our community.

For Shame!

See: "Sex-ed critics take to Sudbury streets," the Sudbury Star, September 3, 2015.

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

Leadership Needed to Reverse Sixth Great Extinction

Late last month, the world went crazy when it came to light that Cecil the lion was shot by American dentist Walter Palmer. Cecil was the popular black-maned lion at Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. Palmer’s guide lured Cecil outside of Hwange’s protective borders and onto a neighbouring farm where Palmer first shot Cecil with a crossbow before finishing him with a rifle. Both the farmer and the guide have been charged by Zimbabwean officials for hunting lions without required permits. Palmer fled to the United States where he has been the subject of public ridicule (see: “Zimbabwe’s ‘iconic’ lion killed by hunter,” BBC, July 27, 2015). 

Protected animals are at significant risk due to poaching in Zimbabwe. Palmer apparently paid $56,000 for the pleasure of killing a lion – big money in Zimbabwe, one of Africa’s poorest nations (see: “Lion-killing dentist planned to take down anelephant next,” New York Post, July 31, 2015).

Yet, hunting lions and other large mammals isn’t illegal in Zimbabwe or elsewhere. Although permits to kill animals are sold by the government, Cecil's illegal slaughter is illustrative of how quotas are often exceeded despite the law.

The risks to lions, elephants, rhinos and other endangered species from poaching are exacerbated by climate change, which threatens the economic stability of poorer nations. Human development and a changing climate are also directly responsible for a loss of wildlife habitat. We are in the midst of a sixth great extinction event – one which rivals the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

“Elephants are a keystone species,” says Anne Belanger, Sudbury’s organizer for the International March for Elephants and Rhinos, taking place at Memorial Park on Saturday, October 3rd. “Elephants help assure the health of tropical rainforests by dispersing seeds. This in turn affects the global climate. There are no boundaries with climate change.”

Wildlife habitat loss due to drought is nothing new to Africa, where the frontiers of expanding deserts have been on the march for centuries. However, human-made global warming has been exacerbating desertification, and Africa is seeing more rich savannah lands quickly give way to arid sand dunes. 

Desertification has been a particular problem in Africa’s Sahel region, home to shrinking Lake Chad – a large inland sea that provides fresh water to an estimated 68 million people.  Overgrazing, inefficient water use by humans, and climate change have been the primary culprits blamed for Lake Chad’s loss of volume – estimated to be about 95% between 1963 and 1998 (see: "Lake Chad," Wikipedia). The shrinking lake has been a disaster for local economies and for the wildlife within the lake's ecosystem.

The international community has committed to reversing the sixth great extinction event through treaty agreements including the United Nation's Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification. However, Canada pulled out of the UN's desertification Convention a few years ago, becoming the world’s only nation to have reneged on its treaty obligation to tackle droughts from a changing climate (see: “UN calls Harper government’s decision to pull out of anti-droughttreaty ‘regrettable’,” the National Post, March 29, 2013).

Here in Northern Ontario, our own threatened and endangered species, such as the woodland caribou, continue to be placed at risk. Changes made to the Endangered Species Act in 2013 now permit industry to destroy the habitat of threatened species in the name of economic development (see: “Ontario Has Given Up On Endangered Species,” Anna Baggio, Wildlands League, the Huffington Post, January 23, 2015). A recent decision by Ontario's Divisional Court, brought on by a challenge made by environmental organizations on behalf of endangered species, upheld Ontario's habitat-destroying regulations (see: “Statement on Divisional Court on Ontario’sEndangered Species Act,” Wildlands League, May 29, 2015).

More must be done to protect biodiversity and the habitats of threatened and endangered species. Yet we continue to push wildlife to the edge of extinction. Within the next decade, elephants and rhinos may cease to exist everywhere outside of zoos. While we acknowledge that more must be done to protect at-risk species, Ontario and Canada are clearly failing to demonstrate the leadership that the world needs right now – before it becomes too late.

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

Originally published in the Sudbury Star as "Only leadership can reverse great extinction" in print and online as "Sudbury column: Reversing the great extinction" - Saturday, August 29, 2015.

Sudbury Council's Fiscally Foolish Move to Cancel LED Streetlight Program

Well, we're starting to get a better picture now about regressive our current municipal Council is. First, Council slavishly decided to adhere to the Mayor's election promise to prioritize a 0% tax increase - and raided our reserves to keep this fiscally foolish commitment (see: "Bigger, councillors freeze taxes, pass 2015 budget," the Northern Life, March 5, 2015)

Then, when potential revenue was staring Council in the face in the form of energy sharing agreements with renewable solar energy firms, Council refused to support the majority of projects ("Councillors feel sidelined in solar planning," the Sudbury Star, July 7, 2015).

Now, they've cancelled the money-saving LED streetlight replacement program in the name of short-term fiscal gain (see: "Sudbury's LED streetlight program to go dark," the Sudbury Star, August 12, 2015). This is a deeply idiotic and foolish decision - clearly, the poorly thought out, short term, and largely political priorities of our Council are becoming more important than the long term fiscal health of our community and its residents. 

Dare I suggest that our previous Council would have had the courage the look out for the longer-term interests of our City?

Thank you Councilors Jakubo, Landry-Altmann & Sizer for not supporting this cheap, cynical, politically motivated move (I understand that Councilor McIntosh was not present at last night's vote).

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

Elizabeth May: the Hanging Chad of the Maclean's Leaders Debate

It’s the day after the debate, and everyone (well, those paying attention to a 11-week long federal election campaign in August – which probably isn’t everyone), just everyone, wants to know, “Who won the debate?”  And just like the election results in the 2000 Gore vs. Bush stunner south of the border, we don’t really know yet – and will have to wait until at least some of the hanging chads are counted.

Oh sure – it would be easy to say that since all leaders did well last night (and they did), that there was no clear winner – but that’s not the story that Canadians want, and it’s not the story that the media is going to give them.  It may be true – and I think that most of last night’s viewers, even the partisan ones who would never admit it, saw a pretty even match in what was undoubtedly one of the best national leaders debates this country has seen lately (and perhaps that was due to the absence of the Bloc Quebecois – no offence to Mr. Duceppe and past Bloc Leaders, but in debates about Canadian issues, getting bogged down about the rights and interests of a single province can get a little tiresome for those of us not from that province – but that’s another story, and not the one I want to tell today).

The Response to the Reaction

But reactions from those watching a debate are generally far less important than the reaction to those who report on the debates after the fact.  And given that so few viewers tuned in to last night’s debate, the media reaction to it becomes that much more important.  And for the most part, the media isn’t interested in policy, facts and figures – their opinions are nuanced by other matters, including style, flair, who looked the most “Prime Ministerial” and – importantly – which leaders can boast of “mission accomplished”.

Trudeau: Mission Accomplished

This morning, upon reviewing the feeds at the NationalNewsWatch aggregator site, it was clear that the media had chosen the winner: Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.  And clearly, more so than any of the other leaders, he accomplished the mission that he had to perform in last night’s debate.  Admittedly, Trudeau also had the easiest mission – “Don’t look like you don’t belong”.  Sure, Trudeau had a few verbal missteps, but generally speaking, it’s clear he “belonged” on the state.  And not just belonged – on his exchange with NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair over the Sherbrooke Declaration and the Clarity Act, Trudeau came across as both in the right, and sympathetic – largely due to Mulcair’s bullying style.  Clips of this exchange played widely in the media, probably more so than any other exchange.  And although Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister Stephen Harper is probably right – that the Liberals and NDP are pouring gasoline on an unlit fire when they try to make hay out of Quebec separatism – it’s the exchange that many Canadians will be talking about today, and most will be mentioning Trudeau in a positive light.

Harper: Mission Accomplished

Harper, too, largely accomplished his mission.  Going into the debate, he knew that he had a massive target painted on his forehead, so fending off the attacks from his opponents would be job one.  Telling voters what 4 more years of Conservative government would mean for them really wasn’t what he needed to do at this time – and he didn’t.  But Harper proved to be pretty deft and deflecting his attackers and defending his record – and drawing a distinction between himself and Trudeau and Mulcair.  That he was less than truthful on more than one occasion wasn’t nearly as important as looking honest and comfortable. 

Mulcair: Experiencing Slight Turbulence

Mulcair, on the other hand, had a bit of more difficult mission.  With the NDP leading in the polls, but with a sense that Canadians still don’t really know what Tom Mulcair and the NDP are all about, Mulcair had to make the pitch that he is the de facto Prime Minister in waiting.  For the most part, he did this, but he experienced the most setbacks of any of the leaders, in my opinion.  The exchange with Trudeau over the Clarity Act was one, but Mulcair also experienced a horrible stumble when facing off against Green Party leader Elizabeth May over the Kinder-Morgan pipeline.  And while that’s a pretty regionally-based issue that voters along the coast in B.C. might get excited about, the exchange with May itself left Mulcair looking slippery, and not wanting to be pinned down on making a decision.  May dominated him and made him look weak.  Later, Mulcair tried to win back a little of what he lost in that exchange by declaring “climate change” to be the biggest challenge facing Canadians – but the damage was already done.   While Mulcair might have looked fairly “Prime Ministerial”, it’s difficult to make the case that he can brag about “mission accomplished”.

May: Flight Cancelled - or Just Delayed?

May had the hardest mission to fulfill – and it doesn’t appear right now that she accomplished it.  May had to make the case to the media that she belongs in all of the upcoming debates.  Right now, the Globe and Mail, the Munk Debates and TVA have all refused to allow May on their stages, and will only host the other 3 national party leaders (although Gilles Duceppe has been invited to the TVA debate).  Those debates will be taking place later in the election cycle, and more Canadians will be paying attention.  With May’s participation in those debates, once again the Green Party will find itself marginalized by the media – and by voters – at a more critical time in the election cycle.

To convince the other debate organizers to invite her, May needed to deliver a knockout blow against either Harper or Mulcair.  She needed to dominate the debate in such a way that the media columnists and pundits would be talking about Elizabeth May in last night’s news casts and in this morning’s papers.  In that respect, May failed miserably.  While she was arguably the best debater on stage, and the one who made the most prescient evidence-based observations, she was unable to deliver anything close to a the knockout needed for the media to stand up and pay attention.

May's Secondary Mission: On Target

What’s interesting, however, is that May not have realized what her mission actually was.  You see, unlike the other national parties, the Greens are running a somewhat more scaled down national campaign with more limited ambitions.  Without the same money or media interest as the other parties – and fighting against a firm trend in the mainstream media to continue to marginalize the Greens – May might have had a different mission in mind going into last night’s debate.  It’s really no secret that most of the seats the Greens are gunning for are located in B.C.’s lower mainland and on Vancouver Island.  To win there, May and the Greens need to make the case that they have the interests of British Columbians in mind moreso than the other national leaders.  With the NDP polling high throughout Canada’s westernmost province, clearly Mulcair was just as much of a target for May as Harper was.

With this in mind, May’s exchange with Mulcair over the Kinder-Morgan pipeline – which didn’t deliver the knockout blow she needed to make a case with the media – will be important for May and the Greens going forward.  It might actually represent a watershed moment for the Green Party of Canada – especially if it leads to the NDP losing the B.C. coast, and British Columbians ultimately electing a bunch of Greens to parliament.  Mulcair’s deflection and slipperiness on this one issue might be enough to change the face of Canada’s Lower House forever. 

Although it might not.  There are a lot of British Columbians who support Kinder-Morgan.  Maybe the issue of tankers plying the waters of B.C.’s coast and jamming up Vancouver’s harbour aren’t ultimately as important to some as, say, terrorism or daycare.  But I’m not so sure.  I think that what May did last night will have resonance – and it’s why that I’m reluctant to suggest that she and the Greens were the losers of the debate last night.  As long as the NDP refuses to take a public position on Kinder-Morgan (and to a lesser extent, Energy East), the more likely it is that Greens will be elected in B.C.  And after last night’s exchange at a nationally-televised debate, it’s going to be very difficult now for Mulcair to change his mind.  NDP strategists might have to start praying for some sort of ecological disaster to use as a reason for road to Damascus conversion moment for their leader.

So the pipeline issue is one of the matters that leaves the “real” winner of last night’s debate in doubt.  It’s a hanging chad, and it will ultimately need to be counted before a more definitive statement about winners and losers can be made.  Of course, by the time it’s counted, no one will care about who won the early August debate.

The Real Hanging Chad: May's Media Mission Accomplished (?)

The other hanging chad actually has to do with May’s first mission – did she make the case to the media that she should be invited to the Globe & Mail and Munk Debate debates?  Based on last night’s and this morning’s response, it’s clearly in doubt that she made the case.  However, we know that debate-based media coverage has a tendency to morph over a few days.  What was the story on debate night doesn’t always prove to be “the story” emerging from the debate after a few days of reflection.  And while May was clearly not the story last night or this morning, let’s wait and see if she emerges as “the story” over the next few days.

For whatever reason, the media’s expectation of May’s performance in the debate were pretty low going into last night.  Suggestions in the media that she was able to “hold her own” show that the media didn’t put a lot of stock into her ability to prove she belonged on the stage with the other candidates – maybe because she has been shut out in the past, and will be shut out in the future.  So “holding her own” might have come as a surprise.  But did she really just “hold her own”, or did she in fact stand up and demand that the media start paying attention to her and the Greens in a way that they haven’t previously – even without a knockout blow?

The knockout would have helped – if today’s media narrative was about how May skewered Harper on something, there would be no question that the Globe & Mail and Munk Debates would change their minds and invite May to participate.  But was May’s performance last night enough for them to reconsider?  Maybe it was – the next few days will be critical.  If the stories from pundits in this weekend’s papers lead to questions about debate organizers not inviting May after her performance on Thursday night, the matter may very well start to gain enough traction that Canadians start demanding debate organizers to change their minds – similar to what happened in 2008 when the Broadcast Consortium initially refused to invite May, but ultimately did. 

It may not even have to be Canadians who lead this charge.  Given that the Globe & Mail is a media outlet, what other media have to say about them can have a pretty big impact on their decisions.  It may be enough that the political pundits lead the charge.  I’ll be looking for media reaction – and the reaction of partisan strategists – over the weekend.  I’m already seen some evidence that May might be “the story” of the debate.  Pundits like to write about “wonkish” stuff like Twitter mentions.  They also get into the the inside baseball of campaigns.  And let’s face it, who doesn’t love an underdog story?  Some of this is starting to leak out into the mediasphere.  By Sunday, it could be a flood, and May will be “the story”.

Right now, though, May is the hanging chad.  She was either the biggest loser – or she might be its biggest winner.  And last night’s debate might just change everything – or nothing.

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

The Future of Local Food in a Warming World

Locally produced food can be healthier and tastier than mass-produced food products that sometimes travel across oceans and continents before reaching our plates.  The production and distribution of local food keeps more money circulating in our local economies.  With Northern Ontario experiencing a mini-renaissance in agriculture, it makes sense for all of us to start paying more attention to how we benefit from locally produced and distributed food.

The food sector is Canada’s third largest employment sector, with cash receipts totalling $57.4 billion in 2014 (see: "Agriculture, not Energy, will Fuel Canada's Economy in Coming Decades," James Wilt, DeSmogCanada, July 29, 2015).  In Ontario, 720,000 people are employed in the agri-food sector (see: "Farming - an economic driver in the Greater Golden Horseshoe," Environmental Defence, July 20, 2015).  With the global population expected to rise to over 9 billion by mid-century, it’s clear that we’re going to have to find innovative ways of feeding a hungry world.

Right now, purchasing locally produced food in Northern Ontario can be a chore.  Most of the food products available at grocery store chains are produced outside of the province.  However, things have started to change with the development of local food hubs, like Eat Local Sudbury.  Farmer’s markets seem to be popping up in communities throughout the north, including a new market in Val Caron which will open its doors this August.  And of course many of us are getting in touch with our own inner-farmer by participating in community and backyard gardening projects.

Some smaller scale farmers are distributing their locally-grown produce directly to the public through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives.  Individuals or families can purchase a CSA share in a crop to help finance the farm operation. In return, throughout the growing year, fresh fruit and in-season vegetables straight from farm fields are provided to the share holder.

While discussions around food security have become mainstream, Canada, which lacks a national food strategy, continues to lag behind other developed nations.  Our food systems are increasingly being threatened by climate change-related impacts in the form of more frequent and disastrous severe weather events, and disease and pest migration.   Longer growing seasons in a warmer world may create some opportunities for Canadian agriculture, but costs may outweigh the benefits for industrial-scale agriculture that relies on fossil fueled thousand mile supply chains. 

The need to curtail carbon pollution as part of a global effort to combat climate change will have an impact on the price of food as a result of higher transportation costs.  The further food travels before reaching your plate, the more climate changing greenhouse gases are emitted.  By building the costs of pollution into the price of goods, locally produced and distributed food should experience a growing advantage over foreign competition.

Despite the benefits that producing more food locally have on the environment and local economies, the health of our local food systems is threatened by governmental policies which favour large industrial-scale farm operations. Marketplace interventions like chicken quotas shut out small scale local egg producers.  The absence of pollution pricing creates a transportation subsidy that artificially lowers the price of imported food. These subsidies may be enshrined in international trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which doesn’t even acknowledge the reality of “climate change”, and which may bind the hands of future governments wishing to take more significant action to address climate change.

As we move ahead into the 21^st Century, it seems clear that the necessary actions we take reduce our fossil fuel emissions will have impacts on the way food reaches our plates.  The longer that we delay implementing a national food strategy which includes carbon pollution pricing, the more we delay creating the truly robust and resilient local food systems that we will need to help fuel our economy – and ourselves.

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

Originally published in the Sudbury Star as "Column: Future of local food as world warms," in print and online - Saturday, August 1, 2015.