Gerald McEachern2013-05-21T09:57:40-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=gerald-mceachernCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Gerald McEachernGood old fashioned elbow grease.Visions Of Justin Trudeau, Uniting The Left And Sugarplum Fairiestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19196192012-09-27T12:02:21-04:002012-11-27T05:12:01-05:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
There's an aura growing around Trudeau, or perhaps there has always been one, that gives liberals (I use the small "l" intentionally) hope for the future. Especially in the face of Stephen Harper's quietly draconian governing style rising up again in the form of a new omnibus bill as the fall session starts. "Can Trudeau reignite the flame of the centre-left?" Canadians wonder.
Trudeau's aura brings with it a halo effect to liberal/Liberal politics that's been missing since, well, I don't know when. Yesterday, for example, I got an accidental phone call from a disaffected NDP supporter in Montreal (which is odd, since I'm based in the provincial Liberal office in Edmonton). She was upset that the NDP in Quebec were drifting toward what she termed "soft nationalism" and she didn't want to remain with a party that supported separation, no matter how softly. Toward the end of the conversation she asked whether I knew if Trudeau had officially declared his nomination. "Ah, there it is," I thought.
No one would like to see Canada's left reignited and reunited more than I would. And lately in Alberta there's been a lot of not-so-secret backroom buzz flying around about a merger between the parties on the left. In fact, there are a few people actively campaigning to make that happen.
Just for the record, the lonely Alberta Liberals have 5 seats in the Legislature, the New Democrats have fewer with 4 and the Alberta Party has zip. The Wildrose Party on the other wing is now the official opposition with 17 seats. The PCs control the remaining 61 seats--a comfortable majority to say the least, especially when one considers that the party has been in power for 41 years. And, for you trivia buffs, this will be the longest running provincial party in the history of Canada by the end of its term in 2016, beating the Nova Scotia Liberals who operated uninterrupted from 1882 to 1925.
Clearly, Canadians are no strangers to dynastic politics, whether it's in the form of long-standing regimes or second and third generations of political scions such as the Ignatieff's, the Martin's, the Leblancs, the Lougheeds, the Bennetts, the Crosbys, the Laytons and many more. So Justin Trudeau is no anomaly. But one might ask, is this aggregation of power into the hands of a few families a healthy thing, given our country's present size, wealth and population?
I don't know. My instinct says no. But instinct is often wrong. There seems to be no shortage of new genes coming into our political system, including Stephen Harper. Ultimately, the key to a healthy political system is diversity and renewal. And in that sense, Justin Trudeau fits the bill perfectly for small "l" liberals on the national scene, just as Harper did for the right a decade ago.
So we have two threads of thought here: the magnetic appeal of the next Trudeau, and the possible merger of the parties on the left, principally, the Liberals and the NDP. And can these two threads be linked or are they mutually exclusive? It's too early to tell. Bob Rae will be a key figure. But given the discontent of half of the Canadian voting public, there seems to be a deep desire to pursue anything that brings together a working coalition on the left to take on the evermore rightist Conservatives in Ottawa.
Some pundits might tell you that the Canada's left will unite about the same time the Liberals take power in Alberta. And actually, that could happen sooner than anyone thinks, but that's a story for another time.
Mirroring the federal scene, there's a small movement underway in Alberta to bring the Liberals, NDP and Alberta Party together into a unified party of the centre-left. This was openly discussed at the NDP annual general meeting last week, which was publicly rejected by party leader Brian Mason. But the issue isn't quite dead on the floor.
I caught an e-mail the other day outlining the similarity of the platforms of the Alberta Liberals with the NDP during the last election, pointing out that there wasn't a great deal of difference between the two. It was a justification, I suppose, for the merger.
But the devil in any of these concepts, as they say, is in the doing. It's not the platforms that matter so much as how those platforms are developed and implemented that matter. These "how" issues raise deep philosophical divides between entrepreneurial, pro-business liberals and pro-labour, anti-business socialists.
And it's not the parties that matter, but the power residing behind those parties that matter. The "how" of merging power structures and cultures is far more challenging than merging platforms.
On both counts, merging ideologies and power structures, it would be naïve to think that uniting Alberta's Liberals with Alberta's NDP would be an easy task. Developing strong leadership and interparty cooperation might be an easier and far more effective way to deal with the slowly calcifying policies of Alison Redford's PCs.
That, at least, is my insider's view for now. That could all change if the Trudeau-Bob Rae alliance reaches out to unite with the federal NDPs. All things are possible in Canadian politics.
At the end of the day it isn't left-right that matters, it's always top-bottom. And even sugarplum fairies know Santa's the boss.]]>Riding the Big Red Sled into Alberta with Raj Shermantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18810432012-09-13T11:55:06-04:002012-11-13T05:12:01-05:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/ leader of Alberta's Liberals almost as much as his big red Dodge Ram truck. On the way into the city we talked about Alberta's oil sands, the economy and, of course, his recent history as a health critic with both the provincial PCs and the Liberals.
To say that this guy is controversial is an understatement. Stories roll of his tongue like chapters of a rags-to-riches novel. Apparently, his family already had a long history in Canada before Raj was born in India. By the age of six the family had migrated to Squamish, BC, where Raj learned the ropes in a tough frontier logging town where East Indians weren't exactly welcomed. While his father moved into the labour union movement, young Raj accepted the prejudice, smackdowns and bruises stoically.
And I couldn't identify any bitterness in Raj the man, the successful ER doc and now, seasoned politician. In fact, the Raj I met was clearly as Canadian as I am. And a real character, to boot. Which is great since I enjoy working with colourful characters, and I'll be working closely with him (and Sharon) for the next four years as the new executive director of the Alberta Liberal Party.
The learning curve during my first week on the job has been nearly vertical. I've had a mind-meld with Alex, the unofficial party strategist, for two days, had dinner with the party president, took in an executive board meeting, made an off-the-cuff presentation to 20 or more staunch Liberal women over breakfast, tip-toed into the in-house systems and files, and struggled to remember names of a several dozen key people.
In the middle of this I got into two late night sessions with Raj that ended in the big red sled (aka "The Sherman Tank") on the way home talking about everything from our personal histories-philosophies to global resource management issues. Not to mention the curious coincidence that my wife is also named Sharon, who is also an American like his Sharon, also hailing from New England, which I learned while we watched Obama give his big speech at the DNC at their place over takeout Thai.
What have I learned about Alberta's Liberals in just one week? It's too soon to say and probably more than I can possibly remember. But I have learned a bit about Alberta itself, at least as a comparison to life back home in New Brunswick.
I've learned that there's an epidemic of potholes in the streets of Edmonton. That its water and sewer utilities have been partially privatized and that the water tastes just fine. That housing prices are through the roof relative to East Coast prices, and that the cost of a mortgage can eat up a large portion of an Albertan's paycheque.
I've also discovered, I think, that Albertans seem to be, at least after one week, to be friendlier and more optimistic than eastern Canadians. They smile at you and look you in the eye even in the big city, which comes as a bit of a surprise to someone more attuned to the Toronto-Boston-New York street society. That said, I've been told that Edmonton is the murder capital of Canada, attributed feuding immigrant drug dealers.
But I'm an immigrant here, too, just like all those Newfoundlanders and Somalis, Middle Easterners, Asians and the rest. If they're part of the problem, then perhaps I am too, just another newcomer looking for new opportunities and challenges in the Promised Land.
And that land is big and beautiful, as I found out this weekend when a friend drove me up to Athabasca for the weekend. The farmers were out combining their fields, swathed into rows in the sunshine under that indescribably big sky. I had my friend stop the car so we could get out and walk into a cut grain field and stand among those huge round bales parked like spun gold discs against the bright blue horizon.
Is it easy to be here? Would I advise others to come? I don't know. A lot of easterners and even westerners like Raj have made the leap before me. I do know that the logistics of putting the house up for sale back home, staying connected with family on Skype, buying a new car, finding a place to live, shopping for houses and fumbling my way around a new city is slightly daunting.
Of course, the whole experience will seem insignificant a year from now, as they say, like a woman remembers childbirth.
But remembering is the thing. We moved from Ontario 8 years ago. New Brunswick has been the only home our kids have known, and a lot of our memories are there: sailing on Passamaquoddy Bay with the tides and seals, walking down to the St. Andrews blockhouse and the reef, having lunch at Olde Tyme Pizza in January when you could shoot off a cannon and not hit a tourist if you wanted to, and those slow, slow days of summer living beside the retired people who have nothing much to do except maybe cut the lawn and go for a walk. And for me the days of writing and hanging out with the kids.
It isn't going to like that here. But that's OK. I'm looking forward to the challenge of a more active, liberal chapter after a long sojourn in the slow moving, conservative East. So goodbye, New Brunswick, you will be missed. And hello, Alberta, let the adventure begin.]]>Indian Point: Beautiful View, Ugly Historytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18382722012-08-30T00:00:05-04:002012-10-29T05:12:04-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
No wonder that the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Indians considered Qonasqamkuk, their name for Indian Point, to be a sacred place, which was, in fact, a well-known native burial ground for Passamaquoddy chiefs. It was here that these Indians first met Sieur de Monts and Samuel de Champlain over 400 years ago. It was from here that the Passamaquoddies went out to rescue Champlain and his starving settlers on Saint Croix Island that winter.
This place comes into focus once again as the town council of St. Andrews has once again considered the possibility of allowing a housing development on the site. It seems that the concept of who gets to settle on the point has never been resolved.
The Loyalists, escaping the American Revolution by way of Nova Scotia, came to the area in 1780 or so, and agreed to pay the Passamaquoddies 25 pounds a year rent to stay at Qonasqamkuk, which they promptly renamed St. Andrews. And reneged on paying the rent. Less than five years went by before the newcomers chopped down a big cross marking the sacred native burial ground on the point and a complaint was lodged by the Indians to the government.
Most of the Passamaquoddy people then packed up and moved across the U.S. border to Pleasant Point, where they remain to this day. By the early 1900s the Town of St. Andrews sanctioned construction on the original burial ground, disturbing the sacred site. Some time later, the sweet grass field -- an important traditional native resource on Indian Point -- was destroyed (in an act amounting to high irony) to create the town's sewage lagoon, which was recently upgraded with a multi-million dollar expansion in 2009.
One family remained connected to Qonasqamkuk, specifically, the 100 acres of Indian Point. That group is the Akagi family, the product of marriage between a Japanese man and a half-Passamaquoddy woman who had remained on the land and maintained historical Passamaquoddy claim on the place. Today, the Chief of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, Hugh Akagi, and his extended family, still live of the site.
Local gossip has it that over decades the Akagis were put under considerable pressure to give up their land to the town, including as I've heard it said, a threat to take their children away if they did not comply. In any event, the Akagi families stayed intact and the town secured title of the land--land that the townspeople had never leased, purchased or legally acquired at any point in time.
By the early 1990s development, perhaps to raise tax revenues, was much on the minds of some local town councilors. In 1992, they took the Passamaquoddies to court to secure "quiet title" of the 100 acres of Indian Point, a case which they won, leaving the Akagi family just seven acres.
Throughout the rest of the decade the town council was approached to develop high-end housing on the point. Each time the proposals failed. Finally, the Kiwanis Club was more successful in its proposal to build the famous RV park on the oceanfront -- which rather conveniently generates a lot of profit, a good chunk of which goes directly to the Town of St. Andrews every year. So the point has been repurposed from sacred burial ground to sacred cash cow.
Fast forward to this year. Another housing development proposal landed on the town council's agenda. Councillor Mary Myers worked diligently to get council to put Indian Point into a "public land trust" for the people of St. Andrews to enjoy in perpetuity. One has to wonder how the Akagi family and the rest of the remaining Passamaquoddy people feel about her patronizing gesture.
And just how should we feel about it? Well, native peoples across Canada have been working directly with the federal government on treaties for the last 200 years or more. Land claims, both historical and recent, have been negotiated and many settled. But here in this lost corner of New Brunswick the entire issue seems to have been rendered invisible and irrelevant by the Loyalists and their ancestors who still run the place. It's as if the Passamaquoddies had never existed, except for presence of their name on the bay lapping on the town's waterfront.
If we were a moral and honorable people what should happen would be exactly opposite to what has already happened. The 100 acres of land should be returned, immediately, to the Chief of the Passamaquoddy Tribe. The federal and provincial governments should generously contribute a hundred or more millions of dollars to the tribe to make restitution for the theft of the St. Andrews town site and occupying it illegally for 227 years.
I am sure they would be as good or better stewards of that land than we've been, what with our building of sewage lagoons and RV parking lots.
Of course, many long-term residents of St. Andrews might think this solution is outrageous. But imagine how we would feel if a wave of foreigners came and took over all the best available land around our town? Would we be as gracious as the Akagis and Passamaquoddies have been?
Given our history I highly doubt it.]]>Genetically Modified Breast Milk...From a Cow?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17596442012-08-10T07:02:04-04:002012-10-10T05:12:15-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/ "Real men drink Monsanto milk," she says.
In case you don't know, rBST is recombinant bovine somatotropin, a growth hormone administed to cows to force them to produce more milk. The practice was developed by Monsanto with its Posilac rBST brand, and it works quite well at increasing milk production and farm profits. It also happens to make the cows sick.
Cows treated with rBST develop mastitis, a swelling of the udder that produces pus, which, of course, gets into the milk supply. This is not a particularly appealing prospect, especially when one is picturing this as one reads the labels on the milk jugs on the shelf.
Unfortunately, traces of the hormones remain in the milk and are transferred to us. Not only that, rBST milk is not quite like regular milk, and this complicates things a bit. Like the fact that Monsanto milk contains a whole lot more natural growth factor (called IGF-1) which is easily absorbed by the human gut. And research has shown that high levels of IGF-1 are implicated in a rise in breast, colon and prostate cancers. Not only that, but high levels of IGF-1 block our natural defenses against early stage microscopic cancers.
And if that were not bad enough, the same cows treated with Prosilac are almost always treated with antibiotics to suppress infections like mastitis, and those antibiotics are transferred to us in the milk.
I can see that you're starting to rethink the idea of buying cheaper milk in the U.S. Me too. Breastfeeding women, I've read, should be particularly cautious. Personally, I'd speculate that a mother drinking a tall glass of Monsanto milk is a higher risk to her newborn than if she drinks a glass of wine. Then again, I'm no research clinician.
Of course, some modern science seems to contradict that caution. I just read that the Chinese are modifying cow's milk to produce human breast milk. "It's good," said worker Jiang Yao. "It's better for you because it's genetically modified," in a quote from a piece on the Natural Society website.
The article goes on to say:
"Chinese scientists have genetically modified dairy cows to produce human breast milk, and hope to be selling it in supermarkets within three years. The milk produced by the transgenic cows is identical to the human variety, with the same immune-boosting and antibacterial qualities as breast milk, scientists at China's Agricultural University in Beijing said.
"The transgenic herd of 300 was bred by inserting human genes into cloned cow embryos which were then implanted into surrogate cows. The technology used was similar to that used to produce Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned by scientists, in Scotland.
"The milk is still undergoing safety tests, but with government permission it will be sold to consumers as a more nutritious dairy drink than cow's milk."
Well, that's reassuring. But here's the thin edge of the ethical wedge in a Chinese scientist's own words: "There are 1.5 billion people in the world who don't get enough to eat," he said. "It's our duty to develop science and technology, not to hold it back. We need to feed people first, before we consider ideals and convictions."
I don't know what I could possibly add that you're not already thinking.
Ironically, correspondent Michael McCarthy reported in The Independent back in 1999 that Monsanto had removed genetically modified foods from one of its cafeterias in England, thanks to an enterprising catering supply firm. But it turned out it was just a tiny exception to the Monsanto rule of making GM food available to all, whether we like it or not.
Which is happening to our field crops whether we like it or not. Genetically modified Monsanto seed has now contaminated seed stocks across North America, from alfalfa and canola to beets. According to research in Poland, it is also happening to honeybees that have been fed GM corn syrup. Apparently, the syrup has altered the bees' DNA and threatened their survival. Fortunately, to rectify the situation, Monsanto bought out the bee research firm, so problem solved.
Closer to home, potatoes have been targets for genetic modification since the mid-90s. Though it regarded GM potatoes as "good science," McCain Foods stopped buying GM back it 1999 due to public perception. We'll have to see how that works out for everyone.
Meanwhile, I think we should encourage real men, and real women, too -- especially senior bankers, agribusiness and pharmaceuticals CEOs -- drink more Monsanto milk and eat more GM food. After all, a court in Ohio ruled that rBST milk is at least as good as, if not better than, regular milk. So I figure what's good enough for them will be good for the rest of us.
As for me, I guess I'll keep reading the sketchy food labels when shopping in the U.S. and resist the urge to "man up."]]>Marissa Mayer Seems Nice, But Yahoo Has No Futuretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16880752012-07-20T10:59:52-04:002012-09-19T05:12:38-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
Marissa is clearly no Steve, though that's not entirely a bad thing. Where Steve was the industry's iconoclastic, Baby-Boomer bad boy and college dropout who started out in his parent's garage, Marissa is the preternatural Gen-X good girl. She's also blonder and decidedly more beautiful than Steve, if that matters.
Unlike risk-taking, laterally shifting Jobs, Mayer has been on a single fast track. She graduated with honours from Stanford and went on to get a Master of Science degree in computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence. Soon after she joined Google as employee number 20 in 1999 and moved up the corporate ladder from engineer to senior management.
For all that, I don't expect that dramatic turnaround to happen at Yahoo under her watch. It's not that Marissa Mayer isn't a smart enough product developer or because she's a woman or lacks political savvy. She's got it all and more. She's even expecting a baby; how could anyone not love that? I also predict that after she leaves at Yahoo her future will be as golden as she is.
I wish her luck. But turning companies around isn't about skilled management. Apple is a good example. Its board swapped out Jobs in the mid-80s to bring talented management on side, and look how that worked out. Fortunately, Apple still had Jobs playing safety in the background. Yahoo is pretty much an orphan in that department.
And just where is Yahoo these days? What kind of company is it? What actually would "save" Yahoo and why should we care? Since its inception in 1994 or 1995 (depending on how one defines inception), Yahoo has bounced around as much as its name suggests. By 2000 Yahoo was at the top of its game with its stock topping out at $500 a share before settling in at $475.
After that, it survived the dotcom meltdown and launched into an eight-year run of acquisitions and new product development, trading in a couple of CEOs along the way. By 2008 Microsoft made a $44.6 billion bid for the company and later that year co-founder Jerry Yang, sitting in the CEO's chair for just 18 months, resigned.
Enter Yahoo's first female CEO, Carol Bartz, a very Steve Jobs-like Boomer who, in an effort to stem the red ink, slashed staff even deeper than Yang had, and read the riot act to the rest. By 2010 she was voted "the most overpaid CEO" at $47.2 million and by the end of the next year she'd been fired. Over the phone no less. So I guess that fix didn't take.
Meanwhile, Mayer's old alma mater Google followed a remarkably similar path in acquisitions and new products. And its new product strategy has not been an across-the-board success.
Of course there are Google's blockbuster hits like its search engine, Analytics, Google Maps and Earth, the Android OS and Chrome browser. But products like Google+ are languishing far behind competitors like Facebook, and then there's Twitter, running a race with no competition at all from Google or anyone else.
And the list of discontinued Google products is as long as your arm. It includes Google Buzz, Video Player, Google X (a Max OS X-like interface), University Search, Google Sets (a colour-coded organizing system), Search Mash, Google Trends and something called Google Lively, a 3D animated chat feature. To say that product development is the key to success would be accurate only to a point. In Google's case there may be such a thing as product over-development, though it can certainly afford it.
And from the outset Google has been as much of an innovation buyer as it's been an innovator. Among its purchases include building blocks for its famous search engine, Ad Sense, Blogger, Google Earth, Picasa and even Android.
But this kind of deep product development is likely something that Yahoo can't afford, either in time or money. Yahoo needs a winner out of the box. It could have been either content, something that players like the Huffington Post are better at, or product. But Yahoo's board has chosen product.
Conveniently, Marissa Mayer has been sitting on the Yahoo board, which certainly would have provided a natural opportunity to make personal contacts and lobby her own point of view, before being chosen as the new CEO. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to conclude that she tilted the table toward product, since that's the part of the business she knows.
But all of this is just so much ancient history now. Where can Yahoo go from here?
Well, at the end of the day it's all about the product, perception and the customer. Going back to the old marketing gurus, Al Ries and Jack Trout, there are only three leaders in any segment leaders and only one of those is the outright dominant player.
In desktop operating systems it's Microsoft Windows vs. Apple OS vs. Linux. Ever since 1985, when it was laid over the ubiquitous MS-DOS, Windows has remained the dominant player. In mobile OS it's iPhone vs. Android vs. Blackberry, and we can all see how that's going.
Today Google still dominates the search engine category. Yahoo dominates, well, nothing.
And it won't take inventing another line extension (or add-on product) to "save" Yahoo. It will take inventing another completely cool new category, like the iPad or even humble little Pinterest.
In case you missed it, the operative word here is "cool." The Internet, as a whole, is now two decades old and a rapidly maturing industry. It has moved from Gen-Xers, to Gen-Y, to even younger cohorts, and they all have their own sense of cool. The Internet is now moving, inexorably, from form and function to fashion. And fashion is arguably one of the most arbitrary, highly specialized and competitive businesses there is.
One thing that Yahoo is definitely not, and that's fashionably cool. And unfortunately, as glossy an insider as she seems to be, neither is Marissa Mayer. Yes, she's probably a very agreeable public face and a capable manager and has good product development skills.
But greatness in business requires that special je ne sais quoi of leadership that managers, no matter how great, never seem to have: that mix of gnaw-your-leg-off competitiveness with an uncanny instinct for inspirational design.
So, sorry, Yahoo. I just don't get why we'd need you any more.]]>The Crush and Rewards of Peak Lifetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16701482012-07-17T13:13:07-04:002012-09-16T05:12:12-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
"Bewildered" might be apt. With the mind-bending complexity of our lives, it's impossible to navigate the sheer volume of information, regulations, qualifications, instructions and gadgetry attached to day-to-day survival. At what point does the crushing overload reach a tipping point?
Like why, for example, do I have to know that Mick Jagger has slept with over 4000 women, while Gene Simmons of KISS has had precisely 4897? Not to mention the niggling issue of how they keep track.
So much has changed since the 1950s and '60s, and I don't just mean by the rate at which Elvis may have bedded women. Cities now stretch in sparkling webs from horizon to horizon, we can see them when we fly at night. And when I drive down the eastern seaboard of the U.S. or from England to Scotland, the freeways are endless conduits of taillights six lanes wide, bumper to bumper.
And it isn't so much the masses of people; it's the people and the machines and the buildings and the industries all compressed. Our world is being consumed by urban development. And my personal tipping point was, predictably, a trip to India. There, the crush of human beings was simply too great to be ignored. What was unconscious became a conscious perception.
On one side is our love affair with our own ingenuity, which has created a paradise on earth for a third of the world's population. On the other side we have the crushing backside effects of our ingenuity on the poorest citizens, as well as on the other species with whom we share this rock in space.
While our souls are being overwhelmed by over-choice we crave simplicity. At least I do. Yet in seeking it, we are perhaps the most poorly-equipped generation of human beings in history. Our relentless, restless action which has become our defining characteristic.
Last night, for example, I watched Senna, the recent documentary about F1 racecar driver, Aryton Senna. Here was a guy to whom I could relate: He did his thinking at 200 plus kilometers an hour and was the consummate expert. He lived to win and die the perfect death: hitting the wall abruptly stopping his life and career at the pinnacle moment of fame.
Ironically, a lot of us have become so active and specialized that, instead of relying on our own abilities, we now have other experts to handle every important aspect of our lives.
This recent reliance on experts was preceded by an explosive expansion of the education-credentialization industry over the past 50 years. Today, there are over 2000 universities and colleges in the United States alone. It goes without saying that there are more highly educated, inventive and highly creative people per in the world now than in any previous time in history.
The problem is we're drowning in new inventions, most of which we don't need. If there is any truth in clichés, the motto should read: "Invention is the mother of necessity." Once we invent something, we start to need it. So once a thing like an internal combustion engine is invented -- and adopted as the automotive standard -- it becomes very difficult to replace it with a better technology. And even when the global use of these legacy technologies threatens life as we know it, we're slow to adopt newer, smarter technologies.
In the end, it all comes down to two things: there are nearly a quarter of a million more of us on the planet every day, and the more each of us has, the more we want, and that's something our economies are happy to supply. So how is it that with all this activity we still have massive levels of unemployment and inequality?
And while we're having a Back to the Future moment since we've just passed the June 27, 2012 date on the dashboard of the Delorean, (oh, wait a minute, that was a hoax and even more useless information, the date is really October 21, 2015) why don't we have hoverboards or self-tying Nikes yet? Aren't we supposed to get everything we can imagine?
But a lot of us can and do have more than we'd ever imagined. And I don't mean gadgets. Being alive today is the ultimate gift of life extension. Because of fossil fuel and cheap electricity we get to do things that not even kings could imagine.
We get to live several lives instead of one. I'm living proof as are millions of others. Almost 50 percent of us will divorce and remarry. We'll have multiple careers. Over my history I've gone from grocery clerk to artist to stationary engineer to submarine designer to strategic planner. I'm over 60 years old and have a 16-month-old baby. I've travelled from the Arctic to the equator, from one side of the world to the other. And I'm not special. Think Mick Jagger, for example.
So what if, like Peak Oil or peak resources, we've also reached peak lifestyle? In all likelihood that's a very distinct possibility. Perhaps it's best to be grateful and enjoy it while we can. Any other approach at the moment just seems to be too confusing.]]>Canada's Only Bilingual Province Is Very One-Sidedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16527502012-07-06T14:26:33-04:002012-09-05T05:12:07-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
With a little poking online I learned that our provincial government has cut the number of school districts in half across New Brunswick in a centralizing move that they claim will save us $5 million a year. According to NB's Education Minister Jody Carr, that means some 75 to 100 jobs will be lost, and the savings will be passed along to the classrooms, in other words, my kids and yours.
That's a happy little bit of news (unless you're one of those who lost his job). But I wasn't so amused with the voice mail message I got from our kids' school last week informing us that I could buy an $81 supplies package from a local retailer to get my child ready for the next school year. Hmm.
So, say you have three kids in school (which I do), you'd be forking out $243 in binders and paper, not to mention the $35 registration fee for each child plus a $50 locker fee for each kid in middle-high school and then the additional hits for fundraising and tickets to kids performances which would run at least $50 per child a year. And then add the cost of the annual field trips, which can go up to $300 each, and you get the picture. We're talking something like $500 per child (times three, that's $1500). And we haven't even started to talk about the extra curricular stuff like hockey.
So much for the math. But that's up to $1500 a year for "free education" to keep our three kids in school. And what are we getting for that? Classrooms wired with electronic smart boards, teachers with iPhones and iPads and, quite frankly, a generally soggy academic education relative to the one I received, given the poor grammar, memory and spelling skills my kids bring home.
I don't say any of this out of malice. I like my kids' teachers. They're caring, pleasant and diligent people who I trust. But the system has changed, ostensibly to make the school more palatable for electronically-raised kids, at some real downside expense to learning. And for all that, I would have to say my three boys are just as bored and unchallenged in school as I was.
But that's not what angers me most about this provincial system. We are living in Canada's only bilingual province. As such, in order to get a job with the province (in mine and many other fields) one must be fully bilingual, which I am not. Okay, that's just how it is.
Or is it? As I said, it was the District 10 name change that sparked a reaction. "Anglophone?" My kids are being educated as anglophones, which means when they graduate, they, too, will not be able to get the very government jobs I am not qualified to get. What's up with that?
I figure that if our province wishes to maintain its status as a fully bilingual province, it has two choices: either to educate all children in the province to be fully and functionally bilingual, so each of them has an equal opportunity for future employment in the province. Or, the government has to open its hiring policies to include people like me. And use translators to infill the difference.
Or perhaps there should be a combination of the two approaches until the entire province is fully bilingual. This would require a 20-year window (one generation) to make a full transition.
Instead we have created at least two generations of privileged bilingual insiders, administrative elites, who function in a superior capacity over unilingual anglophone and francophone New Brunswickers. I don't know about you, but I personally don't care to have my tax dollars going toward the building of a thicker layer of increasingly centralized elites.
So what are the current options? Barring any change (a highly unlikely prospect at best given that the same bilingual people are creating our provincial policies)? Well, I can arrange to bus all three of my kids 50 kilometers a day to French immersion classes in the next town. But they're now getting too old for that, and beyond easily getting caught up to their bilingual cohorts.
I can just put up and shut up, which is normal default course of action.
Or I can home school my kids. (If you're interested, you can check it out. Your kids, or mine, would be joining the other 60,000 Canadian students doing exactly that.)
The home schooling option is interesting, and seems to be a growing phenomenon with significantly less stigma attached than it used to have. But still, it seems like a lot of work, unless one is planning to live on a sailboat or in some remote location for several years.
But all of this dismisses my real regret. We are living in a bilingual province that should be offering our kids more educational advantages to us as Canadians. But we seem to be unwilling or unable, financially or creatively, to capitalize on that potential. What a shame.]]>Let's Talk About Suicidetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16342902012-06-28T12:42:42-04:002012-08-28T05:12:04-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
There have been two recent suicides in our small community, which I find distressing. When a suicide happens we usually learn about it from the local whispering network, but rarely from the news. The reason is obvious: local media still protect surviving families from guilt or shame.
More people die as a result of suicide than in all transportation-related deaths in Canada. Ten Canadians commit suicide every day. But in remote areas such as Canada's Arctic, suicide rates are up to five times higher than in the south. Among young people under the age of 25, five times as many males kill themselves as do females. And an unspecified number of suicides go undocumented every year, so real statistics are impossible to find.
But frankly I don't care about the statistics. I do care that suicide is too common, yet preventable, and that the subject is still taboo, though perhaps for a good reason. Suicide is an infectious disease.
I was a teenager buying a car when I first learned this. A mother was selling it because her son had hanged himself. He was also the best friend of a kid who lived across the street from me and who, within a month, would also hang himself.
A few years later I was talking to a guy at a party. His wife was drinking too much and he mentioned that she always "got this way" so I asked him what he meant. He lowered his voice and told me about going home one evening and finding their daughter hanging in the garage. She was their only child, and they never got over it. Eventually, they divorced.
Health Canada describes suicide as a mental illness. Maybe it is. The website lists some factors leading to suicide which include pressure to succeed, abuse, depression (and other mental illnesses), financial trouble, sexual identity issues, difficulty fitting in to society, loss of a family member early in life, a family history of suicide, and so on.
The list seems suspiciously like what we all face to some degree. Somewhat glibly, the Health Canada website acknowledges what one needs to avoid suicide: a resilient personality, self-control, a sense of humour, good social supports and at least one good relationship. Well, I guess.
But what if one doesn't have those particular assets?
Given that 60 per cent of us are only a few paycheques away from financial meltdown, if we lost our jobs, what happens next? Does an already shaky marriage survive? Does the banker forgive our debts? Good people don't normally show up when bad things happen. In fact, quite the opposite. Personal trouble is a social repellent. The poor and suffering rarely have friends, despite Christian notions.
And the ones who suffer the most are usually the sensitive ones: the thinkers and the artists and the ones who know that they're strange and different. These are the social misfits who are least likely to be financially successful.
For some people the suicide takes years rather than minutes. My brother's friend is currently doing this. He wakes up alone. He goes to work. He comes home and drinks until he passes out. Every day begins and ends the same way. I saw him a few years ago. He looked exactly as you might imagine.
Which brings me to the here and now. Lately, people in our neighbourhood seem to be committing suicide at a much higher rate than the national average -- 14 per 100,000 people. That's not good. And there are some other bad indicators that add to the problem.
Easy access to mental health care here is abysmal. Illegal prescription drug use is rampant. Job opportunities are sketchy at best. Financial problems are common with many people depending on EI. Food banks are overwhelmed in winter. Domestic abuse and petty crime is endemic. Additionally, some employers consider the local population to be lazy, stupid and not worth employing, and thus look to immigration to solve their employment problems.
And on top of all that, there's that pleasant old East Coast Loyalist culture of ostracizing and shunning, and the desire for harsh punishment (which on the islands includes house burning) that is particularly hard on the people at the so-called bottom. All one can say to that, is thank God there are one or two gentler souls in the legal system who can and do soften the blows.
So why am I writing about this? Because suicide in our communities is the canary in the coal mine. It is telling us that our local societies, not to mention our provincial and federal societies, are sick and need treatment, if we are ever to improve the lot of those most at risk of suicide.
I'm talking about the people who are the most affected by your ongoing ridicule and rejection. Unless we teach our children (and ourselves) to be more open, tolerant and socially equal at home, no amount of pink shirt wearing at school will stop the next generation of suicides.
We might begin by working toward a goal of building a more fully engaged, fully employed creative society in this country -- and end this destructive, unspoken competition separating us into tops and bottom, winners and losers.
And given our unhealthy cultural obsession with competitiveness, vanity and vitality, it's telling that men over 80 years of age have the highest suicide rates of all.]]>Avoiding the Summer Road Trip From Helltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16166382012-06-24T00:00:12-04:002012-08-23T05:12:05-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
The first thought is a road trip to visit my parents. That's a 30-hour drive and I know every kilometre of the trip in advance. I'll make one stop to fill up in Edmunston, but will have already stopped twice for desperate bathroom breaks before getting there.
The next stage is a bit of rough two-lane through rural Quebec to get the coastal four-lane, Route 20, which has some of the best pastoral scenery, in my opinion, in Canada. We will be driving along that trip into the sunset. The colours will be soaked in intensely vivid oranges and reds and finally soft rose-violets, and my sunglasses will be working overtime to cut through the glare.
There'll be another food stop and fuel-up before Montreal. I never like stopping in Montreal for gas. And by then we will have been on the road for over eight hours. That is, if we haven't detoured into some major tourist attraction like Potato World back in Florenceville, NB. The sparkling city lights of Montreal reflected in the St. Lawrence will be beautiful, but I will be the only one looking; everyone else will be asleep.
I'll try not to wake anyone, and keep my foot into it to get us to North Bay before stopping for the night. The only thing on my mind will be keeping my mind awake, and looking for moose. We've already hit one and lived to tell the tale.
OK, let's just stop there and erase that thought -- the moose and everything before that. You've got me convinced. I don't think I want to do that drive. Not to mention that the drive between North Bay and Thunder Bay along the northern route is one of the longest and most boring on Earth.
So, what to do with the kids? Let me take a break, mow the lawn, and think. I'll be right back. Well, that was quick. The lawn is still too wet to mow. A night of heavy rain will do that.
Last summer we went to Florida. Yeah, I know. Florida in the summer? But, you know, it was great. The weather was sunny and hot the whole way down and the heat was pleasantly bearable when we got there, although the midday rainstorms were a bit daunting. Did I say "rainstorms"? These were road-flooding, engine-stalling deluges. But we've already done the theme park scene, and Florida can be a bit flat and boring, and I don't just mean the scenery.
A couple of summers before that we did the ferry ride to Martha's Vineyard and found the greatest beach in the Northern Hemisphere. So, been there, done that.
The real reason for all these summer road trips is not just for the kids, I have to admit. My wife and I keep looking for the next adventure. And while life on the East Coast is wonderfully laid back, there is also a world of opportunity out there. So it becomes not only "what to do with the kids for the summer" but "what to do with our own adventure down the road," which is always the real question.
And I don't think I'll get that solved while mowing the back lawn.
All this comes down to two things: figuring out where "home" is in the summer, and finding some new frontier in a world in which frontier is rapidly disappearing.
Excuse me for a minute. In storytelling, things are linear. But in life they are not. The baby is awake after her nap. So. I'm babysitting. The baby is now walking on the wet lawn and visiting the rabbit in its cage, while I read an online post about yet another new book dealing with the Kennedy assassination (speaking of lost frontiers). But where was I (other than getting lost in bucolic aberration of multi-tasking)? Oh yes. Summer vacation...or was it about finding home? Perhaps it's the same thing.
They -- that is, some contracting outfit -- is tearing up the road beside our house. My stream of thought is now constantly being assaulted by the beep-beeping of earth-movers backing up and the sound of trucks going by with their jake brakes clattering, which should be illegal in town, but for some reason is not.
My God, I've digressed even further. Perhaps we could put in a swimming pool. But it would take the rest of the summer to get it done. And then there's the maintenance.
Yes. I'm avoiding the issue. I don't have a clue as to what to do with the kids this summer. I know that my parents never had to struggle with these problems. We built forts and rafts and generally managed our own summers. But that was then and this is now.
So that's it. I've hit the wall. Feel free to offer your own solutions; I am officially open to suggestions.]]>Kevin O'Leary Has Us Under (Remote) Controltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15976982012-06-15T11:49:19-04:002012-08-15T05:12:05-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
But now some of that TV programming has come to Netflix, which we do have, so my wife is now watching past seasons of Dragon's Den. I try not to watch. But, I can't quite not. The show, like all reality shows, triggers a kind of compulsive voyeur reflex. Maybe it's all the goofy business ideas, or the often harsh and predatory behaviour of the regular panelists -- who are big, successful moguls, we're told.
And apparently Dragon's Den has been a big hit for CBC. But what I didn't know was there are 24 versions of the Sony-franchised show around the world, from Afghanistan to the Ukraine. To say that the show is universally popular, even influential, is an understatement.
For example, now-famous star Dragon, Kevin O'Leary, has his own spinoff show on CBC: The Lang and O'Leary Exchange, a bit of which I caught on a YouTube video a few months ago. It was the one where he got flattened by American documentary journalist and now social activist, Chris Hedges. No doubt you've seen the clip. In a prejudicial volley, O'Leary quickly branded the Occupy Movement a "nothing burger" and "very low budget" and referred to Hedges as a "nutbar."
Well, Chris Hedges may be a lot of things, including overly serious and a harbinger of doom, but he's no nutbar. What he is, is frighteningly rational. Ironically, Hedges has written about men like O'Leary and the apparently socially-destabilizing phenomenon of fame, power and money in his 2009 book, Empire of Illusion, with the telling subtitle: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, which is a direct aim at our new "reality TV" lives.
But back for a moment to actual reality. Now that summer is approaching, I'm watching less on Netflix and moving back into my library of old books, searching for a good re-read. Ralston Saul's epic Voltaire's Bastards is the current favourite in the light reading category, and I'm already deep into the Surviving in Fantasyland chapter in which Saul writes (in 1993):
"This is an age of great conformity. It is difficult to find another period of such absolute conformism in the history of Western civilization. The citizens are so completely locked inside their boxes of expertise that they are effectively excluded from public debate. We have disguised this truth by redefining individualism as an agreeable devotion to style and personal emotions. We project ourselves, as if in a romantic dream, against a backdrop of martyred existential outsiders. And in the absence of practical levers of power, we have convinced ourselves that these images are real. Film, television, magazines have given these outsiders concrete form. We know them. We know them well..."
O'Leary, though, is no mythologized martyr like John Lennon or James Dean. But still he plays the role. In a little video clip we watch him standing in the bathroom shaving, getting ready for to record a two-minute Skype promo for CBC (which, we assume will be shot somewhere in his home in front of his computer). As the camera pans down his bare torso to the white towel over his lower half, he brags about the fact that he will not be wearing any pants for the talking head promo and in fact goes on to say, he never does. In a media savvy moment O'Leary has more or less successfully managed to transform himself into the image of a lovable rebel.
But O'Leary is no rebel or outsider operating at the edges of society. He, in fact, operates at the top, much as a parasite does on its host. And competitive one at that, as in his classic on-air line: "where's the mu-NEY? Mu-NEY," he repeats, knowing as the audience does, that money inevitably rises to the top.
But competition, not money, is the fascinating point of the show. In true gladiator spirit, contestants, er, business people, compete with the Dragons for a piece of their money. The audience waits for the businessperson to be ritually slaughtered, or, if the idea and the hard luck story is compelling enough, succeed to become a full partner with one of more of the Dragons; that is, to become a junior Dragon themselves.
What got me was the episode with the dude who'd invented a hydrogen-powered motorcycle. The Dragons dumped the idea because there was currently no network of hydrogen fuel stations, even though the inventor observed that hydrogen could be purchased at any welding supply shop.
In other words, the guy was too far ahead of the mass distribution market. He couldn't compete.
Competition, it turns out, at least on Dragon's Den and possibly the real world of business, is not tied to future public good. But competition is definitely one of the ways to personally make mu-NEY.
Does that make O'Leary a bad man? Not if we see him as merely a symptom of who we are. O'Leary, after all, has an Honours BA in environmental studies and psychology. He's clearly aware of both the environment and the effects we humans have on it. So why would his life's work be directed at material acquisition rather than working as an environmentalist?
There are all kinds of reasons. Who knows, or who cares?
The basic case comes down to the fundamentals of capitalism. Like any idea that's reached the status of religion, in order to function it has to detach the individual from reality and replace it with an ideology, in this case the ideological belief that the acquisition of money, power and fame equals success, which will equal happiness.
The problem is, with a daily media diet of this kind of tripe, we and our society overlook the real issues that face us collectively, such as how we might transition off fossil fuel sooner rather than later, or migrate toward collaborative, sustainable economies rather than endlessly pursuing competitive growth strategies.
As for O'Leary as a model of social success, one might take another look at the hairball of software he sold to Mattel for $3.8 billion in stock, a deal that brought nothing but grief to Mattel and the other companies that bought the wreckage of the deal -- and one of O'Leary's current successes, Stream Global Services, a company that specializes in outsourcing, that is, shipping North American jobs overseas.
But that's OK with O'Leary, who, in a recent interview that included the fatal impact of his career on his marriage of 21 years, said: "The troubling thing is, I would do it again. You only live once."]]>Canada's Enviro Policy is Sleeping With the Fishestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15772432012-06-07T12:41:45-04:002012-08-07T05:12:03-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/losing key people -- and a hundred-year-old science legacy.
My tour ended with the actual ending: in the new library. It's a wonderfully spacious room, long and climate controlled, filled with natural light from skylights high above, and banks of rolling bookcases, each at a cost of $15,000 or so, and filled with a collection of science books and research that dates back to the origins of the station (the first of it's kind in Canada, founded at the turn of the last century). As I said, impressive.
There, we were told that the two full-time librarian positions were being terminated, as is a project to digitize the entire library, and the 100-year-old collection is to be packed off to a central library at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, NS. The boxing and shipping alone seemed to be a massive job, not to mention that a great deal of the material is archivally-sensitive and in many cases rare. Some documents are original documents and irreplaceable.
This is also a loss for the students at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre located next to the biological station, and for nearby UNB and New England researchers and students who regularly use this unique library--and visit the attached archive of North Atlantic marine specimens, the world's largest collection, which will not be moving.
Great Canadian ocean science pioneers -- men you probably haven't heard about -- such as A.G. Huntsman, Alfred Needler and Bev Scott (now in his 90s) would be horrified. While I can't speak for Huntsman and Needler, Scott was recently quoted on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) website.
"Overfishing is a problem created by governments," Scott declared, and advised the federal government to limit access to fish stocks to "reduce pressure on fisheries to produce more protein." And on climate change he went on to say, "By the next century, the sea will be two feet or more higher than it is now... New Orleans shows what can happen... Most intriguing is why so many people seem to be ignoring it -- especially politicians."
But the current federal government is doing the exactly that. And more. Not only is it ignoring the situation, critics say that under the new omnibus finance bill, C-38, the government is actively gutting both the Fisheries Act and environmental protection legislation.
Lawrence Macauley, Fisheries and Oceans critic for the Liberal Party writes,
"changes to the federal Fisheries Act include: severely weakening federal protection of fish habitat; downloading federal responsibilities to the provinces or third parties; allowing the deposit of deleterious substances authorized by the minister; allowing fish to be killed by means other than fishing when authorized by the minister; allowing the minister to decide which fish will be protected and which will not; giving cabinet the power to exempt any Canadian fisheries waters from the environmental provisions of the Fisheries Act; and allowing the minister to take fish quota and equipment away from fishers and use it to fund scientific activities, all while the minister guts the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' (DFO) science and habitat management by millions of dollars."
Add this to the actions of the provinces, like B.C.'s current (and disturbingly perverse) legislation to make it a crime for journalists and scientists to report diseases in farmed fish populations -- ostensibly to protect the aquaculture industry from public criticism, and one has to wonder what is happening to our democratic governments. Are they working for us, or for the anti-environmental corporations? The question is rhetorical, of course. We already know the answer.
But back to the St. Andrews Biological Station -- what do these changes mean for the scientists there, or for us? In a word: confusion. For example, a lot of the new infrastructure was designed to support aquaculture research. But the government has recently shifted its focus from developing new fish farming techniques to climate change (not that studying climate change is a bad thing). So the new equipment has to be repurposed, just weeks after the new facility opened its doors.
In light of the developments in St. Andrews, it's apparent that Canada has no coherent, long-term ocean science and environmental strategy beyond rejiggering it and cutting it back. This becomes painfully obvious on the business front, too. Plans are in the works to move some 60 DFO finance jobs to New Brunswick, but not to the St. Andrews site. Word has it that the jobs may go to Fredericton to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Keith Ashfield's riding, instead.
So rather than enhancing the existing marine-science economy in St. Andrews, the government is simply rearranging the deck chairs or worse. Nothing about these moves makes any sense -- unless one is adhering to a "government is business" ideology. While these changes may look good on a federal balance sheet, they don't make good business sense, let alone protect either us or our environment -- which was why the biological station was built in the first place, and then rebuilt last year.
But one has to wonder, where are all those politicians who made the initial announcements or showed up to cut the ribbons on these new facilities? Where's the local outrage about these changes? Where's the desire to not only make our communities healthier, but our economies and environments, too?
Perhaps it's time to reintroduce the word "conservation" back into the Conservative agenda. Even former (Progressive Conservative) Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Tom Siddon, agrees. The party might, as the Germans have, find it's also good for business.
And if one doesn't think marine research is good for business, one should really watch the Huntsman video again.]]>Duck Honey, Here Come the Retirees!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15617842012-06-01T12:15:45-04:002012-08-01T05:12:19-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
The bike stopped at the stop sign and took off, and it was only then I could tell it was gas-powered. But even then it was nearly silent -- a highly sophisticated four cylinder or six, I figured.
I compared it to the bike and sidecar I'd seen in town a couple of weeks before. It was a noisy antique contraption, its riders wearing matching gang colours: ragged jackets with big Hell's Angels patches on the backs.
Since the departure of the Altanticade motorcycle event last year there's been a lot more motorcycle traffic to our little town. Most of these bikes -- ridden by aging Baby Boomers -- are Harleys or Harley knockoffs, with big V-twin engines and minimal exhaust systems. They're loud, even when the riders are trying to be quiet.
Welcome to the new age of retirement, in which "do your own thing" is the mantra. So the question becomes, how does a small tourist town accommodate the diversity? Well, it can, and it can't. The town first has to decide what it wants to be. Does it want to cater to folks who like art galleries, crafts shops and upmarket restaurants, or does it want to cater to people who like stripper bars, fast food, loud entertainment and rebel paraphernalia? Either group can spend a lot of money.
These value choices are extremely important -- they shape the culture in which we live. For example, our small town has somehow managed to keep big franchise stores out of the community, and you won't find a Burger King or McDonald's or even a Red Lobster. The people here seem to care about what fits and what doesn't.
So why is the town willing to distort its values to accommodate motorcycle tourism? The easy answer would be money. But that's not the whole story. The answer is numbers. Tourism runs on traffic, and motorcycles bring visitors. And when tourist destinations in town sense that their numbers are dropping, they tend to look to "the low-hanging fruit," which in this case is motorcycle tourism. But whether that type of tourism best fits their existing businesses or their community culture is another issue.
As young retirees start to impose new challenges on the national scene, these value choices aren't limited to small town tourism. And these challenges bring more paradoxes. Affluent Boomers want to preserve their wealth, while their less affluent cohorts will be relying on the government and social security cheques. And Boomers of all types will be looking at affordable, high-quality retirement locations.
Real estate in some parts of Canada is expensive, which makes the East Coast, with its affordable real estate, attractive to potential retirees. But the eastern provinces -- especially New Brunswick -- are "have-not" provinces that depend on federal transfer payments to remain viable. So if the federal government neutralizes the transfer payments, or decides to disconnect the provinces from a national universal health care system (allowing any province to develop a two-tiered, private-public system), the entire social services picture could change depending on where one retires.
New Brunswick also has a rapidly aging population and a historical problem with out-migration of young people. So one would think that these demographic dynamics are extremely important to policy developers, who might view building affordable and efficient retirement housing, seniors' health care, social and cultural centres and attracting young and capable service workers as primary challenges.
But reality check: the current provincial government is forced by necessity to focus on internal cost-reduction and paring back its spending to control its spiraling debt rather than looking at the future. And there's the rock and the hard place.
Retirees from across Canada and the U.S. are looking at attractive, affordable retirement locations. Many of them will make the leap without a full understanding of the long-term implications. Pretty seaside towns may be quaint, affordable and fun while these retirees are still relatively young but may become less desirable as these newcomers move into old age. But the lack of assisted living facilities and distance from comprehensive medical facilities will pose new challenges. As will living within the financial constraints of a "have-not" province.
Perhaps, for the first time, we're seeing a three-stage retirement: early retirement in which retirees in good health explore their inner adolescent in seaside towns along the coast, mid-retirement in which they scale back youthful desires and move into affordable condo living, and late retirement in which they tighten up their expenses and look after their fading health.
Geographically speaking, these three phases might suggest living in three different towns, creating a new class of aging nomads. Disconnected from their kids, who have moved away from home after college, and thus from their grandchildren, the new retirees are a footloose, go-anywhere group.
And that simply means another new market to exploit. Paradoxes and challenges always bring new opportunities for those who willing to anticipate the future. Retirement, like everything else, isn't what it used to be.]]>I Can't Escape the Man, and Neither Can Youtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15072662012-05-25T12:10:30-04:002012-07-25T05:12:18-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/On the local front:
We went down to the polling station to vote in the municipal election last week. It wasn't even noon and already there were long lineups.
Yes, local election fever had swept through our small New Brunswick town. And it had infected us, too. My wife found a mayoralty candidate she liked and volunteered to help his campaign.
Three days before the end of the campaign my wife worried that her guy didn't have enough exposure, so she went shopping for paint and Bristol board, and the family pitched in making bright, flourescent signs. Then she posted the signs around town, some on telephone poles and others on supporters' front lawns.
In the evening, she took the kids out to take a look. Twenty minutes later the door opened and I heard, "The signs are all gone." I thought they were kidding, but no. Of the 29 signs they'd put up, 22 were gone. By the next morning only two were left -- and those went down by noon.
I suspected that there was some by-law about posting signs on telephone poles. But if that were the case, why weren't old yard sale signs also torn down? And why were lawn signs also removed?
The answer was obvious. Someone wanted them gone. It turned out it was the retiring mayor, who was supporting another candidate, and he was using the "rules" to support his position. Of course, the unspoken message seemed clear: "Zero-tolerance if you're not with me! No lively participation allowed."
But what about common decency? Or citizen enthusiasm, or freedom of speech?
To his credit the local town manager told the mayor that the signs would only be up for a day, and that there was no need to have town staff take them down. So the mayor took it upon himself to have the signs removed.
I guess if the rules on signs were really important to our past mayor, all yard sale signs should be regularly torn down, along with posters for fundraising spaghetti dinners, and even realtors' signs planted on town-owned easements. But of course it wasn't the signs; it was the message on the signs.
And in the end? Most of the residents saw the colourful signs go up, and then go down. It was the talk of the town when someone tore down the signs in the pouring rain -- and on Mother's Day no less. And the next day my wife's candidate won.
Meanwhile on the home front:
In the middle of the campaign our daughter took her second driving test. She was nervous and it was nerve-wracking for me, too. I couldn't find our insurance slip so on the way I stopped to get a new one and we barely made the appointment on time.
Predictably, the tester asked for her paperwork, and after looking it over, noticed that my wife hadn't signed the car ownership. And that was that. He shut down the test and mumbled about making time for us later if we wanted to come back.
We drove home (a maddeningly unnecessary 25 minutes each way) got the paper signed and drove back. He was on his lunch. So we waited. When he showed up, he said he could take her right after his first appointment.
His first victim was a young woman, also anxious, who arrived with her mother. After she passed, her mother told us that this was their fifth try. Hmm. The girl didn't appear to have a learning disability. My daughter told me later that one of her friends had taken the test eight times. I could see that this was a whole new standard of testing.
It was my daughter's turn and off they went. When she returned, I knew. Tears didn't flow until we were back in the car. Apparently, she hadn't parked well enough in the test space. On the retry she forgot to use her turn signal (this was an off-street test site) and he failed her. Plus there was also some confusion around a tricky yield sign. But on the positive side, he'd told her with a smile, she definitely knew how to drive, and he liked her car. Well, gosh.
I resigned myself to the fact that she could have done better. But my cynical side tells me that this is a very convenient way to keep income rolling into the Service New Brunswick office to keep staff gainfully employed.
It is also painfully obvious -- given the numbers of absolutely dreadful drivers I encounter here every day -- that the new zero-tolerance approach to testing is virtually useless. But somehow the rigid enforcement of the rules is now paramount.
On the world front:
These things are more than a local aberration. There's the growing trend of unchecked authority hiding behind new rules -- rules that will allow almost limitless power over ordinary citizens.
But there are a few rays of hope on the horizon.
On Thursday, journalist Chris Hedges, Cornell West and others on their team are celebrating their victory in court against the Obama administration. U.S. Federal Judge Katherine Forrest just struck down the most controversial portions of the National Defense Authorization Act that would have allowed the U.S. military the right to indefinitely detain and hold U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, including at home, without charge or trial. Forrest ruled that the Act appeared to violate the First and Fifth Amendments and was therefore unconstitutional.
How does this connect to stealing signs and punishing driver's tests? Just that it's all a part of an overarching pattern. We're living in times of growing intolerance and diminishing trust. And if civility and trust disappear, what do we have left?
I somehow doubt the crushing hand of authority ever contributed to a kinder, gentler society.]]>Suzuki and Tree-Huggers: Prepare for Wartag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14575232012-04-27T11:05:54-04:002012-06-27T05:12:02-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/
This week, David Suzuki and his foundation came under attack by the ironically named Ethical Oil group, a new American anti-environmental video has been making the rounds online, and the $500,000 Koch brothers contribution to Canada's right-wing Fraser Institute made the news.
I don't know which of these I find most disturbing. Or maybe it's the combination of the three that we should find most disturbing. Because what we're seeing is the politicizing and distortion of science. And frankly, we will need a clear scientific perspective if we're to have any hope of keeping our complex human support system going on the planet.
David Suzuki is a scientist. Though he has become a communicator and an activist, nevertheless, it is science that informs him and motivates him. It's more than coincidental that Suzuki and his foundation have come under attack by the oil lobbyists just after the federal government accused the Canadian environmental movement taking money from and being under the influence of "foreign interests."
Back in February, Brian Jean, a Conservative member representing Fort McMurray and the tar sands region of Alberta announced that he planned to table a private member's bill aimed at outlawing foreign donations to Canadian environmentalist groups.
For those who missed it, this is tied to the oil industry's push to get federal approval to build the Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast to export tar sands oil, the Conservative government's support of the industry plan and the inevitable public and environmental push-back against the plan. The Suzuki Foundation was caught in the cross-fire as pro-industry anti-environmentalists began to pressure the organization about its political advocacy activities.
Responding to the pressure, Suzuki resigned from his foundation so he could "speak freely without fear." But, one wonders, or at least I did, why should Suzuki have anything to fear?
The answer came a week later, when EthicalOil.org, with strong ties to their spiritual leader, Ezra Levant, and to the Conservative party, then hired a lawyer and drafted a 44-page letter to have the Suzuki Foundation's charitable status revoked by Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for allegedly violating the tax laws governing the amount of political advocacy the foundation is allowed to pursue under Canadian tax laws (10 per cent of its total work). Apparently there will be an investigation that should tie up the foundation for months or even years.
Well. That was a rather large cannon ball fired at the foundation's hull; the first man overboard being Suzuki himself.
Ethical Oil, name clearly revealing its true function, was now attacking the ethics of others -- instead of those real but ever-so-irritating environmental issues. Issues such as the actual environmental impact of tar sands oil mining and the potential environmental risks of the proposed pipeline.
Meanwhile, in seeming lockstep with Ethical Oil, the Conservative government has fired up its own war machine on the environmental movement, giving the tax department a windfall of $8 million (this in a time when the CBC budget is being slashed) to enforce the rules on charities and not-for-profits. Yes. There seems to be good reason for Suzuki's choice of the word "fear."
Fear was the weapon of choice once again in a slick but subversive little propaganda video I saw circulating on the net this week. It's called "If I Wanted America to Fail." The video opens with a headshot of a clean-cut young man who delivers a lyrically poetic rant about the evils of environmentalists and their support of "expensive energy" (alternatives such as wind and solar) and their opposition to sources cheap energy (read: fossil fuels), the oil companies and the American way of life. The video is being promoted as "going viral.".
Watching it as a career marketing person, I couldn't help feeling that this was right up there with outright political propaganda complete with misleading information and half-truths, just like most of the commercial advertising we see today.
The difference, of course, between this new "Fail" video and commercial advertising is the fact that the commercial audience knows that the companies are telling one side of the truth to sell products. The propaganda videos, on the other hand, don't have that unspoken preface. The audience is encouraged to view them as "truth." But what gives them away is their emotional appeal rather than the weight of real physical evidence.
What is most maddening is that the new anti-environmentalist approach has become a war on actual fact, a war in which everything is turned away from actual reality toward what the audience interprets is simply a war of conflicting opinion.
But the laws of physics, unfortunately, can't be suspended to accommodate anyone who chooses to disbelieve the physical laws. Cigarettes do cause cancer. The world is not flat, whatever Thomas Friedman's sense of humour might say. The polar icecaps are melting. And fossil fuel is a non-renewable resource, spin it however we may.
The final news item was the Koch brothers' donations to the Fraser Institute, which pretty much puts the cherry on it in my view. The donations were among the largest handed out by the oil billionaire brothers according to their U.S. records, though the donations were never made public by the Fraser Institute; it took the Vancouver Observer to do that.
For its part the Fraser Institute has been actively involved in influencing and shaping Canadian government policy for decades, while claiming to be "not political and non-partisan." I guess it's one of those suck-and-blow things. What is clear is the Fraser is anti-environmentalist. You can find gems on its website such as: "New video urges Canadians to 'Question the Hype' about global warming," and "Sustainable water exports possible with reformed Canadian water policies," and this classic, "New report details over-looked scientific evidence against simplistic climate alarmism." And it's offering these anti-environmentalist materials to classroom teachers, so your kids can become anti-environmentalists--just as its Koch-funded American counterparts are doing in the U.S.
I don't know about you, but I don't think that the current concern among the vast majority of the world's climate scientists about climate change is "alarmism." I also don't think most Canadians want to start exporting their fresh water to the U.S. or the rest of the world for that matter, unless I've missed some significant new development. And I want my kids to learn how to love the environment, not hate the environmentalists who are trying to protect their future.
But the Fraser Institute, and the people who finance them to influence Canadian policies, certainly do want those things.
So what's really happening? How can the average Canadian separate the real science from the BS? Or the bad opinion from the good?
The simple answer? It's all about motivation. Just ask yourself who stands to gain the most cash and control of our natural resources from any government decision. And there's your answer.
Hint: Somehow I don't think we need to worry about Suzuki selling off our resources to foreigners for a profit -- or for a lifetime seat in the Senate. Do you?
The good news in this declaration of war on the environmental groups is that the wealthy pro-industry forces, through their recent slam-dance tactics, have now openly acknowledged that these "tree-huggers" are highly effective at representing the public's interests. The battles may have escalated but this war is far from over.]]>Even Canada's Criminals Deserve Better, Vic Toewstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14386192012-04-20T10:01:34-04:002012-06-20T05:12:02-04:00Gerald McEachernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mceachern/just announced the permanent closure of the Kingston Penitentiary and the Leclerc Institution in Laval, QC. Apparently, both facilities are antiquated relics of a bygone era. Kingston, built in 1835, is one of the oldest, continuously operating prisons in the world.
I've never been to prison. But several years ago a realtor took us to look at a house located just across the road from one. "Not a problem," she said, "there are only a couple of escapes every year." That federal prison located in Dorchester, NB, is also an old facility, built in 1880. Once a notorious maximum security lock-up, it now handles all of Atlantic Canada's medium security offenders with an emphasis on psychiatric care and rehabilitation. There's a big farm attached to it to prove it. But the place still seems pretty rough. Just looking at it one gets the idea that Canada's prison infrastructure is a bit out of date.
As I read the news about Toews' announcement, I expected to read that there would be some new, high-tech Panopticon-style facility being built to replace the old prisons. But I was wrong. The prisoners are being merged with existing prison populations elsewhere. According to Toews, this is not a problem.
The good news is the government, or "we," will be saving $120 million a year, and most of the staff will be reassigned to other institutions. And we won't be spending any more money to build new prisons.
The bad news is the existing prisons are already running at over-capacity. Millhaven is 112 inmates over capacity and the max security complex in Saint-Anne-des-Plaines in Quebec is 217 inmates over its design. Closing Kingston today would result in nearly 100 more inmates over the Canadian prison system capacity. And there's talk that about 100 prison workers will lose their jobs.
The whole thing is a bit more complicated than that, of course. The Conservatives have committed to adding 2,700 new prisoner spaces to existing facilities over the next five years, which should alleviate some of the pressure.
And then there's the new "tough on crime" legislation introduced last year. Stats show that the increase in new inmates is lower than expected, and Toews states that, "Instead of attracting all sorts of new criminals into the system, we're just retaining the old ones." Hmm. That doesn't sound like progress.
Still, the prison population has grown from 13,300 two years ago to about 15,000 today. If that rate continues at the same pace (about 1,100 a year) due to new legislation and a tougher economy for those living on lower incomes, Toews' plan to add new spaces is going to be half as much as the system will actually need. Hello, more overcrowding.
I'm no prison expert, but I suspect that the short-term solution of packing more inmates into aging facilities is a recipe for long-term disaster.
A report by the Alberta John Howard Society in 1996 stated the same thing. It noted that Canada's prisons were already overcrowded with over 20 per cent of prisoners "double-bunking" in cells. The report cited the decision by Correctional Service of Canada (which was dealing with a total prison population of 12,400 at the time) to "more effectively deal with violent high-risk offenders, while examining alternatives to incarceration for low-risk offenders," which represents the most dangerous 18 per cent and lowest risk 17 per cent of the prison population.
And those alternatives are exactly the initiatives the current Conservative government is eliminating with its new tougher stance on crime as we begin to overfill our prisons with petty thieves and drug offenders -- to teach them a lesson.
But what lesson will "we" be teaching? Today's prisons are dealing with epidemics of mental illness as social downloading has offloaded the mentally ill on the justice system. HIV/AIDS is an ongoing concern, especially in overcrowded and thus emotionally charged prison conditions. Not to mention the obvious, that every neophyte offender going in gets a thorough crash course in a life of professional crime and violence.
Race is another hidden aspect of these new, wrongheaded policies. Canada's prisons have a disproportionately large population of aboriginal inmates. But Toews and his fellow Conservatives, with dark glasses securely in place, are conveniently colour-blind now, as well.
As for Correctional Service of Canada, its reward for making those recommendations all those years ago with be a growing problem and a cut of $295 million over the next five years. I expect that this won't make for a more "efficient" department.
But wait. There is hope on the horizon. If the government system becomes too inefficient, we can privatize parts of it. Bad idea. It's not working too well in the U.S. where the private prison model requires high levels of incarceration to remain profitable. And it didn't work well here, either, when the new, five-year-old 1,200-inmate private super-prison at Penetanguishene was shut down in 2006. Rates of reoffending were higher, the health of prisoners was lower and the security was worse than in our old publicly-run institutions. End of that story.
So what should we be doing? We should be looking at our whole society first. World data (via Wilkinson and Pickett) show that more income-equal societies have lower rates of crime and incarceration. So the job starts with creating good jobs and shifting a proportionally greater share of taxes to the top income earners in Canada.
Second, we have to address mental health issues head on in this country which are now at unmanageable levels. Third, we need to reach out to our First Nations people, and bring them into the economic decision-making process of the country. Fourth, we need to invest in rethinking, redesigning and rebuilding a more enlightened prison system worthy of the 21st century.
And finally, we need to start redeveloping a sense of ourselves as forward-thinking, caring Canadians, with a common vision of our own future -- beyond hauling non-renewable oil and minerals out of the ground (like some Third World country) and selling off them to the lowest bidders, along with the remnants of our Canadian-owned corporations.
It's time we told our politicians to take off the dark glasses. Those people we're tossing in our jails are our neighbours and fellow Canadians, not scum to be cleaned off the soles of our shoes.
It's been said before and I'll say it again: the American prison model isn't working for them, and it sure as hell won't work for us. And if you don't believe me, just ask Conrad Black.]]>