Alberta: Get Rich or Die Trying

Stelmach: The fact that Albertan soliders have died in Afghanistan should absolve us from our Kyoto commitments

Daveberta has a great post today describing how Ed Stelmach - responding to questions raised about the UN's investigation into Canada's unwillingness to comply with its Kyoto obligations - argued that Alberta should be absolved from its responsibility to help Canada meet its climate targets under the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol because Albertan soldiers are dying in Afghanistan. Seriously.

From the Canadian Press article,

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is bristling over the United Nations threat of sanctions against Canada for failing to meet a Kyoto Protocol deadline on greenhouse-gas reporting.

Stelmach says Canada is doing its part for United Nations-backed military efforts in Afghanistan and the timing of these threatened sanctions appears to be insensitive.

"Does it bother me a bit? Yes it does," Stelmach said Thursday. "We´re in Afghanistan and just lost another soldier."

Wow. Between this and the "wind turbines kill 30 000 ducks a year" bit, it seems like the main focus of Stelmach's mandate is to embarrass Albertans on an international scale. He appears to be unaware that the mission in Afghanistan is actually a NATO-led and Canada -- not Alberta -- signed on to it, and even if that were the case his logic would still make little sense. If anyone ever thought that the Alberta government's arguments around climate change were based on sound scientific policies or rational thought, this and the Mark Jaccard report the Alberta government finally released today should have completely dispelled that notion.

I think this raises another interesting point, too: if Alberta wants to have its own embarrassingly ineffective climate change plan, it should have to go and defend it on the international stage like every other jurisdiction. At this point, Canadian provinces operate more like independent nations than European countries in this respect anyway. Could you image Canadian provinces getting along enough to burden share like the EU did?

So why don't we send Stelmach and his compelling arguments to Poland in Decemeber for the next meeting of the signatories to Kyoto? Hell, he can even take along Knuckles to back him up.

How much longer will we look the other way?

A march was held in Edmonton on Saturday to remember and raise awareness about the hundreds of Aboriginal women who have gone missing in Western Canada over the past two decades. This year's march marked the 2nd Annual Stolen Sisters Awareness Walk and was led by the mothers of Nina Courtepatte and Rachel Quinney, two slain Aboriginal teenagers from the Edmonton area.

Aboriginal women in Canada are five times more likely to be murdered than women of any other ethnicity. Over the past 20 years, more than 500 Aboriginal women in Western Canada have gone missing or been murdered. Although statistics like this are sobering, it seems to me that as a society we don't truly understand the implications of these numbers. If we did, we would be doing a lot more to prevent them from happening.

It is all too easy for each of us to see a headline or hear a news report that another young Aboriginal woman's life has been cut short, and with all but the slightest pause for sadness or regret, continue on with our daily routines. This process is particularly easy when victims are identified as having led a 'high-risk lifestyle.' It's as if while we may be shocked or even somewhat horrified to hear about the disappearance of another young woman or the discovery of another brutalized body in our city's suburban backyard, the revelation that the victim was believed to be a sex worker, drug user, or even simply Aboriginal, is enough to lull us back into our collective indifference and dispel any sense of outrage, safe with the assurance this couldn't happen to women we love.

There are several problems with this 'high-risk' designation, which I think are important and need to be unpacked if we are to truly understand the need for action on our part.

1. Often and particularly, in conversations around initiatives like Project KARE, the Highway of Tears task force, and even when thinking about the Stolen Sisters report, the identies of 'high-risk' and Aboriginal are conflated to mean the same thing. This ignores the fact that many of the missing Aboriginal women, were not in fact leading 'high-risk lifestyles'; however the indifference we feel toward these cases is nonetheless the same.
2. As eh has previously posted on, labeling the victims of violence as 'high-risk' implicitly places blame squarely on the shoulders of the murdered or missing young women and removes the focus from the men trolling our streets looking for the next victim.
3. Designating women as having been involved in 'high-risk' lifestyles obscures the fact that these women are mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins, and nieces and have relationships with other human beings who will be adversely impacted by their disappearance. Many of the people involved in Saturday's march were there in remembrance of a friend of family member they lost and these people deserve the same level of societal concern as the families of any other missing person.
4. Relatedly, labeling missing and murdered women as 'high-risk' removes the context from their lives.  It absolves the media from asking important questions about how a person got to the point where they have become 'high-risk', it conceals the cycles of abuse and violence that have impacted the lives of many of these women and most tragically, it completely dehumanizes these women to the point of being just another statistic or blip on the radar.

Seeing the epidemic of violence affecting Aboriginal women from a new (non-mainstream media) perspective is crucial to our finding the anger necessary to break with our collective indifference, to demand that our lawmakers do more to end the violence, and ensure that Aboriginal woman enjoy the same rights and privileges as every other citizen of this country. If you would like to learn more about this issue, take a look at the Amnesty International 'Stolen Sisters' report (or even just check out the site) that finally forced us to acknowledge there was a problem. There is also a sobering documentary by the same name that appeared on Global in October -- any of them will make you angry.

Alberta government bans CBC....well sort of

On Thursday, the Alberta government banned CBC from media lockups 'for at least a year'. This means that CBC reporters in Alberta will no longer have access to government documents prior to their public release. News organizations  are given early access in exchange for their promise not release any information until the Public Affairs Bureau (the PCs' information clearinghouse/spin machine) says its OK. Unfortunately, during the recent release of the provincial budget a CBC reporter breached this contract by sharing some  information with a Calgary official, in an effort to get a head start getting budget reactions (prior to the budget announcement). To be clear here, the information was never broadcasted on air or in anyway released to the public at large. While this was an error on the part of the reporter I doubt this isn't the first time a situation like this has occurred.

What strikes me as interesting about this whole ordeal is the harsh and swift reaction of the government. In the past few months (especially) I have noticed that CBC Edmonton's editorial line has become more and more critical of the Alberta government. In particular, reporters Kim Trynacity and John Archer were highly critical of the PCs during their last campaign and seem to have continued this trend.* I appreciate their perspectives and I certainly don't blame them for taking a position (does anyone still cling to the illusion of media neutrality?). In contrasr, the Edmonton Sun is usually painfully conservative and pro-AB government (and as such, I don't read their tabloid....I mean 'newspaper').** But, I wonder if they would have received the same punishment had one of their staffers made a minor breach?

Check out the CBC staff blog, for more deets/commentary.

*take a close look at the two photos in this last article.
**No self-respecting newspaper should frequently feature half-naked women or men on their pages.

UPDATE: Graham Thomson's Saturday column in the Edmonton Journal discusses Stelmach's penchant for vindictiveness and his 'don't mess with the Alberta government' attitude.

Liberals + NDP + Greens = you still lost the election

I took this picture while stopped for a pee break on the way back from a recent trip to Lethbridge. It doesn't really have much to with this article, but it's, I think, a very stereotypically Albertan image, so it might be an appropriate accompaniment for the discussion of heady matters like those below. Most of all I just thought it was nice and wanted to put it up...

Everyone knew that this was bound to happen sooner or later: the parties defeated in the recent provincial election are "mulling radical options," according to the Edmonton Journal. Although we're a little late (each of Ken Chapman, Daveberta, and Calgary Grit have already offered opinions on this matter), in the day-late-dollar-short spirit of the opposition parties of Alberta, I thought I would contribute a substandard analysis after everyone has stopped caring.

First of all, I'm thrilled and overjoyed to see that these parties are finally doing what many opponents of the Alberta PCs have been wishing they'd do for years -- that is, recognize that what they're doing isn't working, and take an honest look at what can be done to change this. What they've come up with thus far isn't entirely impressive, but there is some definite potential and it's great to see people actually thinking about this.

The "radical options" that the Journal article refers to are:

1. An alliance of sorts where the Greens, NDP, and Liberals don't run candidates against one another in some or all of the province's ridings, and agree to a list of "core priorities to act upon if they are able to form a government after the next election." (h/t Daveberta).
2. Liberal MLA David Swann's investigation (which apparently includes a planned meeting with Preston Manning) into starting "a new party based on green politics, accountability and democratic reform."

As Calgary Grit very capably points out in his post on the subject, the first idea is destined for failure. The last election was not lost on vote-splitting. It was lost because none of the opposition parties came close to offering up a vision that would attract support from significant numbers of Tory voters and/or non-voters. My feeling is that to ever have a hope of unseating the Alberta PCs, the farthest to the left any opposition party could be is "centre, " and in Alberta I would say that the NDP, Liberal, and Green brands all carry connotations of "left." Although these perceptions, at least in the case of the Liberals and Greens, aren't entirely based on reality, they would nonetheless result in this alliance being perceived as resolutely "left-wing" -- which might actually result in them losing total votes. In this case, I think the whole would be less the sum of its parts, which is why I'm much warmer to idea number 2.

I think David Swann is one of the best of MLAs in the legislature, so to see this coming from him is great (and not entirely surprising.) However, although the Journal story is a little thin on details, it seems that the party that he is contemplating could best be summarized as Green Party 2. If I were to start an opposition party I'd want to focus on exactly the same three things that Swann mentions: green politics, accountability and democratic reform. However, if I wanted to get elected, I'd be sure to make smart spending and continued prosperity central planks of this party's platform.

The key, I think, is to not be perceived as an environmental party that embraces fiscal conservatism -- that's what the Green Party does, and it earned them 4.6% of the popular vote last election. The key is being seen as a fiscally conservative party that embraces environmentalism (and democratic reform and accountability). Hopefully Preston Manning mentions something along these lines when him and Swann are talking.

The Alberta PC party is perhaps the biggest tent in Canadian politics. Any opposition party that wants to form government in our province is going to have to lop off a pretty big chunk of it, and I think the the time is right for a movement like the one Swann is proposing to do just that, so long as it is grounded in the fiscal conservatism that I think is basically a prerequisite for forming government in Alberta. Such a party might not attract the support of very many NDP voters, but I would say the centre to centre-right spectrum is a lot more vote-rich than the left to far-left.

That may sound a little greasy, but perpetually being in the opposition -- or, more accurately, never having a snowball's chance in hell of forming government -- sucks. I'm willing accept a little bit of spend-thriftness if it means having a Premier who doesn't wholeheartedly believe that the environmental toll of the oilsands is a "myth."

Back to the dead ducks

When Premier Stelmach finally stopped drooling out comments about wind turbines and the evil Sierra Club, I thought that writing fodder on this subject had just about come to an end. However, yesterday in the letters section of the Journal I saw about a square foot of backlash towards citizens like us here at AGRDT who've been impolite enough to raise a stink over this whole issue, which kind of got the gears turning. Adding to this, today I was forwarded this piece of nonsensical sanctimonious tripe (penned by Ian Robinson for the Calgary Sun -- surprising, I know) that, as you can probably tell from the description I gave it, riled me up enough to write one more post on this issue.

There upshot of most of the letters in the Journal and Robinson's piece (if there is one; he rambles from topic to topic, the only common thread seeming to be his desire to malign "enviro-whackos") is that, in the big scheme of things, the death of 500 ducks isn't a big deal. Many more are killed by wind turbines/hunting/cats/cars/houses each year, so we should just forget about this (and, presumably, go on with strip mining the rest of the province.)

Talk about missing the point. I completely agree that the death of 500 ducks, in itself, is nothing to get too upset about. But the big issue with this incident isn't the ducks per se; it's that we ever allowed an enormous, poisonous lake that can more-or-less instantly kill an entire flock of ducks unless it's surrounded by constantly-firing noise cannons to ever exist in the first place. The unfortunate death of these ducks simply brought that to light in a very visible way. The communication I've seen that has been critical of this incident has consistently conveyed this idea, but people like Robinson seem to be more worried about painting "enviro-whackos" as a bunch of bleeding hearts who guilelessly personify all living creatures like a bunch of misguided children than actually thinking about what they're saying or writing.

Here's a few numbers to illustrate my point: in 2004 there were 622 murders in Canada. In that same year, a 160 762 Canadians died from either  circulatory diseases, cancer, or respiratory diseases. Using the logic of Robinson and his ilk, we could safely conclude that murder isn't a problem in Canada, so we should just go on our merry way without being burdened with the unseemly task of figuring out how we can improve things.

The problem with this logic, of course, is that it's really stupid -- it ignores the fact that there is some sort of underlying problem with our society that is causing the murders. Although simply not worrying about this would undoubtedly make it easier to sleep at night, it would unfortunately do absolutely nothing to solve the problem.

I'll agree with Robinson and say that the death of 500 ducks in itself doesn't constitute a tragedy. What's truly tragic -- and what this incident illustrates -- is the sorrowful extent to which our governments have allowed our environmental stewardship to degrade.

Touchy-feely good, sexual assault bad

LV is back after a prolonged absence with a new post, check it out:

Despite efforts by activists, feminists and women-loving people in general, the mainstream media is STILL minimizing and denying the effects and experiences of sexual assault.  And this article from today's Edmonton Journal is no different.  The article, entitled "Appeal rejected for touchy-feely doctor", details the case of an Edmonton physician who groped and assaulted several of his patients during routine examinations.  Here is what happened:

"A 2005 investigation by a college committee heard from one woman who said she felt violated after Litchfield pinched her nipples during a routine physical. Another woman, who went to hospital with a migraine, allowed Litchfield to loosen her bra to check her back for muscle spasms, but then felt him cupping her breasts with his hands and pulling her against his groin, court documents revealed at the time."

While this excerpt clearly demonstrates that the doctor completely violated the trust and body of his patient, the Edmonton Journal headline writers choose to refer to his actions as "touchy-feely".  Obviously, at some point they completely missed the boat. 

According to the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre, "sexual assault" is any form of sexual contact without voluntary consent (Adapted from the Criminal Code of Canada, Sec.270).

• kissing, fondling, sexual intercourse, anal intercourse, and oral sex are all examples of sexual assault if they are done without voluntary consent.
• consent obtained through pressure, coercion, force, or threats of force is not voluntary consent.

And consent is not given if,

• it is given by someone else
• the person is incapable of consenting (i.e. unconscious, drunk, stoned, or sleeping)
• it is an abuse of power, trust, or authority
• the person does not say yes, says no, or through words or behavior implies no
• the person changes her/his mind

Get that Journal editors?  Unwanted groping and fondling by a person who has authority, power and trust  is sexual assault. Period.  This "doctor" is not "touchy-feely", he is perpy. Ask the women, I'm sure they would agree. 

Not only is this a clear case of sexual assault, but it also is a flagrant example of the abuse of medical authority, and our tendency to brush it off.  We need to start asking ourselves why this doctor is called "touchy-feely," when if a pedophile enacted the exact same physical actions on the body of a young girl, the media would be up in arms. The news media holds special privileges and rights in our society, but with those comes the obligation and responsibility to not minimize and treat lightly sexual violence.  Let's hope the Edmonton Journal steps it up.

Edmonton arts goings-on

In the last couple of days I've had a chance to get my pasty buns out of hibernation and over to a couple of very Edmonton-y  events which, thanks to our 8-month-long winter, have invigorated me with the confirmation that there is indeed a world outside of my apartment, my office, and the liquor store. Since even I'm tired of hearing about our fantastically incompetent provincial government, I thought I'd mix it up a little bit and talk about something that doesn't involve, say, entire flocks of ducks dying horrible deaths in massive poisonous cesspools.   

photo: http://dawn.cbcr3.com/nmc/16/16916/Images/CadenceWeapon.jpg

1. On Thursday night, I ambled over to the McDougall United Church for a show by Edmonton's own Rollie Pemberton (aka Cadence Weapon), who was opening up for Nova Scotia's own Buck 65. I think that they must have been advertising the concert in the church's congregation newsletter or something, because it was the most literally all-ages show that I've ever had the pleasure of attending. The crowd truly ran the temporal gamut, from the 3-year-old girl near the water-cooler who informed me that the holy-water-holder-looking-thing wasn't a garbage can so I shouldn't throw my used cup into it, to the 70-ish grandmas who were milling about the back of the church and apparently held a meeting of some sort in the basement between the opening and headlining acts.

This provided an unpretentious and, as I said, very Edmonton-y backdrop for what was a very entertaining performance by Edmonton's most noted musical export of late. Pemberton is an engaging performer who's not afraid to get really, really sweaty while doing his thing, which includes multiple trips onto the floor and into the crowd, and creative and hilarious variations on the "clap-your-hands" admonition that is typically issued to a concert-going crowd. A particularly good example of this occurred during his performance of "Black Hand." During the first chorus he issued the fairly typical "put your fist in the air" command, but on the subsequent chorus he pantomimed a Fightin'-Irish type motion and told the crowd to "move your fist like this, like you're punching someone." Ha!

His sense of humour is quite evident in his music, and it definitely made it's way into the performance. Ever a proud Edmontonion, I would like to think that growing up in a city that didn't take itself too seriously (I say "didn't" here because it seems this is changing) has contributed to him not taking himself too seriously. Whether or not this is actually the case or simply me trying to somehow claim a small fraction of credit for his success, I don't know, but in any case it certainly contributed to my enjoyment of the proceedings.

image: http://www.fifteen.ca/theroyalbison/

2. Emboldened to again leave my house, this morning I headed over to the Royal Bison Craft & Art Fair put on at the Cosmopolitan Music Society building in Old Strathcona by local illustrator Raymond Biesinger. After paying a $2 admission fee, I had a chance to rationalize spending way too much money on all manner of things that could generally be described as "neat." There was quite a selection of wares for sale, including paintings, drawings, clothing, soap, magazines, yo-yos, records, weird guitar amps, and a large smattering of general knick-knackery, all made locally and vended* by very friendly vendors. I made a few purchases, but the one I'm probably the most excited about was a sort of illustrated dance-move drawing from a series done by Sean Borchert. I plan on studying it intensively to enhance my repertoire for the bevy of weddings I'll be attending this summer. 

"The Bison" runs today until 5 and tomorrow from 10-5 -- I'd urge anyone interested to check it out.

*I can't actually believe "vended" is a word, but I didn't get any red underlines when I typed it...

Syncrude's Dead Ducks: update

Don't worry about the toxic chemical lakes that cover over 50 square km of former Boreal forest, are growing by 1 million litres a day, and that we have no idea how to get rid of, folks! Wind turbines are our real problem. At least that's what Ed Stelmach says in a piece of logic and integrity that make me think his brain and heart, like several hundred hectares of our province, are full of carcinogenic sludge. According to this story in the Globe,

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is down playing the deaths, saying that wind turbines kill 30,000 birds annually.

If anyone needed any more proof that Ed Stelmach doesn't care about the environment, this is it. Instead of confronting this issue, he flippantly quotes a meaningless and inflammatory statistic to attempt to minimize the debacle. Of course, this isn't at all surprising coming from a man who's government has chosen to spend $25 million in attempt to convince people everything's okay without actually making it okay first. In fact, I'd say it's a shining example of the supposed "integrity" that his supporters love to prattle on about.

Were it not so infuriating, it would be hilarious to watch Stelmach stumble through yet another incident with his characteristic media savvy. Prior to the above bombshell, Stelmach likened himself to David in a battle against the Goliath that is evil, all-powerful, and notoriously deep-pocketed environmental movement:

“The $25-million is small compared to the combined money of the various lobby groups,” said the premier. “In terms of David and Goliath, I've been in this position before and now I'm here, so I recognize the challenges.”

(From this story in the Globe.)

There you have it folks, your premier Ed Stelmach. When a flock of ducks dies by landing on an oil company's giant toxic slough, his default position is say it isn't a big deal, defend the oil company, and attack the environmental groups who dare use it as an example of poor environmental stewardship by self-righteously and incomprehensibly framing himself as the underdog. Like I said, I'd laugh at this were it not so completely depressing coming from the man that runs my province.

If anything, at least we can take solace in the fact that the unfortunate death of the 495 ducks was not completely in vain, as there is no question that the international news coverage of this tragic episode has more than negated any potential positive effect from the dishonest $25 million PR campaign. Quack heard around the world, indeed.

Some thoughts on hypocrisy

It's been a pretty eventful couple of weeks for people interested in Alberta environmental issues. We've seen Ed Stelmach's $25 million dollar greenwashing campaign swing into action, the cheeky interruption of Stelmach's Premier's Dinner speech by Greenpeace activists, and, most recently and visibly (notice the source I link to), the death of approximately 500 ducks that landed in one of Syncrude's several, massive, and highly toxic tailings ponds (these, I might add, being a fine example of the environmental stewardship that our government is spending vast amounts of taxpayer money to promote.*)

Because this blog doesn't often allow me the opportunity to directly berate people, I often find myself duking it out in the comments section below news stories on either the CBC News or Globe and Mail websites. In light of all of the action this week I've been especially busy, and I've noticed a common thread in the arguments posed in these forums, typically by conservative types, that makes my blood boil: the notion that people like the Greenpeace protesters, for example, are "hypocrites" because they drove to the Shaw Conference centre/were wearing shoes with rubber in them/performed their action in a room heated by natural gas/know someone that works at a gas station. The idea is that this "hypocrisy" somehow invalidates the arguments of these people because they're not "putting their money where their mouths are."

The only problem with this argument is that in western society it is impossible -- short of walking into the forest naked -- to put one's money where one's mouth is in this respect.  As an example, I type this on a computer composed largely of petroleum byproducts that's being powered by coal-generated electricity while I sit in a natural-gas-heated room, with the energy for this typing coming from food produced with fossil fuel-powered machinery. Are these oil-industry critical  words invalidated because I'm indirectly using oil to produce them?

I don't think so, because it is impossible to produce these words otherwise -- just as there was no practical way for Greenpeace interrupt the Premier's dinner or for David Suzuki (another very popular target for accusations of this sort for having the audacity to use a bus for his cross-country climate change tour) to influence public opinion without using fossil fuels in some way. Accusing environmentalists of hypocrisy is so popular amongst their opponents, I think, because the accuser knows that the only real alternative for the party that the accuser is directing his or her attacks towards is to more-or-less stop doing whatever it is that riled up the accuser so much in the first place and, as I mentioned, walk naked into the forest.

People like Suzuki or Greenpeace members are simply trying to change the society that we live in, and regardless of what they think of this society they are subject to its constraints like everyone else. Calling environmentalists hypocrites for using fossil fuels is like calling Scott Hennig a hypocrite for paying taxes, or members of the private-healthcare-advocating Fraser Institute hypocrites for going to a publicly-funded hospital if they fall ill. It's ludicrous, because in Canada, paying taxes and using public healthcare are precisely like using fossil fuels, in the sense that each is entirely unavoidable. Right now there is no fossil-fuel-free method remotely approaching practical that would allow environmental groups to spread their message to the extent necessary to influence public opinion  -- indeed, that is exactly what they're trying to change. Can you think of anything that would make Greenpeace happier than us living in a society where it wasn't necessary for them to use fossil fuels to propagate their message?

Criticize these people for being idealistic, unrealistic, or fatalistic -- whatever. But stop calling them hypocrites, or I'll aggressively browbeat you in the discussion section of a globeandmail.com story.

*I've been having a lot less of these lately, but this is one of those things that makes me shake my head, sigh, and say "Oh, Alberta." Edmontonians flew into an absolute rage when architectural entrance markers were proposed for the city, at a cost of about $1.4 million -- but they'll look the other way when the government spends $25 million on what is so blatantly propaganda.