Locked up reporters, denied a look at the bill, revolt.
…a massive white screen lowered from the ceiling behind two Canadian flags. A six-metre-tall Stephen Harper was projected onto it as he gave a speech to introduce the new anti-terror legislation live in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
Reporters in Ottawa became surly quickly Friday when it was discovered the government lock-up they attended for a briefing on proposed anti-terror legislation was light on information and heavy on restrictions.
On Friday, the federal government tabled Bill C-51, Canada’s new ”Anti-Terrorism Act” meant to bolster authorities’ powers to prevent and dismantle terrorist activity.
Journalists were corralled in a so-called lock-up to hear details of the new proposed law. Media lock-ups are frequently used to provide journalists with extra time to pore over information on a complicated subject — such as a budget. The reporters can’t publish their pieces until a set time, usually when the government announcement becomes official.
The idea is that when the government unveils the news, the public will have instant access to the finer points of whatever is being released.
That was the case Friday when reporters were told they could sign an embargo and listen to a briefing of Bill C-51, hosted by Public Safety Canada and the Department of Justice.
The bill was expected to have controversial new powers — such as lower thresholds for arresting suspected terrorists — for law enforcement in the name of protecting Canadians.
”The media lock-up will start at 11:00 A.M. until the designated Public Safety Canada official announces that the embargo is lifted, at approximately 12:30 P.M,” said a Thursday release to the parliamentary press corps from the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
”Once the lock-up has commenced, no one will be allowed to leave the room or contact their office until the embargo is lifted.”
Bills are usually given to reporters in a lock-up before they are tabled in parliament. A copy of the new Anti-Terrorism Act is what most members of the press were expecting Friday.
No bill to view
But when more than two dozen reporters arrived at the briefing in Ottawa, they were told they would not be getting a look at the bill, even before the question-and-answer portion of the technical briefing.
President of the Parliamentary Press Gallery Laura Payton took up the cause and at the back of the room argued with government staffers, questioning the point of having reporters sign an undertaking when they weren’t even being given sensitive information, just backgrounders. The backgrounders detailed little information the reporters didn’t already suspect would be in the new legislation.
The staffer insisted to Payton reporters weren’t actually in a lock-up, but merely signed an undertaking to observe an embargo on disseminating information from the backgrounders until the embargo was lifted.
The Tyee is withholding the staff member’s name in accordance with the undertaking’s stipulation not to attribute information to government employees at the event.
The briefing — referred to three times as a ”lock-up” — by another government staff member in his opening remarks then began.
Dissent grows
The minor grumblings about the lack of information that had been moving around the room suddenly matured into outright dissent.
”Can you give us an explanation for why you would hold a briefing and not give us the legislation at the beginning?” boomed one reporter.
”We’d be happy to take your questions on the substance of the information,” replied a frazzled bureaucrat attempting to maintain a social veneer.
He was then interrupted by another salvo of displeasure.
”We don’t have any information,” followed by ”We haven’t even had time to read the backgrounders!” and ”Give us the bill!” were shouted from reporters on chairs circling the room.
The shouting and sarcastic remarks continued — at one point it seemed a walkout was close to happening. Renewed demands from one corner of the room or another to see the bill were called out as staffers went on with their briefing.
Public Safety Canada and Department of Justice employees around the room began nervous attempts to calm reporters.
”Are you filming us?” a CBC reporter asked in disbelief to a staffer who appeared to be using a phone to record the discontent. The undertaking signed by media specifically said there was to be no filming in the room.
About 15 minutes later, Stephen Harper’s director of communications, Jason MacDonald, arrived and sat down, promptly thumbing away on his phone. The undertaking the journalists signed also forbid the use of cell phones to ”release or communicate documents, materials or information, or other records of any nature whatsoever to anyone in any manner” during the embargo.
Explain law
Staffers described to journalists Bill C-51 and how it makes it an indictable offense to advocate and promote terror, to preventative arrests and expanding the powers of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
The bulk of reporters’ questions were on how the bill makes it an indictable offense to knowingly advocate or promote terrorism offences ”in general,” which could mean people who post propaganda on social media are subject to arrest.
During the question-and-answer period, reporters asked how the government would decide who is supporting terrorism. Stephen Maher from Postmedia asked if someone would be breaking the law if they posted material encouraging attacks by Ukrainian militants on Russian targets in Crimea.
The row of bureaucrats at the front of the room said they wouldn’t speculate on hypothetical situations. Many answers seemed scripted to the point where one reporter asked if they were just reading parts of the backgrounder as their answers. The staffer replied that they weren’t.
A little after 12:00 p.m., the bill was given to reporters.
Half an hour later, the embargo was lifted and reporters were told they could expect a text message with a wireless code so they could file their stories. But the wireless did not immediately work.
Meanwhile a massive white screen lowered from the ceiling behind two Canadian flags. A six-metre-tall Stephen Harper was projected onto it as he gave a speech to introduce the new anti-terror legislation live in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
The Prime Minister talked about a growing ”great evil” Canadians need to be scared of in the form of violent jihadists wanting to kill anyone ”who does not share their narrow and oppressive world view.”
Reporters, meanwhile pleaded with government staffers to get the wireless working so they could get their stories — cobbled quickly from what information they were given — to the public.
Payton said she left after 15 minutes of waiting for the wireless to work and doesn’t know if it ever came on.
Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne take part in a joint news conference in Ottawa Thursday January 29, 2015 ahead of a meeting of Canadian premiers. (CP / Adrian Wyld)
By Canadian Press, reposted from CTVNews, Jan 29, 2015
OTTAWA — Efforts by the provinces and territories to combat climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be a top item of discussion at Friday’s premiers meeting, says Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.
Wynne and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, meeting on the eve of the gathering, accused the federal government of an absence of leadership that has all but forced the provinces and territories to tackle carbon-pricing and climate change on their own.
Wynne says they’re attempting to do so through the so-called Canadian Energy Strategy, an initiative involving all 13 provinces and territories focused on climate change and clean energy
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard is to update his counterparts about the initiative at the Council of the Federation meeting, being held just a few blocks from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office.
Harper has been invited to attend, but is skipping it again, much to the chagrin of Wynne, who issued a personal invitation to him earlier this month.
At a news conference with Wynne, Trudeau denied suggestions that he recently argued the provinces and territories should grapple with climate change on their own.
“Indeed, I am encouraged that over the past nine years of lack of leadership and inaction from the federal government, provinces are stepping forward with solutions to price carbon and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
“But that doesn’t absolve the federal government from needing to step up and take a very clear leadership role to demonstrate to the world that Canada is serious about taking on its responsibilities in terms of addressing and attacking climate change.”
Wynne agreed, saying the provinces should do what they can, but the federal government must take a stand on the world stage.
New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant said he’s hoping the provinces and territories will agree to co-operate on energy projects, in particular TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline.
“There’s no doubt as a nation we have to do a better job on climate change,” the Liberal premier told his own news conference on Thursday.
“On top of that, we also have to have a conversation about developing our economy throughout the country in a responsible way. We believe the Energy East pipeline is one that will help us grow our economy, create jobs; it’s one we that we can do, we believe, in a sustainable way.”
The $12-billion pipeline would give western oil producers access to a deep-water port on the Bay of Fundy. Environmentalists have mounted a spirited campaign against the project.
The Council of the Federation meets twice a year, summer and winter. Friday’s meeting, hosted by P.E.I. Premier Robert Ghiz, is focused largely on the economy and sliding oil prices.
But Dr. Chris Simpson, head of the Canadian Medical Association, said he was delighted to hear that a national seniors’ strategy is also high on the agenda.
“It becomes a really easy and compelling political agenda item, because doing the right thing for seniors happens to be something that we have to do for the sake of the economy,” he said in an interview.
Simpson also expressed disappointment that Harper won’t be at the meeting.
“The federal government has taken the stance that national issues like this are to be devolved to the provincial premiers, but I think health care is one of those things that is a truly nation-building issue,” he said.
“It really doesn’t make sense to have 14 different systems of health care that are functioning completely independently of each other.” SOURCE
A group of energy sector insiders look set to rubber stamp the eastern oil sands pipeline, which will cross rivers and cut through communities from Alberta to Québec and New Brunswick — choking the climate, and risking spills of up to 2.6 million litres of oil.
Shockingly, they say that climate changeisn’t their concern.
The good news is that the National Energy Board is about to start public consultations before this crucial decision is made —but they only want to hear from a hand picked few, on topics that they choose.
Right now, citizens’ groups are coming together to make the biggest push yet for a fair and inclusive process that will look at all the issues — if we all add our voices, they will have to listen, or risk a complete loss of public faith.
We only have days before the process starts. Click now to tell these decision makers to put their rubber stamp back in their pockets, and instead protect our precious natural resources and the climate. When 100,000 sign on, Avaaz will bring all our voices right to the NEB’s doorstep in Calgary. https://secure.avaaz.org/en/canada_pipeline_neb_e/?bEZXgab&v=52813
PM Harper’s government has tethered our economy to the oil industry, they’ve described the National Energy Board as an “ally”, and they advise on appointments to the board.
But the NEB is supposed to be independent, and they are required to hear from people impacted by these mega projects. This should include people impacted by thedevastating effects of climate change too.
The NEB says that climate change isn’t its concern, and that the provinces, together with pipeline-builder TransCanada, should deal with it. But it’s taking a narrow look at only the oil transportation issues, and not at the pipeline’s role in unleashing carbon from the tar sands on the world. Building this pipeline means digging ourselves further into a downward spiral of oil dependency and its impact on our changing climate needs to be reviewed.
New studies show that the pipeline, which will transport over 1 million barrels of tar sands crude each day, is vulnerable to corrosion, cracking, and massive spills. The Ontario-commissioned studies also say that the pipeline doesn’t provide the economic benefits that have been claimed, and there could be impacts on drinking water.
The National Energy Board could decide that the project is simply too risky for Canadians to bear. As they prepare for public consultation, let’s make sure that they hear from as many people as possible, and look at all the impacts of this oily pipeline. Click now to take action: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/canada_pipeline_neb_e/?bEZXgab&v=52813
Late last year, pipeline company TransCanada hired a giant PR firm that suggested targeting Avaaz and other organisations. We won’t be intimidated by this dirty war! By raising our voices together, we can show the NEB that thousands of Canadians demand fair and open hearings on this massive project.
With hope,
Jo, Ari, Danny, Emma, Ricken, and the whole Avaaz team
Lana Goldberg moderated the presentations at Beit Zatoun in Toronto, 11 January 2015.
By leftstreamed, reposted from YouTube, Jan 17, 2015
The Lima Conference should have been a milestone that marked out how governments will take urgent action to tackle climate change and to support vulnerable people across the world to adapt to its locked in impacts. But it was a failure and ran up against a political-economic system that puts the pursuit of profit above the needs of people and the limits of nature.
This is the importance of Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, where she argues that the main culprit of runaway climate change is the system itself: capitalism. She explains that a system that requires endless growth is incompatible with sustainability and meaningful climate action. Klein insists and shows that market solutions will not do the trick, and that even “Big Green” environmental groups are part of the problem because they falsely suggest we can solve the crisis without fundamental changes in society.
Moderated by Lana Goldberg. Speakers: Umair Muhammad, Patricia E. (Ellie) Perkins and Sam Gindin. Recorded at Beit Zatoun in Toronto, 11 January 2015.
Umair Muhammad is the author of Confronting Injustice: Social Activism in the Age of Individualsm. He is a PhD student in Political Science at York University. His research focuses on the political economy of the environment.
Patricia E. (Ellie) Perkins is a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, where she teaches and advises students in the areas of ecological economics and critical interdisciplinary research design. Her research focuses on feminist ecological economics, climate justice, and participatory community- and watershed-based environmental education for political action.
Sam Gindin spent most of his working life in the trade union movement as research director of the Canadian Autoworkers. He is the co-author, with Leo Panitch of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire.
This talk was delivered at a forum at Beit Zatoun, in Toronto on January 11, 2015, on Naomi Klein’s recent book, This Changes Everything (2014) [see video at LeftStreamed No. 245].
I would like to thank and acknowledge the First Nations of the territories where we live and are meeting, the Anishinaabe Mississauga, Seneca, Huron-Wendat, ‘Neutrals,’ and other peoples whose ancestors lived here. The land claim of the Mississaugas of the New Credit, relating to the Crown’s 1805 acquisition of land running from Ashbridge’s Bay westward to the mouth of the Credit River, and extending 28 miles northward, is still under negotiation. Toronto owes its location and earliest traditions as a meeting place to the aboriginal peoples who developed sustainable ways of living and welcomed settlers here. The appalling treatment of aboriginal peoples by settlers is an ongoing disgrace which is intertwined in many ways with the economic, political, and social systems that have produced climate change.
We must start by acknowledging and addressing long-standing injustices if we are to build alliances to fundamentally change this reality, as we are discussing today. I hope today’s session will contribute toward this understanding, and I think we all need to take seriously our responsibility to educate ourselves about the still-suppressed history and the current situation of aboriginal peoples.
Ecological Economics, De-Growth and Climate Change
As I read Naomi Klein’s wonderful book, This Changes Everything (2014), it kept reminding me of proposals and ideas which are part of the ecological economics canon, and I’d like to briefly share and describe some of these.
Ecological economics emerged as an academic field in the late 1980s (the journal Ecological Economics began publishing in 1989 and Canada’s chapter of the International Society for Ecological Economics(CANSEE, started in 1993). Ecological economics recognizes that the economy, however it is organized, is an open subsystem of the Earth’s ecosystem (of which humans are of course a part). The Earth system is materially-closed and energetically-open – since the Earth receives sunlight, and hopefully radiates an equal amount of heat back to space. Therefore material limits exist on how big the economy can grow, although these limits are not usually acknowledged in capitalist / neoclassical / traditional economics, which sees perpetual growth as good and necessary. Interest rates, wage increases, profits, and sometimes redistribution are fueled by this growth. Following the Meadows Report, The Limits to Growth (1972), E.F. Schumaker’s Small is Beautiful (1973), and Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971) which pointed out that due to thermodynamics, energy degrades and becomes progressively less useful once it enters the economy, books like Is Capitalism Sustainable? published in 1994, have highlighted the fallacies, contradictions and problems with economic growth-dependence. But as we know, growth has powerful and linked political constituencies.
The Degrowth movement, which is quite strong in Europe now and has an active Canadian presence, advocates for the downscaling of production and consumption so that humans live within the limits of the earth’s ecosystem while maximizing well-being through non-consumptive activities centred on culture, community and human relationships. Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster (2008) by my colleague Peter Victor at York University is a detailed blueprint and computer-tested model which shows how social goals like full employment and poverty reduction can be met even in a no-growth economy if the political will supports concerted, directed government spending. Clearly this will require a lot of grassroots organizing!
The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), founded in 1986, fosters research and discussion about the benefits of an unconditional basic income for all as an economic right. A basic income could be at least partly funded through minimizing the complex bureaucracies required to administer welfare, unemployment and other social transfers, and would allow those without formal employment to still contribute socially. Doesn’t this approach the aboriginal principle that everyone deserves food, clothing and shelter? Some people see a global basic income, perhaps funded through carbon taxes and climate debt repayments, as a climate justice goal. Wouldn’t this at least partly redress the economic development inequities stemming from colonialism?
The York-McGill-University of Vermont partnership website is e4a-net.org.
Ecological economists have also researched how to support the development of local economies, how to end perverse subsidies that stimulate economic bads not goods, ways of measuring resource depletion, pollution, and ‘stranded assets’ so that they can be included in national accounts, planning, and policy, and many other detailed policy-relevant topics that are likely to come in handy during the transition we face.
York University has recently begun a pedagogical partnership with McGill University and the University of Vermont to develop a joint ecological economics graduate program that will train dozens of graduate students over the next several years. Its goals include critiquing and advancing alternatives to Western, instrumentalist mindsets and disciplinary silos in order to contribute to a more holistic and practical understanding of sustainable human endeavor. Students work directly with organizations outside the university to put their academic studies at the service of civil society and test the relevance of what they are learning. The three focus areas for this joint program are water, energy, and climate justice.
In much recent work on ecological economics, degrowth, and the transition to more sustainable socio-economic systems, ‘commons’ is emerging as a paradigm for future economic institutions. A ‘commons’ starts out more overtly oppositional to capitalism than other sometimes-vague terms like ‘sustainability’ or ‘development,’ focusing as it does on ownership and property, land, resources, and assets that are explicitly not privately owned.
This goes beyond the idea of a commons as a common-property regime with the socio-political structures required to prevent open access. The vision more broadly is one of people working together, cooperatively, to build methods of production, service provision, and exchange which create value and well-being while integrating ecological care, justice, and long-term planning to the best of diverse communities’ abilities. This includes institutions such as co-ops, land trusts, and non-market or beyond-market collective ways of organizing production, distribution, consumption, and waste or materials management.
Preventing the so-called “tragedy of the commons” by controlling open access through strong social institutions requires a high level of general civic consciousness, co-operation, the ability to listen and mediate differing goals, conflict resolution, flexibility and good will throughout society, especially in the context of social dynamism and diversity. As 2009 Nobel Economics laureate Elinor Ostrom and others have demonstrated through meticulous research, this does not always happen, but it is possible.
The interdisciplinary International Association for the Study of the Commons was formed in 1989, building on the Common Property Network which was formed in 1984. IASC now has over 1,000 institutional members and has sponsored 12 international conferences, with another planned for May 2015 in Alberta. The idea that commons governance represents something fundamentally different from “the Market” or “the State” is becoming well-known and widely accepted.
The journal Capitalism Nature Socialism, founded in 1988, provides a focus for egalitarian and environmental anti-capitalist perspectives. Political ecology, green community development, and feminist eco-socialism, among others, are burgeoning communities of thought and action related to human relationships with the Earth.
My general point is that many relevant theories, methods and tools which may be useful in the struggle against climate change have been advanced and analyzed by academics, and are therefore available when needed and as soon as the political will is in place to put them to use. Academics and activists can and should be strong allies.
Three Sets of Ideas in Addressing Climate Change
There are three areas where I’d like to offer some additional thoughts, building on what Klein says about climate change and capitalism. The first relates to race and slavery, energy transitions, inequities, and human work. Energy transitions are times when humans ‘discover’ or invent a new way of making their lives easier. Animal traction, making ‘domesticated’ animals do work for humans, made possible new kinds of agriculture and increased food production. Using fire was one of the first energy transitions (requiring wood biomass for fuel). The eventual near-deforestation of Europe led to the discovery that coal could also be burned; coal allowed hotter fires, making possible steel smelting and all sorts of resultant technological changes. Transitions to other fossil fuels, and nuclear energy, followed. Technical change in ship design, including hull profiles and sails, made possible ever-fleeter and more wide-ranging wind-powered and then fossil-fueled ships, military conquests, trade, colonialism.
But not all humans were ever the beneficiaries of these energy transitions and technological advances. The beneficiaries depended, and still depend, on which people have access to the technologies and which people, through violence and political power, ‘own’ the ability to enjoy easier lives. Women’s work, for example, has nearly always been controlled and directed for the service of men through religious and family traditions, domestic violence, labour-market discrimination, and other institutions of patriarchy. This is why women in North America and Europe still earn only about two-thirds of what men do for equivalent work, and why women with dependents work a double or triple day at the expense of their rest, leisure, and health. After WWII, as electric household machines fuelled from the grid reduced women’s drudgery in housework, laundry and cooking, women began to work outside the home, still at low wages. In the global South today, electrification has similar effects, sometimes displacing rural women and men to urban factories where they face a different kind of drudgery.
And slavery, viewed in this way, is another institution that some people invented to make their lives easier at the extreme expense of others – it cannot be separated either historically, economically, or environmentally from the energy transitions surrounding it. (Some alternative energy publications still talk about ‘energy slaves’; since the average sustained power output of a human being is about one-tenth of a horsepower, an ‘energy slave’ is equivalent to about 0.67 of a kilowatt-hour.) Recent research by black scholars is documenting all the ways that slavery undergirded and made possible the growth of capitalism and its heinous intellectual justification. The near-genocides of aboriginal peoples are another aspect of this ‘othering,’ using Power to categorize some humans as beneficiaries and others as outcasts. Our fight today against the results – globalization, corporate control of governments, trade agreements, worsening income inequality, ongoing extreme social inequities, environmental injustices, and climate change – represents our chance to build the strong alliances needed to right these wrongs, as Klein states.
Obviously this is a complex story about which a great deal more can be said, but my basic point is two-fold: We must not allow ourselves to assume that all humans, even all humans in a particular region or country, are equally responsible or equally affected by the institutions and processes that are responsible for climate change. And secondly, this is one reason why the voices of all those affected must be equitably involved in envisioning and building the solutions – so that all the relevant information is brought to bear, and so that the question of interpersonal, political Power is reunited with the question of energy transitions and power shifts in building sustainable solutions. The climate justice literature speaks of “procedural justice” – engagement in building ongoing political solutions – as being equally important along with “distributive justice” – the material redistribution of benefits, land, and rights.
Watercolor depicting the Klallam people of chief Chetzemoka (1808-1888) at Port Townsend, Washington, with one of Chetzemoka’s wives distributing potlatch.
I’d also like to add to Klein’s words on the role of Aboriginal leadership, treaties, court rulings, and land claims – what John Ralston Saul has described and documented as “the Comeback.” Indigenous worldviews provide such rich insights into ways of organizing society to prioritize resilience, interdependence, trust, and ecological respect. Aboriginal traditions of hospitality, sharing, potlatch (or giving away material wealth as a sign of moral and community standing, thus trading off material wealth for leadership and respect), humility, and reverence for the earth and its creatures and life systems are central to locally-appropriate commons governance processes. First Nations also had nested governance hierarchies which seem to me to correspond with what Elinor Ostrom has cited as successful ways to govern large-scale commons.
The active suppression of the potlatch by the Canadian government between 1884 and 1951, on penalty of 2 to 6 month jail terms, shows the extent to which gift-giving and generosity were inimical to the selfishness and violence of capitalist expansionism. During the potlatch, guests are named and given gifts with the words, “you are recognized.” In The Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to Global Crisis (2011, Ch. 4), E. Richard Atleo (Umeek) comments:
“Over time it was learned that gift giving and recognition promoted balance and harmony between beings, that it obeyed what might be called the laws of the positive side of polarity. To neglect the promotion of balance and harmony between beings promoted what might be referred to as the laws of the negative side of polarity. These are not new ideas. Indeed they are commonly held both by Western and Eastern morality (generosity begets generosity) and by the laws of physics (to every action there is a reaction). When two neighbouring nations shared the same resources, whether cedar, salmon, or human, then it was obvious to the ancient Nuu-chah-nulth that to neglect the act of recognition would open the way to conflict, while to observe the act of recognition, through what I refer to as ‘mutual concern,’ would open the way to balance and harmony.”
Aboriginal women, in particular, are the strong leaders of the most powerful environmental movements in Canada today.
The issue of women’s leadership and embodied knowledge of power inequities is a third area where I would like to add to what Klein has said. The transition away from climate change and fossil fuel ‘energy slaves’ has to mean a transition to meaningful jobs without drudgery for all – and women are everywhere the experts on drudgery. As Emma Goldman said, “Woman is the worker’s worker.” Since most of this work is unpaid, and in fact the unpaid economy is at least as big as the paid one in every country and globally, this both undergirds capitalism and is simultaneously outside the market’s control, which puts a different spin on the prospects for alternatives to capitalism. A basic income could make the distinction between paid and unpaid work almost irrelevant. Women’s voices, participation, and leadership are so crucial in climate change activism for such changes.
I’m learning a lot about this through interviews I’ve been doing recently with women across Canada, for a study on climate justice and gender in Canada. When extreme weather events disable the electricity grids, flood the farms, bring fires and beetles to the forests, melt the permafrost and sea ice, and cause rising sea levels which destroy the fisheries, this wreaks economic havoc and sometimes brings family breakdown. Women end up doing much more work, and sometimes taking another paid job on top of their family responsibilities. There is lots of stress. And as noted after Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, and other climate crises, domestic violence against women can also be a manifestation of climate chaos.
At the same time, gendered social roles and responsibilities mean that women tend to be central to community resilience, care for the sick and vulnerable, livelihood skills transmission, and inter-household sharing in times of crisis. For all these reasons, the alliances needed to build socially, politically, economically and ecologically sustainable futures must rely on women’s experience and input.
Organizing into an Effective Movement
I believe the potential of the internet, social media and youth organizing have an important role, especially insofar as youth learn to use these means to communicate effectively across difference, address conflicts, and build politically astute coalitions. Cellphones and community radio, along with the internet (which is more liable to intervention/control and to which not everyone has access), are powerful tools for networking and democratic information dissemination.
Canada’s diaspora communities provide many opportunities to communicate broadly, build trust and assemble global coalitions that I think may have tremendous potential in times of climate change. For example, my students in environmental studies at York have included people of Egyptian, Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian descent who were able to discuss issues related to climate change and water politics in the Upper Nile basin, and at times correspond with their relatives in those countries or do internships and field experiences there, at times when there was a total breakdown in peaceful communication on these issues among the governments themselves. Some of these students have gone on to careers related to environmental policy, water, and climate. Won’t their interpersonal connections and experiences with others in the diaspora contribute to their future work and to broader understandings of what is possible?
For those who are doubtful that dog-eat-dog capitalism can be summarily dismantled, let me offer the view that it is already happening, in ways I’ve outlined. Furthermore, we do know some specific areas where concerted pressure will provide additional impetus.
Here’s quotes from commons expert Elinor Ostrom, specifically in reference to climate change:
“Instead of presuming that cooperation related to social dilemmas is an impossibility, the presumption should be that cooperation will occur in settings with several broad characteristics. These include the following:
“1. Many of those affected have agreed on the need for changes in behavior and see themselves as jointly sharing responsibility for future outcomes.
“2. The reliability and frequency of information about the phenomena of concern are relatively high.
“3. Participants know who else has agreed to change behavior and that their conformance is being monitored.
“4. Communication occurs among at least subsets of participants.
“…. The crucial factor is that a combination of structural features leads many of those affected to trust one another and to be willing to do an agreed-upon action that adds to their own short-term costs because they do see a long-term benefit for themselves and others and they believe that most others are complying.
“….. Many of the policy analyses recommending ‘solutions’ at an international level to be implemented by national governments are based on a fear that unless global solutions are made for global problems, these problems will continue unabated….
“Yet extensive research on institutions related to environmental policies has repeatedly shown that creative, effective, and efficient policies, as well as disasters, have been implemented at all scales…… It is important that we recognize that devising policies related to complex environmental processes is a grand challenge and that reliance on one scale to solve these problems is naïve…. The benefits from reduced greenhouse gas emissions are not just global in scope. The benefits are distributed across scales – from the household to the globe.
“….. Rather than only a global effort, it would be better to self-consciously adopt a polycentric approach to the problem of climate change in order to gain the benefits at multiple scales as well as to encourage experimentation and learning from diverse policies adopted at multiple scales.” [2009, pp. 13-14, 27-28, 31]
In other words, starting where we are and continuing to do research, educate, organize, advocate for transparency and democratic governance, attack cronyism and corruption, and build broad, respectful, inclusive political alliances is exactly the way forward. Polycentric commons-building at multiple scales is climate action, and also builds institutions that challenge, destabilize, and create alternatives to capitalism. • SOURCE
Patricia Perkins teaches in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto.
Debeir, Jean-Claude, Jean Paul Deléage, and Daniel Hémery (1992). In the Servitude of Power: Energy and Civilisation Through the Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas (1971). The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996). The End of Capitalism (as we knew it). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Mantle Site, Wendat (Huron) Ancestral Village. This village is near Whitchurch-Stouffville in Ontario, and built in early 1500s, with about 2,000 occupants in 95 longhouses, and a well-developed waste management system.
Mellor, Mary (1997). Feminism and Ecology. New York: NYU Press.
Mies, Maria (1986). Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed Books.
Milani, Brian (2000). Designing the Green Economy: The Postindustrial Alternative to Corporate Globalization. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
The ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada will affect public service unions in provinces across the country.
Member of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union picket at George Brown college in 2006. The new Supreme Court decision will affect public service unions in provinces across the country. COLIN MCCONNELL / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
By:Mike BlanchfieldThe Canadian Press, reposted from the Toronto Star, Jan 30, 2015
OTTAWA — A divided Supreme Court of Canada has raised the bar for Ottawa and the provinces in their dealings with public sector employees by affirming the right to strike as constitutionally protected.
By a 5-2 margin, it struck down a controversial Saskatchewan law that prevents public sector employees from striking, saying it was unconstitutional.
The high court granted an appeal Friday by the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour of the province’s essential services law that restricts who can strike.
The Supreme Court also gave Saskatchewan one year to enact new legislation, and made clear that any new law had to be fair to workers. The high court affirmed that same principle in a ruling two weeks ago that cleared the way for RCMP members to form unions or associations.
In both cases, the Supreme Court affirmed the principle that any labour relations scheme that gives management a final authoritative say over the conditions of its workers simply doesn’t cut muster.
After winning power in 2007, the Saskatchewan Party introduced the new law, which says employers and unions must agree on which workers are deemed essential and cannot legally strike.
If the two sides can’t agree, the government gets to decide who is an essential worker.
Writing for the majority, Justice Rosalie Abella said that unilateral power violated section 2(d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects freedom of association.
The two dissenting justices, Richard Wagner and Marshall Rothstein, said that enshrining the right to strike restricts the government’s flexibility in labour relations.
Hassan Yussuff, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said the ruling will force government’s to craft much more careful legislation to stop essential workers from striking, compared to the “much more cavalier” approach it has taken in the past.
“The government needs to take a great deal of care if they’re going to intervene to interrupt that right of workers,” said Yussuff.
Lori Johb, of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, said workers aren’t generally keen to strike.
“Without that right, we really had no power, we had no ability to achieve fair, collective bargaining for all the members,” she said.
“For workers, it levels the playing field.”
The Saskatchewan law came after some high-profile labour unrest in the province, including a strike by thousands of nurses in 1999 and another by highway workers and correctional officers in late 2006 and early 2007.
Court challenges began in 2008 after the law was enacted, and the Regina Court of Queen’s Bench struck it down as unconstitutional in February 2012.
The court upheld the principle of essential services and gave the government 12 months to fix the law.
The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overturned the lower court ruling in 2013, so the labour federation appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has now reversed that appeal.
“Given the breadth of essential services that the employer is entitled to designate unilaterally without an independent review process, and the absence of an adequate, impartial and effective alternative mechanism for resolving collective bargaining impasses,” wrote Abella, “there can be little doubt that the trial judge was right to conclude that the scheme was not minimally impairing.”
Wagner and Rothstein disagreed.
“The statutory right to strike, along with other statutory protections for workers, reflects a complex balance struck by legislatures between the interests of employers, employees, and the public,” they wrote in their dissent.
“Providing for a constitutional right to strike not only upsets this delicate balance, but also restricts legislatures by denying them the flexibility needed to ensure the balance of interests can be maintained.”
The ruling will affect public service unions in provinces across the country. Last April, Nova Scotia enacted its own essential services law for health care workers, joining Newfoundland and Labrador and British Columbia as provinces that have essential services laws.
The Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling of its own from the 1990s which upheld an exclusion that barred the Mounties from forming unions like federal public servants, who gained the right to collective bargaining in the late 1960s.
The ruling did not explicitly state that RCMP members have the right to form a union, but the justices effectively cleared a path to that possibility. As with today’s ruling, the high court gave the federal government one year to create a new labour relations framework with the RCMP.
The RCMP ruling did not address the right to strike.
by Stephanie Spear, reposted from EcoWatch, Jan 27, 2015
A new report out today from Environment America Research & Policy Center shows that all types of fracking companies, from small to large, are prone to violating rules intended to protect human health and the environment.
The report, Fracking Failures: Oil and Gas Industry Environmental Violations in Pennsylvania and What They Mean for the U.S., analyses Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry over a four-year period and found that the top offenders of regulations—averaging more than one environmental violation every day—represented a wide range of companies from Fortune 500 companies like Cabot Oil, to mom-and-pop operators, to firms like Chevron.
“Fracking is an inherently risky, dirty, dangerous practice, and regulations can’t change that,” said John Rumpler, senior attorney with Environment America. “But this report shows that a range of oil and gas companies struggle to meet even modest protections for our environment and public health.”
The report tracks lapses such as allowing toxic chemicals to leach into the air and water, endangering drinking water through improper well construction and dumping industrial waste into waterways.
According to Environment America, fracking operators in Pennsylvania have committed thousands of violations of oil and gas regulations since 2011 with violations that are not “paperwork” violations, but lapses that pose serious risks to workers, the environment and public health, including:
Allowing toxic chemicals to flow off drilling sites and into local soil and water. In July 2012, for example, Chief Oil & Gas was cited by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) when the company allowed 4,700 gallons of hydrochloric acid to flow off of its drilling site in Leroy Township, Bradford County, and into nearby Towanda Creek, causing a fish kill.
Endangering drinking water through improper well construction. Well problems, including leaks, contaminated drinking water supplies in as many as 243 cases across Pennsylvania between December 2007 and August 2014—81 of them between 2011 and 2014. In one such case Carrizo (Marcellus) LLC was cited for failing to properly restore a water supply its fracking activities had contaminated.
Dumping industrial waste into local waterways. One operator, EQT Production, was cited twice in 2012 by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for violations at a well in Duncan Township, Tioga County, that polluted a local stream.
Otherwise disposing of waste improperly. In one 2012 incident at an Exco Resources well in Bell Township, Clearfield County, the company was cited for contaminating underground drinking water supplies as a result of leaks from a well drilled for the specific purpose of injecting toxic waste underground.
The report ranks Pennsylvania’s 20 most frequently cited fracking companies by number of environmental and health violations from January 2011-August 2014. Houston-based Cabot Oil, a Halliburton contractor, committed the most total violations with 265.
The report highlights the growing number of scientific studies that links the drilling practices of fracking to various health risks. Studies have shown that the proximity to well pads increases a person’s risk for respiratory and neurological problems, as well as birth defects. Here’s a chart showing the recognized health effects of air emissions from natural gas activities:
“Fracking is a failure for our environment and health,” said Rumpler. “That’s why we should keep this dirty drilling out of our national parks, forests and other public lands.”
![[Tyee]](../ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
