Current Projects
Past Projects
Neighbourhoods
LINKS
Ward Links
City Web Links
© Clive Doucet 2007
Wednesday
March 7, 2007
A slightly greener wash of politics-as-usual
The amount of ink spilled on climate change recently has been impressive. The great dailies of the nation have had entire sections documenting everything from the Ross ice shelf melting into the Antarctic sea, to the no-longer-eternal snows of Kilimanjaro, to disappearing Arctic ice habitat for seals, polar bears and Inuit. Climate-change stars – Al Gore, David Suzuki, James Kunstler – are everywhere.But for all the alarm, the story has had little political or economic connection.
To discover why, you need not look further than Ottawa's failed electric light-rail project. How could something that would have taken 26,000 tonnes of carbon out of the air annually and won national sustainability and procurement awards, drift off into the bicker of a lawsuit? The answer is, for the same reasons the tar sands are sucking water out of a semi-desert region in Alberta to separate sand from oil. Carbon-driven jobs require no change and create both wealth and successful politics.
In 2007, the City of Ottawa will build a record number of new roads -- 200 kilometres. Carbon-based sprawl will increase and we will be years from seeing any electric light rail even commenced.
How did it happen? The answer is simple -- smart, partisan politics. John Baird, the present federal Minister of the Environment, refused to sign the contribution agreement to send $200-million in partnership funding for the project. This killed it, not once but twice. It was bad news for the city's environment and its pocket book, but it was smart, partisan politics.
John Baird didn't even get tagged with the project's demise. City council did. Yet, two different city councils voted to go ahead with the award-winning project. In all, 56 votes were taken -- all approving the project. The reality was that its failure had nothing to do with council: The project failed because $200-million in federal partnership funding was withheld on two occasions by Mr. Baird. That was the trigger that finally turned the council.
Local politicians were left looking disorganized and inept. After the election, Mr. Baird surfaced smiling, with a conservative mayor, Larry O'Brien, replacing the liberal mayor, Bob Chiarelli, who was strongly identified with the project.
The only problem with this little electoral trench war is that, regardless of any lawsuit, the delay will cost the city hundreds of millions because the line eventually will have to be built, it will just cost a whole lot more. In the meantime, we will be pumping more carbon into the atmosphere than we needed to.
In a larger arena, smart, partisan politics was how George W. Bush beat Al Gore. It may be how Stephen Harper beats Stéphane Dion, who is already reeling under the flash cards of negative advertising.
Smart, partisan politics is all about polls and maintaining the current political and economic balance of power. The problem is climate change requires that we elect people who are prepared to fight for a new balance of power -- a small business and big business world that doesn't exist yet. But no one ever got elected by saying that it's not about the other guy's party, it's about doing things differently.
We need to stop driving everywhere. We've got to stop building new roads. We've got to stop flying so much. We've got to start saying no to many of the things that are so much a part of our daily lives now, and start saying yes to things that don't even exist yet -- fast intercity trains; new streetcar lines; human-scale five-storey walk-ups with green roofs instead of high-rise concrete monoliths; more energy from renewable resources. This is what the reality of climate change demands from us, and by extension, from our political system. Instead, what we're seeing is a slightly greener wash of politics-as-usual.
Climate change is just one of the issues stuck in the quagmire of smart politics. Canadian cities are no longer financially or environmentally sustainable. It now costs the equivalent of about an 8-per-cent annual property tax increase every year simply to maintain what we have. The property tax cannot carry that burden, so cities are becoming dirtier, less secure, more polluting. Toronto Mayor David Miller is absolutely right: Canadian cities need a 1-per-cent share of the GST. If Mr. Harper, instead of cutting that 1 per cent to satisfy the smart political games of the previous election, had transferred that portion of the GST to our cities, Ottawa's city council, for example, would not have had to stand at Mr. Baird's door, cap in hand, waiting for the $200-million that never came. We would have the light-rail project under construction and be moving toward a different, more sustainable vision of the national capital.
Looking at the lead-up to the next federal election, I see lots of "smart politics." Stephen Harper is selling himself on being more "presidential" than the other guy. The other guys, and girl to be exact, haven't quite decided whether they want to compete in the presidential "I'm-in-charge sweepstakes" yet, or prefer to just be prime ministerial -- usually a more cautious role. Meanwhile, the many issues that have us by the throat will once again take a back seat, even though it is crystal clear what they are and what some of our responses should be.