2013 starts with the individual

It's good to start the new year with an improvement in the weather, however slight. Somehow, it's easier to look forward to the turning of the calendar during a warming trend.



Especially when all this occurs during what we call the dead of winter.



Just think: wouldn't it have been nicer if New Year's coincided with the spring equinox? After all, since calendars are arbitrary constructs anyway, wouldn't it be better if we celebrated a new year that starts with the return of the sun, as opposed to two and a half more months of darkness and cold?


then again, who wants to worry about losing weight, getting fit or improving humanity when you can finally go outside without a parka?




But that's just me. Perhaps starting a new year in the middle of winter forces one to contemplate the near future in more personal terms. 



On the whole, 2013 is looking like it will be the kind of year when the positives are going to be personal, rather than economic or societal. With a world economy that can improve itself only modestly at best, and with a social fabric that's looking rather worn in western societies, maybe it is time people focussed on individual growth while we wait for the big picture to cycle round again.



Simply remaining civilized seems to be the major challenge here.



Learning about the insane shooting deaths in the U.S. over the Christmas season was agony. What sort of evil drives people to go into an elementary school and start shooting? Why would a person buy guns and ammunition for a clearly deranged neighbour, so he could set fire to his neighbourhood and kill the firemen who came to fight the fire?



Worse, why would someone in Alberta choose to use that as inspiration to threaten the same at a school in our province?



There is no good answer to any of that. All we can do is resolve to remain civil and rational in our own lives, while we keep watch over families and loved ones, without succumbing to nameless fears.



Maintaining ethics and integrity is another challenge for 2013.



There's not much we can do as individuals, while bureaucracies and people in power decide what to do as the chief of the Attawaspiskat First Nation starves herself on the doorstep of Parliament.



Elsewhere, violent revolutions have begun with similar acts (the Arab spring, for example).



But individual Canadians cannot hope to resolve injustices reaching generations back, which are as complex as the identity of the one, the culture of the many, and the machinery of government between.



What we can do is maintain justice in our own affairs, and insist on integrity from our leaders.



I believe that most people in Red Deer — if they had the power —would personally visit Chief Theresa Spence, and agree that a complete revision of our treaty relationship with First Nations is needed. She need not die to see that happen.



We would likely agree that the treaties signed so long ago were not fair, and were not kept. New strucutres need to be created, that maintain cultural dignity and right of self-governance for first nations, along with modern standards of democracy and individual responsibility.



Governments, bureaucracies and national representatives don't seem to act that way.



But while they learn how, we, on our own, can decide we will be civil to each other and pass along expectations that our leaders will do the same.



That would be a good start for 2013, don't you think?

High risks and a share of guilt

It's hard to read the reports relating to the inquiry into the murders that Robert Pickton committed on his farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C. over the course of many years, without feeling some measure of guilt.

Twenty poor and vulnerable women – prostitutes working Vancouver's seamy Downtown East Side – went missing over a period of more than a decade. For all anyone but serial killer Robert Pickton knows, that grisly toll could be even larger.

But, as the victims' families claimed and commissioner Wally Oppal confirmed, police consistently refused to take the disappearances seriously, and when they did investigate, their work was fraught with errors, bungled nearly from beginning to end.

"There was an institutional systemic bias against the women," Oppal told reporters after his report was released. "They were poor, they were aboriginal, they were drug addicted and they were not taken seriously."

But if the police work was uniformly shoddy, what's my measure of guilt in that?

Those of us who work or volunteer with agencies that serve the poor, the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill term where these women existed as a "high-risk lifestyle." (Full disclosure: my wife works for the Canadian Mental Health Association region in Red Deer; our daughters have worked summer jobs in the community CMHA serves in volunteer management, housing first services and with the local AIDS association. I'm a CMHA volunteer and fundraiser.)

We all know what "high-risk" means. There is generally no retirement age for sex trade workers, especially workers who have addiction problems. The vast majority either get out of the trade as quickly as they can, or they die in it.

So these women had already put themselves on a path to a severely shortened lifespan. What's my measure of guilt in that?

As I see it, Oppal's commission of inquiry, the police investigation which eventually grew massive, the hugely ornate and costly trial of Robert Pickton (taxpayers built him his own private high-security courtroom), the years of pleading by family members for some form of justice, these all came too late.

There is guilt enough to cover all corners here. But the part that concerns me is that these women came to the point where drug addiction and prostitution looked better to them than their lives did before they went onto the street.

Red Deer is lucky to receive the insights of people like Advocate  columnist Chris Salomons. Because of his articles, nobody should be able to claim they never knew how frequently broken family trust, neglect, abuse – and sometimes plainly stupid choices – lead people to take on high-risk lifestyles on the street.

What's my measure of guilt in that? It's that I know this evil situation exists. It's that many, many people know this situation exists and that we're a bit too comfortable allowing it to continue. Until it touches us personally.

Commissioner Wally Oppal challenged all his readers to "imagine how you would feel, put yourself in the shoes of the missing and murdered women and think how you would feel if you were dismissed, considered unworthy of attention by the majority of the people in your city."

The burden is that we can't pretend the mentally ill, the poor, the homeless, or the addicted are invisible. Or that many of the forces that put them there can be identified and help for them can be found. Once you know, you cannot refuse to act, or else that burden turns to your share of guilt.

Apocalypse Now, version MCCXVIII

Are you prepared for Doomsday? After all the Christmas preparation done in our house recently, if civilization as we know it ended Friday (as some fear it will), I figure we've got enough food and drink banked that we could climb out of the wreckage next spring somewhat overweight – probably with a hangover.

I cribbed this picture off the Internet;
sue me – if you survive.

Sadly though, we will have missed a long-standing family Christmas tradition of going as a group to see the latest Tolkein movie. Good thing we kept the books.

Personally, I'm somewhat disappointed with the lack of hysteria whipped up for this latest version of the end of all things. I blame the media. Definitely not keeping the pace.

I kind of enjoyed the madness around Y2K, not least because it provided employment for a family member, who got a lot of programming work for companies worried that they might not be able to bill their customers in the new millennium. But also because "obsolete" computers became really cheap. It was such a good deal, I've been working on obsolete equipment ever since.

In preparation for what might become my final column, I searched online for a complete tally of end-of-the-world predictions. The list proved so long as defy mockery. I mean, what could the ancient Mayans know that the early Romans, Isaac Newton and many others, clear up to the Bible Study Movement, several (still operating) Christian churches, multimillionaire evangelical preachers, Charles Manson, and the Amazing Criswell did not know?

The Large Hadron Collider did not turn Earth into a singularity, so even humanity's hubris in tinkering with the laws of physics failed us here. But there's still a statistical chance that an asteroid is out there, with your name on it.

History strongly indicates that people in general just need something to fear. Something big. Something far outside of our puny powers to control.

So what could we fear in Red Deer? 

Well, the Dickson Dam could suddenly and catastrophically fail, sending a lake's worth of water rushing downstream, backing up severely at the narrow Canyon area, and flooding the city. I happen to live on the floodplain, and benefit from the centuries of intermittent flooding that have built my garden topsoil to a fertile depth beyond three meters. It could happen again, I guess.

But that's too unlikely. We need something more plausible.

I know: a cabal of extreme conservatives will take over city council at the next municipal election, and cancel all capital projects that involve debt for 14 years. This has happened here before.

Infrastructure will slowly decay as frozen tax rates do not allow for adequate upkeep, much less growth in the next boom cycle. The streets will be in gridlock, unable to handle the rise in population.

And me, on my obsolete bike, will be smiling.

Teen bullies a problem; adult bullies are worse

The tragic death of Amanda Todd, tormented into suicide by online bullying, galvanized Canada into confronting the dark world faced by many of our country's young people. It's sad that a final, desperate cry for help like this is needed to bring widespread attention to the way that people treat each other.

Peterborough's Miss January,
in a photo from the Toronto Star.
Granny got run over by
a smear campaign.

In today's digital world, casual and anonymous hatred passes for conversation. Violent and extreme language, delivered instantly for all to see, passes for entertainment. 

It's reflective of the invention of the printing press; it's first widespread uses were not to disseminate the Bible, as we are often told, but to wage the vicious propaganda war that came with the Protestant Reformation.

It took many years, and a lot of legal reforms for a widely literate society to understand the power of the written word and to accept that freedom of expression carries responsibility and has limits. Perhaps that's what's missing in the Lord-of-the-Flies universe of online media.

But it isn't just youth with too little guidance and too much cell phone power who make up Canada's bullying population. Our own city council and staff are quite aware that adults will use the cloak of anonymity to spew violent and hateful language, which would bring them to shame, if not arrest, if they said the same things in public, or signed a printed document with the same words.

In Peterborough, Ont., a group of 11 women, including a 98-year-old lifetime church member, became targets of both public and anonymous bullying, for their attempt to raise some money for a duplex purchase by a local non-profit for homeless people.

What made them targets? They posed for a hockey-based calendar on sale for $20. The OHL's Peterborough Petes, and hockey legend Eddie Shack were backers.

The photos are the usual tasteful-but-slightly-bare fare that has adorned community fundraiser calendars around the world, since the 2003 movie Calendar Girls made these projects popular.

But since 2003, society seems to have grown a bit less accepting and much more spiteful. These women were attacked in public, online, and even from church pulpits as purveyors of pornography, elder abuse and the objectification of women.

Their neighbours felt entitled to engage what is described as a "vitriolic" smear campaign. 

These are not teens, taunting each other with misspelled non-gramatical insults in text messages. These are grown people who consider themselves good citizens, and who do not see their incivility as any crime whatsoever. 

For them, bullying is totally acceptable behaviour – when they wish to engage in it.

So why should Canada get upset that young people bully each other, when upstanding adults feel entirely free to attack people they don't like, freely, anonymously, viciously and at will?

Check Question Period in the House of Commons. Read – if you can still find them – the social media exchanges and advertising in the last U.S. elections. Phillip Melancthon, Martin Luther's collaborator and propagandist, called the Pope the Antichrist (and worse), but he had nothing on the people thumbing their 140-character anonymous slurs in today's social media.

In the small town of Hanna, long before the adult world knew of Amanda Todd's private suffering, local RCMP approached town council about proposing a bullying bylaw. Just as the legal world took a long time to catch up to moveable type technology, the Criminal Code offers police too little means to deal with harassment effectively.

So mayor Mark Nikota and council passed a bylaw calling for fines up to $1,000 for bullying. You can even get a $100 ticket for being a bystander, if you do not speak up when you see bullies at work.

The local school board, under provincial law that supersedes local bylaws, is onside to extend the bylaw's intent.

After what happened when Red Deer's bike lane pilot project was installed this summer, maybe our city council should consider something similar. Adult ratepayers can be pretty spiteful, when they think they can get away with it.

Fiscal cliff looks more like a chimera

Raise taxes, cut spending. In all the world, that's the prescription the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the greater powers of the European Union have for all countries whose out-of-control debt is threatening the global economy.

That's the medicine prescribed for Greece, Spain and Portugal. And when the leader of Italy's unelected technocrat government, Mario Monti, decided to step down over the weekend, his country's stock index took an immediate hit.

Monti was specifically placed in office to raise taxes and cut spending in 2011, when Italy was poised on the verge of a Greece-like economic meltdown. As directed, he raised taxes and cut spending, and despite the pain inflicted on the Italian middle class, he's widely seen as the county's saviour.

So, if raising taxes and cutting spending is called good (if bitter) medicine in all the world, why is it called a fiscal cliff in the United States? Why is prudent government something to be feared in what is still the world's largest and most influential economy?

Here in Red Deer, why should we be afraid that America might go over that cliff? Because they won't buy as much of our oil and gas? That doesn't seem likely. Because they won't buy our manufactured goods? We already buy far more of these things from the U.S. than they buy from us, so a drop in these exports should hardly be called a fiscal cliff in Canada.

I make no claims to understanding that disconnect. In fact, I wish somebody could make a clear explanation as to why raising taxes and cutting spending in America is bad, where everywhere else on the planet it's the basis of qualifying for economic bailouts.

The reasoning can't be completely blamed on America's high debt-to-GDP rating. According to IMF figures, it's 103 per cent. That rate for Greece is 161 per cent. Italy, where the tax-and-cut turnaround has begun, is at 123 per cent. Spain (a troubled economy, by most reports) has a debt-to-GDP ratio of only 68 per cent, which is far less than strong-economy Canada's 85 per cent. France, at 86 per cent, is said to be in the danger zone, while Britain, at 82 per cent is said to be close to some serious trouble.

No strong trend indicators there.

Pundits are telling us that if America puts a surtax on high incomes, and cuts program spending (primarily in the military, but also in health care reforms), the result will be like taking everyone's spending allowance away. The rich won't buy stuff (as if), the middle class will have less (what else is new?) and the poor will have less of a safety net (America? Safety net?).

And there will be another recession.

I suppose the pundits do know what they're saying, but nobody has explained the alternative. Debts have to be paid, governments can't run from reality . . . or they must eventually run over a cliff.

Better sooner than later, I say. Until we get better information, it seems to me that America faces a chimera, not a fiscal cliff. We should worry more that president Barak Obama, Congress and the Senate patch together some sort of delay tactic, rather than face their problems head on.

America should not be above taking its medicine. Neither should Canada, when we need it.

Value of citizenship: not measured on TV

If I read the news report correctly, TV production company Force Four would put something like $400 in a bank account for me, if Red Deer were to be chosen as its venue to shoot their reality show Axe the Tax.

That represents eight weeks of my municipal taxes, more or less. The company would then film me, paying as I went about my socialist life, over a course of eight weeks. 

A small fee for the use of the streets to ride my bike to work (or to drive when the weather is really bad), or to do my shopping. A little more every time I took a shower or flushed the loo. A point here and there whenever I went to the library, a bit more on top of the entry fee for my morning swim.

The cost of a stroll on our trail network? So little, that if I saw the change on the street, I probably wouldn't stoop to pick it up (and I'm a notorious cheapskate).

For the right to call police and complain about a neighbourhood drug house, I would pay just about anything. I already know what happens in some towns in the U.S. when people don't pay their voluntary fire protection fees. Their house burns to the ground, while the firemen hose down the buildings owned by the socialists next door, to keep the capitalist fire from spreading.

In all, it might be interesting for other people to find out if I get $200 a month value for the right to live in Red Deer. But for myself, I already know. (It's why I haven't left town).

As far as value for services goes at any level of government in Canada, municipal taxes are pretty well the best deal you can get anywhere.

That must be why Penhold mayor Dennis Cooper is so sanguine about a proposal that his town be chosen for this social experiment-cum-TV entertainment project. If he wasn't as convinced as I am that municipal government is simply the most efficient means of delivering collective services in a democracy, then the stress of his job just wouldn't be worth the pay.

I wonder what portion would be taken from every Penhold resident's "bank account" for a town meeting at the Penhold Multiplex. In fact, I wonder if Force Four paid anything at all to use the centre for their meeting Tuesday. Do they think multiplexes grow on trees?

That, of course, is the shortcoming of an eight-week experiment of this type. Most of the benefits of living in Red Deer that I mentioned at the beginning of this article involve long-term infrastructure investments.

People were outraged, yes, outraged, at the cost, the waste, the wanton profligacy of building Red Deer's Collicutt Centre. Today, it's a source of community pride – and too small at that.

That's the easiest, most obvious of examples. What I don't see inside my $200 a month is the dedication, education and expertise of the staff who make my city work, even if the snow does get too deep on some city streets. 

Engineers, planners, clerks, bylaw officers, parks personnel, transit workers, librarians and more, these people are where the best value is achieved for my taxes. Yet these are the very people that tax complainers devalue and disparage whenever the cost of running a municipality gets discussed. 

The total dollar values are indeed high, but think about how great a deal this all works out to, for $200 a month (in my case). Even that ultimate evil – bike lanes – cost each household less this year than a ticket to Life of Pi, with popcorn and a soft drink. What's the value of safe passage to work, even if it's only used when the weather is better than it is today?

The shortcoming of this experiment is that it cannot take a full measure of the value we get for our taxes. If some people don't use certain services (and therefore don't pay) during this experiment, should these services therefore not exist, or be priced out of reach of the people who need them?

There is a value beyond mere taxes in a community where people take care of their neighbours. TV shows don't measure that. So count me out of any experiments like Axe the Tax.  You can keep the change.

Gravy trains and public suspicions

There's a balance, an ongoing conversation between people who report the news, and those who read and receive it. When I started in this business about 40 years ago, exchanges on issues occurred at the speed of Canada Post and the interval of publication.

In some ways, it still does. I appreciate the long-term rejoinders in monthly publications like The Walrus or weekly newsmagazines. Even the more rapid give-and-take that occurs in your local daily gives some time for thought, while histories that develop in conversations – all duly recorded – can be illuminating.

But in this electronic age, instant reactions to events as they are revealed become part of the events themselves. Even when the story is years old.

Just ask the Alberta premier. When old political skeletons are revealed, their new life is not in the revelation, but in how people react. There is no evidence of direct plotting by Alison Redford to do unethical party fundraising, or to unethically direct lucrative contracts to firms with whom she has personal ties. But news that unethical donations have been made in the past, or that personal ties exist, gives stories about these things a decidedly hot glow. 

Or consider the mayors of certain Quebec cities, where years-old revelations of shady payments for construction contracts are coming to light. The story is one thing, the instant online reactions are a story unto themselves.

The reaction to the news in fact becomes bigger than the news itself, because the conversations affect the ways many people over a wide area make decisions. These decisions have consequences, far beyond the outcomes of the original events.

Here's a good recent example. An investigation by CBC reporters discovered that two years ago, CN Rail formed a "mystery train" that shuttled back and forth between Sarnia and Port Huron, Mich. The train, loaded with about $25 million worth of biodiesel, went back and forth across the border (a trip of about three km) numerous times, clearing customs both ways, without ever being unloaded. The shipping bill paid to CN was about $2.6 million.

The practice seemed common enough for CN administrators to feel confident sending emails ordering staff to ensure these trips went fast and smooth. Move the train, do the paperwork, move the train back, repeat as quickly as possible.

The American companies listed as customers were HeroBX and Northern Biodiesel. CBC says CN records show the Canadian company that arranged the deal is Bioversal Trading Inc. Bioversal is being investigated by the Canada Border Services Agency on allegations it made false statements to avoid shipping duties in Romania and Italy.

That's pretty well all we really know about this.

But the replies to the story say a whole lot more. People – whose identities are not revealed – claim (in the online discussion that follows the CBC story on its web site) that they have worked in the transportation industry. Shady stuff like this happens all the time, they say. 

Fuel is trucked from Alberta to Montana, unloaded, and then reloaded and trucked back. Somebody gets a tax-paid incentive to do so. 

Often, we are told, barges shuttle product back and forth, either to keep inventory in transit (and off the books), or to collect export incentives – both ways. 

The shippers are told to shut up and drive. Which they do, because their companies have contracts to ship stuff around, not ask difficult questions.

Well, as you can imagine, difficult questions are now being asked everywhere. 

What's the real purpose of government incentives to make green fuels? Is anyone monitoring where the product is actually going, and whether the tax incentives are achieving anything? How much phantom product is just running around on gravy trains and on truck fleets for the purposes of collecting export incentives, with no benefit to taxpayers?

All this on the basis of allegations from people who don't even give us their names.

As far as the news goes, we just don't know the facts yet. But in the comment section, it's a hurricane of malfeasance by corporations and governments on both sides of the Canada/U.S.border.

How do you think this will affect decisions the next time a government committee suggests it might be a good idea to use tax money to subsidize any kind of export program?

We need to make decisions based on facts, not nameless allegations. More corporate and government secrecy will not solve this discrepancy. Just ask the premier of Alberta.

Private schools/public funding: the cost of choice

Education is not a consumer commodity. When we start talking about how we fund our education system as if it were, Alberta is in trouble.

Kent Hehr, Liberal MLA for Calgary Buffalo, seems to go out of his way to avoid talking about education as a commodity in his private members bill to stop all public funding for private schools. But some of the arguments surrounding the issue do look at education as something we can buy or trade, while also looking at students as factory products.

We need to avoid that, and instead look at funding models relating to how they touch the right of every child to an equal opportunity for the best general education possible, plus the rights of parents to decide what's best for their children – within the limits of the law.

The state need not dictate all the means, but the state must protect of the rights of children against parents, teachers, and administrators who do not reach society's standards in providing kids with the best chance they can get to succeed in life. For the vast majority, that is achieved through public funding of a public system.

First off, we need to acknowledge that despite the wide range of student abilities and the varying qualities of individual teachers and schools, Alberta is widely viewed as a top-quality place to send kids to school. We teach our students better than most other places in the world – if you believe the results of global standardized testing.

Alberta also has the highest tax-paid support for private schooling in Canada. The 25,000 students (about four per cent of the total school population) who attend Alberta's accredited private schools get 70 per cent of the per-pupil grant that public and Catholic school students get.

Only four other provinces give any public funding whatever to private schools (the Western provinces, plus Quebec), and they only provide 50 per cent of what a public system student would get. Ontario experimented with a tuition tax credit for private schooling, but dropped it in 2003.

Along with our charter schools and a widely-accepted home schooling option, Albertans have plenty of choice for providing an education for their children. We also have broad government support for private schools designed for children with disabilities. Plus, the outcomes of those choices are measured against broadly-accepted global standards.

Compared with the world, our system seems to be working for the vast majority of our children.

So why ask for as radical a change as the end to public funding for private schools?

Economic arguments should be ruled out; they are mostly too thin in the balance in any event. 

Parents of children in private schools pay full school taxes, but only get 70 per cent of the benefit. Tough. People with no children at all pay full education taxes. It's the price of civilization.

Parents of children in private schools "subsidize" the public system through both their tuition fees and the fact that public education would cost more if there were no private schools and every kid got full funding in a more universal public system. Both ways, that's also the price of choice.

Not all kids in private schools are rich and spoiled. A friend of mine taught for a time in an academy in Calgary, where Christmas gifts for teachers included expensive wines and NHL game tickets. In Grade 1. But the majority of private schools are religion- or language-based, not income-based. Again, it's the price of choice.

We should be more concerned with children from families who cannot afford any choices at all. And for children in families where parents don't seem to care much at all. How many private schools need breakfast programs, clothing exchanges, or in-school laundries? We have all of these in Red Deer public schools.

Our best investment is to raise the bottom, not to pad the top. Therefore, my vote is to allow support for parents' choices – and Alberta already does that in spades – and use whatever financial efficiencies we have to give more help to those who need help the most.

GST rebate won't cut it in Alberta

A sales tax in Alberta? Impossible! 

If there were an Alberta equivalent of the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies, and if such a group contracted a pollster such as Leger to list the sources of Albertans' pride (like they did recently nationally), our repudiation of a sales tax would probably be near the top.

But if minds of a certain bent were to analyze Steve Lafleur's article in Monday's Advocate (Decentralize the federation) the case could be made we already have a sales tax in Alberta. It's called the GST. And we should be allowed to keep it here.

Lafleur is an analyst for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. His thesis is that Canada would work a lot better – be more transparent, efficient and less corrupt – if the feds would simply transfer GST revenues to the provinces. With that, the federal government should cease all provincial transfers.

As well, he says the feds should divvy its fuel taxes among Canada's municipalities on a per capita basis, and likewise stop direct funding of municipal projects.

That way, he says, taxpayers would have a better idea of how their tax dollars flow, plus provinces and municipalities would be forced to be more efficient and honest stewards of their revenues.

But Lafleur's mind isn't quite bent enough to make this work for Alberta, or for Red Deer.

A fast crunching of the numbers shows Alberta would be worse off under the program suggested. The numbers for Red Deer need more study, but Lafleur's plan don't look very good here either.

The GST collects about $28.3 billion a year. That comes to about $823 per Canadian. Based on population, Alberta's share would be just under $3 billion a year. It could be more if the the feds remitted Alberta's portion of the GST collected, because Albertans have a higher average incomes and higher-than-average spending. To be fair, we should get it all, right?

Federal taxes on gas and diesel come to $5.3 billion a year. On a straight population basis, a math-challenged columnist finds Red Deer would get roughly $1.54 million a year from that. Does that match what the city currently gets for infrastructure, housing and (filtered through the province) social programs?

Without resources for a full study, I'd say if all Red Deer got per year in total federal grants was one-and-a-half million, there's your next election issue right there.

Currently, federal cash transfers to Alberta are about $3.8 billion, just a bit over $1000 per person. So Alberta would have to collect between $800 million to a billion a year to make up the difference.

The other provinces already do that and more, with their provincial sales taxes.

Hmmm. Is this where Lafleur was going with his thesis? Bent minds want to know.

Small change can move mountains

I very seldom wish I had a Facebook account – no, check that, I've never wished I had a Facebook account. And the recent announcement by Target Canada urging Canadians to use their Facebook page to make charitable donations isn't enough to change my mind.

But if you happen to be a Facebook client, you may wish to spend a little time to spend a little piece of Target's $1 million which they will donate according to choices you make from a list of selected charities on their page, or wall or whatever they call it in Facebook.

Apparently, Target's department of external relations spent months researching the right mix of partner charities to receive this million bucks. 

I surmise the charities had to be national in scope, but with enough local chapters that customers can designate donations to a place close to where they live. They also needed to cover areas with a broad level of public acceptance, but unique enough that the Target brand will stand out as a supporter. (For instance, an effort like Run for the Cure already has a great deal of national corporate backing.)

When you think about it, these choices aren't as easy as it sounds. And if you're investing in goodwill prior to perhaps 135 store openings in cities across Canada, a million dollars is a lot less than it sounds. So you've got to target your choices.

At any rate, after much deliberation and the consumption of sandwiches at meetings, Target aimed at the arts, education and literacy, and programs that benefit people on low incomes. For Target, I'll allow these are good choices, but I wouldn't be impressed (or get a Facebook account) until they upped the ante to $5 million at least.

ArtsSmarts, ArtStarts, First Book Canada, Pathways to Education, Food Banks Canada and a number of YMCAs made the list, and starting Tuesday, you can designate $100 a day to a local chapter of one of these on as many days as you wish, until Dec. 9 (or until the money runs out, which would be my bet).

You'll notice that not many of these have a chapter in Red Deer, although Target will open a store here. But  a benefit to any of the charities on their list is a benefit to us, in the big picture.

However, if you want to donate money that you'll never miss, in ways that could have real local impact, there are other options.

Load your pocket with a bit of the small change you keep in a dish on your bedside table, when you go out to shop for groceries. Red Deer Co-op, for instance, has change collection jars at their checkouts, listing a number of valuable local charities as beneficiaries. Other stores will have theirs as well.

Consider: there must be 50,000 grocery purchases made every day in Red Deer. If we could achieve just a nickel average donation for each of these, that comes to about $75,000 per month going to local charities, without the need for a costly fundraising campaign or an army of volunteers to make it work. 

Do you think that level of money might make a difference in the quality of life for a lot of people in our city? Just ask the charities involved.

And here's this: nobody would miss having the money.

The Salvation Army will soon be starting their annual Christmas Kettle campaign. Even if you're the kind of shopper who uses a plastic card for everything, keep some change in your pockets. Promise yourself that you will not pass a volunteer with a kettle, without adding even a little to it.

Everyone loves a generous corporate donor, but collectively, many people doing incredibly small acts of caring is how mountains get moved.

Small change, big impact. Just pick the right target.

The thin line between money and power

When a ruling party has been in power longer than the majority of its citizens have been alive, the line gets blurred between the proper roles of government, its partisan supporters, its party machinery and the bureaucracy that manages its services.

Nobody came out of the recent Alberta PC convention to make headlines saying the province needs to brings political fundraising laws into line with public expectations of fairness and openness. And why should they? These laws are mandated by government, not party policy.

But in Alberta, it's fair to ask: what's the difference?

The Wildrose opposition is making hay over recent revelations from CBC news, that premier Allison Redford's sister Lynn (who happens to be vice president of special projects for Alberta Health Services) inappropriately expensed up to $3,500 in donations to the PC party.

Good for them for doing so, but the behaviour of Alberta's political culture speaks to an awful lot more than $3,500 in cash, plus a few hours of political organizing on the company's (taxpayers') time. 

That occurred back in 2008, when political fundraising in Alberta was all but going down in ethical flames. All sorts of government-funded agencies were using tax grant money to "give back" to the party that had ruled the province for most people's living memory.

Colleges, universities, hospitals, school boards, municipalities – even the ATB – have since been found to have "erroneously" expensed partisan donations made by their officials.

Recent headlines of questionable donations by the family and businesses of Edmonton billionaire Daryl Katz are likewise only part of the picture.

The issue is Alberta's democratic deficit. 

People here have freedom to run for office and vote as they choose. But the rules governing how parties are financed, the way party leaders are chosen, and how elections are fought are skewed heavily toward those with power to grant favours and those with money to secure them.

Alberta is the only province in Canada with no spending limits on elections. Alberta allows the second-highest tax credit limit for political donations of all the provinces. There is no prohibition on corporate or union funding of political parties – and as we have seen, the donation limits seem more like guidelines than rules.

Only in Alberta is the position of chief electoral officer (the top policeman on watch against corrupt electoral practices) appointed by a partisan agent of the party in power.

Lorne Gibson held that position once. He fought for tighter limits on party fundraising and more transparency in how the money is spent. He was fired in 2009 by then-premier Ed Stelmach.

That was the low point. That was not too long after the premier sought to recoup his leadership campaign costs by selling face time in conjunction with a fundraising dinner. These dinners and breakfasts – the lifeblood of all parties – were attended by people on payrolls either fully or partly filled by tax dollars, and nobody will ever know how many expensive meals ended up with receipts given, which were expensed back at the government-funded office.

It was unethical, illegal – and far too often unquestioned.

And now we hear the premier's sister – with her six-figure government salary – felt entitled to political activism, with us paying the expenses.

It must be pointed out that Lynn Redford was a senior exec at the Calgary Health Region at the time her expense claims were routinely approved. When the regions were dissolved and melted into the current AHS, its new CEO Stephen Duckett put a sharp line on what government employees could do politically while on the clock.

He's history now, too, spending his severance in his native Australia.

Wildrose is not calling for a total revamp of the laws surrounding election fundraising – just a public investigation into alleged Tory wrongdoing.

We must remember they actually outpolled the Tories in that regard, raising $2.4 million in the last election, against $1.8 million for the Progressive Conservatives. That campaign was supposed to be a Wildrose upset.

Maybe that speaks to our political culture as well. In Alberta, who can tell?

Ralph Klein's legacy: Alberta today

Former premier Ralph Klein deserved his day of honour Tuesday. It is a shame his physical illness prevented him from participating in the ceremonies awarding him both an Order of Canada, and a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

"King Ralph" as we knew him,
was ever the "People's King."

Ralph loved nothing more than the adulation he received over his many years of public service, and I'm certain that had he been able to be at the event to participate fully, he would have taken it all in with a big, satisfied smile.

As it was, it was a kindness on the part of the federal government to move the ceremonies to Calgary, so that Colleen Klein could accept these honours on his behalf, without needing to be parted from her husband for an extended trip.

We've had two premiers in the long Tory dynasty since Klein stepped down, but his fiscal legacy and his contributions to our political culture continue to endure. In the same breath, the changes to Alberta that occurred under his long watch have made many of his policies and style of government quite unelectable today.

Klein was the man for his times, but times have changed. In fact Klein worked very hard to usher in those changes.

I'm not sure he recognized that while in office, and I'm pretty certain his core advisers didn't either. But the PC party under premier Alison Redford sure ain't Ralph's "Henry and Martha" Tories.

Voters today have much more culturally diverse names, and they come from parts of the world that likely wouldn't recognize a Ralph Klein, much less choose him to lead such a technologically advanced and dynamic place that Alberta is today.

Not recognizing the face of 21st Century Alberta is also the failing of the Alberta Wildrose Party, which is trying to assume the populist mantle that Klein wore.

Klein's greatest achievement was to re-establish the Alberta brand of economic progress and national political influence that was being eroded in the hard years immediately following Peter Lougheed. Klein put the swagger back in our step.

He did it by putting himself in front of the parade to regain control of our finances. He did it through austerity measures that are being forced way too late on other governments around the world now, two decades later. Whether Klein was prescient in that, or just plain lucky, it pays to be first.

There is a cost to that kind of prudence, which we are paying today after many years of postponed investment in infrastructure repairs and building. 

There is also a cost to Klein's imprudence in not aggressively building Alberta's savings account. It's almost heartbreaking to think about the billions that would be coming into our treasury today, if Klein would have chosen to simply pay down our mortgage in the orderly manner he first mandated, instead of plundering that account, so he could brag about being debt free in time for our provincial Centennial.

And therein lies the mistake of the Wildrose Party. Opposition leader Danielle Smith points to the $10 billion Alberta gets in energy revenue every year, and wonders how the government can't balance the books with that kind of windfall.

So do I. But had we built our savings through the 20 boom years under Klein, had we not not adopted Stockwell Day's idiotic flat income tax, had we not been too proud to think about even a one-per-cent provincial sales tax dedicated to infrastructure spending, we'd be making $10 billion a year today in interest payments from the Heritage Fund – probably even more.

Look out the window. We see the Alberta that we all built under Ralph Klein. For the good parts (and there are many) we need to be grateful. For the lessons learned – that's our responsibility going forward.

America needs Europe's dismal medicine

There's a reason we call economics the dismal science. We can't say it's an austere study, because "austerity" has a different meaning these days (aristocrats used to be austere; now it's the unemployed). So dismal it will have to be, and progressively more dismal as the globe marches toward America's fiscal cliff.

Or not. While Canadians were watching CFL playoff games on Sunday, Europe was saving itself from destruction – or at least giving it a significant delay. As midnight tolled through European time zones (and Edmonton Eskimos fans ended another disappointing season), new agreements were announced in Frankfurt that many believe will save the European union, save its currency, and be a lesson for American leaders hoping to find a parachute at their cliff's edge.

The Greek parliament also passed a budget that will raise taxes and cut spending, reducing its deficit by 13.5 billion Euros. Greece's "austerity" budget means the country can avoid default on 4.1 billion in debt that matures next week. 

Europe's central bank now has the power to buy pretty well unlimited amounts of bonds issued by its troubled economies, vastly reducing their costs of borrowing. Europe's Sunday agreements open what appears to be a year-long window of opportunity to work on its financial problems and avoid a costly breakup.

In other words, Europe will do what U.S. president Barak Obama wants to do, if Congress will just come along. 

Europe is raising taxes and cutting spending – exactly what U.S. financial institutions want it to. American money market funds poured themselves back into Euro bonds for the third straight month, a 16 per cent rise since September. For all I know, some of that money comes from my RSP.

But in America, raising taxes and cutting spending are considered bad medicine; that's the fiscal cliff everyone's talking about. They reduce the ability of rich people to spend freely, withhold government services from the poor and middle class, while driving up unemployment and driving investment down.

But in dismal economics, what medicine is ever good? 

Unemployment in Greece is 25 per cent, and Europe has a whole new social class: the NEET. A NEET is a person aged 15-29 who is Not in Education, Employment or Training. There are 14 million of them in Europe now. This is expected to get worse before it gets better.

But that's the point. As of this week, Europe expects to get better. America doesn't.

President Obama wants America to take its medicine. There will have to be tax hikes, sacred spending cows (the military?) will have to be bled. 

Why should an economy that has run short by a trillion dollars a year for 11 straight years not take the same medicine needed in Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Britain? The mixture needs to reflect the patient's needs, but the basic ingredients are the same.

The science is dismal, but it seems that worse-before-better still means that someday, you will will arrive at better.

Advice you give to yourself

Maclean's  came out this week with their annual ranking of Canadian universities. It must be a big seller, because it seems to me that they come out twice a year.

This time out, they ran a side feature asking some prominent Canadians for advice they would give to their own 18-year-old selves, now that they have the benefit of hindsight. Sort of a quick essay assignment, the kind that appeals to writers, news personalities and politicians (who formed the majority of respondents to this feature).

Our family has had at least one member – and some years, three – continuously in post-secondary for the last 15 years. I must have have imparted some wisdom somewhere along the line to our children, though looking back I can't remember what it might have been. Probably  something along the lines of "don't tell me when you've been partying too hard." You know, the important stuff.

Of my own university experience, the only advice I recall getting was from my dad who told me not to use bad language in my editorials in the student newspaper. Above that, we were on our own.

So after reading what the prominent Canadians had to say to themselves in Maclean's, I thought surely I would be qualified to advise myself for a reverse time capsule that could be sent to an 18-year-old me leaving the farm for the lights of Edmonton.

If the technology existed to send such a message, I surely hope I'd have the sense to read it and take it to heart. But I doubt it. Back then, I was having a lot of fun making friends, exploring ideas, and faking my way through those classes I thought I "needed" but didn't enjoy.

First off, I'd tell myself to drop linguistics, and go for the science-class-for-arts-students program designed for those of us who needed two science options to complete an Arts degree. Students called it "Jolly Rockets." Personal note: we have nothing to learn from linguistics.

Also, there must have been a more worthwhile French option than 18th Century French literature. Voltaire was a pretty neat guy, but he didn't help my French much. A history course, particularly a course in the history of political thought, plus an introductory course in philosophy and critical thought would serve you better, my young friend.

Then I'd give the big one (and this copies advice you'd read in the Maclean's article): pay attention, stupid, and keep up! You only get one chance at this kind of learning, and the experience is really, really expensive!

Newspaper work was fascinating, and was the basis for a whole lot of well-rounded learning, but a little less interviewing and a little more study would not have hurt at all. In the mid 1970s, stagflation and high unemployment ruled our economy, but I never doubted that I could walk into any newsroom and produce immediately. After all I'd already been doing it for years while a full-time (cough, cough) student.

And by all means, buy that 1965 Vauxhall Epic for $150, drive it through a January snowstorm to Red Deer, and land that job. Even though the pay was less than my honorarium at The Gateway, the employer had a lower circulation and press run than the university publication, and received less per line for advertising.

Coming here, and dragging my girlfriend with me to marry her, were the smartest moves I made in those years.

What advice would you give now, to your 18-year-old self? Send a short note to greg.neiman.blog@gmail.com, and I'll compile responses into a column. I'll try to negotiate some swag from the Advocate as a reward. After all, not all advice should be free.

Don't buy a bridge from misleading pollsters

There's more to the story than was reported in the Advocate Monday in a column by Matthew Johnston, president and CEO of Enquirica Research. The article Sending our money east is an accurate reporting of the company's poll based on the questions they asked, but I am skeptical of the poll's accuracy in its reporting of opinions of Albertans who are more fully informed

In short, both the poll and article attempt to convince us our federal government is taking Albertans' hard-earned incomes to build a bridge in Ontario that competes directly with a privately-owned bridge business. In Alberta, them's fightin' words.

But the premise is not quite true. 

This artist’s rendering provided by the Gov. Rick Snyder’s office
(via the Detroit News) shows the New International Trade Crossing
bridge and its location in southwest Detroit. 

The Ambassador Bridge linking Windsor Ont. and Detroit, Mich., was built in 1927 – with taxpayer money, of course. Many years later, when we all woke up to the fact that private enterprise can do everything better (including ownership of the world's busiest international trade nexus), the bridge came into the ownership of Matty Moroun.

That bridge carries a quarter of all Canada-U.S. trade. Not just trade in goods, but trade, period; $120 billion worth last year. It's a constant stream of heavy trucks paying tolls to Moroun, going both ways.

The builders of the bridge in the 1920s could not have envisioned the changes to occur on either end of the project. The route has no easy access to customs offices, and its approach runs through 16 traffic lights, straight through downtown Windsor.

In Red Deer, we don't even like the noise of our own transit buses. How would you like hundreds of diesel trucks an hour, 24/7, through our downtown?

Johnston's article points to a downturn in traffic on the bridge in past years, in tandem with a downturn in the auto industry. Coincidence? Try in tandem with traffic congestion at both ends on this aging chokepoint. By the way, long-term plans aim to ban heavy truck traffic through Detroit's downtown zone by 2020. (Wonder which citizen ratepayers group got that one going?)

Both Canada and the province of Ontario, plus the states of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, along with their major manufacturers and associated unions, back a proposal for a six-lane bridge 3.2 km west, away from the cities' downtown cores, direct freeway-to-freeway, with dedicated lanes for pre-screened traffic and quick access to customs offices.

Detroit's broke. So is Michigan. But cross-border trade is still expected to rise, despite the current U.S. economic downturn. Almost a quarter million jobs rely on this trade in Michigan alone, never mind the other states and in Canada.

The current bridge infrastructure cannot handle the traffic, and its current owner has proven, well, hard to work with.

So prime minister Stephen Harper told Michigan governor Rick Snyder, that we'll put up $550 million to build a new bridge, plus $1.5 billion for connecting roadwork on the Canadian side, if Michigan will waive the "buy American" rules and allow both Canadian and American labour and materials for the project. We're talking up to 15,000 construction jobs, plus opportunities to sell a whole lot of steelwork.

The government of Canada would collect tolls on the bridge to recover the  investment (putting us in direct competition with Moroun), and for all we can foresee, in due time a future clone of Harper will probably deed the bridge to a Canadian billionaire, to run it "better."

Hwy 63 to Ft. McMurray, which desperately needs a fast-tracked upgrade, is not connected to this bridge, despite what Johnston and the wording of his polling questions might have you believe.

The Huffington Post put up a poll of its own on Proposition Six, which is a question on Tuesday's presidential election ballot in Michigan. It proposes that no bridge or tunnel between the state and Canada should be considered without direct voter approval.

You can't participate in the Huffington Post poll until you first give an opinion, and then read the arguments for and against the proposed bridge project, and then vote again.

Canada's side (against the proposition) was argued by ambassador Gary Doer, the pro side being argued by Mickey Blashfield, director of the group called The People Should Decide.

When informed of the arguments, polling opposition to Proposition Six grew from 75 per cent to 82 per cent. Now, which poll do you trust more?