Good news: Canada si no longer chair the Arctic Council

The world received a welcome piece of good news over the weekend: Canada has passed off chairmanship of the Arctic Council, and it will likely be 16 years or more before we get it back.

That leaves the world plenty of time for real leaders to address the alarming environmental changes that are occurring in the region, and hopefully to curtail unwarranted energy exploration in the North, with all of its pollution risks.

The council meets every two years, in the country of the current chair. (The members are Canada, the U.S., Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland, plus all circumpolar indigenous peoples.)

Friday's meeting in Iqaluit was supposed to be preceded by a showcase event in Ottawa the day before. The event was to celebrate the Council's accomplishments during our two-year stint in the rotating chairmanship, but it was abruptly called off.

The reason was politics. How would it look if senior Russian officials were invited to visit Ottawa for what is essentially a photo-op, while Canada/Russian tensions over events in Ukraine were so high?

It would remain for environment minister Leona Aglukkaq to repeat Canada's outrage over Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its military support for rebel forces wanting to secede parts of Ukraine into Russia.

As it was, Russia had already had gotten the message, and didn't care to hear it again. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had attended every Arctic Council meeting since 2004, but gave this one a miss. Environment minister Sergei Donskoi came in his stead.

And in the due course of events, chairmanship passed to the United States, which wasted no time in announcing the agenda of the last two years has been ended.

The Arctic Council is no place for geopolitical messing around, while back doors were being opened for accelerated industrial development of the north, at the expense of the environment.

U.S. secretary of state John Kerry assumed the chair and announced that the priorities of the Arctic Council have changed, starting now. Global climate change is occurring fastest at the poles, and addressing the results of receding sea ice, rapid acidification of the ocean, the collapse of permafrost, rising sea levels and general warming would take immediate priority.

“This is not a future challenge, this is happening right now,” Kerry said, adding that all member nations “must do everything we can to prevent worse impacts” of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Arctic Council can do more on climate change,” Kerry said.

News reports of the change of chairmanship say the move was welcomed by the other members of the council, who also want to focus on the threats of a warming climate both on the land and on the people who live there.

Canada, for its part, has made no secret (or at least it has been a very poor one) of its lack of concern regarding climate change. In the minds of our governors, the best protection we should offer the wild areas of the north is a good dose of profiteering.

Thus the formation of the Arctic Economic Council, a self-selecting group of businesses that work in that formidably difficult region. The economic council was a chief highlight of Aglukkaq's term as chair of the Arctic Council.

Except in corporate boardrooms, our current government has made very few friends globally for its policies on the environment. Rather the opposite. Our government has made our country a global embarrassment on issues of greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.

Remember when Canada's global brand used to be our forests, glaciers, clean rivers and open, unpolluted vistas? Not so much any more.

So, well and good that Canada no longer drafts the agenda for the Arctic Council. Far better to be a follower, in the presence of better leaders.

The next decade is expected to be a watershed space of time for the Arctic. Either we will preserve what we can, or we will risk losing it all in the greatest global disaster in human history.

Activists around the world still hold out hope that with strong measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions, we can avoid the worst.

Based on its record, the Canadian government scarcely gives climate change in general and its effects in the north in specific, a reluctant second thought.

The Arctic Council can be a strong voice, based on its highly industrialized member nations and historic indigenous peoples as stakeholders.

Let us hope that a rotation of strong leadership can help bring that about. Lord knows, leadership on the environment from the outside is the best Canadians can hope for.

Safety in numbers: the more we ride, the safer it gets

Last week, the city posted its traffic accident and fatality stats for 2011. I'm not sure why it takes four years to get a report like that together, but we are promised a new filing with much more recent figures in it, later this year.

Judging from the numbers I see in the report (filed by the Engineering Department, posted in their section of the city's web site) I'll make a prediction for what the next report might tell us. In the years since 2011, even though traffic volumes have increased greatly in the city, I believe our safety record overall will have improved.

I can only give personal observations, but I see Red Deer drivers slowing down a bit as our main traffic arteries have gotten busier. Our commutes take a bit longer, but they have become more safe.

The number of incidents may well rise in the next report, but not as a proportion of the number of trips and commutes being made here. We'll see.

Dangerous intersections (mostly on 67^th Street) are clearly identified in the report. Understanding the problems are a major part of solving them, but I suspect we won't get a permanent solution to make that street more safe, until we get our new bridge and ring road on the north and east sides of the city.

That's about the motorized commutes in Red Deer. I'm more interested in the safety stats for cyclists, and how they play against the perception of the safety of our streets.

A world-renowned urban design firm once discovered that cities don't count what they don't value. When they decided to value — and count — bicycle commutes, they found that in cities around the world, the numbers of cyclists was far higher than perceived in the engineering and policy-making departments of those cities.

When planners and designers decided to include those more accurate numbers in their traffic plans, cycling numbers boomed as both the perception and the fact of safety improved.

The improvements to safety alone created real, hard cash savings that far exceeded the upfront costs of design and construction to separate the bikes from both pedestrians and motor vehicles.

I propose that even the slim stats in our own annual collision reports suggest the small steps we have taken here are already bearing fruit.

There is no formal count, but nobody can dispute that since 2009, there has been a large increase in the numbers of daily commutes being made by bike in Red Deer. We work with a figure of about one per cent of commutes, but really, no one can be sure of the proportion of bike trips people make in our city each day.

Nevertheless, even with the well-understood steady increase in cycling commutes in Red Deer since 2009, both the numbers of collisions and the numbers of injuries has dropped.

There have been zero fatalities for cyclists in Red Deer since 2009. From 2009-2011, you were more likely to be murdered or struck by lightning in Red Deer, than to be killed in a bike collision.

Even though the number of commutes obviously increased, injuries declined. Thirteen people were hurt in bike/vehicle collisions in 2011, down from 22 in 2009.

Since then, we don't know; there have been no new reports. But I will suggest that any increase in either collisions, injuries or deaths since 2001, will be in negative correspondence to the increase in bike traffic.

Perhaps it's a greater awareness of cyclists since all the bad (and largely errant) publicity surrounding the bike lanes pilot project of years ago, but both drivers and cyclists in Red Deer are learning to get along.

If we actually counted, and then planned for cyclist safety, I say there would be a huge increase in the numbers of bike commuters, and a corresponding decrease in motor traffic density on some of our more dangerous streets.

As luck would have it, I'm on a committee that will take families of new cyclists on a bike trip along that busy and dangerous 67^th Street. Our trip, from the G.H. Dawe Centre to Three Mile Bend and back, will cross 67^th Street twice, with two crossings of the dreaded 67^th Street and Gaetz Avenue.

On June 20, the Dawe Community Bike Fair will host a safety workshop, quickie bike tune-up station, skills training and a bike ride/scavenger hunt for families to Three Mile Bend and back. We will have volunteers at points along the ride to guide participants and to ensure safety regulations are followed.

If you would like to ride more, but fear it's not safe, come to the event. The aim is to improve skills, knowledge, and cyclist confidence for families and new riders. And to have fun.

Per hours of exposure, cycling is just a bit more than half as dangerous as being in a moving vehicle. Global experience shows that as cyclist numbers grow, so does overall safety — especially when planners decide to value, count and include them in city design. The cash savings to taxpayers from this are genuine and substantial.

I may be wrong, but that's what I'm looking for, when the next collision report is issued by the city.

How many rules should honourable people need?

Mike Duffy's fraud and breach of trust trial, which passes for entertainment in Ottawa, cannot possibly be further from the point that upsets Canadians about the workings of the Prime Minister's Office and the Senate.

This is not about the vagueness of rules surrounding how senators should behave in their financial arrangements with the country. The rules are vague because decent people understand that “honesty” cannot be defined by a rule book.

Fact One: Prime minister Stephen Harper knew where Mike Duffy lived. It was in Ottawa, not Prince Edward Island. Check the photos: Duffy's Ottawa home is a mansion, his “principle residence” is a cute little A-frame cottage that looks like it might have a shared bath.

Under the Senate's residency rules, Mike Duffy was not eligible to be a senator from P.E.I. Harper obviously knew this, but appointed Duffy a senator anyway. Presto-chango! The summer vacation house became Duffy's “principle residence” by the prime minister's fiat.

If one is a senator from one of the regions, one is entitled to a housing allowance. A pretty nice one, too. Nice enough to keep a mansion in Ottawa.

These are the rules. Is anyone confused? Does anyone need an expensive lawyer to pick up a dictionary for the definition of “residence” in a court of law?

Of course not. You and I and everyone else would know that being a senator is a high honour, and requires a person to act with integrity. You don't fudge your monthly billings, you don't pad your expense account, you don't use semantics to get around doing what's right.

You don't fly off to a meetings to shill for the Progressive Conservatives at party fundraisers and then bill the Senate for the cost of the flights.

You don't fly first class to a meeting for a corporate board that you sit on, and then bill the cost to the Senate.

You don't hire friends to do government contract work, pay them even though work is not done — and then bill the Senate.

And if you are a senator from P.E.I., you friggin' well live in P.E.I.

Is anyone still confused?

Fact two: If your principle residence is found to be not in the province you claim to represent, you must resign. You are not eligible to sit.

A little A-frame cottage that you visit maybe 30 days in a year is not your principle residence. Who would not know this? An honourable person would not need an auditor to count the days you spent there, or track your plane trips or draw a line on a chart for you to establish “residence.”

Getting a provincial health card? To prove residency? You should already have one — because that's where you live.

This is what Canadians find disgusting about the Duffy affair, Pamela Wallin's shenanigans, and a smell around the Senate that's bad enough to justify an audit of each and every senator's expense account.

Duffy's defence suggests that if he has broken some vague rules, then so have all the rest of the senators — and that this has gone on so long, it's standard practice.

When did personal integrity cease to be standard practice?

In Ottawa, what is happening in court right now is considered procedure.

For Canadians, what is happening is political farce. The workings of the Prime Minister's Office, the “kids in short pants” telling government representatives what to do and what to say, millionaires writing personal cheques to bridge lapses of integrity — it's just bad television.

I think a lot of Canadians have already passed beyond disappointment and outrage — they're simply turning off the set.

The pundits are pondering how Mike Duffy's trial might impact the Conservatives' chances in the next election. I doubt it will, because Canadians are past caring.

The federal prosecutors aren't interested in exposing the moral weaknesses of the Canadian executive branch or the rot at the centre of the Senate. Duffy's defence is interested in creating more fog than clarity.

No set of rules can guarantee integrity. A rule book simply can't cover every dodge made by people who have no scruples.

But this entire case began when Stephen Harper appointed an ineligible person to a Senate seat, in exchange for good speeches to be made at party fundraisers.

That would be the pilot episode to some bad TV, that I believe Canadians simply don't want to watch.

Never a bad time for an Alberta election

Let's see... Alberta is expected to enter a recession this year, unemployment is rising, home values are stagnant or dropping, and the provincial government raised 59 different taxes and fees in its budget (none of them really touching our core economy), while projecting a $5 billion deficit.

Good time to call an election.

Of our 87-seat legislature, 25 seats will have no incumbent at election call, either due to retirements, or with the current member running for a different party this time around. According to an article in the Globe and Mail, that's the highest turnover since the Tories took power in 1971.

Political polls suggest the long-ruling Tories are neck-and-neck in popularity with the Wildrose Party — even though most Albertans don't even know the name of the party's leader. (It's Brian Jean, by the way, with a bonus point if you know he's running in Fort McMurray).

But not even Wildrose will agree voter intentions are as close as the pollsters suggest. So let this be one more election to prove polling is an obsolete tool. Really, somebody has to tell the industry that you can't get a representative sample of Albertans anymore, by calling landline telephones.

I suspect the Tories might actually have to work through their campaign to maintain the size of their majority. That will be a change from the days when winning the Tory nomination was the biggest hurdle to being sworn in as an MLA.

But there's an inertia in Alberta that is so hard to overcome. People may be unhappy with our government — we haven't forgotten the excesses of the Redford regime, and we're not gullible enough to believe that's been entirely purged.

We know the Tories have been promising for 43 years to get Alberta off the roller coaster of energy prices, and we know there's not enough in Jim Prentice's 10-year plan to convince us even another 10 years will change that.

But when voters do the gut check in the polling booth, they stick with the devil they know.

Or they don't vote at all.

Above all, Albertans simply don't punish bad government.

That's why there's never a bad time to call an election in Alberta.

How insular or detached from reality does a government have to be in Alberta before it loses the confidence of ordinary voters? Actually, that's the wrong question.

The real question is: what does an opposition candidate have to do in Alberta, to convince ordinary voters that they wouldn't do worse if they became the government?

Such is the state of politics and governance here. However bad the track record is on issues of trust and vision, nobody else seems able to make us believe their vision is better, or more trustworthy.

The leader of the Alberta opposition spent years, hammering the government every day, never missing an opportunity for a headline, never short of damning information detailing government mismanagement or outright malfeasance, never missing a chance to say how they could do better.

And then she led a defection to cross the floor to become part of that same government.

OK, so what's the Wildrose going to do for us today? Or the Liberals? Or the NDP? Or the Alberta Party, or the Greens?

If the best the opposition can do is agree not to run against each other, or split the opposition vote in some few selected ridings, then this election is already in the bag.

That's why I figure this election is not about Prentice's 10-year plan, not directly anyway. This election is about shedding those 25 old members (including the new ones who didn't win a nomination after switching parties).

This is about Prentice assembling a new team that has substantially less to do with the old one. In essence, he's being his own opposition, turfing out the old ideas, and building a new government that the opposition can't convince voters that they could build.

Are you unhappy with how things have gone here in the past few years? Do you suspect the vision of the current leader isn't really that different than the old ones? Then by all means punish the government. That's a good reason to vote.

But I want the opposition parties to give me a better reason to vote than that. I want details, charts, comparisons, projections. Vision, I call it.

Otherwise, even today, there's no bad time to call an election in Alberta.

Alberta budget: not a stellar vintage

We have a sign above the door to our kitchen. A gift from friends, it reads: “Life is too short to drink bad wine.”

I take it to be metaphorical, but my wife is more literalistic, and she will no longer drink the swizzle that comes from my wine lab downstairs.

That edge of particularity now costs us a bit more, due to the 16-cent-per-bottle hike in provincial wine taxes in last week's budget. Is there anyone out there willing to bet that this increase will morph closer to $1.60 by the time the price stickers are applied to the bottles?

Gasoline, wine and beer — the fluids on which much of Alberta runs — have become more dear since the price of that other vital fluid — oil — has collapsed. But life is too short to get bitter over that.

Rather, we should sample a bit more widely from the budget before we pass judgement on it. But judgement is needed, considering we can expect a snap election to be called any day now, as a sort of public ratification for it.

So what has really changed since premier Jim Prentice gave the province a long, hard look in the mirror? For most of us, not a whole lot — at least not immediately.

Alberta's flat income tax has become slightly inclined. The first $100,000 of taxable income remains taxed at 10 per cent. That about covers the 90 per cent of us.

But any portion of a taxable income over $100,000 to $250,000 will ratchet up to 11.5 per cent by 2018. Taxable incomes of $250,000 and up will hit 11.5 per cent in 2017, and take a one-year bump in 2018 to 12 per cent, before going back down to 11.5 per cent in 2019 — just in time for the next election scheduled by law to follow the snap election we'll have this year.

If you can believe it, there are critics bemoaning this heartless tax grab. But once Alberta's super-rich compares the top income tax rates of the other provinces, I doubt we'll see an exodus of wealth any time soon.

The new health levy is getting the most ink in discussion of the budget. While catching up on the news Monday night, I was called to participate in a phone-in “town hall” meeting with the health minister, most likely to discuss the health levy.

I had volunteer commitments right then, so I had to hang up.

But we 90-per-centers won't be suffering much from that new tax levy. After all your deductions, if your taxable income is under $50,000, you won't pay any health care levy at all.

Anything over that, up to $70,000 (remember: taxable, not gross income) gets hit with a five-per-cent surcharge — the maximum you'll pay is $200.

The sliding scale slides up — for a person who has $130,000-plus annual income — with the maximum annual charge of $1,000. Some people pay more than that for a night out to watch one hockey game.

The only improvement I currently see in this health levy over the last one, is that it's tied to the tax system. Our previous “health care premium” was a separate bill the government spent fruitless millions trying to collect from people who just refused to pay it.

What bothers me more is a change that has slid under the radar so far. Alberta till now had the most generous tax rebate for charitable donations (between the federal and provincial governments, we used to get back half of what we gave to charities, over $200, at tax time). After 2016, the provincial portion drops from 21 per cent, to 12.75 — the rate it was in 2007, when it was last raised.

As a volunteer fundraiser for charities, I used to pitch for donations by telling people that they'd get half their donations back (at least the portion over $200 a year).

In the larger picture don't know how well that worked — the provincial government reports having serious doubts raising the deduction helped raise charitable giving.

But it does tell me something about human behaviour, and the effectiveness of tax incentives in general. Albertans do give the highest median charitable donations in the country, about $420 a year. But because we have so many millionaires among us, Alberta ranks second last in donations as a portion of median income.

So, I say the biggest lesson here is that people will give what people will give, and tax incentives don't influence personal generosity all that much.

That argument cuts in several directions. It could also mean that, for instance, businesses decide to invest and work in Alberta regardless of whether the business tax is the 10 per cent or, say, 12 per cent.

A 100-per-cent income tax write-off for RSP investments has not created a nation of savers, has it?

A 50 per total tax rebate for charitable donations did not make Alberta charities here so well funded they can patch up the shortfalls of the publicly-funded social safety net.

So what makes the government think a two-per-cent corporate tax hike would totally flatten this province?

But where we live, saying things like that sounds like bad whining. And life's too short for that.

Follow greg Neiman's blog at Readersadvocate.blogspot.ca