Skewed perspectives could make for bad policy in 2017

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute claims it exists “to make poor public policy unacceptable in Ottawa.” I'd bet people along the entire political spectrum in Canada would suggest the've had a rather poor success rate at that over the years — but that at least does bolster its second claim of being non-partisan.

Managing director Brian Lee Crowley wrote an essay in the Globe and Mail this past week debunking what he called popular myths that could lead to poor public policy for 2017.

The problem here is that if policy-makers in Ottawa accepted his arguments, the result would be an outpouring of poor public policy in the coming year. Because his so-called “myths” are described from the perspective of someone who can't see the forest for the trees.

First, Crowley seeks to dispel the thought “endlessly repeated that we must get off fossil fuels or we are all doomed.”

From his perspective, fossil fuels are so cheap, storable and transportable, so energy-dense that chasing after alternatives is foolish. Fossil fuels are actually an irreplaceable protection against the climate's ravages, he writes.

To lend a whiff of scientific credence to this, Crowley claims that the rate of climate-related deaths has fallen recently. Unfortunately, there's less connection between that, and the incidence of extreme weather events than he believes. Maybe, with all our practice, we're just getting better at saving people during storms.

What he does not mention is that Arctic temperatures have been measured at more than 20 degrees Celsius above long-term averages, and that the ice sheets that control weather patterns in our hemisphere (also just under 2 degrees warmer than normal) are smaller and thinner than they've ever been.

Likewise, he does not mention that technology is making fossil fuels less irreplaceable for many purposes. This year, in many countries, unsubsidized renewable energy reached a production cost to match or beat carbon-based alternatives.

When Bloomberg analysts suggest oil prices could drop as low as $10 a barrel in coming decades (a supply/demand prediction), when energy giants are turning off fossil fuel plays and investing in wind and solar, when Saudi princes want to sell off parts of family-owned Aramco, I'd say the writing is on the wall.

We'll be drilling and mining fossil fuels for a good while yet, but we'll just be doing less and less of it. Which has a public policy impact, when considering multi-billion-dollar investments in things like pipelines.

Another myth Crowley seeks to debunk is the assumed control over global government policy held by giant corporations. In this, I agree with him — to a point.

History shows us over and over how large empires, both political and economic, are not eternal. They always create niches for disruptive ideas and technologies that bring them down and create new ones.

For instance, public acceptance of the dangers of climate change will lead to policies to account for widespread changes in the way we lead our lives.

In the same way, public policy must eventually address the dangers inherent in the growing income gap between the vastly wealthy and everyone else, both nationally and internationally.

On this topic, Crowley suggests that poor people and poor nations merely haven't learned the lessons about the forces that cause economic growth. In other words, they're poor because they're stupid.

That is about as blatant a basis for poor public policy as you'll ever find.

A final comment: Crowley invokes Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, the great lamenter who in ancient days predicted doom if God's Chosen People didn't return to pious right-living.

These days, you'll find a Jeremiah in every crackpot blog or fringe political party, he says.

Trouble was, in his time, Jeremiah was right. Israel was in fact doomed to being conquered and its people enslaved, but they would later return to their homeland.

Crowley might also have referenced Greek legend Cassandra. But he'd have been wrong on that as well. Her prophecies were also spot-on, but her doom was that nobody would pay attention to her.

Not paying attention to the narrow perspective of groups like the Macdonald-Laurier Institute would be a good first step in creating better public policy.

Their business-as-usual, everything's-fine conclusion will not see us into a better future.

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

Have we abandoned Syria? To whom should we give it?

For a short while at least, there is a cease-fire in Aleppo, and time for the world to witness the exodus of refugees fleeing whoever it is that will take over their ruined city next.

It is heart-breaking to see. Syria's civil war has left behind a nation that I cannot imagine any despot would actually want to rule. Every media image is of ruin and destruction.

How is it that anyone at all has survived the battle for Aleppo? How is it that after the refugees leave, that there could be anyone left, other than more fighters trying to level the last two rocks still standing one upon another, in the hopes there may be someone left behind them that they could kill?

And yet we are told by pundits and agency spokespeople that somehow the West has abandoned Aleppo, Aleppo in particular and Syria in general. This must be some sort of attempt to paint us with the guilt of the butchery of Bashar al-Assad and his ally Vladimir Putin on one side, versus the rebels and the collection of violent religious fanatics and ethnic warlords who are their allies.

There is no one in this battle that I as an ordinary Canadian can support. Only the many thousands of victims — and they include the doctors and aid agencies who were targeted by Assad's barrel bombs, Putin's missiles — and for all I know, rebel suicide bombers.

So don't tell me I have abandoned Aleppo. I don't see that Canada has anything with which to save it that wouldn't be bombed to oblivion the minute it arrived.

Instead, dear pundits and spokespeople, tell us who on the ground there can save Syria; someone who is not a plundering serial murderer or megalomaniacal monster with an extreme religious agenda.

The United Nations agency that monitors refugees globally puts the current registered refugee count at 4.8 million from the Syrian conflict. That's just the ones who got counted and put into camps in the hopes of resettlement in places like Canada.

What country can survive losing 4.8 million people, including their doctors, lawyers, teachers, builders, entrepreneurs and all the rest? That's from a population estimated in 2011 at 23 million (which included more than 2 million refugees from places like Palestine and Iraq). By 2016, the group World Population Review estimated Syria's population at just over 18 million.

For its part, Aleppo held about 2.1 million people in 2004. There's no telling what the population is now, but aid agencies tell us that 5,000 people flee Syria every day. CNN news agency tells us that about 400,000 people have died in the fighting in Syria since the civil war began — a lot of them in Aleppo, which was Syria's largest city.

What's left there to fight over? And what fault is it of mine, or of Western democracies, that Bashir al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are butchers, or that anyone connected with rebel or ISIS groups should even be considered an improvement over them?

But it is a Canadian trait to constantly apologize. So forgive me for not wanting Canada to get involved in this game, other than to take in and support as many refugees as we can.

And forgive me also for not feeling guilty about having “abandoned” Syria.

Assad and all the rest have caused many graves to be dug; they are also eventually digging graves for themselves.

We cannot stop them or hinder them. And we will not assume blame for them, either.

Money and power: the co-joined twins of politics

It's too easy to simply get angry when province after province — and including the federal government — sells special access to governors as a partisan fundraiser.

If you want to believe that government acts on behalf of groups that make large donations and not on behalf of the people that voted for them, you need look no further than that. Special, exclusive — and paid — access to lawmakers damages the legitimacy of elections, and brings our whole concept of democracy into contempt.

Not to say that very many Canadian governments haven't sunk to that level. They have. But when they're caught, parties of all stripes learn that offering private interviews to wealthy clients in return for generous donations comes at a price.

That's why six of our provinces, most recently Ontario, have proposed or passed laws limiting the size of donations that can be made, and limiting the list of who can be donors.

In Alberta not long ago, when it became widely known that municipalities and tax-supported institutions were regularly sending donations to the long-ruling Conservatives, that insidious practice was stopped.

In Saskatchewan, Canada's last bastion of Wild West fundraising rules, there's no cap on how much corporations or unions can donate to political parties. In fact, out-of-province groups have sent millions to Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party (by far, mostly from Alberta).

You can even set up a numbered corporation in Alberta and donate unlimited amounts to a political party in Saskatchewan, making it much more difficult for any average voter to know who is behind the donation. You can gather that money from anywhere, and who would know?

So when Brad Wall opens his mouth in opposition to Canada's efforts to mitigate climate change, whose voice is really speaking?

So let's go ahead and put a tight cap on political donations. (Quebec, which has been stung by perceptions of influence peddling, now has a cap of just $100 per year for political donations. That's a full third more than the Quebecers' median donations to charity, but there you are.)

But be careful how you do that. Money and power are the co-joined twins of politics everywhere, and it would take better surgery than that to make some room for justice and equity.

The reason why is right in front of us.

In early January, Kellyanne Conway, the manager of US president-elect Donald Trump's poisonous election campaign, will be come to Alberta for a paid speech to Calgary business leaders. And for a tour of the oilsands projects at Fort McMurray.

Personally, I'm hoping for minus 40 with a howling windchill for that week, but climate change, unpredictable it is, will likely disappoint me.

I don't object to her visit or her speech. I object to the reason for it.

She was invited to headline a fundraiser for a new group called the Alberta Prosperity Fund. It's our version of America's political action group (PAC) and their billionaire-run big brothers, the Super PACs.

This is what we'll get if we ban or cap political donations without thinking things through. Alberta Prosperity Fund, managed by longtime Tory insiders, has chosen Jason Kenney to become leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party — and there's not much inside it that appears to be progressive.

Their web site claims need for action because of all the “special interest groups” that are currently running our whole society into the ground, according to the fund's backers.

Those enviro-pinkos who oppose pipelines for instance; they have a lot of money behind them, right? Ditto those obstreperous native groups. Same with those bleeding-heart refugee-lovers.

If we didn't like groups with special interests giving big donations to parties that support their views — out in the open where it's all easily seen — we're really going to hate shadow groups who claim no official party affiliations, but support just the opposite.

It's called free speech and freedom of association.

You can't separate money from power in the dark. It's hard enough to do that in the light of day.

As the federal Liberal Party has amply shown us, the current fundraising rules can be stretched pretty far. At least now, when they are stretched to the point of abuse, we can know who's done it — and punish them if we want to.