Jody is Independent. Jane is Independent.

Wilson-Raybould has announced she'll seek re-election in Vancouver-Granville as an independent. I expect her decision means that riding is lost to the Liberals even if she doesn't win in October.

So much for Jody. As for Jane, news crews are awaiting her arrival at some produce market in Markham-Stouffville.  It was interesting looking at all those former Liberal voters gathered to await her announcement. Ah, here's Jane.

Dr. Philpott is also running - as an independent.  Given the enthusiasm of the crowd it seems that Markham-Stouffville is also now lost to the Liberals.

When the campaign does begin it's hard to imagine what their Liberal opponents will have to say about them. How will they try to take them down? Attacking either of them could be suicidal.

Philpott praised Elizabeth May and the Greens, pledging to support their platform.

What Yesterday Meant to Me

Since that first time I heard Greta Thunberg, I sensed that something wonderful might be about to happen.

Eventually she inspired a resistance. The school children's revolt and then Extinction Rebellion - children and adults saying there no longer could be, nor would be, tolerance of the status quo.

As altruistic Britons were refusing to move, they were arrested, charged and taken into custody - for what is genuinely trying, in a most modest way, to save humanity by changing minds.

And it worked.

With more than two-thirds of the population now realizing that the UK was in a climate change emergency, Jeremy Corbyn took that as his cue to table a motion calling on Parliament to declare a state of national climate emergency that easily passed in the House of Commons bolstering similar declarations from Wales and
Scotland.

As Westminster was declaring a national emergency, across the Atlantic, Canada's finance minister, Morneau, was beating his chest over fracked gas, LNG, as proof of Canada's ability to deliver on big carbon-energy projects. The prime minister, meanwhile, was begging Alberta premier, Jason Kenney, to save emissions caps by promising to just look the other way on bitumen extraction.

Brits take pride in their "stiff upper lip" image, the "Stay Calm and Carry On" national mantra. The people of the UK aren't afraid to look over their shoulder and spot what's coming and, when they did, they demanded action.  Canadians, apparently, aren't made of such stuff. All we have to hear are empty threats such as "this will hurt the economy" and we're in full rout. It seems we don't care if this cherished economy or that small fraction represented by fossil fuels has led us to a cliff edge. We're not stopping.

We don't care. Not enough of us anyway. Sure, we're worried about climate change but not enough to insist that real measures be taken to at least give us a chance at a soft crash landing. Ah, the kids'll figure out something. They'll have to with the future we're bequeathing to them.

Maybe we can still change but the clock is quickly running out and our governments aren't courageous enough to declare climate change a national emergency even though Canada is vulnerable. We have the longest coastline of any nation, from sea to sea to sea. Our vast forests are being ravaged by heat waves, unreliable snowcap and summer precipitation, mass infestation by pine beetles and other pests that are now moving steadily out of the West toward the Atlantic. The Arctic ice and snow that once kept our tundra and permafrost stable is disappearing, giving rise to the release of potentially massive quantities of methane and CO2. To the south, "once a century" floods are now becoming once every few years, our "new normal." Science now shows that the prairie petro-provinces are looking at a future as parched wasteland. Mega drought imperils our domestic food security. Our essential infrastructure is in decay and in no shape to withstand the severe climate that is even now setting in. Even our fisheries are being changed as native species migrate in search of colder waters. Wildfire smoke now perfumes the skies of the West, forcing ordinary Canadians to shelter indoors at what used to be the very best time to be outdoors.

But no, we don't have a climate change national emergency and, if we do, we're too cowardly to deal with it.  We won't change, not in time. When we go to the polls this October look for 70 per cent, perhaps more, of the vote to go for the very worst petro-state parties, the Liberals or the Conservatives.

Yesterday was a bittersweet moment, one eagerly awaited. I'm proud of the British people for forcing their politicians' hands. I wish we were made of that same stuff.

I'm Voting for Her This October. Will You?

This year's general elections will be like none other. This may be our very last, best chance to compel our federal government to act commensurately with the scope of the climate change peril.

Had the prime minister not reneged on his promise of electoral reform we might not be at risk of yet another false majority, do-next-to-nothing government whether Liberal or Conservative. That, of course, has not happened. And so, as Mr. Trudeau has ensured we will remain under the threat of these unmandated majorities, I have no hesitation in voting for the future.

I'm voting for her and her entire generation. Another four years from now it will be too late. We know what must be done and how very little time we have to meet our obligation. Our mainstream parties and their leaders have not accepted that responsibility and, for that, they don't deserve our votes.

WTF? Winter Storm Warnings in Texas, Mexico. California on Fire. High Arctic Melting.

Think of it this way. You may not feel it but you are firmly in the grip of climate change. There's nothing you can do to make it go away. It has a firm grip and it is going to tighten. It may not have gotten around to you yet as it has to others but it certainly will and your government is not doing a damned thing about it.

A week ago I posted an item about Springtime in Greenland.  The high north, Greenland and the Canadian archipelago, were basking in temperatures 20 to 30 C above normal, well above the freezing mark.

Today there are winter storm and snowfall warnings across southwest Texas and into northern Mexico.

Jump a couple of states over and you're in fire swept southern California where, in some places, the only thing stopping the spread of wildfires is the Pacific Ocean.

Hmmm, above freezing conditions in December in the Arctic Circle, winter storm warnings in the Texas/Mexico border region, wildfires sweeping southern California.


There have been many victims of the ongoing wildfires in Southern California, the largest of which is the Thomas Fire, a 101-square-mile monster blaze north of Los Angeles. The L.A. Times reports that the fire jumped the 101 freeway and was stopped only by the Pacific Ocean, along the way burning 50,500 acres, destroying 150 structures, and forcing 27,000 people to evacuate. Californians are used to wildfires, but Miller says these ones are unseasonable. “We usually get crazy wildfires in October, and then the first rains come in November, and ground stays wet and more rains come, and there’s no wildfire threat,” said [climate change activist, R.L. Miller]. “It’s early December .... This is happening because there is no more winter rain. There’s not enough winter rain, ever.”

Climate science backs up Miller’s observation. The state’s wildfire seasons are lasting longer and burning stronger due to human-caused climate change, as rising temperatures make vegetation drier and causes states like California to whip between very dry and very wet seasons. These current fires are so bad because of a mixture of dry foliage and low humidity, but also because of hot, dry winds blowing up to 70 miles per hour. This seasonal high wind, known as the Santa Ana winds, is not unusual for this time of year, climate scientist Daniel Swain told the Verge. But some scientists believe climate change “may be making these strong winds drier,” according to the New York Times. 

...

Eventually everywhere in the United States, not just the coastal regions, will suffer from severe climate impacts. Climate scientists have documented how global warming stands will hit the rest of America, whether it be through more extreme precipitation in the northeast or crop failure in the heartland. But reality has shown it to us, too. Hurricane Harvey brought Houston, Texas, its worst rainfall and flooding in recorded history. The risks of sea-level rise in Florida was made more apparent by Hurricane Irma, which flooded city streets and destroyed sea-walls. This summer, in Oklahoma, the temperature reached 100 degrees in the dead of winter.

This year’s mind-boggling extreme weather has shown us that climate change will leave few Americans untouched. And yet, so many states refuse to do much about it. That angers climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “The other states—Florida, Texas, Oklahoma—are under the control of climate change-denying politicians who continue to bury their head in the sand about climate change as they do the bidding of the fossil fuel interests who fund them, with the people they are supposed to be representing paying the cost in the form of devastating climate change-aggravated damage,” he said.

Here's one way to tell if your provincial and federal governments are serious about climate change. What are they telling you about what you and everyone else in your particular region can expect in the way of climate change impacts? What specific recommendations are they passing along to help you prepare for what's coming in the short range, 10 years, 20 years? Are you hearing anything out of them? Chances are pretty good that you're not.

I find it a little odd that my provincial government is so good at warning my community and my neighbours about the earthquake peril that hangs over our head, the mega-thrust subduction zone earthquake that could arrive any time between this afternoon and a century from now. I get detailed lists of what to have on hand, the best emergency foodstuffs, first aid gear, communications and such. I know the best places to take shelter in my home and the worst.  Yet the "Big One" may never hit in my lifetime or even my kids' lifetimes. 

Climate change impacts, however, are a lot more certain and far more predictable. Yet we hear nothing from the federal or British Columbia governments beyond banal injunctions and platitudes. Instead they mutter on about carbon taxes while Trudeau continues to pimp for the bitumen barons. Did the Dauphin even read about the wildfires we had this year, fires so extensive that they formed a high pressure zone that sent the smoke from fires hundreds of miles inland out into the Pacific to blanket Vancouver Island. Wildfires from Mexico to Alaska and what's the Dauphin's response to that? Sweet f#@k all. Carbon taxes - yeah, right. That'll git 'er done, sure.

I'm sensing a window of opportunity that is at risk. If the Liberals don't really come to grips with climate change - both adaptation and mitigation (carbon taxes, etc.) it's a safe bet that, when their time has come and gone, we'll wind up with another Conservative government that will do even less. It's time Justin began giving the country as much attention as he devotes to the economy.

To All You Dippers Who Claim the Greens are Right-Wing

Relax.  You're just going through a bout of separation anxiety for deserting your post and abandoning the Left. You want to be Latter Day Liberals, you've gotta suck it up and learn to get over these pangs of conscience.  It's all part of the process of becoming the very thing that, for so many decades, you reviled.

Now, about those rightwing Greens.  Well this sounds really neoliberal. Elizabeth May would like to make an announcement of a new Green Party policy she calls the the Guaranteed Liveable Income, or GLI.

Our plan will ensure no Canadian’s income falls below what is necessary for health, life, and dignity.

Providing our most at-risk citizens with the resources they need to make ends meet greatly reduces the burden on our emergency and social services, saving our system money, and empowering all citizens to overcome periods of hardship.

Together, we can end poverty in Canada. 

The GLI provides reassurance for families struggling to make ends meet, a vital helping hand for stay-at-home parents, stability for the thousands of Canadians who can only find part-time work, and much needed support for those looking to complete their education and launch a successful career.

Cue La Marseillese and let's storm the Bastille of neoliberalism.  Or, if that's too progressive for you just vote for Tommy Angry Beard.  Hmm.  I wonder what Tony Blair would look like with facial hair?

Could Greece Become the Salvation of Western Democracy?

Greece is revered as the nation that gave mankind democracy.  Could it now become the nation that restored democracy to mankind?

Around the world, democracy has taken a pounding from the fist of neoliberalism.  Market fundamentalism and democracy are simply incompatible over time.  Neoliberalism promotes illiberal democracy, ultimately leading to political capture and the rise of plutocracy as the populace is steadily reduced economically and politically, their power quietly transferred to a select minority.

The Guardian's George Monbiot writes that we're witnessing "the sudden death of the neoliberal consensus."  This he sees in the triumph of the Syriza movement in the recent Greek elections.

The lamps are coming on all over Europe. As in South America, political shifts that seemed impossible a few years earlier are now shaking the continent. We knew that another world was possible. Now, it seems, another world is here: the sudden death of the neoliberal consensus. Any party that claims to belong to the left but does not grasp this is finished.

Foreign Policy's Philippe LeGrain agrees with Monbiot and foresees Syriza's win spreading to Spain and beyond.

"Yes we can" may be a stale slogan in Obama's America but in crisis-hit Spain it is the rallying cry of a year-old radical-left party that is taking the country by storm. In a show of strength, more than 100,000 supporters of Podemos (the party’s name means “We Can” in Spanish) filled the streets of Madrid on Jan. 31 to protest against austerity, crushing debts, and the country’s corrupt political system — and demand change. The demonstrators don’t represent a fringe group, either. Podemos is leading in the polls, ahead of both the mainstream center-left and center-right parties in elections that will be held by the end of the year.

The election of a radical-left Syriza-led government in Greece on Jan. 25 has electrified European politics. After years of being told that there is no alternative to bowing to German demands for crushing austerity and wage cuts, the plucky Greeks have dared to stand up to Angela Merkel’s government in Berlin — and other Europeans have stood up and noticed. While the immediate focus is on the showdown between the new Greek government and eurozone authorities over demands for debt relief — and the (unlikely) possibility that Greece could end up ejected from the currency union — Athenian defiance is already having wider political repercussions.

...Debtor-country governments that have obediently complied with the German diktat — notably, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland — suddenly feel very exposed politically. Governments that have mounted a mild challenge to Merkel (think France and Italy) are in a delicate position: They spy an opportunity to advance their own agenda, while fearing that they may be outflanked by those with a more radical one. And not without reason; anti-establishment parties of various stripes have the wind in their sails.

Whenever voters throw out a government, as they have done in nearly every election since the crisis began in 2008, officials from Berlin, Brussels, and Frankfurt — whom they did not elect and cannot hold to account — loudly insist that the incoming administration must stick to the failed policies of the outgoing one. Since voting for establishment parties of the center-left or center-right makes little difference, it’s hardly surprising that voters are seeking a genuine alternative. And for the moment this exists only on the extremes.

Sometimes, as in Greece and Spain, the insurgents are on the radical left. In Ireland, which is not due to vote until next year, Sinn Féin, a left-wing party that was formerly the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, has a narrow lead in the polls. In other cases, the upstarts are on the far-right. In France, Marine Le Pen’s racist National Front is out in front,winning by-elections and pulling ahead in polls for the 2017 presidential election. In Italy, where reformist Prime Minister Matteo Renzi remains popular, all three main opposition parties — the far-right Northern League, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia — are now anti-euro.

Meanwhile, The Tyee's Crawford Killian ponders whether Canada's politically disaffected could provide the core for our own version of Syrzia or Podemos.

Radical or not, Syriza and Podemos pose a powerful challenge to the narrow centre-right spectrum of acceptable thought. That could encourage some of our cautious Liberals and New Democrats to try out some ideas that are radical only by comparison with the dull orthodoxy of Stephen Harper. If they do, they might find that many Canadians are way ahead of them -- including the two out of five who didn't even bother to vote in the last election.

I agree.  The Liberals and the New Democrats too easily threw in the towel to embrace market fundamentalism and an unhealthy degree of neoliberalism as though these were inevitabilities.  In their unseemly quest for power (NDP) and redemption (LPC) both have abandoned the progressive Left.  They might both do well to lift their eyes, take a look around, and mend their ways.

Canada's Mythical Middle Class and the Quislings of Parliament Hill

The government likes to say it's all about the middle class.  So, too, the opposition parties.  On Parliament Hill it seems Canada's middle class is virtually surrounded by a sea of friends, each clamouring to outdo the other to lend a hand, give a leg up.  With friends like that in high places, those of the middle class can surely look forward to a bright and prosperous future.

Except that it's a load of crap.

An internal report prepared for the Harper government by Employment and Social Development Canada and pried out of the cold dead Tory hands by Canadian Press via a freedom of information demand, paints a much different, far less rosy picture of the state of Canada's middle class and the future that awaits them.

"The wages of middle income workers have stagnated," it says, referring to the period from 1993 to 2007. "Middle-income families are increasingly vulnerable to financial shocks."

The document, drawing on three years of "internal research," was prepared for the department's deputy minister, Ian Shugart, shortly before the resumption of Parliament last fall.

"In Canada, political parties are making the middle class a central piece of their agendas," notes the presentation.

"The market does not reward middle-income families so well," says the report. "As a result, they get an increasingly smaller share of the earning's pie" compared with higher-income families.

The Cheney-inspired, neo-conservative government of Harper, Flaherty, Oliver et al, seem happy enough to watch the middle class devolve into an American-style 'precariat' while the spoils of their labour increasingly accrue to the wealthy.  Mulcair and Trudeau, with their pledge not to increase taxes, appear to be walking in lockstep with Harper.

"Over the medium term, middle-income Canadians are unlikely to move to higher income brackets, i.e., the 'Canadian dream' is a myth more than a reality."

When judging the culpability of our parliamentarians for this deplorable condition, remember this.  Most inequality today and most of the stagnation of the middle class isn't market-driven or merit-based.  It is legislated, the creature of statutes written and passed on Parliament Hill.  Harper knows it.  Mulcair knows it.  Trudeau, unless he's an idiot, knows it.  It's about time we got some straight talk from these characters - not from Harper of course but at least from our own.

Chris Hedges Takes Down Intellectual America - Iggy's On His List Too

To Chris Hedges, America's intelligentsia are a pack of sell-outs who showed their true colours when they lined up to support George w. Bush's war on Iraq.   And Hedges is naming names:

The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as  Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman,Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late  Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it. 

These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. ...Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all.” He called the typical anti-war protester a “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.” The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war—shutting down public debate. Those of us who spoke out against the war, faced with the onslaught of right-wing “patriots” and their liberal apologists, became pariahs. ...The critique that I and other opponents of war delivered, no matter how well grounded in fact and experience, turned us into objects of scorn by a liberal elite that cravenly wanted to demonstrate its own “patriotism” and “realism” about national security. The liberal class fueled a rabid, irrational hatred of all war critics. Many of us received death threats and lost our jobs, for me one at The New York Times. These liberal warmongers, 10 years later, remain both clueless about their moral bankruptcy and cloyingly sanctimonious. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on their hands.

You may recall that the Liberal's own annointed one, Ignatieff, supposedly admitted he had been wrong about Iraq but then smeared those who opposed the war as having been disingenuous and actually opposed just to Bush/Cheney.  And nobody in the Liberal ranks took Ignatieff down for that either.  Speaks volumes.

The power elite, especially the liberal elite, has always been willing to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status. They know what they need to say. They know which ideology they have to serve. They know what lies must be told—the biggest being that they take moral stances on issues that aren’t safe and anodyne. They have been at this game a long time. And they will, should their careers require it, happily sell us out again. 

...Those who doggedly challenge the orthodoxy of belief, who question the reigning political passions, who refuse to sacrifice their integrity to serve the cult of power, are pushed to the margins. They are denounced by the very people who, years later, will often claim these moral battles as their own. It is only the outcasts and the rebels who keep truth and intellectual inquiry alive. They alone name the crimes of the state. They alone give a voice to the victims of oppression. They alone ask the difficult questions. Most important, they expose the powerful, along with their liberal apologists, for what they are.

British Columbia's Tumblin' Crispy Christy Clark

British Columbia's unelected, unelectable and outgoing premier, Crispy Christy Clark, was nudged ever closer to the exit today - by her own party members.

More than a hundred BC Libs met in Surrey this morning to demand Clark resign to let somebody else, presumably almost anybody,  lead the government party into the May election.  It's hard to imagine how a change at the top could do the party much good at this point.

Recent polls find 59% of respondents favouring a change of government versus just 24% still supporting the BC Libs.   Worse still, over 70% of respondents believe the latest "balanced budget" was a scam designed to cloak an actual deficit.

Some think that a real contender might be willing to step in at this point to revive the BC Libs' fortunes before the poll but it's hard to imagine anyone with ambitions for the future being willing to "step in" to the mess Christy Clark and her advisers have left on the floor.

Clark has summoned a meeting of her cabinet this afternoon.  No word yet in which bunker they'll convene.

There's Only One Position and It's Filled

Call him what you like, Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness, the Baron of Bland, today's Corporate Canada has its administrator in chief and we call him Stephen J. Harper.

Here's a secret:  the Liberals and New Democrats want Harper's job.  They want one of their guys to become the next C.E.O. of Corporate Canada.   They want Harper out.   They're not trying to dismantle the corporation.

I read a lot of nonsense about what the "left" should be doing or how the "progressive" parties should be doing this or that.   And each time I see those references I ask myself, "what 'left'" or "what 'progressives'?"

There was a time when most everything on the other side of the Conservatives could be considered left or at least slightly centre-left.   Then Harper showed up with his prime directive to shift Canada's political centre far to the right and fix it there.   And, with a great deal of help from people with names like Ignatieff and Layton, that's exactly what he's done.

Harper said we wouldn't recognize Canada when he was done with it and it turns out he was right.   He was so right that now it's also nearly impossible to recognize the Liberals and, even more so, the New Democrats for what they used to be.   Harper can be justly proud for beating the socialist stuffing right out of the New Democrats, sending them running for cover as Latter-Day-Liberals.  Sorry Dippers but you've been royally Tony Blaired.

Isn't it odd that the Canadian people don't much care for Steve Harper as a person.   They certainly don't trust him.   But that doesn't matter, does it?   They think that, overall, he's running the country more or less okay.  

The Canadian people think he's a somewhat competent administrator and that's what prime ministership has become today, administration.   And who can blame the Canadian people for seeing it that way when the opposition parties are looking to fill that same job?

So what are we reduced to?  We're waiting patiently for Steve Harper to screw up so badly that enough voters will turn up at the polls to turf him out.   That could be a while because Steve has shown us his greatest talent - engineering election wins out of thin air.   His campaign strategy has always been the same - "That guy,  are you serious?"

But there may be another way, one that doesn't depend on Steve Harper falling down a flight of stairs.   That's to do the one thing he can't.   That's to become genuinely progressive again.      And the neat thing is, once we restore progressivism to the heart of our politics, we can generate powerful policy platforms and present a vision that speaks to the concerns of Canadians, that resonates deeply with the voting public.   If that means leaving the security blanket of corporatism, and it does, then the country and our people are far better off for it.

If you're still not convinced, look at it this way.   Progressivism is the key to the future of the Canadian people as we, and the rest of the world, meet the challenges that this century has in store for us.  It is the glue that holds together and nurtures the strongest, broadest and most vibrant middle class, the very cohesiveness without which we are in for a very rough time very soon.  It's time for a bit of housecleaning on the left.

Here's a Campaign the Libs Might Just Win

Say what you will about the guy but Stephen Harper has been astonishingly successful at manipulating a wobbly official opposition into supporting or at least not opposing Tory policies, Liberal acts and omissions that could easily come back to haunt them on the campaign trail.

As Steve showed us in trashing Dion he likes to run an election not on his record, not on his policies, not on his vision, but as a referendum on the opposition. He basically says, "look at these guys - they've got nothing, at least nothing worth supporting and, remember, that awful sponsorship scandal." Gulp.

Having carried Harper's water on the economy, backing the Harper-Ignatieff "Pinata" stimulus budget and having lost traction on the torture scandal and just about everything else that Canada's Furious Leader has pulled these past years, Ignatieff is largely neutralized which at least partly clears the way for Harper to repeat his Dion caper. Trying to revive outrage over these things with an election looming is a waste of energy, something the Libs haven't shown in abundance since the new guy took over.

No, the Libs need a policy of their own making, an eye opener, something that will connect with and resonate among the public. My suggestion? Water, freshwater, something Canadians instinctively cherish. Fight the election on water. Turn it into a campaign to protect and secure Canada's water resources for this century.

Here's the thing. With climate change already impacting Canada, just like everywhere else, we need to take stock. Canada is one of just a handful of nations, all northern, that stand to be the last and least affected by the ravages of global warming. We have options. We have choices for adaptation and remediation the rest of the world can't even dream of. But, and here's the but, the key to most of our options, our environmental advantages, lie in what we decide, in the immediate future, to do about our freshwater.

There's probably no aspect of our country less well managed, haphazardly monitored, more poorly regulated than our water systems and reserves. And we're paying a big price for that now and stand to pay a horrific price very soon if we don't wake up.

Most Canadians live in a bubble full of myths about Canada's bountiful, pristine waters. Every time some jackass raises the idea about bulk water exports to a rapidly drying United States, it reinforces that myth. Maude Barlow in her book Blue Covenant succinctly addresses the core myths surrounding Canada's freshwater, myths that endanger this very resource:

1. The Myth that Canada has a surplus of water.
2. The Myth that Canadians love our water heritage.
3. The Myth that the Canadian government protects our water.

We don't have a surplus of water because we don't get much more precipitation than most other countries. We have untapped surface water but their volumes are relatively static and once drained won't simply fill up again overnight.

Barlow points out that while Canada does receive about 6.5% of the world's renewable water, 60% of that flows north. The 90% of Canadians living along the Canada-US border actually have access to but 2.6 % but we can't count on even those levels continuing with the advent of climate change. Saskatchewan and Alberta, for example, are at grave risk.

Our institutional ignorance about the state of Canada's groundwater is discussed by Barlow:

...Documents prepared by Natural Resources Canada warn that Canadians face tremendous challenges in the future, and even the leading scientists do not know how long supplies will last. So little is known about Canada's groundwater, or subterranean, supplies - upon which more Canadians rely every day - that it could take thirty years to produce a comprehensive inventory.

Barlow convincingly disputes our notional love of Canada's water bounty by pointing out how poorly we take care of it.

Forty-two percent of water discharged by Canada's manufacturing businesses is dumped untreated into Canada's waterways, and our cities dump another two hundred billion liters of raw sewage every year. This sewage is a mixture of water, human waste, microorganisms, toxic chemicals, heavy metals, excreted pharmaceuticals and pathogens such as cholera, typhoid and hepatitis B.

...Untreated sewage from cottages and communities and the dumping of effluent from massive hog-farm operations have made Lake Winnipeg, the tenth largest freshwater lake in the world, Canada's sickest body of water... Phosphorous was the main pollutant in Lake Erie and is a major player in the contamination of Lake Winnipeg. Despite what we now know, phosphorus dumping, particularly from Canada's pulp and paper industry, is on the rise, according to Corporate Knits in its 2006 annual report on water. The Abitibi Consolidated plant in Alma, Quebec, alone increased phosphorus dumping from 80,505 kilograms in 2003 to 448,005 kilograms in 2005.

And then, of course, there's the rapacious consumption and reckless contamination of the Athabasca and Peace by Alberta's Tar Sanders.

Finally, Barlow cites successive federal governments for creating the impression in the public's mind that Ottawa, "has laws and regulations in place to protect Canada's water, both ecologically and from commercial export." We don't.

"As water expert Karen Bakker, a professor at the University of British Columbia, notes, Canada is one of the few industrialized countries in the world not to have legally enforced water quality standards. Unlike the United States and Europe, for instance, Canada has no national standards for sewage treatment that cities and towns must follow. The only serious federal law regarding water protection is the Fisheries Act, which prohibits dumping of materials in waterways that would harm aquatic life. But this act is routinely broken. Mining Watch Canada points to a federal study that evaluated the Metal Mining Liquid Effluent Regulations of the Fisheries Act, which found that almost half of the mining operations in Canada are in noncompliance with the act. Nevertheless, not one charge has been laid against any of these companies. The story with the forestry industry is similar.

Now this is one area where there's plenty of room for finger pointing at Liberals and Tories alike. Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, even Stephane Dion can be rebuked but so can Tories Mulroney and Harper. The point is that a Liberal water policy can be a break with the past, the lot of it, and that's just how it can be presented. A new determined and effective policy, a new way.

It's easy to make the case for a thoroughly reformed water policy introducing wholesale changes from the ground up to ensure that our children and grandchildren's Canada will enjoy as much water security as we can muster.

It isn't difficult to anticipate how the Harper Cons and their industrial benefactors will push back on a major water initiative. It isn't difficult to be prepared to meet them head on in a positive way that will resonate with the voting public.

Pulp and paper mills don't vote. Bitumen mines don't vote. But the people who's welfare and future these outfits and those like them endanger do and will vote if they sense with confidence that someone is sincerely holding out the means to genuinely protect their extraordinary resource one in their minds at least they hold very dear.

I think Liberals have a real interesting choice right now. They can either rise to the moment, do something dynamic and truly meaningful, or while away the time on bus tours waiting to get mauled in the fall by Stephen Harper.

An Issue We Can Still Fight an Election On

Steve Harper, echoing his American Idol, Mr. Bush and the Geezer McCain, says we have nothing to worry about, that the fundamentals of the Canadian economy are sound.

Does that sound familiar?

Then, yesterday, Merrill Lynch Canada released a report saying that we Canadians shouldn't get smug about what's happening in the U.S. and that we'll be next to face our own debt and housing price crisis. I found that pretty hard to believe but the more I thought about it the more I had to wonder what if they're right?

It may or may not be anecdotal but I recalled a recent study that showed that the average, first time home buyers in Vancouver were now paying something in the range of 75-78% of their combined, after-tax income on housing. A Vancouver starter home takes somewhere between three quarters and four fifths of a two income family's take home.

Back in my day it was considered not just prudent but essential to keep one's housing costs below 30% of net income. That got me wondering how this has changed so radically? How does a family get by while paying out three quarters of their disposable income on housing?

What if Merrill Lynch Canada is right? Don't we need a government that's on top of this now? If this danger is real, what measures, what policies do Canadians need to minimize the risks and impact? Is it really enough for Steve to tell us that the fundamentals are strong?

I don't know but it seems to me that when it takes nearly all of a two job family's net income to buy a house, maybe we are in an unhealthy and dangerous housing bubble. Why do I need to find that out from the Canadian subsidiary of a defunct, American securities giant?

In the greater scheme of things it's no skin off my backside. My house may have soared in price but it hasn't gone up a dime in value. It'll still buy me the house next door and that's about it. That's just fine for those of us lucky to be in a low debt/no debt position but the operative word there is "lucky."

What about the unlucky, the vulnerable? I'm talking about the new families that have just taken the plunge, hoping they can stay afloat long enough to get their debt down to something manageable. It's easy to say "that's their problem" except that it's not just their problem, it affects all of us. It affects the prosperity and stability of our communities among other things. It certainly affects their ability to contribute to our communities, to our societies. We benefit when we keep them healthy.

Have our politicians been asleep at the switch, blinded by our petro wealth to the gathering perils to our people?

Housing bubbles are economic cancer. Read my post on that subject from yesterday. It cavasses the approach some other countries have used to tame the destructive fluctuations in housing stocks, to recognize that housing can't be treated as just another commodity for speculation.

Don't look for any answers from Steve "the fundamentals are sound" Harper. I want to hear from the Liberals on this. If this problem is nearly as bad as claimed by Merrill Lynch, we need to identify it and come up with solutions. The Americans have shown us what happens if you don't deal with these threats promptly.

There's no better time to get this on the radar screen than right now, in the midst of a general election.