Category: Canada

Anything related to Canada or Canadians

Indistinct nationalities

It was easy to guess why the American had been selected to deliver the message: other countries in the NATO alliance were describing their presence as a humanitarian gesture. A British minister infamously predicted the military surge would happen without a shot fired, and the Canadian military was pushing journalists to write about medical programs. By contrast, the Americans advertised their willingness to draw blood. The US colonel aimed his words directly at the insurgents: “If they want to die, stay,” he said. “If they don’t want to die, give up.” This prompted a look of discomfort from a Canadian press officer, who immediately tried to soften the message.

“I would simply add that…” he said.

“I thought I answered it pretty good,” said the American colonel, with a smile at the journalists. The Afghan press didn’t get the joke, however, because to them differences among the foreigners were hard to understand. They found it difficult to imagine that English-speaking soldiers who wore similar uniforms, carried the same weapons and fought on the same side would have fundamental disagreements about the war. They saw all of us as Americans.

Smith, Graeme. The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan. Knopf Canada, Toronto. 2013. p. 58-9. Italics in original

Peter Russell’s forthcoming book

In a recent briefing on Canada, The Economist discusses my committee member Peter Russell’s forthcoming book:

After Britain wrested control of Quebec from France in 1763 its new French-speaking subjects resisted assimilation. So did Canada’s indigenous groupings: Inuit, First Nations and mixed-race Métis. Such resistance was sometimes met with oppression and cruelty, and Canada’s treatment of its indigenous peoples has been atrocious in some times and places. But as Peter Russell, a Canadian historian, argues in a forthcoming book, their “incomplete conquests” forced Canada’s overlords into habits of accommodation that have shaped the country ever since. “Diversity is our distinctive national value,” he says.

The book Canada’s Odyssey: A Country Based on Incomplete Conquests is coming out in early January, and was refined in part by a series of seminars taught on each chapter in progress. I am looking forward to seeing the finished text.

It’s interesting to see Dr. Russell described as a historian, given that he was long on the faculty of the political science department and is not a professor emiratus in that field.

“We won’t stop using fossil fuels tomorrow”

Sometimes paired with the fallacious argument that only people who use no fossil fuels can legitimately oppose fossil fuel development is the statement: “We won’t stop using fossil fuels tomorrow”.

The logical error associated with using this statement to defend new fossil fuel infrastructure like fracking wells and bitumen sands pipelines (as well as new fossil fuel vehicles or power plants) is so obvious that it may seem unnecessary to state, but the quip is so popular among those trying to delay adequate action on climate change that it requires a quick rebuttal.

It’s true that human society is dependent on fossil fuels, and not only for discretionary activities that people can legitimately be asked to give up. That said, it’s now entirely evident that climate change threatens human civilization if unchecked, to say nothing of the profound damage it’s already doing to non-human nature. Preventing the worst impacts of climate change requires a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, and that is fundamentally incompatible with building new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Under contraction and convergence, it is plausible that some poor places can legitimately build a modest amount of additional fossil fuel infrastructure. This is most defensible in places that have low per capita emissions, low historical emissions, and where new fossil fuel use will address basic human needs instead of luxuries. None of these conditions apply in Canada or the United States, where per capita and historical emissions are both unconscionably high, and where most citizens routinely make heavy use of fossil fuels for trivial purposes.

The line about not giving up fossil fuels tomorrow is rhetorically appealing because it makes the speaker seem like a level-headed pragmatist and suggests that anyone who disagrees is out of touch with reality. In actual fact, our existing dependence on fossil fuels is an argument against new fossil fuel infrastructure, not for it. The media, members of the public, and decision-makers need to accept this.

Climate leaders don’t build pipelines

Reject Kinder Morgan

Tonight Toronto350.org organized a vigil to resist the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, which took place along with 44 others across Canada.

Justin Trudeau is going to find that his promises about indigenous reconciliation and restoring Canada’s environmental reputation require him to stop further bitumen sands extraction and export. If not, he will end up as confounded as the Harper government.

Settler stories of alcohol

Alcohol is not just in our stories — the stories that kiciwamanawak [Cree for white settler Canadians] first told about us that some of us continue to tell and believe. You see, alcohol is also in kiciwamanawak stories, the stories they tell about themselves. However, it is told much differently: they are never “the lazy, drunk, white person” in their own stories about alcohol.

To many kiciwamanawak alcohol is an everyday thing. It’s a glass of wine with supper, or a beer or two while watching the game on television, or a glass of whiskey in the evening. To them, alcohol is natural, normal, and even necessary. In their stories about alcohol, their social position determines the amount they spend on alcohol. The higher they are in their social and class structure, the more expensive the alcohol they must consume.

In their story, if a person does not drink, it is automatically assumed they do not drink because they have a religious reason, or, more often, it’s assumed it’s because they can’t handle it. Only alcoholics in their story do not drink. Healthy, normal people in that story often consume alcohol daily. Every significant event is marked by alcohol: birthdays, marriages, graduations, a sports team winning (or losing), and even death is saluted with a drink, a toast. To not drink in the kiciwamanawak story is to cut oneself off from important parts of the story. Their story and the alcohol story are so entangled that one becomes the other. The kiciwamanawak story becomes the alcohol story and the alcohol story becomes the kiciwamanawak story.

Johnson, Harold R. Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours). 2016. University of Regina Press; Regina.

A broken culture in Toronto climate activism

Recent developments (before the US election) have left me worried that there is a broken culture in Toronto environmentalism, and perhaps the environmental movement more generally.

Erosion of democracy

First — Toronto350.org and (while it existed) UofT350.org were founded on a model of open and participatory decision making, where all volunteers are members who have the final call on big decisions. That model has been undermined in a number of ways, primarily through institutional design choices, social cliques, and secrecy.

Toronto350’s decision to incorporate created a board, and almost none of the board members have been active volunteers. This has created a split between authority and involvement and has essentially broken Toronto350’s decision making structure, as decisions from the board are frequently informed by little understanding of how the group actually operates, and volunteers feel alienated from decisions being made by people who they neither see nor actually work with.

In both the Toronto and U of T groups, decision making based on personal relationships has often eclipsed or replaced open and inclusive decision making. In part this has been because a lot of members are bored and frustrated by decision making which they see as boring and bureaucratic. In part, it’s a response to interpersonal conflict: people pull back from engaging the general membership to engaging only with people who they still get along with. In part, it’s the result of a lack of respect for democratic procedure. There’s a case to be made that activist groups shouldn’t be democratic to start with, and would be better led by a vanguard of individuals capable of setting a coherent and effective agenda. That said, within groups that have been structured to function democratically, it’s deeply problematic when those in positions of authority fall back on making strategic decisions in private with their friends.

Taken to the next level, decision-making among friends becomes decision-making by a socially exclusive clique within but not representative of the general membership. In this situation, your social positioning and alliances become more important than the quality of your ideas and people interpret decision-making in terms of social impacts rather than the degree to which one action or another serves the stated aims of the group as a whole. A good sign that a social clique has taken over decision making is when elected executives do not meet or make decisions, and where changes in group functioning or priorities seem to come out of nowhere.

Periodic strategic planning sessions attended by a subset of the membership are not an alternative to a functioning executive, and can in fact make decision making problems worse by establishing contradictory priorities or being dominated by a small number of vocal members.

Secrecy is another major factor. For a few types of direct actions, it can be necessary to maintain operational security beforehand. At the same time, when strategic decision making begins to happen in secret, it’s often a way for a group of insiders to avoid having to hear or consider the perspectives of others. This can run in concert with when functions within an organization become enduringly linked to a specific individual, making the apparent elected structure not reflective of actual organizational functioning. This is a sort of empire-building, where people feel ownership and entitlement to particular campaigns or roles and where they assert themselves through hidden and private channels rather than involvement with the general membership.

Quite worrisomely, following the disbanding of UofT350.org after President Gertler rejected divestment, the principal group which has been formed by a minority of former members now seems to be exclusively engaged in Facebook activism, and actively rejects involvement from some of the most capable and committed organizers who were involved in the divestment campaign.

Lack of democracy is even more extreme with Canada350.org / 350Canada.org, which isn’t a real organization but rather a brand used by the handful of 350.org staff who are working on Canadian issues. That being said, unlike the Toronto and UofT organizations, the Canadian group (to the extent it exists) was never built on a model of open or participatory decision making. From the perspective of local 350.org chapters, at least, that also applies to the international 350.org organization.

One-way emotional progressions

Second — I have often felt that members of climate activist groups behave as though their emotions can only progress in one direction, toward the accumulation of more frustration and resentment both toward other volunteers and toward entire organizations.

It’s as though everyone has a little frustration thermometer for each organization and other person, and it ticks up by a degree or two every time there is a decision which that feels incorrect or problematic, and each time another volunteer does something which seems worthy of disapprobation.

This is one explanation for why so many of our most effective and committed activists have broken ties with the group, as well as for why people have a frustrating tendency to break off and form new small and ineffective organizations rather than working to revitalize older ones which are larger and have at times been more capable.

Decision making largely motivated by resentment has been especially evident during elections, where people who have long histories of involvement (and who have therefore raised the temperature in the thermometers of a lot of other people) have often been rejected in favour of people whose involvement has been non-existent, limited, or invisible to the general membership.

I have chosen to stop being involved with Toronto350.org for at least a year or two in order to focus on the PhD which I neglected so much while working on the divestment campaign. I hope the culture of climate activism in Toronto can improve, and that effective and popular new groups will emerge with a variety of decision making structures and theories of change. We can’t afford to fail in our response to climate change, so everything that strips us of effectiveness is something we need to think through seriously and respond to with practical solutions.

Reminder: Anonymous comments are encouraged

Writing my first book

Nothing about my PhD so far has been easy. As long-time readers may recall, my first comprehensive exam was only passed after two attempts and a lot of effort. The strike was painful, and has made me particularly question the quality of undergraduate education that U of T provides, in terms of class and tutorial sizes, the selection of professors, and support for and integration of teaching assistants into the learning process. I am now edging toward a formal research proposal for departmental approval and ethics review.

I originally wrote a longer document which talked more about methodology and many other things, but my supervisor encouraged me to write something more concise with the essential features of the proposed research project.

The plan now is to make sure the short document is a plausible nucleus for a successful PhD, including through a presentation to a brown bag lunch at the U of T Environmental Governance Lab on October 27th; to incorporate what has been left out in the older longer proposal; and to seek departmental and ethical approval before beginning first round remote interviews.

My supervisor has intelligently cautioned me about seeking too many critiques of these documents – a factor which has complicated and delayed my efforts so far, and which may be drawn from my experience as a civil servant. I have also been warned by Peter Russell that I am starting to write my thesis in the form of the proposal. So no comments please, unless they are strictly limited and focused on the process for making this proposal viable.

Open thread: nuclear refurbishment in Canada

About 16% of Canada’s electricity generation comes from the 19 nuclear reactors at Pickering, Darlington, Bruce, and Point Lepreau.

For years, politicians, regulators, environmentalists, and the public have been contemplating whether it makes sense to refurbish some reactors to extend their lives, particularly as climate change has become a greater concern.

Today, World Nuclear News reports that Bruce Power signed an agreement with SNC-Lavalin for up to C$400 million of work “for Bruce Power’s engineering needs including field services and an incremental program to refurbish six Candu units. The company will be responsible for the tooling to remove pressure and calandria tubes, the installation of new components and the deployment and maintenance of a number of reactor inspection tools.”

WNN also reports that Intrinsik Environmental Sciences have estimated that refurbishing the reactors at Darlington could avoid almost 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions between 2024 and 2055.

All the familiar issues with nuclear are at work here: what sort of power would be used in the alternative? Could energy storage and demand management do the same job? Is it technically and financially feasible to extend the operation of existing nuclear facilities?

Concluding 2016 Massey Lecture

Dr. Jennifer Welsh’s lecture tonight about the challenges faced by liberal democracies — including the psychological, political, and social stresses arising from extreme wealth and income inequality — was highly interesting and I took detailed notes, both for a forthcoming response here on my blog and for incorporation into my PhD research project.

I was happy to get some photos at the lecture, which was expertly MCed by CBC Radio’s Anna Maria Tremonti.