2016 Hitchhiking #1

I hitchhiked last week. Not very far and not for very long, but considering how my hitchhiking adventures ended last fall (see On the Road Again 2015 #35 -10/8/15)- I needed to make sure that something had not happened to either my powers to attract drivers or to drivers in general. I am glad to report that people are as nice as ever and at least my ever greying beard does not appear to act as a deterrent to those drivers stopping.

Of course I was on Salt Spring for part of the trip and one could argue legitimately that it is easy to get rides on Salt Spring. Although as I have noted elsewhere, sometimes getting a ride on Salt Spring is difficult - the newest residents with their unnecessarily large SUVs  appear to be less inclined to participate in all aspects of Salt Springs culture. None-the-less I was on the Island and needed to get from the Vesuvius ferry terminal to Isabella Point and back again. And I did so efficiently using the bus system and the goodwill of 4-5 drivers.

I sometimes forget how much I enjoy meeting people and in particular, how the conversations evolve. I think all of my discussions started with some brief comment about the weather - but they all evolved in completely different directions. For one driver the rain was about the fact that his roof fed cistern system that he uses to water his orchard and vegetable garden all summer was full. We spent the rest of the short drive talking about how the gravity system worked and how silly and wasteful it was when people used large over head spraying systems to irrigate their crops.

For another driver my same comment about the grey skies brought forth the comment "but at least we don't have to shovel it" - which led to me talking about my decisions to move to Vancouver Island. The driver, like many people who hear that my choice was between Sudbury and Duncan assumed that there was, in fact, no decision - the answer was obvious. They are always surprised to hear that it was really a matter of economics. I could live cheaper month to month in Duncan than Sudbury. When I told him how much I paid for the mobile home - his comment was " why am I paying $10,000 a year in taxes when I could live where you do?" I suspect that he, a very long term resident of the Island, has a much larger and nicer place than mine.

On Vancouver Island going from Crofton to Duncan on the way back,  I got picked up by someone who worked at a gardening centre. They were already getting in bedding plants in preparation for the gardening season. I think she saw the rain as just one of the seasonal milestones that meant that spring was coming and her place of work was going to get busy.

My final ride of the day was a short one the last 11 kilometres into Duncan. It had gotten cold on the highway and when I got into the backseat of the SUV it was nice and warm. I mentioned to my driver and his wife how glad I was that they had the heat on and that it was getting cool out there. That started a whole conversation about the fact that the heater, in spite of spending a lot of money on the problem didn't work properly and just stopped and started whenever it felt like it. The on/off switch did nothing. We talked about cars in general and how hard they are to repair.

Four conversations that started by a mention of the weather - all different - all highly enjoyable. I love hitchhiking and if the only real benefit of my move is that I get to do sooner in the year and more often - the move just may have been worth it!

A New Direction? Part Two

As stated in a previous post, the issue of how to resolve the overwhelming lack of services for First Nation communities in the far north is both complex and potentially very expensive. It is not just a matter of throwing piles of cash at the problem. We need, as a country, to have a better understanding of how we got into this mess (perhaps the report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission should be required reading before anyone is allowed to talk about solutions). We also need to understand what the people who live in those communities are saying and what their solutions are. However dealing with the housing, educational and social crisis in the north is only half of the problem.

According to the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada web page, half of all Indigenous Canadians live in urban centres. While it might be arguable that a portion of these individuals have migrated to urban centers because of the lack of services or opportunities in their home communities, I would suspect that for many of those who reside in cities, it is now their permanent home. The fact that those individuals appear to have less access to services is, in the year 2016, disheartening.

While it may not be a matter of public policy that indigenous individuals are discriminated against - it happens. It happens not just occasionally but continually. There are numerous indicators that clearly suggest that we are not all playing on a level playing field. In fact it would appear that for some Indigenous Canadians - they are not even allowed into the park.

In a Stats Canada report from 2006, it was reported that Indigenous citizens were less likely to graduate from high school than the Canadian population in general. When Indigenous students move to urban centers to go to high school it appears as if they are at a higher risk of suicide. In some cities (e.g. Thunder Bay, Regina, Winnipeg) Indigenous men and women make up between 50 and 80% of the homeless. The number of Indigenous Canadians incarcerated in our penal system both at the provincial and the federal level is nothing less than outrageous. One could fill up pages and pages with statistics from the countless reports and studies from the last thirty plus years. And they would all say the same thing.  It is clear that there is systemic racism at every level. The overt and sometimes subtle racism limits the opportunities for individuals to succeed. And that as long as  this discrimination continues, the long term consequences will be disastrous for the majority of Indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians.

While various levels of governments, assorted commissions and committees, and leaders of various groups can all publically wail and wring their hands; while ministers can promise more commissions and more money (in the next budget year), none of this matters one little bit. In the short term these promises may help us feel better; they may give hope to those who are naive enough to believe that money fixes all things or that the state can impose upon Canadians the obligation to treat their fellow Canadians with justice. While more money and better planning may help in creating some of the needed changes - the simple solution and in fact the only solution is that those of us who are in positions of power, those of us who are part of the privileged elite (e.g. have been to a post secondary institution) or those of us have benefitted (no matter how unknowingly) from this biased system need to stand up and say "we need to do something to level the field -  where do you want me to start?"

Governments can't impose values; governments can't stop racism - but we as individuals can live a life with values that honour and respect all people - and that will stop racism.

A new Direction ? Part One

The Liberal government has accepted both the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and more recently the findings of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in terms of the discrimination that children in First Nations communities have historically faced. It is certainly refreshing to have a government that does not fight the obvious. However, such acceptance is, on its own, worthless. People will want to see some action. If there are not clear plans presented within the next few months, the government will been seen as just one more Canadian government that makes promises when it has no intentions to do anything.

The government's commitment to start to address the sins of our forefathers, while it may have been made in good faith, could not have been made at worse time in terms of the country's capacity to spend more money on education and housing in the far north. Canada's economy is caught in a geopolitical game of chicken for which it is poorly prepared to play. As long as multinational companies or countries with either much larger war chests or a lot less to lose are prepared to manipulate the availability of resources (in particular oil), Canada assets will have limited value. Or rather we will have little or no control over the value of those assets. While the reduction of the once healthy tax base has many consequences, one of them is that there is less to spend on social programs.

However, even if Canada had multi-millions of dollars sitting in the bank, I convinced that no one knows the answer to the complex series of social problems that confront both the First Nation communities in the north and the large number of Indigenous citizens who live in or near urban areas. The lack of obvious solutions is in a large part due to the fact that while such issues as the need for better social service/support sound like a consistent problem throughout the majority of First Nations communities, the causes for the lack of services are not. There is not one solution that will meet all needs.

Some of the  problem rest with geography. There are many communities that are just too far away and far too small to be able to have access to some services. For example it is unreasonable to assume that a community of six or seven hundred people will have a school that provides everything that an urban school does. The elementary school that both my children went to, while it was reasonably close to major metropolitan areas, did not have a dedicated music, gym, or art teacher. The school was too small. The situation is far more challenging the further north one goes. It is not that those students do not need or deserve all of the supports that all students need and deserve, but rather that the cost is prohibitive.  Even if the grant-per-student were identical across Canada, it would not fully address the lack of educational supports or programs in isolated First Nations communities. We need to acknowledge that if we are committed to proving equal opportunities, it will cost more per student to give them equal opportunities when that student is in a small isolated community.

 Similarly communities in crisis have an enhanced need to have complex and comprehensive mental health supports. But it is unreasonable to assume that the same small community will have a few social workers and at least a consulting doctor. No community of equal size in the south has their own mental health system. But what those communities in the south do have is relatively easy access (at least on paper) to the needed mental health services located in nearby urban areas. Northern communities do not have major urban area anywhere near them. There is nowhere to drive to. Most Indigenous leaders would argue that it has been proven that "shipping" people in need to services 500 miles away has been at best problematic and usually worse than useless. Clearly we need to find a solution somewhere between every community having its own stand alone mental health system and sending people out of their community for extended periods. 

Canadians need to have this discussion, not out of guilt or out of anger but rather as a complex problem that will affect all of our lives in the future.

A New Chair

I bought a new chair this week. There is nothing extraordinary about that statement. Hundreds if not thousands of Canadians could, on any given week, say the same thing. The number of furniture stores in Duncan alone attest to the fact that a lot of people spend a lot of money buying furniture. So why is the statement that I bought a new chair worthy of an opening line?

I realized as I got home and was assembling my new chair that I had never ever bought a new chair. I would not want anyone to think that I have been sitting on the floor all of this years. In fact considering that I live alone, I probably have too many chairs. I have an old wooden office chair with arms that sits in front of my desk, a modern wheeled office chair to use when weaving or spinning, two dining room chairs, a padded folding chair I use to sit on when spinning at the market, three or four bar stools and a director's chair with my name on it that I have in my bedroom so I have somewhere to throw my clothes.

For years my reading chair was a lovey old wooden chair well padded with cushions. We had bought the chair at an auction with money that was earned by my former wife selling her first painting. I used that chair for probably 20 years. We had built  the couch and the love seat in the living room. My first major attempt at sewing had been when I made the love seat for that room and done all of the upholstery. All of the pieces looked fine for the times and were functional. In hindsight however, none of the furniture was super comfortable. When I sold the farm house the chair went to auction and I think I just left the couches there. They were really too heavy to move and I could not imagine anyone wanting to buy them.

When I moved to a one room apartment to be closer to the university, I bought a queen size futon. It was the first piece of new furniture that I had ever bought. For the next eleven years that futon served as my bed during the first year or so and as my couch for the rest of the time. It was, in my various apartments, the only piece of furniture with padding. It was my work station for teasing out the washed wool, a storage place for spun wool and when I badly hurt my back a few years back, the only place that I could comfortable sit. It was lumpy, the burgundy cover was faded and slightly stained, it was heavy and expensive to move (long distance movers charge by the pound) and I was tired of it. I sold it before I moved.

When I arrived in Duncan, my original intent was to buy an over-sized, super well padded couch and chair. I wanted something comfortable enough that I could wake up from my late afternoon nap without feeling as if my back had been twisted in two. There were lots of chairs and couches available on the various used furniture sites. I looked at a number of them. Some were the wrong colour, others were not comfortable enough and others were just to damn heavy to imagine ever moving them anywhere. But the real problem was that the ones that I envisioned as owning were just too big. I didn't need a seven foot couch and that in combination with a proportionately sized chair  would dominate my living room leaving little or no room for anything else.

So instead I bought from a really nice guy who also delivered it, a small,  reasonably padded love seat. It is a bit lower to the ground that I would have liked and of course I can't stretch out on it but it is comfortable enough to read or watch television on and equally important it fits into the room. It looks as if it belongs there. The next day I drove to Nanaimo and after some comparison shopping, bought a brand new, from a store, modern looking, pseudo leather, semi reclining chair with an ottoman. Again not what I thought I wanted but rather something that would fit well into the room and be functional. I think it will be just fine for reading and if I get bored there....I can move to the love seat. Imagine having a choice where to sit!

Alberta

I think it is human nature to at least think "I told you so". It may not be the most endearing quality about humans, but I suspect we have all taken some secret delight in knowing that we were right and someone else was wrong. For me, I can only hope that before I say it out loud, my better nature will overcome this natural temptation to prove that someone, somewhere should have listen to me.

I must confess for the past few weeks, I have had an almost overwhelming urge to tell Albertans that they should have been listening to me. For years, in countless cars driving across the prairies, my drivers and I have talked about the fact that in a resourced based economy one needs to maximize that government's revenue from that resource. More importantly, in such an economy the state cannot rely on those monies (i.e. oil royalties) as the primary revenue to fund programs. I also wrote about this issue in mid January of last year comparing in part the history of Norway and how it managed its oil revenue as compared to Alberta.

For the individuals and their families who are watching their over-valued housing lose equity and in some areas becoming unsalable, for those who gambled that the high wages (in spite of the high cost of living) would warrant re-location from another province, for those who built a life style based on commuting large distances (sometimes literally across the country) every two weeks and for those who invested their life savings in developing needed business and services, but who now need sell out at a loss - I can only imagine the frustration, anger and disappointment you must be feeling. To be caught up in a bust or boom cycle that is both beyond your control and your understanding is, at the very least, unfair. But it needs to be said -the crash was in part predictable and to some extent, the pain preventable.

 I really wish I had been wrong. With all of my heart I wish it were possible to live in Alberta and for there always be enough money to support people. I wish that there would always be great paying jobs. But all of the best wishes in the world can't change the reality. The crash in oil prices is well beyond the control of any Albertan There were  however, things that could have been done.

Albertans chose not to have a provincial sales tax. They consistently rejected any suggestion that they should pay taxes at the same rate as other Canadians do. While there are a myriad of reasons why last year the provincial Conservatives were voted out of power for the first time in decades, one of the reasons why there was such anger was that Jim Prentice, the Premier, suggested that people needed to pay more taxes (admittedly he did not say the same thing about oil companies). Quite simple one cannot run a government without everyone paying their share. To pretend otherwise is absurd and dangerous. It is also true, that if one lives in a resourced based province, one must bank large sums of money to deal for those times when the resource is either depleted or less valued. To do anything else contemns the people of that province to live on an endless economic roller coaster.

Canada is a federation of semi-autonomous states. For it to function well, all of those states need to be economically stable. For the past few decades it feels as if there has been a continuous imbalance between the West and central Canada. It feels as if there is some sort of secret rule that says when one is doing well, it means that the other cannot be doing as well. The resource sectors and the manufacturing sectors are compatible. We need, as a nation, to work together, to support each other, to cheer on or to commiserate each other. We need to be able to share the pain and to share the benefits of living together.

I would argue that one way of ensuring that was possible is to have unified resource management policies and a unified system of how much we all pay in taxes.

Syrian Refuges and the Cost of Travel

It came as a shock to me last week when I read that refuges have traditionally had to pay their own airfare when coming to Canada. This rule has been temporarily waived since the election of the Liberal government in terms of Syrian refuges. There are however, no indications that the government sees something intrinsically wrong with refuges being placed in debt even before they arrive.

By the very definition of a refuge, one should assume that these individual are not wealthy people, that they have lost everything and have a legitimate fear that if they remain where they are, their very lives are at risk.  Because they arrive with almost nothing in terms of personal possessions, because their only access to housing, to food, to education and to jobs comes through either the largess of the state or private groups, they need time and space to establish themselves. In fact the Canadian government recognizes that each refugee needs to be supported for a year before they can start to be self-sufficient. But we, the Canadian people who with such great fanfare and much slapping of our own backs when they arrive, start to charge them interest on the "loans" for airfare as soon as they arrive!

According the CBC only two other countries charge refuges for airfare and only Canada charges interest on that loan. Really? I find inconceivable that anyone, anywhere in the world would think this is okay. I am embarrassed that I live in the only country in the entire world that places such a burden upon those who we say we want to help.

We want (I assume) these new Canadians to feel like they have a shot of making it, that there is some sort of level playing field, that they have some control over their destiny. We need them (and their children) to understand that because of our belief in fair play, that we will do nothing to sabotage their potential success.  I think we are a long way from proving that.

There is some research that suggest that the rise of gangs that are comprised mainly of kids whose parents are immigrants/refuges is in part due to the fact that those children and young adults see their parents (sometimes qualified for jobs they can't apply for) struggling and not getting ahead. Certainly in Europe, links are being made between individuals who feel separate from/disenfranchised from their society and the rise in home grown terrorism. While these links may be tenuous, we need to ensure that as a society we empower people to be in charge of their lives, not make them feel like they are already in debt before they buy their first piece of fruit or loaf of bread.

We need to help people get out of debt - not to ensure that they are in debt from their very first breath of Canadian air.

Come on Canada - we can do better than this.