The Stelmach government now goes to Albertans and is looking for new ideas on how to reduce green house gasses. The government and industry can have expectations placed upon them but so can individuals play a role in making a difference.
Informed citizen engagement is the key to any positive policy change. This effort to engage citizen on climate change is broadly based and looks to be an aggressive outreach to engage Albertans.
Lots of ideas are emerging on how individuals can make personal changes have to be understood and acted upon if the challenge of climate change is going to be tackled effectively.
Will it all be about making the other guy change towards doing the right thing and I can avoid change myself?
The environment is the #1 public policy issue and with a high level of commitment compared to other issues, including health care. Will we start to see people making personal changes in lifestyle because they understand the nature of the finite system we have on our planet. Garth Turner has a Handbook for individual actions on climate change posted on his website and it is worth a read.
One can not only hope – but we can get involved, get informed and become actively engaged. Citizenship has its rights and its responsibilities. I will be fascinated to see how this initiative unfolds and am optimistic that it can make a real difference.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Quebec Welder Firing is About Safety and Literacy, Not Discrimintion
The recent “firing” of the Quebec Ironworker for failing to pass a safety exam in the English language is being misinterpreted as to what is really about and what is really going on.
This is not an example of a human rights abuse. Nor is it the old chestnut of the west being anti French language. I am old enough to remember the mantra about bilingualism as being French being shoved down our throats. The ghosts of those old attitudes seem to emerge out of this incident. This situation is nothing to do with any of that.
What this is actually all about is safety and literacy. If the reverse were true, say in an iron oar mine in rural French speaking Quebec, and a unilingual English speaking worker could not pass a safety test in French, in that setting, he ought not to be hired either. If you are working in a complex and dangerous environment and you can’t read the safety procedures or the operations manuals to deal effectively with emergencies and other non-standard events, then you are a danger to yourself and to co-worker.
The media stories in defense of this worker has been that he had worked for the same sub-contractor in the area but not on an oils sands site for a few months before without supervision, problems or incidents. We do not know what he was doing and have no reason to doubt his work ethic and skills. If he was doing straight non-critical welding in standard circumstances that did not involve integration with other large project aspects or inherently dangerous circumstances, I see no problem. I also see no comparison to that circumstance to the complex and dangerous Suncor work situation, which he was trying to qualify for n passing a safety exam. We do routine drug testing and criminal checks and why not literacy competency testing of employees for safety purposes?
The working language at Suncor is English but that is not the only determining factor. I understand another project has a significant number of Chinese workers on site under a subcontract with a company from the Peoples’ Republic of China. I understand they are working on installing specific projects parts that were manufactured in China. The working language for them is undoubtedly going to be Mandarin. They can be held responsible for site safety requirements for all their workers because there are enough of them and they are involved in a specific aspect of the overall project. Same will likely be the case for the Synenco project and their Upgrader because they are 40% owned by the PRC. Sufficient numbers of Mandarin speakers working on specific identifiable project aspects will justify safety testing in that language.
The real issue here is the dirty little secret that in Canada our low literacy levels are astonishing. We have statistics to show our literacy rates are so low in the nation, (Alberta actually being marginally the highest in the country), that some 40% of Canadians are still learning to read instead of reading to learn. Can you believe it? It is true.
This is not only a competitiveness and productivity killer; it can be a human killer too. Work crews with insufficient literacy skills are a danger to themselves and co-workers.
Premier Stelmach has recognized this issue and has delegated the challenge to improve literacy in Alberta to the Minister of Advanced Education and Technology. A good start to a serious problem! Literacy Alberta has developed a proposal for a literacy policy for Alberta that is working its way through the political policy making process. It is worth going to their site to give it a read.
This is not an example of a human rights abuse. Nor is it the old chestnut of the west being anti French language. I am old enough to remember the mantra about bilingualism as being French being shoved down our throats. The ghosts of those old attitudes seem to emerge out of this incident. This situation is nothing to do with any of that.
What this is actually all about is safety and literacy. If the reverse were true, say in an iron oar mine in rural French speaking Quebec, and a unilingual English speaking worker could not pass a safety test in French, in that setting, he ought not to be hired either. If you are working in a complex and dangerous environment and you can’t read the safety procedures or the operations manuals to deal effectively with emergencies and other non-standard events, then you are a danger to yourself and to co-worker.
The media stories in defense of this worker has been that he had worked for the same sub-contractor in the area but not on an oils sands site for a few months before without supervision, problems or incidents. We do not know what he was doing and have no reason to doubt his work ethic and skills. If he was doing straight non-critical welding in standard circumstances that did not involve integration with other large project aspects or inherently dangerous circumstances, I see no problem. I also see no comparison to that circumstance to the complex and dangerous Suncor work situation, which he was trying to qualify for n passing a safety exam. We do routine drug testing and criminal checks and why not literacy competency testing of employees for safety purposes?
The working language at Suncor is English but that is not the only determining factor. I understand another project has a significant number of Chinese workers on site under a subcontract with a company from the Peoples’ Republic of China. I understand they are working on installing specific projects parts that were manufactured in China. The working language for them is undoubtedly going to be Mandarin. They can be held responsible for site safety requirements for all their workers because there are enough of them and they are involved in a specific aspect of the overall project. Same will likely be the case for the Synenco project and their Upgrader because they are 40% owned by the PRC. Sufficient numbers of Mandarin speakers working on specific identifiable project aspects will justify safety testing in that language.
The real issue here is the dirty little secret that in Canada our low literacy levels are astonishing. We have statistics to show our literacy rates are so low in the nation, (Alberta actually being marginally the highest in the country), that some 40% of Canadians are still learning to read instead of reading to learn. Can you believe it? It is true.
This is not only a competitiveness and productivity killer; it can be a human killer too. Work crews with insufficient literacy skills are a danger to themselves and co-workers.
Premier Stelmach has recognized this issue and has delegated the challenge to improve literacy in Alberta to the Minister of Advanced Education and Technology. A good start to a serious problem! Literacy Alberta has developed a proposal for a literacy policy for Alberta that is working its way through the political policy making process. It is worth going to their site to give it a read.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Stelmach Moves to Stop Misuse of the Courts
You want some intelligent responses to a law and order political policy agenda? Look at the changes being implemented in Alberta to get rid of vexatious litigants by Premier Stelmach.
Streamlining the court process and eliminating inappropriate intimidation through initiating costly and inappropriate law suits will save money and time and enhances real access to justice.
This is in contrast to Harper's court related policy is all about trying to manipulate the appointment process so someone he likes, get to be a Judge. Whereas Stelmach is empowering the Bench and enabling the Judges to be Judges.
Smart move by Alberta's Premier Stelmach. a good governance model for Prime Minister Harper. I don't expect the Prime Minister will pay much heed though.
Streamlining the court process and eliminating inappropriate intimidation through initiating costly and inappropriate law suits will save money and time and enhances real access to justice.
This is in contrast to Harper's court related policy is all about trying to manipulate the appointment process so someone he likes, get to be a Judge. Whereas Stelmach is empowering the Bench and enabling the Judges to be Judges.
Smart move by Alberta's Premier Stelmach. a good governance model for Prime Minister Harper. I don't expect the Prime Minister will pay much heed though.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Boot Scooter Libby!
First Michael Jackson exiles to an Arab country. Next we see Halliburton’s head office moves from Texas to Dubai. If Scooter Libby doesn’t get a pardon from Dubya, will he and Vice President Cheney likely be the next exiles to an Arab nation? Just asking!
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Worth a Read
I know a lot of people who wish they had written this - it comes from a friend who knew I would be interested! I trust many of my Blog readers will find it interesting as well!
The Great Moral Issues of Our Time
By David Michael Green03/10/07 "ICH" -- --
You liberals are such losers.Like His Holiness Reagan used to say, “There you go again!” Even after a quarter-century of us regressives running the country, you still don’t get it.
You can’t tell the difference between what is truly important for this country and what is not. You still can’t distinguish the great moral issues of our time from your petty bleeding-heart concerns.
Oh, I know how you guys think.You’re probably sitting there right now whining about how the massive carnage that is consuming citizens and soldiers in Iraq by the hundreds of thousands is a big deal. Wrong.
You probably think that the ongoing failure of the president to provide adequate armor for the troops he sent to fight in this four year-old war is important. Wrong again.
Or maybe you got yourself all worked up when the horrific treatment our wounded soldiers are receiving at Walter Reed Hospital and elsewhere proved that Bush couldn’t care less about the troops. Still wrong.
I bet you think it’s a big deal that al Qaeda and the Taliban – you know, the folks we said did 9/11 – are regrouping in Afghanistan, and that Osama bin Laden remains a free man five years later. So?
Are you upset again about the loss of jobs in America and the growing pressures on the struggling middle class? We’re not.
How about all the corruption scandals and gross incompetence of George Bush’s crony government? Get over it.
I’ve heard you guys ranting on and on about the mountain of debt we’re leaving for your children to pay off, plus interest, in order to finance our twin extravaganzas of huge tax cuts for the wealthy and a useless war costing $1-2 trillion. What’s wrong that?
Ah, then there’s healthcare! All you whack-job lefty clones seem to think its important to provide decent healthcare for our country, especially the 50 million people who have no coverage whatsoever, a large bunch of whom are children. No doubt Hillary told you to think that, so you did. We say, “Let them eat Band-Aids!”
And don’t go getting a bee in your bonnet just because so many people are suffering and dying needlessly from diseases that could be prevented and treated if only stem cell research was permitted. Do you really think the health of millions is such a big deal?
Please don’t go off again about the destruction of American civil liberties. Man, I hate that. You’re always spouting all those goofy ideas from the Bill of Rights – habeas corpus, right to trial, right to an attorney, protection against torture, search warrant requirements, and everything else you learned about in your fifth grade civics class. Who cares?
And then there’s the Constitution itself – all that stuff about separation of powers, checks and balances, and so on. So you’re all in a lather because the president has secretly appended close to a thousand “signing statements” to congressional bills, declaring all by himself how he interprets those laws, and which parts of them he intends to ignore. But what country can’t benefit from a good stiff shot of monarchism every now and then?
Oh, and please don’t play that tired Katrina card again. You think that the failure to protect, save and restore one of America’s great cities from the ravages of a hurricane is a pretty big deal, don’t you? Christ, you liberals are so sanctimonious! Yadda, yadda, New Orleans. Yadda, yadda, Schmew Orleans.
Or maybe it’s the economic polarization of America that’s got your undies all in a bundle. What’s the difference if the top one percent of the country grows fantastically rich while the rest are stagnant or sinking? That just shows your failure to understand the beauty of our capitalist free market system! What next?
You’re bothered that the Mid-East is in flames? That North Korea has gone nuclear, and that Iran is doing the same while growing in power because we destroyed its rival, Iraq? Typical liberal appeasement naiveté about tough foreign policy questions. Stop talking French, wouldya?
Don’t tell me you’re ashamed that genocide is occurring again while we stand by and do nothing? So what if the same government that moved heaven and earth to “bring democracy to Iraq” can’t be bothered to lift its little finger for Darfur after 400,000 people have been slaughtered?
Enough with the bleeding-heart routine already.
Okay, so it must be global warming, then, right? Ozone Man gets an Oscar and you think that saving the entire planet from vast, lethal and massively expensive environmental destruction is one of the great moral issues of our time, eh? Well, that’s where you’re especially wrong.
See, if you really want to know what matters in the moral universe, you should take your cues from us conservatives, especially those of us from the religious right. We can tell you.And what we say is that the great moral issues of our time are not war, peace, protecting our children, fiscal responsibility, caring for our soldiers or defending the constitution. And especially not pulling the Earth off the planetary grill.
No, the great moral issues of our time are: Your genitals. Yeah, you heard me right. Your genitals.Surprised? You wouldn’t be if you’d been following the news during your lifetime. And especially if you heard what happened just last week.Seems that one of our own by the name of Reverend Richard Cizik strayed off the reservation and got himself in some unexpected trouble.
Unexpected because he is a longtime advocate for the Christian right, now serving as Vice-President for Government Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals.But when the good reverend made the mistake of fretting in public about your so-called global warming, well, we came down on him hard.
No less than those great moral arbiters of our time, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins and Paul Weyrich called for Reverend Cizik to resign if he “cannot be trusted to articulate the views of American evangelicals”.What are those views? What did they identify as the “great moral issues of our time”? I thought you’d never ask. Opposition to abortion and gay marriage, of course. And “the teaching of sexual abstinence to our children”.
In short, everything to do with your genitals.And I do mean, of course, YOUR genitals. Not ours.
Reverend Cizik was actually supported during this controversy by Reverend Leith Anderson, the new president of the association. Why new?
Seems the old one – a certain Ted Haggard – loved to preach about your sexual morality but had a slightly different agenda when he found himself inside hotel rooms snorting drugs with gay prostitutes.
Kinda like Newt Gingrich, Robert Livingston, Henry Hyde and the others who chased Bill Clinton down for chasing down Monica Lewinsky, while they themselves were fathering children outside their marriages, having serial affairs, and dumping their wives for new ones, as the old ones lay in the hospital, post-cancer surgery.
Kinda like the Catholic dioceses across America that are declaring bankruptcy so they can avoid paying legal claims for all the damage caused by the sexual predators they hired, ignored and protected for decades.Dummies! Don’t they know you’re not supposed to get caught?
Listen, you get a sixer or two of Coors in me and even I’d admit it’s a pretty good rule of thumb that anyone who is publicly obsessed with your sexuality is actually totally freaked out (at least) about their own. But, hey, what’s the point of being a conservative if you can’t be a hypocrite?!
Y’know?You liberals, though – you’re hopeless. You keep thinking that hundreds of thousands of deaths from war and genocide are more important than dudes marrying other dudes.
You keep thinking that preserving democracy is more important than preventing premarital sex. You keep thinking that saving the planet is more crucial than discouraging masturbation.
You keep thinking there are greater and weightier moral issues than what you do with your genitals.But you’re wrong, and our country is falling apart because of all those misplaced priorities Satan got you to believe in.
And Hillary.It’s time to restore the moral greatness of America again. We need a new campaign of sexual authoritarianism to purge this country of our evil influences. We need to purify our precious bodily fluids and refocus our priorities.
Only then can we safely turn to lesser national priorities. Only then can we plot for our next invasion, our next raid upon the treasury, our next abandoned city, our next ignored genocide, our next assault upon the ecosphere.
Sure, all that stuff’s important. But none of it can happen until we first get our moral house in order.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto: dmg@regressiveantidote.net ), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, http://www.regressiveantidote.net/
The Great Moral Issues of Our Time
By David Michael Green03/10/07 "ICH" -- --
You liberals are such losers.Like His Holiness Reagan used to say, “There you go again!” Even after a quarter-century of us regressives running the country, you still don’t get it.
You can’t tell the difference between what is truly important for this country and what is not. You still can’t distinguish the great moral issues of our time from your petty bleeding-heart concerns.
Oh, I know how you guys think.You’re probably sitting there right now whining about how the massive carnage that is consuming citizens and soldiers in Iraq by the hundreds of thousands is a big deal. Wrong.
You probably think that the ongoing failure of the president to provide adequate armor for the troops he sent to fight in this four year-old war is important. Wrong again.
Or maybe you got yourself all worked up when the horrific treatment our wounded soldiers are receiving at Walter Reed Hospital and elsewhere proved that Bush couldn’t care less about the troops. Still wrong.
I bet you think it’s a big deal that al Qaeda and the Taliban – you know, the folks we said did 9/11 – are regrouping in Afghanistan, and that Osama bin Laden remains a free man five years later. So?
Are you upset again about the loss of jobs in America and the growing pressures on the struggling middle class? We’re not.
How about all the corruption scandals and gross incompetence of George Bush’s crony government? Get over it.
I’ve heard you guys ranting on and on about the mountain of debt we’re leaving for your children to pay off, plus interest, in order to finance our twin extravaganzas of huge tax cuts for the wealthy and a useless war costing $1-2 trillion. What’s wrong that?
Ah, then there’s healthcare! All you whack-job lefty clones seem to think its important to provide decent healthcare for our country, especially the 50 million people who have no coverage whatsoever, a large bunch of whom are children. No doubt Hillary told you to think that, so you did. We say, “Let them eat Band-Aids!”
And don’t go getting a bee in your bonnet just because so many people are suffering and dying needlessly from diseases that could be prevented and treated if only stem cell research was permitted. Do you really think the health of millions is such a big deal?
Please don’t go off again about the destruction of American civil liberties. Man, I hate that. You’re always spouting all those goofy ideas from the Bill of Rights – habeas corpus, right to trial, right to an attorney, protection against torture, search warrant requirements, and everything else you learned about in your fifth grade civics class. Who cares?
And then there’s the Constitution itself – all that stuff about separation of powers, checks and balances, and so on. So you’re all in a lather because the president has secretly appended close to a thousand “signing statements” to congressional bills, declaring all by himself how he interprets those laws, and which parts of them he intends to ignore. But what country can’t benefit from a good stiff shot of monarchism every now and then?
Oh, and please don’t play that tired Katrina card again. You think that the failure to protect, save and restore one of America’s great cities from the ravages of a hurricane is a pretty big deal, don’t you? Christ, you liberals are so sanctimonious! Yadda, yadda, New Orleans. Yadda, yadda, Schmew Orleans.
Or maybe it’s the economic polarization of America that’s got your undies all in a bundle. What’s the difference if the top one percent of the country grows fantastically rich while the rest are stagnant or sinking? That just shows your failure to understand the beauty of our capitalist free market system! What next?
You’re bothered that the Mid-East is in flames? That North Korea has gone nuclear, and that Iran is doing the same while growing in power because we destroyed its rival, Iraq? Typical liberal appeasement naiveté about tough foreign policy questions. Stop talking French, wouldya?
Don’t tell me you’re ashamed that genocide is occurring again while we stand by and do nothing? So what if the same government that moved heaven and earth to “bring democracy to Iraq” can’t be bothered to lift its little finger for Darfur after 400,000 people have been slaughtered?
Enough with the bleeding-heart routine already.
Okay, so it must be global warming, then, right? Ozone Man gets an Oscar and you think that saving the entire planet from vast, lethal and massively expensive environmental destruction is one of the great moral issues of our time, eh? Well, that’s where you’re especially wrong.
See, if you really want to know what matters in the moral universe, you should take your cues from us conservatives, especially those of us from the religious right. We can tell you.And what we say is that the great moral issues of our time are not war, peace, protecting our children, fiscal responsibility, caring for our soldiers or defending the constitution. And especially not pulling the Earth off the planetary grill.
No, the great moral issues of our time are: Your genitals. Yeah, you heard me right. Your genitals.Surprised? You wouldn’t be if you’d been following the news during your lifetime. And especially if you heard what happened just last week.Seems that one of our own by the name of Reverend Richard Cizik strayed off the reservation and got himself in some unexpected trouble.
Unexpected because he is a longtime advocate for the Christian right, now serving as Vice-President for Government Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals.But when the good reverend made the mistake of fretting in public about your so-called global warming, well, we came down on him hard.
No less than those great moral arbiters of our time, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins and Paul Weyrich called for Reverend Cizik to resign if he “cannot be trusted to articulate the views of American evangelicals”.What are those views? What did they identify as the “great moral issues of our time”? I thought you’d never ask. Opposition to abortion and gay marriage, of course. And “the teaching of sexual abstinence to our children”.
In short, everything to do with your genitals.And I do mean, of course, YOUR genitals. Not ours.
Reverend Cizik was actually supported during this controversy by Reverend Leith Anderson, the new president of the association. Why new?
Seems the old one – a certain Ted Haggard – loved to preach about your sexual morality but had a slightly different agenda when he found himself inside hotel rooms snorting drugs with gay prostitutes.
Kinda like Newt Gingrich, Robert Livingston, Henry Hyde and the others who chased Bill Clinton down for chasing down Monica Lewinsky, while they themselves were fathering children outside their marriages, having serial affairs, and dumping their wives for new ones, as the old ones lay in the hospital, post-cancer surgery.
Kinda like the Catholic dioceses across America that are declaring bankruptcy so they can avoid paying legal claims for all the damage caused by the sexual predators they hired, ignored and protected for decades.Dummies! Don’t they know you’re not supposed to get caught?
Listen, you get a sixer or two of Coors in me and even I’d admit it’s a pretty good rule of thumb that anyone who is publicly obsessed with your sexuality is actually totally freaked out (at least) about their own. But, hey, what’s the point of being a conservative if you can’t be a hypocrite?!
Y’know?You liberals, though – you’re hopeless. You keep thinking that hundreds of thousands of deaths from war and genocide are more important than dudes marrying other dudes.
You keep thinking that preserving democracy is more important than preventing premarital sex. You keep thinking that saving the planet is more crucial than discouraging masturbation.
You keep thinking there are greater and weightier moral issues than what you do with your genitals.But you’re wrong, and our country is falling apart because of all those misplaced priorities Satan got you to believe in.
And Hillary.It’s time to restore the moral greatness of America again. We need a new campaign of sexual authoritarianism to purge this country of our evil influences. We need to purify our precious bodily fluids and refocus our priorities.
Only then can we safely turn to lesser national priorities. Only then can we plot for our next invasion, our next raid upon the treasury, our next abandoned city, our next ignored genocide, our next assault upon the ecosphere.
Sure, all that stuff’s important. But none of it can happen until we first get our moral house in order.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto: dmg@regressiveantidote.net ), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, http://www.regressiveantidote.net/
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