Alberta Needs to Start Thinking for a Change. Ontario Is!

I am intrigued by the Ontario government’s support for taking advantage of the current economic crisis as an opportunity to transition to a creative economy from a dying industrial age. I guess it helps that Richard Florida who writes on urban cultural creatives has recently moved from the States to Toronto as his preferred city of residence. I like Florida but prefer the deeper insights of Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson’s work “The Cultural Creatives” about similar themes.

Florida has teamed up with Roger Martin the Dean of the U of T’s Rotman School of Business to write a report commissioned by Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty to be released today. The report is Ontario-centric but is said to be transformational and transferable to all provinces and will show how to move from an industrial society to a creative one. Ontario has been studying the link between prosperity and productivity for some time now. They are clearly leading the way to add a creative link as a means to future prosperity as well. I am looking forward to getting a copy of the report and giving it a careful read.

Alberta is in need of this kind of thinking for a change. Alberta is still striving too much to sustain a sense of yesterday. For example we continue to subsidize conventional oil and gas drilling activity by reducing royalties and industry accountability for sound environmental practices and duties to reclaim abandoned sites. We have fragmented the boreal forest with well sites, seismic lies, roads and right of ways so badly that its sustainability for wildlife is under serious threat.

It is not all bad in Alberta but there are few serious signs of any significant transformational shift happening in Alberta anytime soon. We need to quit compromising to conventional industry demands and to embed a new consciousness of innovation and adventure that will take us to a new level of diversification. Examples of that kind of leadership thinking are around but they are sparse and segregated and mostly insignificant.

We have some political champions in Alberta for such a change but they don’t seem to be winning the agenda and priority battles in Cabinet and Caucus. Alberta seems more intent on perfecting yesterday with more and more concessions being granted to the conventional industries from oil and gas, to forestry to agriculture in an effort to try and sustain old models and methods in the conventional economy.

We Albertans have the necessity to adapt and change because fossil fuels have limits that are economic and environmental. We have the fiscal resources to change. We have the institutional and intellectual infrastructure and human ingenuity horsepower in our universities, technical schools and the Alberta Research Council to change.

We have a very creative group of people in our cultural industries and environmental and social services sectors as well. We can transform the province if we choose to. We seem to lack the visionary leadership in politics and business to actually engage in the new world we can see coming. We are too "successful" and complacent to have any sense of urgency and intentionality to get serious about the inevitable changes that are coming. We seem content to passively react rather than actively respond.

This recession is a perfect opportunity to revisit, revise and to shift to a new trajectory and to actively eschew the tyranny of the dead ideas of the past. Speaking of the tyranny of dead ideas, I just bought Matt Miller’s book of the same name. I intend to read it carefully. I will also be rereading Thomas Homer-Dixon’s “The Ingenuity Gap” to find a reframing of my own consciousness about these concerns about the need to rethink and transform our economy.

Time for Alberta to start thinking for a change. Ontario is on to it. Why not us?

Ignatieff Shows Strength of Character and Wise Leadership

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff understands and respects representative democracy. He has shown those qualities of character by the way he consulted and enabled those Newfoundland and Labrador members of his Caucus to take a stand and vote against the Harper budget. The wanted to take such a stand because the Harper budget serves to single out and punish their region and their constituents. Good for him and good for them.

Old line partisans who think political leadership is about dictating to Caucus in all circumstances and punishing transgressors will call this enlightened approach a mistake and a sign of weakness on Iggy’s part. Nothing could be further from the truth. The ultimate consequences of those 6 members taking a stand and representing the interests of their constituencies are insignificant in the large scheme of things but symbolically important to them and their people.

Politics is all about perception and the Harper cons will mule and mock as is their wont about this action shows Iggy can’t control his Caucus. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The overarching perception that needs to be appreciated here is the flexibility and wisdom of Iggy in accepting the principled position of those 6 disgruntled Liberal MPs. These PMs are supposed to represent the best interests of their region, an area of Canada that is being screwed by the Harper government – yet again.

The luxury of opposition is that the same level of party solidarity is not as necessary for the governing party. The risk in a minority government situation is too much of this self-actualization of MPs could actually unwittingly topple a government. Well that was undoubtedly considered at the MPS met face to face with their leader to discuss the situation and work out a solution. No fear of an inadvertent election happening in this case. This situation shows us Ignatieff’s superior wisdom, judgment and leadership qualities, not to mention his demonstrable personal respect for representative democracy.

You sure can’t say anything close to that about Mr. Harper. Last time Harper had a dissident MP was Bill Casey. His principled stand was to vote against the Harper position on the Atlantic Accord that screwed Nova Scotia where his riding is. Casey was drummed out of the Harper Party Caucus but got his revenge in the last election when he ran as an Independent and won his seat again.

Now the shameless Harper Cons have filed a bogus complaint to the RCMP against Casey making unfounded allegations of election spending irregularities. Bush-league Rovarian tactics are still alive and well in the bosom of the Harper Cons.

Compare the leadership qualities of Harper and Ignatieff in these two parallel circumstances and ask yourself why you ever voted for Harper in the first place. Don’t make the same mistake next time!

Ken Chapman on CBC Wildrose (Jan. 28, 2009)

Here is my lastest column on CBC Wildrose on the Federal Budget and what it means - especially to Alberta.

Bailed Out Investment Banker and Brokers Still Pay Billions in Bogus Bonuses

The Wizards of Wall Street have fallen from grace due to greed and some should be in jail due to corruption and fraud. The tone deaf insensitive and PR deficit CEOs of the Big Three automaker how took their private corporate jets to Congress to beg for taxpayer bailouts was seen as ignorance, arrogance and insouciance – which it was. It was child’s play compared to the almost $20 billion of bonus payout the investment bankers blessed themselves in New York alone, after they got billions of taxpayer money.

Obama has called this action "the height of irresponsibility" and"shameful" and he is right.

The next time some superficial self-satisfied captain of commerce tells me governments should be run more like business I think I will explode. Given the greed, corruption and indifference too many of these self-satisfied sanctimonious scumbags has shown to serving the public interest and lack of respect to their social license to operate I think the business community better shake its collective head and do some serious soul searching about its roles and responsibilities.

I don’t like over regulation but I detest under regulation even more. It was the latter that led to a lax governing philosophy that was bred by too much of the small government, regulation elimination mantra of the fundamentalist conservative politicians that helped to get us into this mess and economic meltdown.

Those neo-con politicians and their “free enterprise” campaign funders have forgotten that the economy is a social value system that we humans invented. It is intended to serve the needs of our society - not the other way around.

When the economic system gets distorted to the point where greed and corruption become normalized then citizens have to get reengaged and start insisting some heads get banged together and some other heads roll. We need to start making some serious demands of the politicians, regulators and to start to tar and feather, Internet style, those psychopathic self-satisfied corporate privateers who are cheating us and rip us off and then begging for taxpayer bailouts.

The cost of taxpayer cash to corporate bailouts must be much more public and regulatory scrutiny, operational transparency, fiscal accountability and governance controls on the private sector that gets the cash. They must be expected to satisfy the same ethical rigour, operational accountability and disclosure diligence that we expect of government officials and public servants. It is time we insisted that industry acted according to the same level of social service standards as we expect from government if they get a taxpayer bailout.

If you Masters of the Universe types expect taxpayer bailouts to be invested, lent and granted to your “free” enterprises in order to save your asses, then expect serious on-going open and transparent public accountability and scrutiny as one of the cost of raising that social capital from us citizens.

You supercilious business guys always knew that you are the “smartest guys in the room” - in any room - right? So I am sure you will have no trouble getting this new reality of accountability and transparency that will be imposed on you in exchange for taxpayer money.

Uncle Jay Explains: Jan. 26, 2009

Another update on political and cultural insights from Uncle Jay as he explains the news