Iris Evans Personal Comments Sparks a Public Debate About the Complexities of Raising Children - I Say Good For Her!

I have followed the debate sparked by the recent remarks of Iris Evans, Alberta’s Finance Minister about her view that the “proper” way to raise children is for one parent to stay at home. I am so pleased that the debate has been brought to the fore. It is a very important issue that deals with the responsibility we owe to children as parents, individuals, community and as government.

My bottom line politically is to value the fact that Iris Evan spoke her mind, clearly and with personal conviction. There is no other current Alberta politician who has done more for the plight of women and children, especially those at risk, than Iris Evans. She championed the project to raise awareness and work on prevention and treatment from domestic violence and bullying. She did this without the usual partisan political posturing. She focused on the issues and gathered the best people together to deal with the concerns – including men as victims of violence. I know because, full disclosure, I lead that portion of the project.

This issue of parenting and caring concerns are far from resolved and are at the basis for many conflicting personal values and societal duties. The trade offs of our various duties to children and to families and the conflicting needs of both parents to work t adequately provide for those children.

I don’t know the current numbers but there has been a significant increase in female participation in the workforce since the 50’s. The net result I recall in the decade 1979-1989 was a dramatic increase in females working outside the home but the net increase in household prosperity of those families merely increased 1% in that decade. Women’s workplace participation may have been personally and professionally satisfying but it did not do much to enhance the economic well being of the family. The increased taxes, inflation, cost of borrowing and other cost like childcare and transportation seems to have eaten up all the “additional” income.

I am not picking sides in the debate mostly because it is very personal and it is up to everyone have to make their own decisions about what is proper and practical. We all have a stake in this question of the care and nurturing, teaching and training of the children in our society too.

Is the Iris Evans approach the right one? I don’t think anyone would disagree – in a perfect world. However the word today is far from perfect. I am not wishing for the halcyon days of my youth when my stay at home mom and I could be supported comfortably on the wages of my Journeyman Electrician father – who almost always had a job in town and was home from work almost every night with the family.

I spent a couple of hours with Wallis Kendall from iHuman on Saturday on the Gun Sculpture Project we are working on together. He is the most engaged front line street level worker with the most dangerous and disadvantaged kids in our society. In discussion about Iris’ comments Wallis said, I work with lots of stay-at-home moms. The parent group he talked about is teenagers with children who were single parents, addicted but working on getting clean. They are uneducated, in poverty and mostly unemployable, especially in this recession because the jobs they are capable of doing simply disappear. But they are "stay at home" moms but hardly the optimal way to raise a family.

Wallis tells me they get their rent paid and they used to have to live on $600 per month to feed, cloth, diaper and deal with all transportation and other the care needs of themselves and their child, and find the hope and support to get past their addictions. Wallis tells me formula and diapers take up $230.00 a month. The Alberta support rates have being going down. Wallis told me now a mom in this situation with responsibility to provide care for two infants and herself now only receives $471 per month.

I tried to confirm these numbers online but without success so I rely on Wallis's knowledge of the supports situation. A proper way to raise a child may be for one parent to stay at home but that implies a whole bunch of other context and available family and community resources to make that a positive situation. The cost of living and the purchasing power of wages are way out of whack for the average family for this to be practical today.

Not only that we are squandering and becoming derelict in our duty to the next generation I the present way we deal with vulnerable and at risk kids, we are also chewing up the environment we will leave in the name of a false sense of short term progress and prosperity. We are also giving away our resource rents in a ridiculously low royalty rate and energy industry subsidies that perpetuate past sins that fragment the forest, destroy habitat, misuse water, spew unconscionable amounts of GHG into the atmosphere and fails to reclaim and restore old well sites, roadways and seismic lines. The lack of concern for inter generational equity in our current energy and economic policy is horrendous.

The energy sector is not the only problem. We all are in how we sprawl our cities, build our buildings and mindlessly use energy and pamper ourselves in our methods and modes of transportation. I think I have illustrated already the insufficient concern we show as a society for the weakest, most vulnerable and least capable in our society. We blame the government as if we are somehow not responsible for the consequences of how we voted or if we did not vote.

All these things tie together and inter-relate. One thing for sure, on a dais giving a speech at the Empire Club in Toronto, one Alberta Minister let her personal views and values about how to properly raise a family show clearly and concisely. Agree or disagree with her as you will but at least we have a politician expressing a personal opinion about a serious social public policy matter in a way that gets people thinking and talking. That does not happen enough in mature and pathetically passive democracies like Alberta.

Criticize her position if you choose. But at least for a few moments, seriously consider the concern, the context and the consequences of her comments. Then come to your own considered opinion based on your values and capabilities to do the right thing for your children, your family and yes – your community too. When it comes to raising kids “properly” it takes at least a viable village and a viable family with capable parents. We are all in this together; alone!

Twitter, Timezones and Terror in Iran

There are people all over the planet following the events in Iran on Twitter using #iranelection and #gr88 hashtags as a search tool. The pictures and video the Iranian Twitterers are able to get out of the country is truly amazing - especially under the dangerous circumstances they are in. The current theocracy is trying to shut down all media and communications out of Iran by blocking the Internet and bloggers plus the usual expulsion of the international media.

There are reports that media and bloggers are being arrested by Iranian military and a number of people have been killed in the streets by the military crackdown too. The next steps, taken last night, was for the military to mark the doors of the Tehran homes of suspected supporters of the rebellion. The Twitterverse was full of information about this targeting and distributed instructions on how to remove the door markings. Realizing how difficult it was to remove the door markings the follow up tweets was suggesting that ALL residential doors in the city. Don't know what the final result was but this is an example of how command and control centralized governments are being neutered by the dynamics of horizontal decentralized networks of engaged citizens.

Iran has an enormous and active blogging community, with Farsi being the 4th ranked language in the blogosphere. Not really surprising when you realize that 50% of the population of Iran is 30 years old or younger. Tough to imagine how arresting some bloggers will stop the rest. It will most likely embolden the rest to find ways to get the stories of the military crackdown and brutality out of Iran.

Twitter is still working well at getting the word out and informing the world about what is going on in the streets of Iran. It is also being used by Iranian officials posting tweets as a countervailing force using misinformation tweets. There are reports that the Iranian "government" is now targeting citizens who are on Twitter as part of the crackdown and retaliation against the dissidents and demonstrators. The Iranian "government" is using the timezone portion of the Twitter profiles of members to find these people who are using Twitter to thwart the communications clampdown the authorities are trying to impose.

The Twitterverse response to this targeting of Iranian dissidents is to ask the millions of the rest of us Twitter-types t0 change our profiles to the Tehran timezone so it will be more difficult to find the true Iranian Twitterers. I change my profile 10 minutes ago and encourage every one else on Twitter to do the same.

Musings and Misgivings About Being a Progressive Albertan

I have been getting a lot of emails from readers asking why I have not been posting this last week and why I have not posted anything about the Iris Evans comments about preferred parenting at the Empire Club in Toronto last week.

Well, as for the first question, I have been out of town working on a major project that captures my imagination so I have not been in a blogging head space. As for the second issue, I have been mulling about the Iris Evans comments on preferred parenting and will do a blog post late tomorrow on it. My working title is "Deconstructing Iris." What do you think?

I am also working on a major blog post on the recent vote in the Whitemud PC constituency to forward a resolution to the PC Party Executive to have a debate on repealing the opting out provisions of what was Bill 44 and now the new Alberta Human Rights Act at the party AGM in November. This is a very positive development but the reactionary social conservatives and partisan panderers in the Alberta PC Party could push this issue off the Progressive Conservative political agenda for the November AGM pretty easily if only it is only the Whitemud that has any balls.

As for the gratuitous advice from former Premier Ralph Klein on how to mishandle the Alberta economy by the mindless mathematics of across the board cuts, I think the less said about his approach to governance in Alberta the better.

I will be active re-engaged and posting plenty next week. Stay tuned.

Alberta Progressive Conservative MLAs Show Up for the First Time at Pride Parade

Thanks Daveberta for the pictures of politicians participating in the Edmonton Pride Parade. The very first time Progressive Conservative MLAs showed up. I know it is not good enough for many in the GLBT community for an MLA to show up at a Pride Parade but still vote for or not show up for the vote on Bill 44 - unless of course they actually believe it is good and appropriate law. It is encouraging to me, as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party who is opposed to Bill 44 opting out provisions, to see some of the PC Caucus "coming out" at least in this symbolic way.

I sense there is some continuing disquiet and perhaps dissension in the PC ranks over the ill-advised and socially harmful effects of extending and expanding parental rights. There has been no sound public policy reason given by the Stelmach government for passing a law to change a policy that has been in the School Act and working well for over 20 years. The only reasons given relate to some internal party politics to appease social conservatives in the PC Caucus.

The government's efforts to try and sell this kind of discrimination as protecting parental rights is misleading at best. Parental rights to opt out their kids from religious and human sexuality instruction within the school curriculum has been protected in Alberta for decades. It was not broke and did not need any socially destructive and retrograde fixing as Bill 44 has done.

So, here is a tip of my hat to my MLA Heather Klimchuk, and to Edmonton MLAs, Fred Horn and Doug Elniski. I say thanks for making this personal political statement by showing up at the Edmonton Pride Parade. I know it is too little too late for some, and they may be right but I think the political impact of Bill 44 is far from over. These PC MLAs, who showed up as the first Conservative MLAs to participate in the Edmonton Pride Parade, will help keep the concern over Bill 44 alive in the public and media mind. It will continue to fester in the minds of many Albertans. It has the potential to divide the PC Party itself on some fundamental principles of human rights and mutual respect. Ideally the Pride Parade attendance of Klimchuk, Horn and Elniski will continue to feed the public conversation about what kind of society Alberta is and what we aspire to become. I hope Albertans continue to consider if Bill 44 get us closer to or farther away from those societal goals and our greater aspirations.

Will the presence of the PC Pride Parade Trio make a difference within the PC Caucus and the PC Party? Perhaps, but only if progressive members in the PC Party continue the conversation at the constituency level and at the forthcoming AGM in November. Will they personally continue to press the other MLAs in Caucus and the Premier's office to repeal the Bill 44 opting out provisions, or at the very least not Proclaim them?

If progressives merely grumble under their breath and fail to take a stand, there are other questions that will have to be asked. Do the progressives still feel they still have a place in the PC Party post-Bill 44? Have they already moved on and left the PC Party? Or are they merely being compliant in this political exercise that is Bill 44 that normalizes and perpetuates a certain kind of discrimination in Alberta.

Nothing in the opting out provisions of Bill 44 serve the greater good. They sure do embolden reactionary social conservatives who are gearing up to press their social conservative political agenda with the new legal tools they can use against teachers and trustees. Those new legal tools at there thanks to Bill 44 which has created them.

The continuing political debate about the wisdom and necessity of Bill 44 now moves from the floor of the Legislature into the public sphere and into rank and file of the PC Party. The power structure in the Party wants to keep the Bill 44 controversy quiet and hope that it will "go away" by relying on the short memory of the Alberta voter to forget about it. Complacency and compliance amongst progressives in the PC Party, who chose to be quiet about their concerns over Bill 44, is what will allow a bad law to endure and be swept under the public policy carpet. That is no way to govern a province. We will soon know if there is any progressive character left in the PC Party - or not.

Poll Shows Carbon Tax Support Growing in Canada

Following up yesterdays post on the video of Michael Adam's remarks at the "Decoding Carbon Pricing" a global warming conference in Vancouver, the Environics poll he referenced is posted. It is part of their "Canadian Environmental Barometer" that they do monthly.

B.C. already has a carbon tax and Alberta has a de facto carbon tax of $15/tonne on heavy emitters but it is intensity based which does not reduce carbon in absolute terms. The Harper Conservatives have recently come forward and are suggesting a Cap and Trade model response to carbon emissions. I personally prefer a tax for reasons I will explore in subsequent posts.

Here is what the Environics poll found about attitudes towards a carbon tax. First B.C. residents initially and pre-recession, were supportive of a carbon tax with 54% Strongly or somewhat support for the tax. That combined support dropped to 40% in July 2008 as the recession was upon us, even though Harper was denying the fact. In May 2009 the B.C. combine support is back to 48% for this example of Premier Campbell leadership on climate change.

The support for a carbon tax in the rest of Canada is approaching 50% as of May 2009. The more interesting poll results are from Alberta and Saskatchewan, the home of oil sands a.k.a. "dirty oil" where support for a carbon tax is growing. In Alberta the Feb 08 combined support was 38% and 57% opposed. By July 08 support had fallen to 27% with opposition growing to 69%. Now the Alberta numbers are 44% in support with 53% opposed. The remarkable jump in Alberta support is 17% in less than a year and the recession is not over yet.

Saskatchewan has gone from an early supprrt of 42%, dropping to 29% and rebounding to 42% now.

I can do no better than Environics VP Keith Neuman who is quoted as saying "this latest survey demonstrates that it is premature to 'write off' carbon taxes as a failed climate change policy in Canada."

Harper is touting Cap and Trade in anticipation of a pending election - my betting in is a Nov 9/09 election BTW. I wonder if Harper is picking the right option for fighting climate change given this shift in sentiment about a carbon tax alternative. Keith Newman again: "Taxes of any kind will never be vote-winners, but the outcome of the recent B.B. provincial election validates Premier Gordon Campbell's decision to stick with a tax-based approach to fighting climate change in the face of serious opposition."

Will any federal party, other than the Greens, will have the courage and character to advocate for a carbon tax as policy in the next federal election? I wonder if this poll result will at least get the parties re-thinking their positions.