Congratulations and condolences to Peter Kent the newly condemned Harper Con Minister of the Environment. I think Jeffrey Simpson's column in the Globe and Mail today captures the conundrum the Toronto based Minister will face internally. Harper is a one-man authoritarian control freak and that will put the laudable investigative journalist instincts Mr. Kent somewhere between the back burner or buried in the closet.
The external pressures the new Minister faces are even more disheartening as he is clearly appointed for political purposes as a bone to Toronto as Harper prepares to engineer the timing of his next election, likely over the budget or his execution of same, not his ineptness and indifference to the environment.
Do not expect Mr. Kent's journalistic talents to be seen or even allowed to be applied to his new portfolio. Harper does not like science, evidence or opinion that runs contrary to his dogma - especially from his Cabinet or Caucus. That is really unfortunate but Harper is the strict authoritarian abusive father figure. He uses his power to control the lives of his underlings and his lesser-beings in Cabinet and Caucus because he, and he alone, makes the rules and all the decisions for all those who serve him at his pleasure in in his house.
ALBERTANS ACCEPT SOME FEDERAL INVOLVEMENT IN OIL SANDS
As for Mr. Kent engaging effectively about federal involvement in oil sands policy and regulation, the Albertan industry and the Alberta government will watch him with a wary eye. The Alberta public knows that the oil sands are key to our future and continued prosperity. Only 17% of us are in any way satisfied with the performance of our federal MPs - and that was before Jim Prentice left politics and the oppressive regime of Stephen Harper. Mr, Kent will do nothing to reverse those fortunes and impressions of how effective our MPs are in protecting our interests as Albertans.
Our research shows that Albertans know the provincial government is responsible for managing our natural resources. We overwhelming (90%) hold industry liable and responsible for any environmental damage they cause. Interestingly 62% of Albertans see some role for the federal government in the development of the oil sands. In the Chretien Liberal days of the mid 90's that federal role was federal tax breaks instigated by Alberta MP and former Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan.
EXPECT A FED-PROV FIGHT OVER WHO RUNS THE OIL SANDS SHOW?
Today the Harper Cons are belatedly entering into the environmental monitoring role as a federal government. We found that 68% of Albertans believed the federal government has increased its role in the development of the oil sands.This is unnerving to the Alberta government who are responding with an even more belated entry into responsible environmental monitoring. There is a looming jurisdictional donny-brook over who is ultimately responsible for environmental monitoring and re-mediation policies to assure Albertans, as owners of the oil sands, that their resource is being developed responsibly. The partisan hand wringing in the province is all behind closed doors but there are signs surfacing of the inter-governmental competition for the trust of Albertans, not just the political hearts and minds. This may be the fed-prov "crisis" that Premier Stelmach will use to trigger an early Alberta election...but I doubt it.
WISE GOVERNING OR DUMB LUCK?
Bottom line is both the federal and provincial governments are wise to be focused on the issue about environmental monitoring regarding oil sand development. That is a good start because 18% of Albertans said that was the most important concern they had around how their oil sands were being developed. While it is a start is is noting to brag about because that same survey showed 20% Albertans were concerned about having assurance that the proper type of oil sands reclamation was being done. Add to that the 19% how said their top priority for responsible oil sand development was habitat protection and you see why I say ecological monitoring is just a start for government engagement and regulation.
So we have a Toronto media type with proven investigative journalist credentials allegedly running Harper's environment portfolio. Actually Harper was pretty clear who would be running the file in the Kent appointment announcement when he said Kent's mandate was "to stay the course." That is code for continue to do nothing but talk a lot so it does not look like you are doing nothing.
So Mr. Kent welcome the Harper in Wonderland world of inert environmental policy and authoritarian political control of you and your soul. We don't expect to see much of you in Alberta after the first run through. Your real job is to get more seats in Toronto next election, not to champion economically enlightened planet saving environmental policy. Don't expect industry to be calling on you much after the first grin an grab initial rounds of meet and greet the new Minister. They have real fish to fry...oops - bad metaphor.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
"Success" Must be Redefined to Thrive in the Creative Age
This clip of a film has piqued my interest. I have not seen the film but I want to. It asks the key questions about what role our education system should play in preparing young people for a changing world and how do we prepare young people to be healthy, bright and contributing citizens?
As part of the Learning Our Way to the Future initiative and the Creative Alberta movement I see so much potential being enabled by the platform for transformation from the Dave Hancock lead Inspiring Education and Inspiring Action on Education.
I am pleased to see this screening of this film being done in collaboration with a number of interesting sponsors and in particular the Calgary Public Library and Leadership Calgary , the sister organization to Leadership Edmonton. These programs are all about striving forward with a greater understanding of the human venture which teaches a progressive approach to unleashing leadership that has wisdom and judgement.
The Calgary screening is January 12, 2011 at John Dutton Theatre, W.R. Castell Central Library, 616 Macleod Trail SE. Doors open at 5, screening at 5:30 and moderated discussion at 7 pm. Tickets at www.race.leadwellinitiative.com
I will work on getting this film screened in Edmonton in the near future too. Stay tuned.
As part of the Learning Our Way to the Future initiative and the Creative Alberta movement I see so much potential being enabled by the platform for transformation from the Dave Hancock lead Inspiring Education and Inspiring Action on Education.
I am pleased to see this screening of this film being done in collaboration with a number of interesting sponsors and in particular the Calgary Public Library and Leadership Calgary , the sister organization to Leadership Edmonton. These programs are all about striving forward with a greater understanding of the human venture which teaches a progressive approach to unleashing leadership that has wisdom and judgement.
The Calgary screening is January 12, 2011 at John Dutton Theatre, W.R. Castell Central Library, 616 Macleod Trail SE. Doors open at 5, screening at 5:30 and moderated discussion at 7 pm. Tickets at www.race.leadwellinitiative.com
I will work on getting this film screened in Edmonton in the near future too. Stay tuned.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Learning Our Way to the Next Alberta: The Alberta Aspiration
One of the most exciting projects we are involved with at Cambridge Strategies Inc. is the Learning Our Way to the Next Alberta. Part of this project is a rethinking of public education principles, practices and progress measurements. It is aided abetted by the work of Alberta Education in the Inspiring Education initiative lead by Minister Dave Hancock.
RETHINKING EDUCATION AND LEARNING
We have to rethink the concepts of education and learning beyond the paradigms of the industrial complex of the past. We have to think and adapt to the consequence of the networked horizontal information economy. We have to develop skills and capacities to prepare our children, and ourselves, for the conceptual age economy that is emerging. This is the way forward for developed societies and for continued prosperity in places like Alberta. Alberta has an excellent public education system that is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this new way forward. However we must redefine success and rethink what we mean by progress. It is about a new sense of being literate that includes the traditional concepts but move beyond them into a 21st century context.
CHANGING THE PARADIGMS:
Sir Ken Robinson puts all this in context in this RSA video. It is 11 minutes long but worth every minute of it.
(H/T to Alberta Education's Inspiring Education site for the link)
We are capable of imagining, creating and even adapting to new measures and meanings of progress and prosperity. These new models must promote social cohesion through inclusion and a savouring our social diversity, not fearing the differences. New thinking must require that we work within the realities of the environmental limits of the planet. We need an economic model that develops new technologies and assets that promote sustainability and innovation from the creativity of Albertans.
THE ALBERTA ASPIRATIONS:
This next Alberta is all about our finding and fostering our Aspirations in ways that align with our values. Now that we in Alberta can become anything we we want to be, what is it that we want to be? My answer is simple and complex. It is not just about the old Alberta Advantage mentality of competing in the old industrial marketplace model with a shallow goal to be the best IN the world. It is more about leading, seeing and achieving our potential to aspire to be the best FOR the world.
We have all the ingredients and the infrastructure necessary to achieve this Aspiration. We just need the attitude shift necessary to actually do it. In short, the Alberta Aspiration mindset has to trump the old race to the bottom paradigm inherent in the Alberta Advantage mindset. We need to adapt from the Alberta Advantage mindset but not eliminate it as we work through to realizing the Alberta Aspiration model. In doing so, we transform ourselves and our province into a trail blazing example of a 21st century integrated society, economy and ecology.
JOIN IN AND BE A CO-CREATOR OF THE NEXT ALBERTA:
You can join in the co-creation collaboration of Learning Our Way to the Next Alberta in a number of ways. Sir Ken Robinson will be in Red Deer February 9th for a reception 6-7 pm and public lecture and discussion from 7-9:30 pm where he will speak about this opportunity to transform public education. This is an event in collaboration with the Alberta Teachers' Association locals in Red Deer, Creative Alberta, the Red Deer Advocate and Red Deer College. The cost is $10 and for tickets contact Jennifer Bahler at jbahler@rdpsd.ab.ca or 403-505-5889 Ticket proceeds to the the Central Alberta Women's Shelter.
RETHINKING EDUCATION AND LEARNING
We have to rethink the concepts of education and learning beyond the paradigms of the industrial complex of the past. We have to think and adapt to the consequence of the networked horizontal information economy. We have to develop skills and capacities to prepare our children, and ourselves, for the conceptual age economy that is emerging. This is the way forward for developed societies and for continued prosperity in places like Alberta. Alberta has an excellent public education system that is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this new way forward. However we must redefine success and rethink what we mean by progress. It is about a new sense of being literate that includes the traditional concepts but move beyond them into a 21st century context.
CHANGING THE PARADIGMS:
Sir Ken Robinson puts all this in context in this RSA video. It is 11 minutes long but worth every minute of it.
(H/T to Alberta Education's Inspiring Education site for the link)
This new way of thinking, learning and of being an educated person is going to be realized through unconventional partnerships, relationships and new collaborative models of meaning making. We are all in this together and alone as we develop our personal gifts in ways that also contribute positively to the greater good.
We are capable of imagining, creating and even adapting to new measures and meanings of progress and prosperity. These new models must promote social cohesion through inclusion and a savouring our social diversity, not fearing the differences. New thinking must require that we work within the realities of the environmental limits of the planet. We need an economic model that develops new technologies and assets that promote sustainability and innovation from the creativity of Albertans.
THE ALBERTA ASPIRATIONS:
This next Alberta is all about our finding and fostering our Aspirations in ways that align with our values. Now that we in Alberta can become anything we we want to be, what is it that we want to be? My answer is simple and complex. It is not just about the old Alberta Advantage mentality of competing in the old industrial marketplace model with a shallow goal to be the best IN the world. It is more about leading, seeing and achieving our potential to aspire to be the best FOR the world.
We have all the ingredients and the infrastructure necessary to achieve this Aspiration. We just need the attitude shift necessary to actually do it. In short, the Alberta Aspiration mindset has to trump the old race to the bottom paradigm inherent in the Alberta Advantage mindset. We need to adapt from the Alberta Advantage mindset but not eliminate it as we work through to realizing the Alberta Aspiration model. In doing so, we transform ourselves and our province into a trail blazing example of a 21st century integrated society, economy and ecology.
JOIN IN AND BE A CO-CREATOR OF THE NEXT ALBERTA:
You can join in the co-creation collaboration of Learning Our Way to the Next Alberta in a number of ways. Sir Ken Robinson will be in Red Deer February 9th for a reception 6-7 pm and public lecture and discussion from 7-9:30 pm where he will speak about this opportunity to transform public education. This is an event in collaboration with the Alberta Teachers' Association locals in Red Deer, Creative Alberta, the Red Deer Advocate and Red Deer College. The cost is $10 and for tickets contact Jennifer Bahler at jbahler@rdpsd.ab.ca or 403-505-5889 Ticket proceeds to the the Central Alberta Women's Shelter.
As a Citizen - Who Can You Trust to Tell the Truth?
I rarely do this, run an entire text of another source in full in this blog. Links are my usual relationship device to content I find interesting and worth sharing. This piece is an exception, partly due to copyright issues. Just as important is the content itself. The emergence of Fox News North makes this piece relevant to Canada. The American government-journalist relationship and the symbiotic news "reporting" actions that dumbs down and mislead the public is pathetic politics, scary governance and dangerous to democracy.
Most interesting is the extensive quoting of JFK on the proper role of the media in a free and democratic society. Much of the tone and activities referenced about the US government in the Bush years should be looked at through a Canadian lens. Ask yourself how many times can you say or see the same things about Canada under not so Prime Minister Harper? Just askin' - "Who can you, as a citizen, trust to tell you the truth and provide objective reporting these days? Who can you trust to protect you and your rights as a citizen." Not the American or Canadian federal governments...that is for sure.
America Has Gone Away
by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research (December 29 2010)
Anyone who doesn't believe that the US is an incipient fascist state needs only to consult the latest assault on civil liberty by Fox News (sic).
Instead of informing citizens, Fox News (sic) informs on citizens. Jason Ditz reports (antiwar.com, December 28) that Fox News (sic) "no longer content to simply shill for a growing police state", turned in a grandmother to the Department of Homeland Security for making "anti-American comments".
The media have segued into the police attitude, which regards insistence on civil liberties and references to the Constitution as signs of extremism, especially when the Constitution is invoked in defense of dissent or privacy or placarded on a bumper sticker. President George W Bush set the scene when he declared: "you are with us or against us".
Bush's words demonstrate a frightening decline in our government's respect for dissent since the presidency of John F Kennedy. In a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961, President Kennedy said:
No president should fear public scrutiny of his program, for from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition; and both are necessary ... Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive.
That is why the Athenian law makers once decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment.
The press is not protected, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers, in order that it can amuse and entertain, emphasize the trivial, or simply tell the public what it wants to hear. The press is protected so that it can find and report facts and, thus, inform, arouse "and sometimes even anger public opinion".
In a statement unlikely to be repeated by an American president, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers:
I'm not asking your newspapers to support an administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, for I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.
The America of Kennedy's day and the America of today are two different worlds. In America today the media are expected to lie for the government in order to prevent the people from finding out what the government is up to. If polls can be believed, Americans brainwashed and programmed by O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh want Bradley Manning and Julian Assange torn limb from limb for informing Americans of the criminal acts of their government. Politicians and journalists are screeching for their execution.
President Kennedy told the Newspaper Publishers Association that "it is to the printing press, the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news, that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to
be: Free and Independent." Who can imagine a Bill Clinton, a George W Bush, or a Barack Obama saying such a thing today?
Today the press is a propaganda ministry for the government. Any member who departs from his duty to lie and spin the news is expelled from the fraternity. A public increasingly unemployed, broke and homeless is told that they have vast enemies plotting to destroy them in the absence of annual trillion dollar expenditures for the military/security complex, wars lasting decades, no-fly lists, unlimited spying and collecting of dossiers on citizens supplemented by neighbors reporting on neighbors, full body scanners at airports, shopping centers, metro and train stations, traffic checks, and the equivalence of treason with the uttering of a truth.
Two years ago when he came into office President Obama admitted that no one knew what the military mission was in Afghanistan, including the president himself, but that he would find a mission and define it. On his recent trip to Afghanistan, Obama came up with the mission: to make the families of the troops safe in America, his version of Bush's "we have to kill them over there before they kill us over here".
No one snorted with derision or even mildly giggled. Neither the New York Times nor Fox News (sic) dared to wonder if perhaps, maybe, murdering and displacing large numbers of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen and US support for Israel's similar treatment of Lebanese and Palestinians might be creating a hostile environment that could breed terrorists. If there still is such a thing as the Newspaper Publishers Association, its members are incapable of such an unpatriotic thought.
Today no one believes that our country's success depends on an informed public and a free press. America's success depends on its financial and military hegemony over the world. Any information inconsistent with the indispensable people's god-given right to dominate the world must be suppressed and the messenger discredited and destroyed.
Now that the press has voluntarily shed its First Amendment rights, the government is working to redefine free speech as a privilege limited to the media, not a right of citizens. Thus, the insistence that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and Fox News (sic) turning in a citizen for exercising free speech. Washington's assault on Assange and WikiLeaks is an assault on what remains of the US Constitution. When we cheer for WikiLeaks' demise, we are cheering for our own.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
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Saturday, January 01, 2011
A Musical Reflection We Can Use as a We Return to Citizenship
The lyrics are as current and applicable today as they were when first written. (H/T to @HurtinAlbertan)
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