Happy Birthday Kate,

Let there be no mistake

How your beauty radiates,

How the world translates,

Your kindness into many traits,

Your strength easily dominates,

All sadness runs and dissipates,

When in a room of classmates,

Everyone gladly anticipates,

How you cheerfully participate,

Your upbeat aura dictates,

Good feelings that surely advocate,

Animate, appreciate and fascinate,

Accelerate, accommodate and accumulate,

The world a better place you make.

With the gate of a father’s love wide open,

Dad

To make matters even more complicated, there are three levels of government, not just one: the federal, provincial and municipal levels, all of which have their own jurisdiction of laws or bylaws to enforce, to repeal, to enact, to manage large staff compliments and to recruit decision makers through periodic elections.

A noble government initiative of recent heritage, namely, garbage disposal for its citizens, seeks to protect the environment by recycling a respectable list of non-biodegradable items, by managing biodegradable organic waste such as food scraps differently, by separating paper products and cardboard, and by collecting everything else, what is now called garbage, in dumpsters, containers and compactors.

This is how the waste management policy is translated into practice in my strata complex in the land of giant monster houses that line the streets of urban farming with ostentatious opulence and high-priced high rises that block out the sun and one of nature’s greatest treasures from view – the natural beauty of the coastal mountains, the Georgia Straight and the Gulf Islands.

We received our organic waste buckets a couple of years ago and then the new era of conservation began. Nothing further was said until a month ago when our strata received notice in the mail from the civic government that our organic waste contained too many contaminants. Amongst the list of unacceptable items were plastic bags and biodegradable bags.

The prohibition of biodegradable bags really shakes the foundation of the original environmental friendly policy. This is how people collect and dispose their household scraps. Without the biodegradable bags, you are left with an ugly mess caked on and stuck to the bottom of your plastic bucket.

Plastic bags are essentially the real enemy to the environment and not biodegradable bags. Government should ban their usage entirely, or find a way to recycle them.

Governments should be appreciative that the populace has made a valiant effort to change their historically entrenched garbage disposal habits and use the organic waste bins, even though imperfectly. You would think, in this age of technology, that an industrial strength refinement process could be employed to separate the wanted organic waste from the unwanted.

As long as plastic bags are in wide circulation, they will be used to bring new stuff home from the marketplace and later clutter up the best intentions for a cleaner, healthier environment.

To ban or outright prohibit biodegradable bags from the organic waste management process sheds a terrestrial light on a public policy that is drifting out of orbit with logic and reason.

“An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s“

Will Rogers

Just saw a notice today on CBC that Sears is heading back to court to liquidate all of its remaining stores. Another Canadian casualty since Canada joined the free trade era during the 1990s. I use the term free trade era as countries around the world attempted to reduce tariffs and duties in the spirit of promoting trade rather than adopt protectionist policies to safeguard or favour their own country’s production of goods.

The results of dropping national economic defenses to foreign countries such as China and Mexico proved to be harmful to many industries that culminated, amongst other things, in the insolvency of major US automobile manufacturers in 2008-10 and followed by mammoth bailouts by both American and Canadian governments.

Of course numerous other Canadian industries faced extinction without such generous financial aid. Amongst the most famous are the ghosts of Welland: Union Carbide-Welland Industries-Energex Tubesite-Lakeside Steel-John Deere-Powerblades Industries-Welded Tube of Canada-Universal Resource Recovery-Atlas Steel-ASW Steel-Henniges and Automotive Sealing Systems Canada.

Eaton’s, a historical Canadian retail giant nosedived into bankruptcy in 1999 due to what was referred to as a changing economic and retail environment in the 1990s. No doubt an inability to compete with foreign companies appeared on the list of deficiencies.

Now Sears, a founding member of this historical Canadian retail family, enters the final phase of court-ordered creditor protection with total liquidation close behind. Similar reasons appear on the headstone of this once mighty Canadian company as its casket is lowered into the graveyard of commercial failure.

Jobs, something very important to communities and families throughout Canada, slip into the undertaker’s grip to be embalmed and duly buried along with the corporate body that sustained life and health in these many communities for decades upon decades.

Experts estimate that according to Statistics Canada data, 540,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Canada since 2000.

Irony knows no bounds as a billionaire US president, Donald Trump, declared war against free trade generally and NAFTA in particular after the 2016 election in the name of job protection no matter what the effect might be upon other trading partners and close allies. Bombardier Inc. stands as an early victim of unprecedented American protectionist policies that threaten to levy 300% duties against the sale of Canadian aircraft in the United States.

Looks like the free trade era may be coming to an end and that the journey of vengeance may require, as Confucius once said, two graves. One for the United States and one for everyone else.

The infamous American Robber Barons of the early 1900s illustrated the unscrupulous methods used and the perils of unrestricted commerce that eventually burst into the worst world-wide economic downturn ever experienced in the industrialized world from 1929-1941.Â

Following WW2, government intervention evolved further in North America in response to serious safety threats to the public from contaminated food, defective merchandise and automobiles unsafe at any speed. This promoted consumer legislation designed over a number of years to set safety standards and level the playing field between giant corporations, wage-earning consumers and the vulnerable.

Fast forward to the United States 40th president, Ronald Regan, and his economic policies of the 1980s. These implemented widespread tax cuts, decreased social spending, increased military spending and caused deregulation of industry and commerce.

What isn’t so well known is how this version of free market economics tripled the US national debt from $997 billion to $2.85 trillion in 8 years (1981-1989) creating the largest debtor nation on earth.  This economic burden has plagued the American economy ever since and currently sits at over $20 trillion.

Brian Mulroney, the Canadian edition of free trade and Ronald Regan proudly authored the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1987 that endeavoured to maximize corporate profits, reduce taxes and costs and to eventually drift into cheap labour markets outside of Canada and the United States.

Although NAFTA defined Brian Mulroney’s legacy in Canadian politics, the majority of Canadians voted against it and his tenure ended in the most lopsided defeat for a governing party at the federal level, and among the worst ever suffered by a governing party in the Western world in 1993.

The final version of the NAFTA achieved ratification in 1994 and included Mexico.

NAFTA 1 proceeded with Canadian and American corporate casualties in both the textile and automobile industries piling up until the credit crunch of 2007 threatened Canadian and American automotive manufacturers with bankruptcy. The inability for Canadian and American companies to compete with cheap labour markets in Mexico (and China) emerged to become ostensible to the public eye and exposed many of the weaknesses early critics in the 1980s warned about.

Following a massive government bailout of major corporate entities such as the automobile industry, the dependency upon foreign countries received political attention regarding lost jobs and opportunities as a result of hitherto unchallenged free trade beliefs. Ironically, it was the conservative right wing in the United States who embraced free trade with unconditional acceptance in the beginning that thundered the loudest grievances against NAFTA 1.

A loud cry for the return of the lost jobs and opportunities gathered momentum under another Ronald Reagan slogan, to “Make America great again,” that found a new champion and became one of Donald Trump’s most successful campaign promises in 2016. The first step in fulfilling this promise was to rip up NAFTA 1.

NAFTA 2 begins exactly where NAFTA 1 began. What does free trade really mean and who benefits the most – and how long will it last?

We should refrain from rushing into the shallow end of the pool with desperation dripping from political pens eager to sign a superficial one-sided deal, especially now when we understand better what free trade really means and how it can end abruptly – leaving us stranded with exorbitant penalties, tariffs and countervailing duties that spell big trouble for Canadian workers, farmers, lumber, pulp and paper workers and all of the other associated industries trading with the United States and Mexico.

Many factors contribute to this trend including better health care and medicines. I would say this is good news. But not everyone sees the baby boomers’ sail into the sunset of life as good. For many, they worry the planet is being invaded by dangerous aliens who suck governments dry and show no mercy to taxpayers.

For example, an economics professor from Carleton University, Dr. Frances Woolley, rang the alarm bells once again in an article published recently by CBC, “As people get older, they need more health care, more home care, and that puts increasing demands on government spending. There are big challenges for the government coming on the fiscal side. She called it a slow motion train wreck.

This ominous phobia about seniors breaking the camel’s financial back of government pretty much falls under the category of conventional wisdom for many financial experts, today. They argue in unison that governments can’t handle the strain baby boomers put on today’s youth and the future.

Unfortunately this narrow-minded perspective ignores the contributions baby boomers made to social justice, gender fairness, pay equity, consumer rights, human rights and the information age that created the society younger people and everyone else benefits from today. You would think they earned a respectable retirement and to be treated with respect and proper health care.

The bad image sculptured upon the shoulders of an aging population overlooks the growth of wealth in Canada over this same period and that Canada has never been wealthier. No reference is made that today’s wealth is a product of today’s seniors.

The abysmal gap that widens every year between the extreme wealthy and the majority of Canadians hides behind the notoriety of seniors clogging up emergency rooms and long line-ups at the pharmacy for medicines their aging bodies cannot live without – and who is going to pay for it.

The following chart published in a Stats Canada report (2015), Changes in Wealth Across the Income Distribution, 1999 to 2012 documents the trend that the top 20% of the wealthiest families in Canada owned almost 50% of all household wealth. The bottom 20% owned 4% of the wealth. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-006-x/2015001/article/14194-eng.htm

The top 40% of all households accumulated 70% of all wealth (in 2012) compared with 68% in 1999.

The bottom 60% (three quintiles) held a meagre 30% of all wealth, or in other words, the middle class and lower income families are going downhill (from 32% in 1999.)

This begs the question about the poverty of government. Why must seniors face constant cut-backs and suffer the erosion of their incomes through inflation, taxation and endless fee increases including double dipping between health care providers and pension coverages – plus extra charges popping up everywhere?

Most reasonable people understand that the British Columbia Fair Pharmacare plan is a tax on the sick, and the most vulnerable of the population are seniors. And, even though this unfair and unjust practice has hurt millions of ill and elderly people, political parties rarely mention it and certainly have not changed or modified it to resemble anything fair since its inception in 2001.

It seems that as Canada gets wealthier, the governments with their disciples of gloom and doom have searched for reasons why the population is up to its assets in debt and pointed the finger at everyone else but itself. Seniors are an easy target because they lack the economic and physical power to fight back.

A proposed unhappy ending for the future, sketched by those who suffer from conceptual rigidity stuck in the grip of an unyielding conventional wisdom, resemble the climate deniers. This is a term used by Al Gore to identify those who cannot see the burning trees in the massive out-of-control fires in the forests throughout the world; ignore obvious weather changes such as unpredictable and more powerful storms or acknowledge the shelf of ice the size of Delaware that recently broke off Antarctica have anything to do with global warming.

These fortune tellers have convinced a functional consensus inside governments they are broke and there is no way out but to panic – and hunt for savings through cutbacks, send retirees back to work, extend the retirement age, tax the same old cash-strapped middle class or, in other words, the empty baskets, and foreclose on the empty nests of an aging population.

In the United States, one group, roughly half of the electorate, sits horrified at what has been happening since the election of Donald Trump and the other massive group ready to rumble.

This part of the right wing that in the past was kept caged and under control has been released with something never enjoyed before – electoral legitimacy. Their unabridged contempt for social programs, for government regulation and hatred for the modesty of liberalism runs wild on the streets picking fights with foreigners, free trade partners, environmentalists and screaming insults at the media who dare report any inconvenient truths or conflicting evidence that may contradict their ideological message.

In Canada, the opposite has been happening. Our version of liberalism politely sends confused messages about fiscal responsibility, deficit spending, the environment, unaffordable housing, immigration, taxing the wealthy and supporting the middle class better.

Although still relatively high at 54%, Mr. Trudeau’s popularity rating has dropped significantly since his election to the Prime Minister’s office. His government’s disinterest in the economy agitates the middle class up to their assets in debt (over $550 billion in consumer debt excluding mortgages), hurts individuals and families searching for affordable housing, and the failed  promise to tax the wealthy to reduce the burden on middle and lower income families drive many liberal-minded people away.

However, the most recent announcement that the Canadian federal government will apologize to the convicted terrorist Omar Khadr, for crimes he actually committed and for the treatment he endured under the hands of other governments, as well as to pay $10 million as compensation, will clearly drive a wedge between liberals and a growing conservative base unhappy with the Trudeau government’s performance. This misguided compensation shows complete disregard for the middle class that struggles to meet day care expenses, pay taxes, pay creditors and meet all of their monthly and annual expenses by converting a terrorist into a multimillionaire.

This, in my mind clearly, confirms Mr. Trudeau’s inability to grasp the realities of lower and middle class families in Canada, and how easily he is distracted by his pursuit of international fame as a benevolent and generous Canadian. He keeps on saying, “This is who we are” while flagrantly spending and overspending someone else’s money.

At a 54% popularity rating the country is almost pretty much halved, now. With interest rates to begin climbing in July 2017 it won’t take too long for a majority to form and eagerly await an election to articulate their opposition to liberalism gone south.

In both cases, Canada and the US are dividing and subdividing into bitterly alienated groups of the poor, the vulnerable, the misinformed and the powerful.

Fast forward to today’s headline from CBC where they reported Westjet bumped passengers – a team of competitive cyclists for Nova Scotia – off a flight when they boldly advertise they do not bump passengers. The article noted that ten members of Nova Scotia’s provincial cycling team, “Are so upset with their recent experience with WestJet, they’re planning to take the airline to court.”

Social media and the internet have challenged the limits of probity by the proliferation of untruthful assertions, half-truths or downright lies through fraudulent claims that deceive an audience of millions throughout the world.

Enter Donald Trump in 2016 where the leader of the most powerful country in the world dispenses simplistic and questionable tweets that make unfounded assertions on a frighteningly high number of issues and announcements. No documentation or reliable statistical research back up or confirm the many allegations made. He often uses what resembles a sales pitch, “Trust me, or I know, or I’ve talked to many people who agree with me,” as his ultimate justification that basically attacks anyone who disagrees with him or the media outlets that report his missteps and dubious interpretations of facts.

The White House today exhibits publicly the disintegration of a long list of normative traditions – professional courtesy to adversaries, respectfulness for the media who report what governments do and fail to do as allowed by freedom of speech doctrines and constitutionally protected in democracies, respect for the public by being careful as a leader whose office carries great national and international influence by only announcing researched and empirically verifiable statements.

Children are indeed affected by political leaders who normally in North America set an example of respectfulness to carefully prepared statements and defensible facts. Instead, in recent months, they observed that it’s okay to say things one day and then flip flop the next day to a different position. It’s okay to be inconsistent, call people they don’t like bad names, fudge the facts to suit a hidden or less than honourable purpose and basically play mind games with everybody.

The nastiness and character-bashing assaults during elections have become a new standard for politics in both Canada and the United States. Like Halloween gives licence for people to dress up as bad people, demons, witches and zombies, so too elections allow the gloves to come off for politicians to wave their vituperative flags before the public clinging dearly to the belief that the nastiest most derogatory campaign will win. Once again, Donald Trump lowered the bar, first during the primaries as he routinely abused fellow Republicans with embarrassing references, name calling and saying unbelievably disrespectful things and then, getting elected. A strong argument could be made the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States should replace Emile Durkheim’s antiquated definition of moral and ethical disintegration in society.

Canada unfortunately has slipped into the gutter, too, during elections with campaigns aimed at discrediting and embarrassing opponents rather than emphasising clear policy platforms and differences.

Examples of the collapse of a strong moral backbone holding Canadian (and American) societies together include the ever-increasing demand for police, overloaded and expensive criminal and family courts and prisons. Violence in the cities further expose the sad reality that strong morals that encourage love, respect, peace, truth and fairness are rapidly disappearing.

Governments join this list as the Senate scandals revealed profligacy at the highest levels and un affordable housing pushing the tax paying middle and lower income families into the hills and mountains to leave the best land and services behind in concentrated cities populated by the wealthy.

The era of fake news more accurately reflects false politicians with false promises. One that warns us that the end is near unless we revive honesty, morals and the highest ethical standards in government and business.

I remember asking my political science professor back in 1971 what the difference was between a conservative and a liberal. He asked me what I thought to which I replied, “It seems to me a conservative would be against pensions and universal health care, unemployment insurance, reasonable welfare rates and progressive policies that promoted fairness and access to government services.

He answered. “Actually, conservatives tolerate all the things you have mentioned. What makes them different is how they dislike above all else, change, any kind of change.”

In British Columbia the differences between the BCNDP and the Social Credit party in the 1970s and 80s were striking and best illustrated in the reforms passed by the Dave Barret NDP government and then assailed by Bill Bennett in the 1980s that almost resulted in a general strike. This was followed by the Vander Zalm Fantasy Garden version of privatization of government programs and the purity of free enterprise to self-regulate that wiped out the Social Credit Party entirely.

In BC, conservatives of all shapes and sizes disliked taxes and the cost of government the most – independent of the evolution of society from a past tainted with injustices that included institutional racism against the First Nations, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indian people from India as well as systemic prejudice against certain religious groups – a political preference for unregulated trade practices – the tolerance of gender inequality – and the adoption of economic policies that gave huge tax cuts to the wealthy, promoted privatization and endlessly pursued a reduction in government regulation and services.

Gradually tax cuts, smaller government and the privatization of government programs became the central core of conservative ideology while liberal ideology propagated the expansion of government services, especially for the poor and middle class, better schools, better higher paying jobs and a better life for everyone.

The BCNDP in the 1990s provided a liberal government that balanced the public interest with business and trade union agendas. Simultaneously, the BC Liberal Party assumed a conservative agenda that dated back to the Social Credit Party that exploded into action in 2001 with a tax cut for the wealthy and massive government program closures.

At the same time, the federal liberal, NDP and conservative parties were quite different. The federal liberals in the 1990s followed a conservative agenda of balanced budgets, government cut-backs that left middle and lower income families stranded searching for affordable day care facilities, affordable post-secondary education for their children, less benefits for workers, and rising personal debt while the provinces were squeezed with lower transfer payments for social programs.

In many respects, the Stephan Harper conservative government of the new Millennium resembled if not replicated the austerity measures first imposed by the federal liberals.

The federal NDP during the 2015 election likewise shifted to the centrist middle with policies that included a balanced budget whereas the federal liberals proudly announced a new era of government deficits that defied conventional wisdom.

This all leaves the electorate with confusion and uncertainty as to which ideology political parties truly subscribe. They are not sure what they are voting for, and as in the 2017 election in British Columbia suggests, half the population held their nose, tossed dice in the air and voted reluctantly – for or against – depending on your point of view, leaving the balance of power in the hands of an unknown group the vast majority of voters did not vote for, the Green Party, that won 3 seats.

So what a social conservative means and how Andrew Scheer differs from his predecessors remains to be seen. For the moment, the politics of ambiguity continue.

The big question about unaffordable housing across Canada is this. Who is to blame? Hitherto, government policy has focused on lower income families who need mortgages to ‘curb demand’ which leaves the impression that there are too many non-wealthy people buying houses. The governments have duly tightened up mortgage lending rules to make it progressively more difficult for lower income groups to purchase a home, and often have raised interest rates as well. In both cases, the policy has failed.

A tax against foreign investors proved to temporarily quell the overinflated demand for real estate in Vancouver, but only temporarily.

The growing tension between escalating real estate prices and borrowing more and more to purchase homes unfortunately, is far more complicated. The decline of rural employment opportunities and the urbanization of economic opportunities factors into the shift of the population to the major cities. The decline of traditional employment opportunities in many regions of the country such as the Maritimes and northern communities has driven individuals and families into the cities in a desperate search for an income to support their families.

The abstract notion of ‘demand’ driving up housing prices conveniently masquerades the underlying economic deficiencies and suggests that all you need to do is make it more difficult for non-wealthy people to buy a home in large urban centres.

Unfortunately, middle and lower income families need affordable housing, not just want it.

From a banker’s perspective, minimizing risk for their loans is their bottom line. CMHC is a lender and a co-signor for bank mortgages. Its primary concern is to avoid losses and hence it weaves policies to protect their loans and liabilities, not exactly public policy to provide affordable housing. Hence, they tighten up on the lower income groups, the high risk group, as an ostensible response
to the crisis, or at least to appear to be doing something of value for the government and the public – even if these policies have failed in the past and will continue to fail in the future.

Wealthy people do not need a CMHC approved mortgage. Many do not need a mortgage at all. So, there are at least two separate problems with unaffordable housing. The poor and lower income classes who depend upon CMHC to purchase a home, and the wealthy and the investor class that do not.

Raising interest rates hurt the debt-ridden middle and lower income groups that also owe over $556 billion in consumer credit in addition to their mortgage debt. Any serious analysis of debt in Canada for individuals and families must include their charge cards, car loans, student loans and lines of credit. Canadians borrowed more and more each and every year, from $20 billion in 1975 to the present $556 billion (excluding mortgages) to make ends meet.

It is my view that the Bank of Canada understands the conundrum of high consumer and mortgage debt and the effect higher interest rates would have on these debtors. In many respects, higher interest rates may well break the camel’s back.

What perhaps is most needed is for governments to accurately identify the causes of this dependency upon credit and devise decisive policies that would facilitate debt freedom rather than deepen the dependency with higher house prices and the excessive interest rates currently charged by the private banks on the consumer debt while the near zero Bank of Canada lending rates continue.

Far more serious legislation, rules and regulations are required to insulate lower income groups from the vexatious games played by investors and the wealthy.

I suppose one could say that not just the banks have been downgraded for lending too much. The governments likewise have been indirectly downgraded for allowing a nation of debtors to grow so big without any action to curb the indebtedness and the multitude of reasons middle and lower income families are up to their assets in debt.

A bright light to our profound past, of life in early Canada in the 19th century; of tales about neighbourly love; of delivering milk by horse-drawn cart; of walking several miles every day to and from school; of the frigid cold temperatures on the inside of his winter bedroom visible with each breath he exhaled; of family members famous for their contributions to society and to each other; a never ending encyclopedia of childhood memories never forgotten, an enthusiastic voice never silenced by time – yes, history claimed one of its great spokespersons today when the brightest light of all was turned out.

Uncle Herb passionately loved his family and caressed his ancestors, parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, children and grandchildren with unparalleled pride and affection. He alone reached out to every single Whitfield and their children with the friendly hand of kinship, accepting, listening, consoling, advising, and including everyone in his magnanimous embrace. He got involved. He participated with every Whitfield descendent to the maximum of his exemplary ability, warming hearts with his irresistible personable skills even when the doors were only partly opened or a foot blocked entry.

As a senior citizen, Uncle Herb fit the description of a world traveller as he most impressively jumped upon ferries and flew onboard aircraft, big or small, without hesitation, to go fishing with friends in Ontario, to see relatives, to attend functions, book launches, and family reunions. Neither time nor distance impaired Uncle Herb’s willingness to be a part of our lives.

Herbert Morton Whitfield, the last remaining child of Jennie and Herbert Whitfield, born and raised on the Whitfield’s rural farm in Belleville, Ontario, passed the torch of life to us who sadly wave goodbye and who stand on the shores of a flourishing present he helped create. He leaves behind a rich historical record of a family, our family, that ploughed the fields of history with dreams and horses, making Canada a stronger and better place.

Thank you Uncle Herb, a valiant champion of a glorious past that will live forever… because of you.

Douglas P. Welbanks
March 31st, 2017