Category Archives: Bureaucracy

Consumer choice wins in the end.

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It has hardly been a secret in the last few years that the anti-“sprawl” zealots have held a disproportionate degree of sway over Calgary’s city council and planners. Despite the vast majority of the city not being within the barista/hipster city center crowd, city decisions have acted as if most of our populace wanted to live in some sort of expensive, dense Manhattan style of city.

I am not exaggerating when I describe the anti-“sprawl” crowd as zealots either. If you are on twitter, only a short observation of the Calgary bike cult or the armchair city planners on #yycccc will quickly drive home that there is a collection of people who are outright fervent beyond reason when it comes to the idea that our city is growing outward and that people are daring to drive cars. This would be simply laughable if city hall treated these folks as the fringe element that they are but in light of the ridiculous decisions and plans from city hall it is clear that this minority tail is heavily wagging the majority dog here.

The reality is that 97% of Calgary’s growth has been in non-core areas.  People do not want to live in a dense, bike laden hipster’s paradise and they are moving in droves to the suburbs. Despite the infrastructure challenges of a fast growing city, our city council has been focused on idiotic navel-gazing about how to find millions to decorate a new LRT line with art projects and building ugly pedestrian bridges.

One of the great (and sadly plentiful) bizarre plans that our city planners have vomited out has been to remove a lane on Macleod Trail to make room for bike lanes!

This folks is how simply stupid it is getting. Even if that idiotic plan does not actually get implemented, how much did we spend to have these fools design it? They have actually targeted one of the most congested roads in the entire city and are proposing to make it smaller! Do you really think there is a traffic backup of bikes just waiting to use new lanes? Do you really think that people will give up their cars in the tens of thousands to ride bikes to work in January if we simply choke off enough major arteries in our city? Our fanatics in city planning seem to think so.

The hiring of the controversial and extreme city planner Rollin Stanley reflects the mindset of city hall right now.  Ignoring how clearly city residents are voting with their feet and wallets in moving to the suburbs, the city has sought out and found a planner who wants to somehow force upward growth in Calgary. This is a man who actually celebrates parking problems and does not hide his disdain for strip-malls (that service the majority of the city population).

Despite City Hall and it’s hired zealots trying to force-feed us into some utopian urban density, they are failing (though expensively). Citizens are moving from the core in droves and now in a brilliant move, Imperial Oil has decided to relocate their headquarters to the suburbs.

The game is vicious in downtown Calgary as corporate headhunters snipe talented employees from each other. It is critical for every energy company to gain the best people that they can from geologists to production accountants and Imperial has just played a master stroke.

City hall and their density obsessed planners have always worked under the assumption of “if you build it they will come”. These planners have assumed that if they simply force the issue though congestion and zoning that citizens would comply and resign themselves to living in an urban environment. People have put lie to that with their home purchases and now corporate Calgary is following the people.

Every other energy company in Calgary should worry about any of their employees who live in South Calgary right now. Downtown workers have endured years of wasted time due to the purposeful choking of traffic into and out of downtown Calgary by our deluded city managers and planners. Downtown workers have spent countless millions in parking fees and fuel to get downtown. Now with Imperial Oil able to offer employees in the South an extra ten hours a week of their lives along with the parking and fuel savings, they will be very well placed to snipe and retain some prime people.

I have seen some caught up in the density cult already chirping about putting punitive taxes and such on Southern heathens who may dare to live and work within the suburbs. This again demonstrates their total disconnect with the simple and invariable concept of supply and demand.

Okotoks crowed for years about their growth cap as a community outside of Calgary. Reality and consumer demand caught up and Okotoks has rescinded what was an unviable and idealistic policy.  Now should our city be foolish enough (and I fear it may be) to continue to harangue suburban dwellers, all we will see is movement to satellite cities such as Okotoks, Strathmore, Cochrane etc. as corporate offices move to city fringes to follow the people. Sorry kids but in such a circumstance there will not be enough coffee shop facilities and bike rent stations to keep the “vibrant” urban core that some desire. You need real players and real money for that and our city is driving them out.

I feel that the idiot who proposed closing a lane on Macleod Trail for bikes should be fired for complete incompetence and disconnect with reality. On the other hand though, I almost hope that our city council is indeed stupid enough to rip up all six lanes of Macleod with this purpose in mind. That perhaps will finally be the final straw which will encourage voters to get off their butts and vote out the extremists we have on council such as Druh Farrell, Brian Pincott and Gian-Carlo Carra.

I am not sure what else it would take.

Walla walla bing bang.

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Yes folks our Alberta’s provincial government has moved beyond being simply inept and arrogant into the world of the bizzare.

Heathcare consistently ranks as a prime issue with Albertans. With waiting lists hitting critical levels despite massive annual increases in government spending, our brilliant Health Minister Fred Horne has taken it upon himself to give naturopaths full status as “medical professionals”.  

For those wisely not familiar with naturopaths, these cranks tend to practice such brilliant therapies as homeopathy and touch therapy among other forms of quackery. They tend towards conspiracy theories and generally are against medical advancements such as, drugs, vaccines and effective treatment of ailments.

I won’t go into too much detail as to why naturopathy is quackery as it has been so thoroughly covered by many others. I will put a couple links below to save some googling.

A Close Look at Naturopathy Stephen Barrett, M.D.

More naturopathic nonsense in Ontario

Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake

Below I will add a link to a bit by my my favorite libertarians (Penn and Teller).

Their shows are laden with expletives but they do such an excellent job of debunking the “alternative” medicine movement that they are well worth watching.

People can go waste whatever money, time and health they like with whatever crackpot treatment they like. It is their money and their bodies.

When we are talking about the sanctioning of practices by our government though, we must stick to EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE. 

Yes, there has been a process set about to determine what falls under evidence based medicine. Double blind studies, peer review and proven results are the sort of hurdles that treatments are expected to pass before being considered evidence based.

Naturopaths of course reject the concept of evidence based medicine. That is not surprising considering pretty much no naturopathic treatments can withstand proper medical scrutiny.

Don’t listen to crap people spit out about how the treatments have been around for hundreds of years. People used to drill holes in the skulls of patients to let the demons out hundreds of years ago, that does not make it a valid treatment. The average life expectancy a couple hundred years ago was 36 years. Is that something to aspire to?

There are claims that now that naturopathy has a college, they will be able to self-govern. Oh good, quacks governing quacks. That should ensure effective treatment.

Don’t let them snow you pointing out how long naturopathic quacks have gone to school. A person could spend decades in school studying astrology, that person still will not be able to predict the future and will be as well trained to treat ailments as your typical naturopath.

Government sanction of naturopathy adds to the facade of legitimacy for these quacks. You can rest assured that naturopaths will soon be demanding public funding for their pap and considering government is sanctioning them, it very well could happen.

Our healthcare system is under pressure and is crit

Prohibition just doesn’t work.

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As is so often the case, people are often drawn to simplistic solutions for complex problems. At issue right now is the potential banning of retail pet sales within Calgary. I have posted before on dog neglect and puppy mill issues as Jane and I foster rescue dogs. There is a large and growing problem as puppymills and unprepared pet owners neglect, abuse and abandon dogs every day.

I am going to post a couple pictures below of “Rowdy”. He is a rescue dog that Jane and I rushed to the vet just last week. He is residing with us until he gets healthy enough to adopt into a proper household. Rowdy is an English bulldog and is only 10 months old.

At the vet, poor Rowdy was terrified and it was difficult to even coax him out of the kennel. His fear and mistrust of people was very evident. After examination it was concluded that Rowdy had an extreme case of mange. His eyes were both badly infected as were his ears. Open sores were weeping all over his body and his underside was nearly totally hairless and greatly inflamed. He had been terribly neglected.

Below is the pile of medications that we will be giving to Rowdy for the next few weeks from anti-biotics to painkillers to anti-fungals along with some other unpronounceable meds. He clearly could not have survived much longer as he was.

 

Below is Rowdy when we got him home and gave him a long and gentle bath. It nearly brought us to tears as large clumps of fur and skin came loose all over the poor little fellow. His nose wrinkle was completely impacted and infected and the rest of his body was filthy. It may very well have been his first bath ever.

Rowdy is doing well and with a few months of care he should be just fine. He is proving to be a very affectionate and mischievous puppy as he regains confidence in knowing that he is in a safe home. He is learning to be a puppy again.

Now back to my main point; Rowdy came from a breeder not a pet store or individual owner. Banning retail pet sales would do nothing to prevent this.

Rowdy is unfortunately typical of the kind of dog that comes into the Alberta Bulldog Rescue Society (and other animal rescue societies). Rowdy was in worse condition than most, but his story is typical as puppy mills churn out dogs with no consideration for the well being of their breeder animals.

The main group that has been pushing for the ban on retail pet sales calls itself “Actions Speak Louder” Their site offers some great tips on ethical pet purchasing and I don’t doubt for a second that they are generally well meaning. Unfortunately the group highlights the statement: “Puppies are not products!” While that is a nice fluffy statement it does say worlds about the group.

Puppies, kittens, horses and goldfish are all property and at one time or another can all indeed be products. Animals are property and when we exchange property it becomes a product. Animals are indeed different than inanimate property in that we have personal moral and indeed legal obligations to provide a degree of care for them and can’t abuse them. We can take a sledgehammer to our car for example but if we did so to a horse we would soon find ourselves criminally charged even though both were technically our property.

Over the years some of the more extreme animal activists have made repeated efforts to have the laws changed so that animals would no longer be legally considered property. If such legislation were ever to pass, we would immediately see court challenges by PETA and other groups of the sort against every livestock operation in the country. These groups know exactly what they are doing in the pursuit of this change in legislation and it simply can’t happen.

I would very much like to see laws against animal cruelty strengthened with better enforcement and stronger penalties against offenders. There was a federal bill that failed some years ago that would have greatly toughened our laws. The bill unfortunately died as there was a clause within it calling for animals to lose their designation as property in law. The activists managed to squeek that clause into our very parliament but it was thankfully rejected by our legislators at the time. The downside is that the activists did more damage than good in that the whole bill got scrapped as they pushed it too far. Activist consultation in the drafting of bills really is of limited value at best.

Calgary City Council looking at banning the perfectly legal practice of retail pet sales and it is the wrong way to go in a few ways. For one, it simply should not be the role of a municipality to ban legal sales of any product despite what activists claim. This would set a very ugly precedent from city hall and is offensive to free enterprise. The ban would be nearly moot as well as apparently there is only one pet store in Calgary that still sells kittens and puppies. Why all the discussion and time wasted to ban something that essentially isn’t even happening?

The reason that retail stores no longer carry puppies and kittens is simply due to a lack of public demand and due to good work on the part of animal activists. In exposing the abuses of puppy mills and in highlighting the need for adoption of animals, the market for pet stores has simply collapsed. Retailers have discovered that it is much more lucrative to supply products for pet care than selling pets themselves anyway so it hasn’t taken much to make them discontinue sales. Legislation for a ban was not nor is it required.

Some could see the banning of retail pet sales as something of a moral victory. What it really would be would be a form of greenwashing in that people at large would feel that a problem has been solved when it really has not.

The internet has changed the entire face of pet sales. Breeders no longer need to pump out puppies for pet stores as they can cut out the middle-man and sell at retail prices directly to consumers through the internet. This has had the effect of expanding abuses in the unregulated industry of dog breeding and I fear that it will only get worse. Essentially banning retail pet sales in hopes of ending abuse is as naive as thinking that banning street level pot dealers will end pot use and distribution.

Banning internet sales of pets or trying to ban breeders is pointless. What we need is a continued effort to educate and encourage consumers to adopt pets in need before going to breeders. For those who want a purebreed pet, people should be encouraged to demand high standards from breeders that they patronize. As I said in my prior post, customers should demand to see the breeding facilities or simply refuse to buy there. The whole thing is about money and if unprincipled and cruel breeders don’t make money, they will go away.

We have a serious problem with impulsive pet purchases and very unprincipled breeders. Lets work on this productively though. Rest assured my heart breaks and I would love to see change immediately. I understand though that it will take some time to get things right. Kneejerk bans and interfering in legitimate business is not the route to take here. We don’t need symbolic legislative victories, we need real and lasting change. That will mean changing the views and practices of people at large. It is much more work and will take more time but will be worlds more effective than any ban could ever imagine to be.

One last plug here. Alberta Bulldog Rescue really needs help from supporters whether though the donation of time or funds (medications are terrifically expensive) or people considering adopting. You can see updates on Rowdy’s progress among other foster dogs here.

“Sustainable”: code for massive municipal social engineering.

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There are many terms and words that are overused and abused by many in the political world. In Calgary municipal politics there is no doubt that sustainable/sustainability top the list. The definition of the word is open to broad interpretation which gives license to people to utilize the term to encapsulate and hide a broader agenda. The word is used in a way to stifle debate often as we see politicos state: “We must be sustainable”. We see virtually every report and plan coming from city hall in Calgary noting sustainability as a goal yet often never defining just what makes an issue, plan, process, industry, practice or product “sustainable”.

Today I am locked into a motel room due to some rather nasty thunderstorms making my workplan for the day unsustainable. This has provided me with some time to read and review some of the pap and reports that have been commissioned and released by our city. Rest assured, when trying to read, absorb and stomach much of these terribly expensive reports a person needs a good deal of free time without distractions. Gravol helps too.

This morning I punished myself by reading the:  “CALGARY FOOD SYSTEM ASSESSMENT & ACTION PLAN”.

The terms of reference for this dog can be found here along with cost estimates but nothing solid.

The above document was produced by the “Calgary Food Committee” which was formed by  “The Office of Sustainability” (yes there really is a city hall office dedicated to this). This office is modelled through the “ImagineCalgary” Which has a vague mandate of coming up with a 100 year plan for the city that will be presumably sustainable.

The above mess is tied in with “Plan it” which is a city hall division that routinely churns out reports and studies further seeking means of planning to live in a sustainable environment.  The proposals of “Plan it Calgary” are routinely rejected as they simply are not fiscally viable.  Despite this, the pointy heads slaving away in that department will continue to roll out more reports, plans and propositions at great expense to taxpayers.

It is outright overwhelming when one begins to dig through the City of Calgary website and sees just how many committees and groups are spawned and funded to look into and report on damn near everything. There is clearly a huge cottage industry in creating reports for the City of Calgary and while Mayor Nenshi has often spoken of streamlining City Hall, I don’t recall him trying to touch the report/study generation department. I suspect it is because that department makes for such a great employment program for old school chums who have tired of working in the barista field. While it is easy to find all these departments, reports and committees; it is damned tough finding the costs of these things (unsurprisingly).

Need, viability or even a fragment of realism are not required in generating these reports. Lack of all of the aforementioned are all present in the “Calgary Food System Assessment & Action Plan”.  This thing is so horrible I am outright compelled to break it up and tear it apart piece by piece.

Let’s start with need. Is there a food sustainability crisis in Calgary by any measure that demands a huge report and insanely intrusive “action plan”? Do we see mass or even minor starvation in Calgary? Is it difficult to find sources of food in Calgary? Is food in Calgary more expensive than other jurisdictions? Are we at risk of starvation or even rationing of food within Calgary? The answer to all of the questions is a resounding NO! 

Canada and Calgary within it have some of the lowest prices for consumer products (including food) as a ratio to income in the entire world. We have a vast variety of food products from the inexpensive & healthy basics to delicacies and specialty foods. We are by far a net exporter of agricultural products and are not at any risk of running out of domestically produced food.  There are countless big-bag grocery stores within the city and thousands of smaller stores whether Mom & Pop shops, butchers or even large gas stations for small purchases. We have a transit system and good roadways for access to food suppliers. There simply is no food crisis in Calgary nor a looming one by any measure.

One does have to wonder what the reasoning is behind producing a large and expensive report on a non-issue is aside from employing it’s authors. In reading the entire report though it is easy to see the underlying agenda. There are an element of people who want to go back in time to the days when people lived on small farms where they often did live in food independent environments. Never mind that the life expectancies of these folks was 40 back then or that there was mass starvation on those farms as recently as the 30s due to drought. With some highly rose-colored glasses some report generating idealists have determined that this organic and independent lifestyle is attainable and desirable to most people if they simply would embrace going back in time. There is of course a general feeling of loathing of large scale and corporate agriculture throughout the report despite those things being what actually have made food affordable and plentiful to large urban populations.

Lets have a look at what that report lists as it’s goals from the imagineCalgary targets:

By 2036, Calgarians support local food production.

OK so apparently Calgarians need to be trained/convinced/mandated or something to support food production. Does this mean polling in a majority or every single Calgarian? In support does this mean participating? Will there be mandated home gardens? Mandated hours dedicated to working in collective gardens and urban ranches?

There is some polling in the report that indicates that Calgarians are generally supportive of the vague concept of local food production. Does that fill the 2036 quota or is their definition of “support” indeed something more? If that is indeed what is considered support, then what is this goal even trying to accomplish? We are already there.

The above speculations sound absurd on the surface but in reading the entire report I put little beyond these people. What I suspect would happen though is that all Calgarians would find themselves mandated through taxation to support local food production through punitive taxes added to imported foods and massive subsidies to local foods (as local/urban production is not fully sustainable).

The statement itself is as broad broad beyond reason and is a ridiculous goal for a report/action plan.

By 2036, Calgary maintains access to reliable and quality food sources.

Well that certainly does indeed sound like a nice goal. Of course I had not realized that such a threat to access actually existed. I suspect that access to food will be maintained simply due to supply and demand. Hungry people are not prone to closing roads, railways and farms. There is no exclusive access to food. We do not have people being denied food due to race or religion. Access simply is not an issue.

This statement goes a little deeper when one reads the report though. On page 90 the apparent issue is broken down.

The authors of this report feel that it is catastrophic that many Calgarians live more than 1km from a major grocery store. Keep in mind this is “major” stores such as Safeway or Superstore. Convenience stores have been categorized strangely as eating establishments and thus are not considered secure sources of food purchasing.

Now lets look at the makeup of our city. The majority of areas where one could find themselves more than 1km from a large grocery store are suburban and are middle class areas. These areas are predominantly populated by people who are mobile and have chosen to live in areas that are predominantly residential and have limited retail facilities. I bolded “chosen” because individual choice is so often ignored by city planning social engineers.

Now there are some lower income people who do not have access to a vehicle and for whom getting to a large grocery store could be more troublesome. The maps and charts in this report show where we have most of our low income people however and the vast bulk of them live in older, denser and more developed areas that have many retail options including large grocery stores. The number of people who live more than a kilometer from a large grocery store and who can’t actually get to one is microscopic. It certainly does not warrant rezoning the entire city.

Oh but wait! Zoning is exactly what is being proposed. Yes, below I will quote exactly what this report recommends to address this non-crisis of access to large food retailers:

Work with Land Use Planning and Policy to analyze the physical accessibility to grocery stores in the established areas and in the development of future policy in local area plans.
Explore potential programs and initiatives to encourage the location of food retail outlets in areas of
need. Collaboration with Family and Community Support Services, Land Use Planning and Policy, Federation of Calgary Communities and Business Revitalization Zones.

Note that with all of these calls for “collaboration” that developers and retailers are left off the list. Retailers base their locations on where they find the most demand. It is as simple as that. How does this group plan to “encourage” retailers to set up shop where business is not viable? Will the encouragement be punitive or through massive subsidies (yes us the taxpayers again)? Aside from existing districts, what will happen in new suburbs where large tracts have been zoned for large grocery retailers if no retailers want to move in? Will we force businesses to open? Will we have large city owned grocery stores? I toured the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Rest assured people, government is not who you want in charge of food production and retailing. They really are not very good at it.

Mandating a major grocery provider so that every person in the city is within a kilometer of one is simply impossible and stupid in it’s proposal.

By 2036, 100% of Calgary’s food supply derives from sources that practice sustainable food production.

The above proposal is dipping right into the realm of  insanity. How intrusive would policy have to be in order to do this? They are not even saying “most”, they are proposing nothing less than 100% of our supply would be provided by sources that they determine to practice sustainable food production.

How the hell do they think they will do this? Will imported foods be banned? Will certain farms be allowed to sell to Calgary while others are not based on what this committee feels is “sustainable”?

Is this even possible under a municipal government? If not, what the hell business do these guys have in even proposing it as a goal?

Now the word “sustainable” appears 88 times in the report and is applied to damn near everything so it is tough to determine which context is in mind whenever it appears. With this crappy statement though it is expanded on later on in the document on page 110:

Environmental sustainability has been defined as the protection of air, land and water, critical for
achieving healthy ecosystems by minimising green house gas emissions, potable water use and waste
and maximising efficient use of land, air quality, water quality and biodiversity. In addition, the food
system should support community development and action taken locally to create economic
opportunities in the community on a sustainable and inclusive basis.

Quite the definition eh? So not only will these people somehow determine that 100% of Calgary’s food suppliers meet the above environmental criteria, they will somehow ensure that it is on an “inclusive” basis whatever that means.

Ahh but of course these fanatics do not stop there. On page 111 they go into a long diatribe about organic foods. You see, these people now want to expand into controlling exactly what you eat and they feel that they should somehow compel us all to eat organic food.

Now to each their own. If a person wants to pay a premium to purchase and consume organically produced food they of course have every right to. The same goes for producers. Of course I support the right of people to produce, consume and sell non-organic foods too and that is where I quickly part ways with our appointed, tax funded authors of this report.

If the goal of this food “sustainability” plan really is to ensure that healthy food is available to all at a reasonable price and with a limited footprint, then organics are the exact opposite way to go!

Let’s begin with nutritional content. Despite the perception of many, it has been outright proven that organic produce has no nutrional advantages over conventionally produced food (aside from increased protein gained through wormy organic apples).

Lets look at cost and environmental. Organic foods cost much more than conventional foods and cause a larger environmental footprint due to the much lower crop yields. In large scale farming one can’t simply pull weeds or apply a little detergent to aphids as we can in our gardens. No farmhouse will ever compost enough food scraps to fertilize a large operation. Due to this yields are consistenly lower in organic farming which in turn requires greater landuse at a greater cost to the environment and the consumer.

Personally I see it as cut and dry on the organics thing. Still though, some see it as debatable (everything is). There is simply no way that any benefits of organic food production can merit mandating that a percentage of it be a part of Calgary’s consumption despite that being an apparent goal on page 111 of the report.

By 2010, 100 % of Calgarians have access to nutritious foods.

Pure redundancy. 100% of Calgarians have access to nutritious foods already. Unless of course one wants to redefine what nutritious or access are. Get over it guys, food need not be organic in order to be nutritious. A person over 1km from a Superstore is not being denied access to food.

There are people in deep poverty who indeed have trouble getting to stores. Those are poverty issues rather than food ones however. The food bank and Meals on Wheels deal with this to some degree. There could be more work to be done on these issues but that really is not the part of a city-wide food mandate (or it sure shouldn’t be).

Some could claim that the cost alone of food is barring access for some from nutritional meals. That is simply a load of BS and this groups own report shows that.

On page 87 of the report, a piece is written on the role and successes of the Community Kitchen Program of Calgary. This is a great and proactive program that helps teach people how to shop efficiently and cost effectively. Menu planning is provided as well as direction to food specials. Now in their own statement they say: “The Community Kitchen Program can help you prepare delicious food for your family at an average cost of $1.85 per person per meal while saving you time and energy.” Yes, with effort a person can feed a family of four a healthy meal for less than $8.

We have no real food access issues in Calgary.

By 2036, sustainable urban food production increases to 5%.

Now by nature Calgary has a limited amount of urban food production. Calgary has a growing period of roughly 114 days which hugely limits the variety of foods that can be grown and the volume. Being surrounded by tens of thousands of square miles of agricultural land makes urban food production more than a little uncompetitive with major producers as a food source.

Many people garden and it is an excellent hobby. Good fresh food can be produced at home, it is nice to get outside and one can even save a few bucks. Gardening is not for everybody however. Many people simply do not have the time to plant and maintain a garden. Many people simply do not want to garden! I had to bold that because it is another one of those personal choices that social engineers despise.

This goal is where these planners start to tie themselves in knots a bit too in a few ways. While always pushing for a far denser urban environment, these people are also demanding that space be kept open for gardening whether community or personally. You simply can’t have it both ways people.

For a solution the heavy city hammer of zoning is proposed of course. Land is far too valuable (particularly in dense areas) to be set aside to grow veggies for 114 days per year. If we crunch space even further with mandated community gardens, we will an increase in property values again which of course leads to higher rents which of course leads to higher general cost of living which of course harms the low income people that these social engineers love to crow that they are protecting. Is there really a benefit in raising urban rent by say $50 per month on average so that land can be set aside to grow potatoes that for 5% of people that could have been purchased for 59 cents per pound at Safeway? These planners seem to think so.

Other means are proposed in the document. Rooftop gardens are a neat idea. They are rarely actually efficient and produce food that costs far more than simply purchasing it however. How would rooftop gardens be “encouraged”? Will owners have any say?

Now the foodie crowd wants to of course expand into further food production in suburban yards too. On page 40 of the report, it is suggested that people raise chickens, goats and bees in their yards! 

I do wish I was kidding here. Anybody who has spent time near goats knows that they are terribly smelly animals that make a racket and are prone to wandering. If I wanted to live next to a yard full of chickens and goats I would move to the damn country and I suggest the same to anybody who wants to raise livestock.

On page 40 the report speaks of wool and leather being produced in urban settings too. I guess sheep and cattle in backyards are not unreasonable to these people.

How about bees? Sure honey bees are generally non aggressive and they create a great benefit in their pollination efforts. Do you really want to live next to an amateur beekeeper though? How many stings will I get when my neighbor accidentally hits his beehive with the weedwhacker? What if myself or my kids are deathly allergic to bee stings as are so many people? Who will we sue? The city or my neighbor? Either way we will all pay in the end if such idiocy comes to pass.

Concepts of supply, demand and economies of scale are totally lost on the sorts who created this report and set these goals. If indeed we hit 5% urban food production it should only be because masses of citizens chose to do so on their own accord. We can’t force these things.

By 2036, the consumption of urban and regionally produced food by Calgarians increases to 30%.

This is the final little goal here. Now they have coupled urban and “regional” to come with a number of 30%. This goes back to the concept of the “100 mile diet” that eco-types have been pushing around the world. It is quite possible if a person lives in the tropics to have such a diet. Being in Calgary however, people would soon tire of the mass wheat and canola intakes and likely would miss citrus fruits and such.

Transportation of food goods does indeed add to consumption of fuels thus making an environmental impact. This does lead to increased costs though so typically supply and demand ensures that things remain in balance between local and imported foods (until social engineers meddle with the system. Look at Ukraine last century for example).

What really gets me in this report though is that they propose and encourage the use of “bio-fuels”  in transporting food in order to reduce environmental impact on page 60 and other parts of the report. Regulated minimum biofuel use actually caused food scarcity and pressured the poor in Mexico because corn was being burned as fuel rather than consumed as food!

Yes, the folks who want to feed the world are proposing that we switch to a fuel that burns food and has been proven to cause harm to the world’s hungriest and most vulnerable. Just brilliant.

To summarize, this report is nothing less than a pile of idealistic and unrealistic garbage produced in the name of some weird definition of “sustainability”. The City of Calgary blows millions on these idiotic reports and could cost us hundreds of millions if they actually tried to reach the goals of this one. The contents of the report are laughable but the cost and potential costs are unfortunately not.

“Food insecurity” is not what threatens the well being and prosperity of Calgarians. Bureaucratic and idealistic nuts who produce reports like this and the politicians who approve the intrusive legislation in applying the suggestions of these reports are a huge threat to the prosperity of us all. I know it is dull reading through these things, but Calgary voters really need to get a look at what their tax dollars are going towards and what they may be going towards in the future. This has to be reigned in and only the electorate can do it. Get up and vote to fire any city councilor who supports this trash in 2013.

The toughest test for these kids will be that of real life.

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I guess the fault lays with all of us to a degree. The election of school board trustees tends to be ignored and those who do vote often don’t look too terribly closely at who they are voting for or what these people plan to bring to the education standards table. Due to this apathy we have allowed officials to whittle away at all forms of individual responsibility or performance measurement in the classroom.

Every now and then we see eruptions of annoyance when absurd policies from the banning of games that dare to be competitive as musical chairs, dodge-ball and tag. There are movements afoot to ban scorekeeping in sports and of course decades of “social passing” has ensured that no student’s self-esteem need be damaged no matter how poorly they perform academically.

We have finally hit an apex of of idiocy when we see a teacher being suspended for giving marks of zero when no work has been completed!!

We have actually hit the point where students are being taught that even if they do absolutely nothing, they will still receive a grade. In the link above, there is a poll asking for reader input on the policy banning giving zeros in the classroom. While web-polls are of limitted veracity at the best of times, the number of voters and the clear indication of support on one side of this issue is striking.

As of this posting, nearly 12,000 people have voted in the poll. 96.7% of poll respondants oppose this myopic policy!

Despite such clear and overwhemling public opposition to this stupid policy, the Edmonton Public School Board is sticking to it’s guns and may indeed fire Lynden Dorval for his daring to not reward students for doing nothing. Who’s kids are these anyway? Does the opinion of the parents and future employers mean utterly nothing to the school board? Does it even strike these fools for a second that when 97% of the population disagrees with you that you may indeed be wrong?

Let’s look at the outcome of this culture of coddling that we are building. Literacy is a rather good skill to have going forward in life. There are fewer better ways to ensure that a person advances poorly in the professional world than to release them into it without adequate reading skills. Well as of 2006  it was determined that 42% of Canadians are semi-literate!

In light of such disturbing, embarassing and outright dangerous statistics, school boards and teacher’s unions have embarked on a crusade against testing of children on all possible levels. These groups are not as interested in educating children as they are in covering up any measures that may expose their abysmal performance. Have you ever noted how aside from demanding more money teacher’s unions are most strongly focussed on ending standardized testing? That speaks volumes.

Think of what is being done to these kids. Many kids with special learning needs are sliding through the system as they are never properly tested and graded. Social passing policies ensure that these kids graduate no matter how little of the actual learning material they have actually absorbed. A deep sense of entitlement has been built into these kids as they have not even been allowed to lose in a simple game of tag and they have learned that they will be rewarded even if they refuse to undertake even the most simple of school assignments. Now how well will these kids do when they get a job? How are these kids doing when they get to a post-secondary institution and discover that they will indeed be failed if they do not do or understand the work?

In real life there is no ribbon for participation. Learning how to fail is as important as learning how to win. Schools should not be some cruel dog-eat-dog environment of hyper-competition and strict grading. Schools should be preparing students for life though and with policies such as the “No zero” crap we can be assured that the schools are failing terribly.

In Quebec we have seen thousands of entitled post-secondary students protesting in the streets screaming against a modest tuition increase that would still leave them with the lowest tuition rates in North America. It is our public education system that has created this unrealistic sense of entitlement on the part of these students as they are essentially having a collective temper-tantrum upon discovering the most modest realities of adult life and responsibilities. I wonder how many of those students are actually staying on the streets in order to hide from the course material that they discovered that they can’t handle do to “social passing” policies?

Unfortunately this incremental idiocy takes nearly a generation to really hit us all. I like to think that it is peaking and we will push back in order to regain some common sense in our education system. The first step is for us all to engage in elections of both provincial parties and school board officials. Make it clear. Toss the ivory tower fools out on their asses if they insist on a continuation of this foolishness in education. Teach them that if they do not perform for us, we will give them a failing grade at the ballot box. We will all benefit from that in the end.

Why don’t we turn EI into an insurance plan?

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While EI is indeed an abbreviation with the word insurance in it, it is not an insurance plan. Many people have different opinions of what EI is and what it should be. It appears that many if not most are wrong.

In trying to make EI appear as an insurance plan, payments made by workers into the plan are called “premiums”. Sorry folks, but payments made by workers for EI are taxes and nothing less. Revenues from EI were indeed once kept in a fund specifically for the purpose of payouts on claims. When workers paid more into the EI fund than they drew out, a surplus was generated. Surplus funds never escape the eyes of free spending politicians for long unfortunately and EI “premiums” now are directed into government hands thus turning them into taxes.

While serving as Canada’s finance minister some years ago; Paul Martin spotted billions of dollars languishing away from his greedy fingers in an EI surplus. Typically, when an insurance fund generates a surplus either the premiums are reduced or a larger dividend is paid out to the shareholders in the insurance company. As EI was a government program without formal shareholders, premium reduction was really the only option. Surplus funds could have been invested as well so that revenues could lead to further reduction in premiums and the funds could have been saved for increased payouts should there be a sustained economic downturn. What Paul Martin did though was utilize a majority Liberal government in order to change the very nature of the entire program and find a different way to use surplus EI funds. The Chretien Liberal government passed legislation allowing government to take surplus EI funds and direct them to general revenue.

As soon as government could take funds from EI payments and spend them elsewhere, the program ceased being an insurance plan in any manner. Premiums are now actually taxes and payouts are essentially a form of social service. EI is not an insurance plan at all, it is just a large social service program with different steps for qualification and limits on the terms of payout.

The Harper government has been no better than the Chretien government in this regard. Surplus EI funds (overcharged taxes to the employed) are still being directed to general revenue and there has been no indication of an appetite to change the program to an insurance plan. The Harper government is rightly trying to move people away from chronic utilization of EI payouts, but the government is failing in it’s refusal to separate EI as a program.

 With EI being essentially a separate welfare program for the employed, it has unfortunately turned into what some people see as yet another entitlement from the government. Many people are using the program as a supplement to their incomes and they feel it is their right to do so. An insurance plan is not supposed to act as a savings plan, a retirement plan, an income supplemental plan, a regional income balancing plan or a supplemental vacation pay plan. Unfortunately EI is being used as all of the aforementioned things by many.

An insurance plan should be something that covers a circumstance that is unforeseen and can’t be properly planned for. Seasons are pretty predictible in their annual appearances for example so one really should not be insuring themselves for the changes of season. If you know that you will be laid off every year at the exact same time then you need either a savings plan or an alternative seasonal job. No real insurance plan would cover a person for something that happens as predictably as a sunrise.

With a real insurance plan, people’s premiums will rise and fall with their risk levels. Bad drivers pay huge automotive premiums while good ones see a reduction in premiums. A person’s reward for not needing insurance is reduced premiums, not a guaranteed payout. How often do you hear people say “I have paid in all my working life, it is my right to draw out!”.  Damnit no! That is a savings plan then, not an insurance plan. If you don’t crash your car for years, do you get to file a claim and collect anyway? If your house does not burn down, does this mean you get your homeowners insurance premiums back?

I think it is important that workers have a fallback should they unexpectedly find themselves unemployed for awhile. The buffer of insurance benefits can allow workers to seek new employment, move to a different region or retrain for a new line of work. I can live with participation in an insurance plan being mandatory for workers too. Whether run at arms length by government or even privately, an insurance plan can and will work. We need a real insurance plan though!

A real insurance plan will charge higher premiums for people in fields of work that are of a high risk for unemployment and will charge individuals who make more claims than others a higher premium as well. Premiums and payouts would reflect regional needs as well. People who rarely or never claim will find their premiums to be exceedingly small over time. While a minimum participation would be required, people could opt-in for extra coverage (with an increased premium of course) should they wish to. This reduces incentive to be unemployed while still covers a person should they need it.

Let’s be clear, among businesses that I despise insurance companies top the list. Whether privately run or government run, an insurance plan will have to be closely regulated. Benefits must come close to matching premium revenues and surpluses must not go to unreasonable salaries for management or payouts to company owners. Funds must never go to general government revenue either!

Until we actually change EI into an insurance plan we are simply deluding ourselves in calling it one or trying to treat it like one. The current incarnation of “Employment Insurance” is a tax-revenue generating scheme that is used as a political tool for regional political play. It is past time that we re-examined the role of EI and it’s form. The entitlement and abuse due to the current EI (welfare) system is not beneficial to Canadians at large.

If we are going to have an “Employment Insurance” plan, let’s make it a real one.

I guess BC is getting tired of the prosperity.

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While it still is a year away and we certainly saw the collective worthlessness of pollster’s projections in the recent Alberta election, the current polled trends in BC are disturbing. It appears that like a beaten wife who keeps returning to her abuser, BC wants to again embrace the governance of the party that castrated their economy for nearly a decade. It looks like the BC NDP is polling at about 50% right now.

 There are few reliable constants in the world but one that can be relied upon is the economic disaster that comes with a provincial NDP government. Bob Rae proved that the largest and most robust provincial economy in Canada could be brought to it’s knees with his catastrophic term as the Premier of Ontario. Saskatchewan lagged the nation in economic growth and activity under an NDP government as the province lost most of it’s youth in an exodus to Alberta seeking jobs. Manitoba is determined to remain a dependent little brother in confederation and under the inept guidance of their NDP government they are achieving that goal in spades.

 I remember very well working on oil exploration projects in the North where I literally would survey the perimeter of our program right on top of the BC/Alberta border. We would not venture an inch on to the BC side as our costs would explode and it simply was not worth it for our clients to pursue data there. Fort Saint John and Dawson Creek were in dire straits as the BC NDP government regulated and taxed the economy to the point where BC became a have-not province within Canada.

 Along with the consistency of NDP governments destroying economies is the consistent rebound for the economy when the socialists are finally tossed out. Saskatchewan is now a fast growing economic powerhouse in Canada thanks to the rational guidance of the Sask Party government. BC has been booming for over 10 years as the Liberal government undid much of the economic neutering caused by the previous NDP government. Ontario’s economy exploded under the Conservative government that replaced Rae’s grossly inept NDP. The pattern is clear and constant.

Despite such stark and repeated examples of the damage that NDP government’s cause, a large segment of Canadians simply refuse to accept this reality. Like a crack addict who knows the pipe is killing him yet can’t resist putting it back in his mouth again, provinces seem prone to repeated self-destructive behaviour in electing socialist governments.

 Please, please, please BC wake up! If you are tired of the Liberals than by all means pursue an alternative. Going back to the NDP however is simply an example of the cure being worth the disease. I do hope that this trend changes as I would hate to see our provincial neighbors dropped back into the economic toilet again.

 Alberta and Saskatchewan can’t keep up with subsidizing Quebec alone.

 

How long before we crash?

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A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.

~Alexander Fraser Tytler

Tytler wrote that quote over 200 years ago (yes I understand that some dispute the quote origins). I am still trying to remain optimistic in viewing that quotation as being a warning rather than an immutable prophecy. It certainly is startlingly accurate in it’s application to the current trend among modern democracies.

Ayn Rand painted a world in Atlas Shrugged where weasels and parasites had brought the world’s productive to their knees through punitive and envious policy (always cloaked in the words “fair” and “equal”). The parallels that can be drawn between Atlas Shrugged and many modern governments, industries and actions are almost discomfortingly common and accurate. Look at how our government continues to bail out Air Canada & give them preferential regulatory treatment while essentially punishing upstarts such as Westjet for their daring to be profitable and productive. Now look at it as if it were a railway and change the names of the players; you essentially are seeing Atlas Shrugged being played out.

The sense of entitlement that we see growing in developed societies is disturbing. We saw thousands of kids damaging and squatting in parks around the world essentially protesting nothing aside from a feeling that the world owes them something that they apparently are not getting. Look right now to the thousands of whining students in Quebec who while enjoying some of the most subsidized education in the entire world feel that they should riotously protest for more fruits from the labors of others.

In Greece the government finally went totally broke. Austerity was not a consideration for Greece, it was a necessity. Despite this stark and apparently self-evident reality, thousands of union-led Greeks poured into the streets and rioted demanding money and entitlements that simply did not exist. Despite their demands being about as realistic as asking that the moon be moved closer to the earth for a better view, these people preferred to delude themselves into thinking that their government could somehow produce resources from nothing if only the collective temper-tantrum of the citizens was loud enough.

Even the Socialist government of Greece realized that providing the entitlements was simply impossible. Cuts were tabled and austerity measures came into play. Due to that, the people of Greece elected a government who simply promised the impossible and have ensured their total economic collapse will be coming soon.

France was sucked in with the entitlement siren song in last week’s elections as well as they elected a government that promised to tax the “rich” at 75% while reducing the retirement age to 60. Yes the idiotic electorate has essentially put the last nail in their economic coffin as the productive are doubtless already fleeing and I am sorry folks but early retirement is not what is going to aid a country already mired in massive debt. I wish I could say that only the French would think that the solution to deep debt was to work less but I am afraid that this trend is happening all over.

The collision course with an unsustainable debt was deferred by the Obama government last year but the trend has not changed. The debt is growing at catastrophic levels and eventually it will have to come to a hard end.

In Alberta we are only better by degree. Despite rallying resource prices we are still mired in deficit and will be into true debt soon if the Redford government comes through with even half of the promises that were made. Sadly, making unsustainable promises is an effective electoral tactic as we most recently observed. There was more to the Redford win than simply mass spending promises but that was indeed a large part of it. The electorate simply voted for whoever promised the most goodies and Redford promised in the billions. Nobody wanted to really bother themselves with thinking of how we will actually pay for all that excess.

The temptation remains to spend one’s way into power and for parties it certainly is hard to resist when looking at the success of such strategies. The Wildrose Party will be working and maturing in the next four years and I hope that the party continues to strive to be fiscally responsible despite the temptation to try to outspend the government. The temptation to centralize power in a grassroots party is strong too and we are seeing such attempts well under way in the Wildrose Party as some see the membership as a hindrance rather than a resource.

The quotation at the beginning of this posting does not need to be a prophecy. The Wildrose Party can be the voice of reason who can keep Alberta from sinking even more deeply into the unsustainable defict trap. People are making excuses and justifications for borrowing all over the place. To be blunt, they are baffling with bullshit. We simply can’t spend more than we take in. All we are doing is putting off the inevitable financial crash so that the next generation is forced to pay the price.

The membership of the Wildrose Party must be vigilant and fight the temptation to turn itself into the Progressive Conservative Party under a new name or these years of work will truly have been for nothing. Fiscal responsibility can happen and the electorate will embrace it if it is presented well by a trusted source. The Wildrose Party does not need to change it’s base principles or mandate in order to win down the road. We need to evaluate how we present and pursue those principles though.

Let’s turn Alberta into a fiscally stable island while the world around us buries itself in debt. The way to begin though will be by ensuring that our next government is indeed dedicated to that principle and goal. Ground level activity and AGM participation will be critical for the Wildrose Party in the next few years. If we don’t assert ourselves as party members, I assure you that the party will continue to centralize even further and we will simply be replacing one group of undemocratic opportunists with another one.

Remaining debt-free is the tougher political road but it is the only worthwhile one.

Voting with their feet and wallets, Canadians are heading to suburbia.

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The anti-“sprawl” crowd is a vocal group but in looking at our development patterns these people are clearly in a tiny minority. Despite efforts to stunt outward development and an almost cult-like subgroup of people screaming for and trying to shame people into dense downtown living, Canadians en masse are simply choosing to move away from the cores of cities.

Some recent number crunching has revealed that non-core areas have made up 97% of Calgary’s growth with similar numbers in cities accross Canada.  

It is not that hard to figure out why this is a trend. When I was in my early 20s, I lived in downtown Calgary and I loved it. I could walk to pretty much anything I needed and while Calgary is not known for it’s exciting downtown nightlife, the downtown still provided many bars and such to be patronized. I was shopping for food for one and didn’t mind walking a couple blocks with some grocery bags and riding an elevator with them. Of course, my needs and preferences changed as I grew older. The main thing was having kids.

Suddenly grocery loads are a bigger deal and the need for a car is becoming more acute. While I was comfortable walking downtown streets at night as a young man, I really did not like walking with my kids past the seedy elements that are drawn to city centers. I wanted space. I wanted a yard for the kids to play in. I wanted a spread out neighborhood where I knew who lived next door. I wanted family to be able to visit without paying $20 in parking. To summarize, I like over 90% of Calgarians chose to live in the suburbs and have utterly no regrets.

I understand that some people manage to live downtown with kids and enjoy it. Well good for them. It doesn’t need to mean that the rest of us should have to.

I am tired of the near scorn being directed at suburban commuters for daring to choose to live in a cost-efficient comfort with their families. Nobody should be ashamed for not wanting to live in a crowded dense area. We have the space to grow outward and we are doing so. Good.

Now that we have established that the vast vast majority of Calgarians do not want to live downtown, can we start to model policies based on that reality? We don’t need more damn bike lanes. There is no screaming need for more bikes, there simply is a loudly screaming minority of bike riders. We are refusing to recognize where our population really is and are choking traffic to accommodate a tiny minority. Never will a large number of middle-aged folks suddenly decide to start riding bikes 20km to work downtown in January so let’s quit with the idiotic planning under the assumption that they will.

Those who are tired of smog and idling should look at reality here too. Choking traffic will not reduce this. People will simply get up earlier and sit idling longer as they have lost lanes to a handful of bike riders in winter. You want to reduce fuel consumption and idling? Speed up traffic flow then.

Our mayor and council love to blow millions on endless studies of everything under the sun. Well we don’t need to spend a pile here to see the trend. We are a prairie city that is growing quickly and it won’t be stopped. Lets start planning based on that reality instead of some unrealistic utopia of a densely packed downtown. People simply do not want to live like that.

Really folks, the urban density pictured below is hardly a noble goal to pursue.

A picture of our future?

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Here is a piece that summarizes Don Drummond’s release of The Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services.

We see all over the inevitable outcome of continuing down the road of trying to tax, spend and borrow our way into prosperity. Huge governments all around the world are collapsing under their own weight. While Ontario is not as troubled as Greece and Alberta is not as bad as Ontario, we are all heading in the same direction.

Don Drummond’s report could easily substitute the name Alberta for Ontario and while the figures would differ the conclusions would be just as valid.

Nanny Redford and her big-government Tories released a feelgood budget loaded with unrealistic revenue projections and spending increases for all. There is utterly no sign of long term foresight in the budget. What we see is a collection of spending promises modelled solely with the goal of getting the Progressive Conservatives re-elected at any cost.

 The Wildrose Party alternative budget was better and balanced though in my view still did not go far enough in an honest pursuit of spending restraint. Still by far the Wildrose is the best of the bunch coming into this election. I can’t even begin to think how much Redford would be blowing in tax dollars without the Wildrose pressure from the right.

 Our political leadership is terrified of  making tough decisions and honestly identifying where to cut.

We can look realistically at our future and get spending under control now or we can travel down the road Greece is on where austerity is forced upon you and you lose choice of where to cut.

The choice is ours for now but it won’t be forever.