January 2015

Clean technology the next wave

by Bruce Mason

turbine construction
photo courtesy the Canadian Wind Energy Association

• Cleantech – the most significant under-reported story of 2014 – might be the best news you receive this year. Unless you are ‘Big Oil’ or ‘Bad Government.’ Then it is very bad news, indeed, something you would prefer mainstream media to continue to gloss over, belittle or bury beneath distractions.

Hopefully, you read in alternative media – or picked up the whispers from the corporate press echoed electronically across social media last month – that Canada’s green energy sector now employs more folks than the Alberta tar sands!

For those keeping score: 23,700 are currently employed in our nation’s burgeoning green energy industry while 22,340 souls toil in the dark satanic mills surrounding Fort McMurray – an area of 140,000 square kilometres, slightly smaller than the state of Florida.

It might be a tad dizzying to continue to keep a tally: 6.5 million people are employed worldwide in cleaner energy and that number is growing exponentially, leaving oilers and frackers in the dust and waste.

That information is contained in a new study from the climate think-tank – yes, we now have these – Clean Energy Canada. It reports that $25 billion has been invested here in the past five years and employment is up 37%.

“Clean energy has moved from being a small niche or boutique industry to really big business in this country,” says Merran Smith, director of Clean Energy Canada. Investment since 2009 rivals the combined bucks pumped into agriculture, fishing and forestry combined. For example, investment in the energy-generating capacity of wind, solar, run-of-river hydro and biomass plants has soared by 93%. As a result, experts predict the industry will continue to realize huge growth potential, beyond most other businesses.

Predictably, right wing pundits and think-tanks are saying it can’t be so, incessantly mumbling the maddening political mantra that nothing but increasing resource extraction can ensure a stable economy. That scary presumption is finally being definitively challenged by positive action and numbers.

Unlike Céline Bak, who tracks cleantech nationally, most economic observers don’t have a handle on what’s happening. “We haven’t named this as an economic sector in this country; it doesn’t have defined status with Stats Canada or the Bank of Canada,” reports the president of Analytica Advisors.

drilling for heat pump
Cleantech can be a bit messy. Here, a 300-foot hole is being drilled for a geothermal heat pump. Photo courtesy the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Her Ottawa-based company has monitored Canada’s expanding clean technology sector for five years. Its 2014 report confirms that not only is the industry broader and deeper than previously thought, it is growing steadily and can simultaneously be a big winner on environmental and economic fronts.

Cleantech shouldn’t be confused with ‘envirotech’ or ‘greentech,’ popularized in the 70s and 80s as high-flying investment opportunities, then faltering from 2010 to 2013. Subsidies and political support waned as economic woes and initial irrational exuberance morphed into underwhelming investor returns that conspired against it.

Clean technology represents the next wave, providing solutions to such issues as global climate, challenges to resources and the desire for energy independence. New models are emerging, offering competitive returns for investors and customers while providing answers to global challenges. These embrace a diverse range of products, services and processes designed to reduce or eliminate negative ecological impact and improve the productive and responsible use of natural resources.

Bak’s analysis comprises 700 companies in 10 sectors across Canada, including renewable energy, water treatment, green building and the development of environmentally friendly consumer products. It is an industry coming of age.

“Clean Technology is one of Canada’s first 21st century industries. It has a growing presence in international markets and is bringing economic opportunity across the country,” Bak says. “It is growing faster than every other major sector of the economy, directly employing 41,000 people – up six percent from 38,800 in 2011 – and generating $11.3 billion in revenues in 2012.”

NRC Falcon 20
In 2012, the National Research Council of Canada’s Falcon 20 was the first civil aircraft in the world to fly using 100% biofuel. The fuel was produced from mustard seed by Agrisoma Biosciences of Saskatoon. The jet engines did not have to be modified. (From the documentary No Carbon Nation, www.NoCarbonNation.net). photo courtesy NRC

And there is much more good news, highlighted by the increasing numbers of keen, employed, well-paid young people and the need for more of them, including humanities-related graduates. The industry is producing very high rates of exports while investing $1 billion in research and development – a greater investment than in oil and gas extraction, mining, agriculture, forestry and fishing. It is also much less liable to boom and bust cycles, commonplace in resource extraction.

Bak estimates that, if Canadians recognize and pay attention to cleantech as well as actually creating policy to support it, growth would skyrocket to $32 billion by 2022, employing 120,000. Without policies, cleantech will stall at half that size. Wait too long and the technology, intellectual property, manufacturing and jobs may migrate to greener shores.

However, clean energy is still not a priority in Ottawa. “Every major industrial sector in Canada – from the aerospace industry to the oil sands – has gotten off the ground with support from the federal government. But in the clean-energy sector, the federal government is really missing in action,” says Clean Energy Canada’s Smith.

Four out of five of the largest investors in Canada’s cleantech expansion currently come from outside the country. Meanwhile, Stephen Harper and Christy Clark continue to bolster oil sands and natural gas development, western coal exports and proposed oil pipelines and fail to heed the immediate and overwhelming message of climate science that no future stable economy can rely on carbon-intensive development.

Another well recognized Canadian export, Bank of England’s governor Mark Carney, recently warned that vast reserves of fossil fuels can’t be burned if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change resulting from a rise in global temperature beyond a dangerous 2° C.

Despite that alarming fact, not only does the oil industry still get more substantial subsidies and tax breaks, it eats up a good deal of the country’s politics and diplomatic relations efforts, through the lobbying for the Keystone XL pipeline, for example.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently chided Canada while calling on the country to become more “ambitious and visionary” in dealing with issues like climate change. “Canada is an advanced country; you have many ways to make some transformative changes,” he said.

He was also overheard during climate talks in Lima stating, “If climate justice was lightning, then we would surely find Stephen Harper atop a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ‘Climate Change is an alarmist hoax.’”

In September, Bak spoke in Vancouver to a forum sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation, which was opened by Suzuki who stressed that too often Canadian brainpower has fled to other countries. Bak shared the results of her research with a large and enthusiastic audience, followed by a roundtable of local leaders. See the entire presentation at:

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/projects/the-cleantech-edge-canadas-fastest-growing-industry-in-the-age-of-climate-change.

Clearly, Canadians excel at cleantech. The sky is the limit. Perhaps one question to ask candidates in the federal election is how much they know about it and what they intend to do to help grow this essential industry. Here at Common Ground, we look forward to sharing more about cleantech and invite readers to join in the overdue, game-changing, life-altering conversation.

—

Bruce Mason is a Vancouver and Gabriola-Island based five-string banjo player, gardener, freelance writer and author of Our Clinic. brucemason@shaw.ca

Navigating the law of unintended consequences

order and chaos keys

As LUC would have it

by Geoff Olson

Let’s hear a laugh for the man of the world
Who thinks he can make things work
Tried to build the New Jerusalem
And ended up with New York
Ha Ha Ha…
– Bruce Cockburn, Laughter

Murphy’s law snarkily asserts that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. The law of unintended consequences is its close cousin. LUC crops up with a maddening regularity; it’s not a bug in reality, it’s a feature.

Roadways and bridges added to transit routes draw greater numbers of vehicles, returning commute times to their original length. Digital devices meant to be timesavers have turned out to be time vampires, compelling us to chase work e-mails at home or on holiday. Computer algorithms used in “high frequency trading” on stock exchanges amplify uncertainty in the market, as pokey humans try to keep up with the unpredictable effects of their digital spawn.

Back in the nineties, US Naval Research invented encryption methods to protect US intelligence communications online. Within a decade, computer scientists were using the same methods to create The Onion Router (TOR) software, named for its multiple layers of encryption. TOR was used by activist groups like WikiLeaks, which invited whistleblowers across the world to securely post information exposing corporate and state corruption.

As Edward Tenner wrote in his 1997 book, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, “Sometimes things can go right only by first going very wrong.” And vice versa. It wasn’t long before TOR was exploited by criminals to anonymously buy and sell drugs, weapons and stolen identities through “dark web” sites, using the newly hatched digital currency, Bitcoin.

Of course, the Internet itself was spawned by the US military-industrial complex, as was solar panel technology, first conceived for use on US spy satellites.

LUC is particularly evident in the realm of power politics. A recent example is the fallout from the US-NATO program of regime change in Ukraine. Western-supported fascist elements overthrew a corrupt, but democratically elected, government, an event that ethnic Russians in the region correctly interpreted as a coup.

After Crimeans voted yes in a referendum for federation with Russia, the US and EU slapped sanctions on Putin’s state for its “invasion” of Crimea and support of the pro-Russian resistance in Ukraine.

In response to western economic sanctions, Russia has signed on to the world’s largest energy deals with China. BRICS nations, including Iran and Turkey, are now falling into the orbit of this giant economic bloc. Not the consequence the US was looking for.

The short-term goal of the west is to bleed the economies of Russia, Iran and the socialist petrostate of Venezuela, by flooding the global market with cheap oil. The long-term goal is to destroy a Sino-Soviet alliance and to make Russia capitulate to the US petrodollar and surrender economically and militarily to the US-UK-Israel axis.

This high-stakes chess game with hydrocarbons is sending shock waves throughout the global economy and the resulting political-military tensions may threaten a Third World War.

Combine the predictably depressing behaviour of human beings in groups with the nonlinear, natural forces of the biosphere and LUC goes into overdrive.

“The total system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance the consequences of anything that we do,” observed author Michael Crichton in the foreword to his 2002 novel, Prey. “That is why even our most enlightened past efforts have had undesirable outcomes – either because we did not understand enough, or because the ever-changing world responded to our actions in unexpected ways.”

Consider the ambiguous history of “cap and trade.” Tribal people with some of the world’s smallest carbon footprints were displaced after General Motors and two other companies purchased 50,000 acres of Brazilian Atlantic forest, between 2000 and 2002. GM’s reason: the companies wanted to offset the emissions of their SUVs in a test case of nature preservation – and the indigenous people were no longer welcome on the land bought up from under their feet.

This form of carbon credit shell game, which does nothing for overall emissions, is not unusual (for more appalling examples, see the 2012 film, The Carbon Rush). Rolling Stone correspondent Matt Taibbi has predicted cap-and-trade will become the next commodities bubble after shale gas. If he’s proven right, the banksters will be literally pulling profits from thin air.

“The fact that the biosphere responds unpredictably to our actions is not an argument for inaction,” observed Crichton. “It is, however, a powerful argument for caution, and for adopting a tentative attitude toward all we believe, and all we do… We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. We never seem to acknowledge that we have been wrong in the past, and so might be wrong in the future. Instead, each generation writes off earlier errors as the result of bad thinking by less able minds and then confidently embarks on fresh errors of its own.”

From genetically modified organisms to proposals for climate-altering “geoengineering,” you can always count on technocrats to promote supposedly planet-saving schemes that conveniently turn a nice profit while introducing entirely new problems.

The road to hell on Earth is paved with good intentions (and grand inventions). Enthusiasts for the American pseudoscience of eugenics believed enlightened breeding programs would hatch taller, smarter, healthier and whiter human beings. We know how well that project went with The Third Reich. Similarly, followers of Karl Marx believed the state would wither out of existence after a global communist revolution. Today, the nation-state is not withering from Marxist-Leninism, but rather the “creative destruction” of corporate capitalism, which compromises the ability of elected representatives to set national objectives.

Even though they were quite prepared to kill one another – and did, in great numbers – Nazis and Bolsheviks regarded themselves as rational people, embracing science over superstition.

It would be nice to believe that given enough time, science and reason will eliminate all our problems. But we will choke on our exponentially growing infoglut in the effort to attain absolute knowledge.

Taoists held that all things have the seed of their opposite within them. This is summed up in their yin-yang symbol, with its black and white forms flowing into one another, a dot of negative space in each. It’s a nice graphic shorthand for a mercurial truth that has dogged every empire from the Aegean to the Potomac and every human heart from the cradle to the grave.

“Chaos happens. Let’s make better use of it,” said Edward Tenner in a 2011 Ted Talk. At the dawn of a new year, I wish you all good LUC.

—

mwiseguise@yahoo.com

www.geoffolson.com

image © Stuart Miles

The “12 Principles of Don’t Pay”

A New Year’s manifesto in the war on prescription drug waste

DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels

Portrait of columnist Alan Cassels

• Thirty-six billion dollars is a lot of money.

That’s roughly what we Canadians will spend on prescription drugs this year. How big is that number? Let’s see: by the end of the day on January 1st, we’ll have sent $100 million to the drug companies. Then on January 2nd, we’ll send them another $100 million. And again on January 3rd. In fact, we’ll do this every single day until December 31st, 2015. That is roughly $36 billion worth of drugs. Wow.

Where does the $100 million per day come from? Well, roughly $30 million comes directly from our wallets, $30 million comes out of our employers’ wallets and $40 million comes from public drug plans, largely paid from provincial taxes. While we might love the ‘free’ pharmaceuticals we get through our provincial drug plan or our employer-sponsored private insurance, don’t fool yourself; either way, there is no free lunch. Every single dollar we spend collectively on prescription drugs is one dollar we don’t have for something else.

While there are many effective drugs and we should be glad we have them, the healthcare dollars they gobble up are very unequal. Health spending that goes to doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, midwives and other people delivering medical care and community facilities, such as hospitals, clinics and hospices, is money that stays in our communities, recirculates and enriches local economic activity. Money that goes to drug companies? Well, those bucks are exported, mostly to big multinational corporations based in places like Switzerland or New York or to generic companies in eastern Canada. Relatively small bits of drug money stay in our communities and generate some economic activity, especially in pharmacies.

Yet I wonder how many people are aware that the $100 million we spend every day involves gargantuan waste. Recently, some colleagues and I published a study where we looked very closely at how decisions get made on drug benefits in the private sector. The most telling feature of private drug plans – those drug benefits you get through your employer – is how utterly wasteful they are, often paying for higher-cost drugs that are no more effective and sometimes less safe than lower cost drugs. We found that private drug plans in Canada waste more than half the total drug bill paid through private drug insurance. The key thing is that many of the decision makers at the table – insurers, consultants, drug companies and pharmacies – want to keep drug use high to generate profits and satisfy shareholders.

Reducing waste in drug spending, therefore, seems to me an attractive goal, especially if any savings could be redirected to things that actually make us healthier. My friend, Dr. Trevor Hancock, is a professor at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy and we met over a decade ago when he worked at the BC Ministry of Health. If you asked him what he did every day, he would say he spent most of his time banging his head against the wall promoting “population health,” which is all about creating social, economic and environmental conditions that make people healthy. In an article he wrote for the local Victoria paper in mid-December, he said, “If we ask people what makes them healthy, they don’t talk very much about the health-care system. They talk about having healthy food and good housing, being active and engaged, having good relationships with and support from family and friends, being happy at work.”

In my naïve way of thinking, we need to pay for essential, important and sometimes lifesaving medicines, but at the same time, we need to get serious about eliminating waste from the $100 million daily stream going to drug companies. Paraphrasing John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you…” let’s say, “Ask what you can do for your health care system (in reducing the waste in the drug bill). As a citizen, an employee or taxpayer, let me suggest the “12 Principles of Don’t Pay.”

1. Don’t pay for higher cost drugs when there are lower cost drugs that are equally as effective. Are you taking a brand name drug when a generic version exists? Stop paying what I call the “Drug Tax of the Uninformed.” Are you taking Lipitor instead of generic atorvastatin, Plavix instead of clopidogrel? The difference between a branded drug and a generic might be as much as $3 per day.

2. Don’t pay for the newest, most shiny drug when there is an older, safer equivalent. Compared to the newest whiz-bang drugs for hypertension or cardiac failure, drugs such as thiazide diuretics and good old digoxin are effective, cheaper and probably safer.

3. Don’t pay for useless drugs. Ever heard of Ezetrol? There is zero evidence that this so-called cholesterol booster will do anything to extend the quality and length of your life. It will, however, drain your bank account.

4. Don’t pay for drugs with black box warnings if there are alternatives. You might want to avoid drugs that carry the most serious warning issued about a drug. Are you taking Celebrex? It has a black box warning and there is a very good chance your arthritis could be controlled with something safer and likely cheaper. If you want to know if your drug has a black box, ask Dr. Google.

5. Don’t pay for drugs that have no proof they will actually help you. The newest drugs for type II diabetes, the so-called DPP-4 inhibitors, which include drugs like Januvia, Onglyza and Trajenta, might lower your blood sugars, but there is zero evidence they improve the quality and length of your life.

6. Don’t pay for drugs that are likely to make a patient feel worse even if it makes your doctor or caregiver feel better to give it to you. The best examples are drugs for Alzheimer’s, such as Aricept (donepezil) and Exelon (rivastigmine).

7. Don’t pay for prescription-only drugs when there are equally effective over-the-counter drugs. Which is to say, if you’re worried about having a stroke, clopidogrel (Plavix) is maybe 10 times as expensive as ASA (aspirin), but considered equal in effectiveness.

8. Don’t pay for drugs that are likely to lead to additional problems, thus requiring more drugs to deal with the side effects of the drugs you’re currently taking. Taking drugs for side effects of other drugs always strikes me as counter-productive. If those side effects are troubling, try to stop or switch to something more agreeable, under the guidance of your doctor, of course.

9. Don’t pay for drugs when there are equally effective non-drug alternatives. Instead of SSRIs, for mild to moderate depression – i.e. Paxil, Effexor or Zoloft – there is good evidence that cognitive behavioural therapy and increased physical activity work for many people, without the baggage, potential for side effects, addictive properties and expense of antidepressants.

10. Don’t pay for drugs if they haven’t been tested or approved for the disease you have. This is called “off-label” prescribing and means the drug may or may not help, but we’re not really sure because the regulator has not approved the drug for the reason you’re taking it.

11. Don’t pay for drugs out of ignorance. If you don’t know how long you need to take them, the signs that tell you they’re ‘working’ or their addiction potential, ask more questions. And question the answers.

12. Don’t pay for drugs when you’re already taking too many. What’s too many? There is no hard and fast rule. Anything over five and it’s time to start asking some hard questions because as we all know, more drugs, more potential for drug harm.

With our health system looking like it’s always on the verge of economic collapse, it’s great that at least in one sector – prescription drug use – our governments and we citizens can really exercise that muscle of not paying more for prescription drugs than we need to. You’ve got 12 months ahead of you; take those principles out for a test ride and see how well they serve you and your wallet.

—

Alan Cassels researches pharmaceutical policy, writes about drugs and works to advise unions and employers on rational, cost-effective drug use. You can read more of his writings at www.alancassels.com

 

Tea for the joy and health of it

cup of tea

by Nancy Prokosh

 

Obesity is increasing and the need to shift towards disease prevention is an imperative. Mass merchandisers and pharmaceutical companies promote their commodities as the “antidote,” however, most of those antidotes do not have a history and the real winners are the companies’ bank accounts.

On the other hand, tea has been around since 2737 BCE when Chinese emperor Shennong was boiling water to drink and the leaves of a tea plant fell into his pot. The emperor found the taste quite refreshing and from that day, tea has become a very common drink. Today, tea is the most consumed staple drink in the world. It is estimated tea production in 2013 was worth 15.4 billion, growing at an average rate of 15% yearly.

Tea helps people lose weight, relaxes the mind, prevents heart disease and reduces cholesterol. It has been proven to cure and prevent many diseases such as cancer, diabetes, dementia and oral disease. A typical cup of brewed green tea contains between 80 and 100 milligrams of polyphenols with the catechin EGCG – a type of natural phenol – accounting for about 25 to 30 milligrams.

In their research at the Aichi Cancer Institute in Japan, doctors Nakane and Ono found that catechin in green tea can inhibit the activity of the AIDS virus. With further research, there is a slight hope that a treatment consisting of green tea and other components may combat the now unstoppable virus.

A renowned Japanese professor, Mr. Shimamura, discovered that the catechin and theaflavin found directly in black tea have a very strong effect on the influenza virus. He confirmed gargling with black tea helps suppress the risk of contracting the flu. Gargling at least once a day with black tea is recommended in order for it to have an effect.

Immunity boosting purple tea

Purple tea is a new tea with remarkable health benefits. This rare gem is grown on limited tea farms in Mt. Kenya and is considered to be an immunity-boosting beverage. The Tea Research Foundation of Kenya has pre-released a purple tea variety targeting a unique tea compound known as anthocyanins. This clone has been under development for the past 25 years and further in-depth research is continuing on the antioxidant value. Anthocyanins are very high in flavonoids, which are soluble in water and offer powerful health enhancing properties. If you want the simple pleasure of drinking tea while simultaneously boosting your health, purple tea is the best possible choice.

Purple tea was thought to have first originated in Tocklai, Assam. This unique tea contains exceptionally high levels of catechins and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) – confirmed to reduce body fat and obesity and prevent many diseases – and an excess of antioxidants, which help to fight free radicals in the human body. It also reduces hypertension and lowers the risk of cardiac arrests.

Unlike black tea, this clone has very high purple pigmentation in the leaves and after steeping has an obvious purple hue. Its powerful health benefits and fantastic flavour are creating hope around boosting economic revenue in Africa. This exclusive new leaf is high yielding, grows in almost any region and is frost, disease and pest resistant. Negotiations are continuing with pharmacological companies.

Ginger tea a health trend in 2014

One of my favourite things was finding out drinking ginger tea was one of the biggest and healthiest trends in 2014.

The health benefits from ingesting ginger have been recognized for over two thousand years. The legendary healing powers are highly valued by medical traditions in India, Tibet, Japan and China. Ginger originally grew and was discovered in East Asia. Today, it is available throughout many tropical regions including the West Indies and South Pacific.

Ginger is rated as a safe herb with almost zero side effects. It helps the human body in so many ways and is the least costly cure for many ailments. It can be purchased inexpensively at your local grocery store. Research was conducted at Georgia State University that proved this herb can destroy cancerous agents and cells. Ginger tricks cancerous cells into destroying each other and stops the growth of more cancerous cells.

Natural, organic ginger candies suppress nausea, vomiting and motion sickness and fresh ginger root is a great remedy for colds, flu, headaches and winter chills.


Organic tea

I have been an importer and handler of certified organic tea since 2000. My attraction with tea began as a youngster and grew much deeper over the years. Knowledge of organic tea – its quality and where it is grown and processed – has become my priority. From the four corners of the world and for generations, organic tea has adapted to the needs of people and in some countries it is the staple drink. Plantations that continue to grow tea leaves with pesticide residue are slowly depleting, as consumers grow more health conscious and unwilling to settle for secondary tea.

Today’s organic tea is imported from India, Assam, China, Japan and South Africa and is compliant with EU guidelines. We ensure that the organic tea is not tampered with and is flavoured only with natural flavours and free from pesticides and insecticides as well as being cultivated on organic land. Many organic tea growers have found improved soil fertility, balanced mineral deficiencies and a balanced pH level eliminates leaf blister and various other plant diseases and insects, which could not be managed through chemical methods.

We believe organic tea is changing the face of medicine through naturopathic, homeopathic and integrative medicine, with the quality of life being enhanced and extended. Through mind, body, dietary, nutritional and therapeutic treatments, healing occurs with organic tea.

Take time out

Despite our over-scheduled lifestyles and a culture obsessed with instant gratifications, the ceremony of tea drinking has managed to remain an art form – a solace, a refuge and a warm, creative comfort that transcends the passage of time. What began as a mid-afternoon refreshment grew into an elite social activity confined to aristocracy, but it has always offered the means by which to spiritually recharge. Hope, resolve and calm contemplation can be found in a warm cup of tea. There is a time to reflect, relax and nurture friendships when we finally slow down and sip.

—

Nancy Prokosh is a tea professional with a keen interest in health and wellness. Her lifelong goal is to inspire others to live well and drink tea, one cup at a time. www.TealiciousTeaCompany.com, cell/text: 604-377-5789, Skype: nancyprokosh

 

photo © Monika Adamczyk

The Great Shift Forward

Leaf at fast charger

the quiet transportation revolution

by J-M Toriel

2015 is the year to release addiction to oil and embrace a low carbon life.

The world is on the cusp of a renewable energy revolution and Canadians are participating. The 10,000th electric car is about to be purchased in Canada this month. Despite the recent elimination of a $5,000 rebate for electric powered vehicles (EVs) in the last provincial budget, plenty are plugging into a cleaner future while our governments remain idle.

It’s time to take part in the “Great Shift Forward” – a critical time in our collective history where we abandon “fossilfuelishness” for a cleaner energy future. As long as we stay tethered to our internal combustion engines, Big Oil pundits and lobbyists have a point when they say we all “need” them. Many people remain uncertain, but here’s why switching to an EV makes sense.

There’s a quiet revolution happening in the world of transportation and not just in the emergence of EVs like the Tesla Model S, BMW i3, Nissan Leaf or plug-in hybrids like the GM Volt. Electricity is being used not only to provide propulsion for cars and Skytrains, but there is now greater access to electric vehicle charging stations throughout BC; there are now about 1,000 240V public chargers. See plugshare.com.

Canada is a laggard in green policies for transportation, which accounts for 31% of our energy use and 37% of greenhouse gas emissions. The true cost of conventional gas vehicles is heavily externalized. Electric Mobility Canada states that, at $25 per tonne, EVs would save society around $2,500 per vehicle per year thanks to the difference in emissions between internal combustion engines (ICE) and their electric counterparts.

By examining the entire energy value chain from “well to wheels,” a captivating fact emerges. Typical internal combustion vehicles convert 30% of the energy into traction and the rest of the energy is lost as heat. In contrast, electric motors convert 90%. On the basis of efficiency alone, EVs are in a category of their own, with most achieving MPG equivalence surpassing 100 – about three times the average and 1/10th the cost to operate and maintain.

Besides opposing pipeline projects and driving less, another way to stand against fossilfuelishness is to stop driving ICE cars.

Here are five reasons why you should set the intent to buy an electric vehicle as your next car:

1. Efficiency: EVs use about 1/10th of a “fuel efficient” internal combustion car. Electric motors transfer 90% of their battery power to the wheels, losing very little energy as waste heat and they have no tailpipes.

2. Clean grid: Here in BC, electricity comes from renewable sources so electric vehicles release 97% less greenhouse gas emissions than their ICE counterparts.

3. Charging on-the-go: Most EV drivers charge conveniently at home, but with 1,000 charging stations throughout the province and high-speed – 80% in 20 minutes – DC chargers, you can drive electric with greater confidence.

4. Stick it to Big Oil: They’re down, but not out. You can help further reduce demand.

5. Greater peace and security: Hostilities in the Middle East, expansion of the tar sands, infrastructure (like pipelines), rail accidents (like the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster), air pollution, lung conditions like asthma associated with tailpipe emissions, increased numbers of tankers along our coastlines, potential colossal oil spills and staggering price fluctuations are all related to our dependence on fossil fuels.

Start off the New Year with a test drive.

—

J-M Toriel, MBA, is a director of the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association (veva.ca) and president of Big Green Island Transportation, which provides EV charging solutions with consulting and installation services. www.biggreenisland.com

Ralph Maud

portrait of Ralph Maud

1928-2014

Ralph Maud, one of the founding English professors at Simon Fraser University in 1965, became an authority on the work of Dylan Thomas, Charles Olson and the ethnographers of the Pacific Northwest.

Born on December 24, 1928, Ralph Maud was an iconoclastic professor and eccentric pamphleteer who died on December 8, 2014.

As one of the founding English professors at Simon Fraser University in 1965, Ralph Maud became an authority on the work of Dylan Thomas, Charles Olson and the ethnographers of the Pacific Northwest. He was born on December 24, 1928. He died on December 8, 2014.

“Ralph Maud could write, because he knew that all writing constituted a translation of (a) story,” says his friend and main B.C. publisher Karl Siegler. “He thought of writing as a kind of verbal notation–like a score is both a guide to and a record (pun intended) of a musical performance. That’s why he was so interested in acts and circumstances of the first written versions of oral histories, and why he loved Charles Olson so much: from the heart to the breath to the line… He will be missed.”

“Ralph supported our publishing endeavours and authors’ efforts in many ways besides the books he wrote and edited for us,” recalls current Talonbooks publisher Kevin Williams. “He worked behind the scenes to help people their career and with their projects.

“He was a demanding taskmaster though: as Geoff Hargreaves commented, ‘He was a scholar of uncompromising rectitude.’ He had legendary energy and fought the good fight, political and literary, to his last day. His classes were legendary as was his desire to be a bookseller.”

Ralph Maud’s research into original source material led him to edit and revive the work of pioneer ethnographer Charles Hill-Tout for a four-volume collection, The Salish People (Talonbooks, 1978), representing Hill-Tout’s fieldwork from 1895 to 1911. It is divided by geographical and cultural areas: Volume I: The Thompson and the Okanagan; Volume II: The Squamish and the Lillooet; Volume III: The Mainland Halkomelem; Volume IV: The Sechelt and the South-Eastern Tribes of Vancouver Island.

This research let Maud to produce A Guide to B.C. Indian Myth and Legend (Talonbooks, 1982). Twice reprinted, this highly opinionated panorama of what Maud terms “mythography, the study of how a people’s oral traditional literature becomes available to us in published form,” amounts to a third- or fourth-year university survey course in which he grades the various sources of Aboriginal literature prior to the 1980s, usually in accordance with his own perception of their degree of sophistication. “I will not be telling the history of myth-collecting in British Columbia without bias,” Maud admits.

Whereas Maud praised the elements of Victorian melodrama in a translation by Charles Hill-Tout “because Hill-Tout is trying to meet fully the melodrama of the original,” Maud denigrates the Victorian English translations of the Sepass Tales as “hardly satisfying to the modern reader as verse.” Maud suggests Hill-Tout’s naïveté was a virtue when he began his work, witnessing the performance of the blind historian Mulks in North Vancouver, and he states “the most readable body of Native literature in the canon” was gathered in 1896 by Hill-Tout from the “brilliant” Chief Mischelle of Lytton. Mischelle’s version of the Transformer Story appears in Volume I of The Salish People.

“Maud has approached aspects of his topic with a certain insouciant bias,” observed reviewer Andrea Laforet of the National Museum of Man, “which can make what he has written not only superficial but also unjust. This is particularly true in the case of Franz Boas.” A Guide to B.C. Indian Myth and Legend is nonetheless a groundbreaking and engaging work, inviting the lay reader into the highly specialized and mostly academic-dominated field of myth collection.

Edited by Ralph Maud, The Porcupine Hunter and Other Stories (Talonbooks, 1993) is a collection of Henry W. Tate’s stories in Tate’s original English, which grew out of Maud’s survey of Franz Boas’ Tsimshian work published as an article, “The Henry Tate-Franz Boas Collaboration on Tsimshian Mythology” in American Ethnologist.

Ralph Maud’s Transmission Difficulties: Franz Boas and Tsimshian Mythology (Talonbooks, 2000) expands on the relationship between Henry Tate and Franz Boas and the problematic methodologies of their transcriptions. Between 1903 and 1913, Tate acted as an informant, recounting stories of Tsimshian mythology in letters to Boas that amounted to two thousand pages of text. “Tate, on his part, was a 20-cent-a-page man, a piece-worker,” Maud writes. Instead of faithfully transcribing stories told by elders, Tate wrote the stories in English first before translating them into Tsimshian. In the process he minimized sexual elements in deference to his Christianity and sometimes mixed his sources.

Boas, for his part, did not properly identify his source—his co-author—referring to Tate only as a “full-blood Indian of Port Simpson, British Columbia.” According to Maud, both men severely compromised the integrity of Tsimshian culture. “If only Boas had not been so uptight. If only he had been more forthright from the start and stated emphatically, ‘Listen Mr. Tate. You don’t get another red cent from me until I know exactly what you are doing, what you are filching from the texts I sent you, what you are writing off the top of your head and what are the real goods, the exact words of the old storytellers you know. And stop writing these pieces in English first, or no more money orders.’”

Ralph Maud also edited The Chilliwacks and Their Neighbors (Talonbooks, 1987) by Oliver Wells and he was a contributing editor to Coast Salish Essays by Wayne Suttles.

Ralph Maud grew up in Yorkshire, England, and obtained his B.A. and Ph.D degrees from Harvard. While teaching in Buffalo, he published an edition of The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas from manuscripts in the university library. His books pertaining to Dylan Thomas are Entrances to Dylan Thomas’ Poetry (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963), Dylan Thomas in Print (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970), and new editions of Collected Poems (Dent, 1995) and Under Milkwood (Dent, 1988), both co-edited with Walford Davies. He taught at the Dylan Thomas School in Wales and he got to know poet Charles Olson during a two-year stint at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where Olson was also a staff member.

Maud became involved in efforts to restore Charles Olson’s house at 28 Fort Square, Gloucester, Massachusetts, as a research centre for Olson studies. As an Professor Emeritus of English, he engaged in editing a collection of Charles Olson’s letters. Also edited by Ralph Maud, Poet to Publisher: Charles Olson’s Correspondence with Donald Allen (Talonbooks, 2004) recalls the story behind The New American Poetry (Grove, 1960), an influential anthology edited by Allen.

In 2008, Talonbooks released Maud’s “reactive” biography of Charles Olson in part as an attempt to remove the harm Maud believes was done to Olson’s image by Tom Clark’s Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet’s Life (Norton, 1991). Having taught the poetry of Charles Olson at least one semester every year from 1965 to 1994, Maud depicted Olson in Charles Olson at the Harbor (Talonbooks, 2008) as a man possessing great genius, a successful Melville scholar, and a lasting influence on the world of poetry. “The situation I find myself in is somewhat akin to James Boswell’s,” Maud wrote, because Boswell undertook his famous biography of Samuel Johnson to repudiate a preceding biographer.

In 2010, Maud marked the centenary of Charles Olson’s birth with a revised, second edition of Muthologos, the poet’s collected lectures and interviews. The new compilation included five pieces not part of the 1978 edition.

Co-edited by Sharon Thesen and Ralph Maud, After Completion: The Later Letters of Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff (Talonbooks, 2014) follows from an earlier edition of their letters, A Modern Correspondence (Wesleyan University Press 1999), that spanned three years and more than three hundred letters. Charles Olson had many correspondents, but Frances Boldereff, a book designer and typographer, Joyce scholar, and single working mother, was muse, lover, and critic to Olson. A Modern Correspondence concludes with a crisis at the end of their physical relationship. After 1950, Boldereff would no longer believe so whole-heartedly in Olson’s work—or his promises to spend time with her. After Completion picks up the correspondence post-crisis and covers approximately 140 letters written between 1950 and 1969.

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The article on Ralph Maud was originally published in BC BookWorld and BC BookLook. Visit http://www.abcbookworld.com//view_author.php?id=843. photo by Anick Violette

EDITOR’S NOTE: Because of the suddenness of Ralph’s departure, many people have not had adequate time to collect their thoughts and write in so there will be more on our friend Ralph Maud in Common Ground’s next edition . Please send in your memories, to joseph@commonground.ca. Also plans for a celebration of Ralph’s life may be taking form both here and in Wales.

Mushrooms – good medicine

holding mushrooms

by Lari Laurikkala

 

We have all seen some funny looking mushrooms growing in the forest, but the parts we see account for only a tiny fraction of how big the fungi really are. Underground, the fungi spread their mycelium web to recycle dead animal and plant matter. About 90% of the world’s plants rely on fungi and the mycelium is what keeps the soil together. Those parts that pop out of the ground are called fruiting bodies and within them are some special powers.

The best mushrooms are among the safest medicinal foods, with benefits for humans ranging from enhanced physical performance to hormonal balance. At one time, they were worth their weight in silver – for a reason.

Meet medicinal mushrooms

The Asians have used mushrooms in their daily lives for thousands of years. They are present in the west as well even though we’re a bit behind the scenes. The so-called medicinal mushrooms have given us many important pharmaceutical medicines, including penicillin and the first statin drugs and anti-cancer treatments. Today, about 40% of western medicine utilizes mushrooms.

So could drinking a tea made out of a specific mushroom lower your stress levels? Or could topping your risotto with champions help prevent you from developing cancer? Out of the 150,000 known species of fungi, about 300 have shown a wide variety of medicinal properties. Some “shrooms” have a hormonal balancing effect while some enhance the immune system, just to give a couple of examples.

Two mushroom species that must be mentioned at the outset are chaga and reishi, also called the king and queen of the mushrooms. Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) strengthens the body’s own immune system and helps with fighting against viruses and bacteria. Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) produces a calming effect on the mind and nervous system. Others with a very long track record include Lion’s Mane (Hericium erinaceus), Cordyceps (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) and shiitake (Lentinula edodes).

To adapt is to thrive

In addition to all the other amazing benefits, our favourite medicinal mushrooms are also classified as adaptogens. The term adaptogen means that the substance helps the body adapt to challenging conditions. It directs people to relax when they are under too much stress and, on the other hand, increases energy for those with low energy levels.

They are often also highly regarded as being immunomodulators, substances capable of strengthening an under-active immune system and down-regulating excessive immune system response. Extensive research on the chemistry, pharmacology and therapeutic benefits of these mushrooms has all come to the same conclusion: there is some inherent intelligence in the “shrooms.”

How to take them

It could be said that culinary mushrooms are an aid to health, but medicinal mushrooms are magic. Thus, even including some edible mushrooms in your meals every week will provide a huge benefit. So look for a mushroom that has the greatest attraction for you and find a reputable producer for it. You could run to a forest and pick your own, but we can’t stress enough that you have to be sure about your identification before eating anything from the wild.

There are a few tricks that have to happen first to achieve the best possible benefits from any of the mushrooms. Most of the medicinal mushrooms grow on trees and are fibrous and woody and if you only powder them, the digestive system cannot break down the medicinal compounds. By boiling the mushrooms, their cell walls break apart and the beneficial stuff becomes bioavailable.

Making a strong tea, also known as an extract, is the most effective way to feel the power. It is also worth noting that some of the active components are fat-soluble and therefore require a bit more effort to extract. At home, you could put the mushroom pieces or powders into a vodka bottle and wait two weeks for all the good stuff to dissolve. When both water-soluble and-fat-soluble compounds are taken out, it is called dual extraction and that’s how you get the most bang for your buck.

As the whole kingdom of fungi has been susceptible to some food racism in the past, we want people to see and feel what they can get from all these funky little mushrooms. Our strong belief is that, no matter what diet you prefer, you will receive increased health benefits from introducing a few top mushrooms to your diet.

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Lari Laurikkala is a Finnish food enthusiast and a teacher of natural living. He is changing the world one mushroom-eater at a time as the product manager of Four Sigma Foods, a US-based company specializing in medicinal mushroom products.


www.foursigmafoods.com

Reach for better health and well being

ON PURPOSE Peter Ormesher

Peter Ormesher, Josie and friends promoting Do the Right Thing
Josie and friends promoting Do the Right Thing on the streets of Angeles City, the Philippines

• The idea to create an initiative to support women started years ago on the dance floor of a Nairobi nightclub. Friends of mine were telling me stories about how their female friends were dying of AIDS after their boyfriends or husbands brought home the HIV virus. Years later, that observation led to a project in the Philippines we dubbed “Women in Arms” where we distributed condoms in high-risk areas, mainly around the bar district in popular tourist destinations. We called it that to encourage men and women to join arms together and to ask the men visiting there to do the right thing and keep all safe.

Filipina Josie Boclatan would be our first volunteer and she later provided the insight and inspiration for the first Reach Studio of Massage & Well Being in Kitsilano (reachmassage.com). She felt that young women needed an opportunity to have a better life and to do work that was empowering – an alternative to the dangerous, sad life lived in the go-go bars of Asia. Many of these young women have little alternative but to face human trafficking and exploitation in order to support families back in the poorer, home provinces. Especially those ravaged each year by a procession of typhoons.

Josie was the first graduate. We launched our initiative as a pilot in partnership with the Rotary International career college in Dau in the Philippines. After a foundation course in massage training, we would then teach the Reach Therapy technique, an opportunity for graduates to embark on a new career. Our first Reach Studio opened in October of 2014 at 3171 West Broadway in Vancouver.

Peter Ormesher
Peter Ormesher, founder of Reach Studio of Massage

One career I had really enjoyed was in the healing arts of holistic, osteopathic-style massage. As the owner of Aquae Sulis Holistic Spa (then Aquaterra Beauty & Wellness) in Tsawwassen, I could see how built up tension, tightness and pain – the by-products of modern living – were aging people unnecessarily. These conditions created the need for new knees and hips, robbing people of vitality and the joy of living. We were progressively getting out of alignment, with cascading negative effects.

Our goal is to create a series of studios where we can help people relax and heal, at the same time providing women a career in massage and the unique healing Reach Therapy technique. Our Reach Therapy blends a number of massage techniques and energy work with the understanding of how our modern lifestyle – sitting, working on computers and constant action and stress – bends us latterly out of shape. Our butts, hamstrings and calves tighten from sitting and too little stretching. We abuse our iliotibial bands (IT) through sports and walking, our shoulders roll forward causing neck and back pain and we eventually start to break down. Hips and knees are now wearing out, in part as a result of these conditions. The Reach technique is very relaxing yet at the same time effective at reaching and releasing the deeper tensions in our bodies.

As everyone knows, it takes time and a lot of love to start something new. What we have on our side is the great people of this city, who live with purpose, embrace new healing perspectives and love to share new finds with their friends and family. Word of mouth is growing and every day, more people come to experience our helpful hands that clients say restore their bodies “like nothing else.” We are now adding other forms of massage and healing techniques, such as the Ayurvedic Warm Oil massage.

You can help us help by coming and experiencing our Reach holistic massage. Anyone who has trouble sleeping or has body pain or would like to run and engage in sports more easily and with more fluidity will find the experience “life saving.” Those are the kind words we hear from our community.

We are humbled and grateful to have begun our journey here, near home, right in the heart of Kitsilano. Drop by!

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Peter Ormesher is a former investment banker, turnaround specialist and economic advisor in developing countries. His companies have worked to reduce chemical use in food production and replaced ozone-depleting substances. Originally a native of Toronto, he has spent over half his life in Vancouver and could never leave. Josie is the project manager of the Women in Arms initiative and teaches massage and the Reach Therapy technique to young women in the Philippines.

Convenient truths, Canadian-made

READ IT by Bruce Mason

• This Changes Everything book coverNaomi Klein’s brilliant, best-selling This Changes Everything is doing just that – fundamentally altering how we think and act to save life on our planet. We ignore climate change at our own and future generations’ peril. Becoming aware of and motivated by what’s in this game-changing book is humanity’s most hopeful and essential resolution for 2015 – a do-or-die moment.

Find out all you need to know in this big, blue, door-stopper-size publication – arguably the most influential book of our times – or in the reviews, interviews and panel discussions all over the Internet.

Klein’s message and subtitle is Capitalism vs. the Climate. Her argument is so simple, logical and irrefutable, so indelibly etched in our DNA, that kindergarten kids get it. Forget everything you think you know about global warming, she says. It’s not about carbon; it’s about capitalism, unfettered and inconsistent with survival, an economic system predicated on infinite growth and endless, senseless, greedy exploitation of obviously limited resources.

What’s wrong with us? Why are we failing to address our annihilation? Klein says, “We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and benefit the vast majority – are threatening to an elite minority with a stranglehold over our economy, political process and media.”

The good news is we can transform this existential crisis into something almost unimaginably better, beyond socialism and assorted utopias. She writes, “Any attempt to rise to the climate challenge will be fruitless unless it is understood as part of a much broader battle of worldviews, a process of rebuilding and reinventing the very idea of the collective, the communal, the commons, the civil, and the civic after so many decades of attack and neglect.”

Climate change is above all a global alarm sounding in floods, storms, droughts and fire – including the streets of Ferguson – and obscene, almost unspeakable yet ubiquitous wars, inequality and injustice. This Changes Everything is a rallying cry to large numbers of those currently unengaged. Scaring people is “bullshit,” says Klein. “We need fear and hope in equal measure. We absolutely should be scared. But fear alone will not mobilize people or it will mobilize them in scary ways.”

We’ve all caught glimpses and Klein pieces these and more together in a convincing, exciting, inspiring, visionary weave of healing and reconstruction. A new ideology to fight for, to take the con out of economy, share what’s left, fuel the world by renewable energy, declare peace rather than war with the Earth and each other – ecology trumping economy, always.

A key to Klein is a wonderful word: “Blockadia.” Use it or lose what refers to fluid, dynamic networks and roving trans-national conflict zones cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity in places such as Burnaby Mountain. Head-on local opposition to extraction. Shouts of “No!” beyond borders and NIMBYism. It’s about much more than mere money, and so-called “good jobs.” As French anti-fracking activists say: “ni ici ni ailleurs” – neither here, nor elsewhere.”

Humans can be complicated, competitive, greedy and nasty when called upon by a distorted culture. But also kind, generous and compassionate, when need be. Our innate ability to put collective interest above narrow, financial self-interest is now challenged by an unprecedented responsibility – at once, a huge burden and honour. We can hide our heads in the sand, including tar sands, or under the blankets of a technological, distracted, virtual, unmindful and unfulfilled life.

Surely, to maximize our self-interest is to create a future for maximum benefit. This Changes Everything invites us to stop fiddling and to disrobe our free market “leaders” and their great trick and lie about being selfish, that by trying to directly help others, we hurt them.

One of Klein’s most powerful ideas is that acting on climate change will address old, long-denied injustices, including indigenous rights. John Ralston Saul – another high-profile, Canadian, public intellectual – has added his voice to this chorus, writing The Comeback. In this book, he argues passionately that we must embrace and support aboriginal peoples as the great issue of our time and address this essential missing relationship, central to the building and continued existence of Canada.

At press time, Common Ground learned about Kwe: Standing With our Sisters, a 100-page anthology edited by Joseph Boyden, featuring more than 50 contributors, including Margaret Atwood, Tom King, Michael Ondaatje, Saul and others. It is intended to raise awareness of the crisis facing Canada’s First Nations women. All proceeds from the sale will be donated to Amnesty International’s No More Stolen Sisters initiative. It is available in digital format ($2.99) via major online retailers and a limited edition print can be purchased for $10 from the Amnesty International Book Club (amnestybookclub.ca).

Our politicians and corporations aside, Canadians continue to walk the talk. Please share books you recommend as useful tools for making change and breaking the silence in 2015.

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Bruce Mason is a Vancouver and Gabriola-Island based five-string banjo player, gardener, freelance writer and author of Our Clinic. brucemason@shaw.ca

NDP committed to proportional representation

by Tom Mulcair

• portrait of Thomas MulcairThomas Mulcair is the leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada as well as the Leader of the Official Opposition in Canada.

thomasmulcair.ndp.ca

thomas.mulcair@parl.gc.ca

 

In 2015, Canadians will have a choice. Not only will they have the opportunity to elect a new government, but they will also have the opportunity to elect a government that is committed to proportional representation.

We’re very clear on this – an NDP government would introduce proportional representation by the next election. Early in December 2014, we introduced a motion to the House of Commons to reform the system before then, but were disappointed that Justin Trudeau voted with Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to defeat the motion. However, the fact that our motion attracted the support of Greens, independent MPs and several members of the Liberal Party who voted contrary to their leader shows we are making progress in our campaign to change Canada’s unfair electoral system.

In the last election, Conservatives formed a majority government with only 39% of the vote. In our current first-past-the-post system, they govern as if they have the support of all Canadians, but the fact is 61% of voters wanted someone else in government.

Around the world, advanced democracies have recognized the flaws of this winner-take-all system and have adopted a better model that works.

Democracies such as Germany and New Zealand have embraced proportional representation and realized improvements since moving away from first-past-the-post. In a study that looked at 36 countries with proportional representation, countries that reformed their systems saw increased voter turnout, more women and minorities elected and an overall higher satisfaction with democracy.

Furthermore, countries with proportional representation also score higher on indicators of health, education and standards of living. They are more likely to enjoy fiscal surpluses and have healthier environmental policies, economic growth and decreased income inequality.

It may seem shocking that a change in electoral system can fuel such dramatic changes, but when you empower people, it’s incredible what can be achieved.

By responding to and reflecting a broader pool of interests and people, proportional elections lead to governments that are not based on one single partisan worldview or a narrow segment of society. Proportional governments represent a broader cross-section of society; as a result, the policies they pass tend to be more credible, stable and based on the common good.

For years, governing parties in Canada have talked about electoral reform, but have failed to make it a priority. More often than not, those in government are afforded a majority without a plurality of the votes so there is little incentive to change.

That is one of the ways a New Democrat government will be different. Had the 2011 election used proportional representation, despite the NDP’s electoral gains, New Democrats would have actually had fewer seats in Parliament. Even still, we believe that democratic reform is critical to improving the health of Canada’s democracy. For New Democrats, it’s a matter of principle. Proportional representation would better represent Canadians across the country.

Liberals would have seen better representation in the Prairies and even the Conservatives would have been better represented in Atlantic Canada and Quebec. The NDP would have done better in Saskatchewan and the Green Party would have made gains in many places, electing more than just one Member of Parliament.

While Liberals and Conservatives defeated the NDP’s motion to bring forward a proportional system this time, the fight is not over. An election is coming. Now it’s up to Canadians to get involved, voice their support for better, fairer representation and ultimately exercise their right to vote.

Now it’s up to Canadians to make the next election the last unfair election.

Complete text of NDP Motion on Proportional Representation:

“That, in the opinion of the House: (a) the next federal election should be the last conducted under the current first-past-the-post electoral system which has repeatedly delivered a majority of seats to parties supported by a minority of voters, or under any other winner-take-all electoral system; and (b) a form of mixed-member proportional representation would be the best electoral system for Canada.”

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Information about how each leader and party voted can be found at: http://www.parl.gc.ca/HouseChamberBusiness/ChamberVoteDetail.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=2&FltrParl=41&FltrSes=2&Vote=291