Sunshine and Lollipops

Canada has become a place where people are busy all day, every day, without getting much done.

We have slumped into a preference for sitting at tables and debating, rather than lacing up work boots and getting back to building a better place. We are tied to the politics of inertia - at all levels of government. Stand still and argue while critical projects and important opportunities languish.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities reports that more than one-half of Canadian city-owned roads are in need of repairs, and that one-quarter of our waste water systems need billions of dollars in update spending.

The federal Parliamentary Budget Officer reported earlier this year that only 7.2 billion of $14.4 billion budgeted for a first phase of infrastructure updating had been spent.

Things are rotting and falling apart because we are too busy talking and not doing.

One prominent example of our inertia is the much discussed, much delayed pipeline expansion. We are losing billions of dollars because we can’t get more pipeline built to deliver one of our more valuable assets to market.

Most of our oil and gas goes to the United States at huge discounts because we don’t have the pipeline capacity to get it to international markets and their higher prices. We continue to debate, yet find it impossible to settle, our differences over more pipeline capacity and environmental concerns.

Another example is the time-and-dollars-consuming debate over reducing the size of Toronto city council by almost one-half. That debate rages on while Toronto continues to become the most unpleasant city in Canada and among the most unpleasant in North America.

Maybe Toronto needs a smaller city council. Maybe not. I don’t know but I do know that the country’s largest city has huge problems that affect many who do not even live there.

While they argue about the size of Toronto city council, one or more persons every day are victims of shootings, stabbings or beatings in the city. Gang violence is out of control and Toronto-area traffic is a nightmare most days. Subway and bus travel is not much better.

To folks on the outside looking in, Canada on the whole appears to be doing well. The prime minister is out there talking about all the right things -- inclusion, diversity, environment, disparity. Everything is sunshine and lollipops.

Meanwhile, we are grossly underperforming. Growth is stagnant, employment is lagging. A six-per-cent unemployment rate is nothing to brag about.

The strongest part of our economy is a credit card industry driven by low interest rates. Those will rise and when they do, you don’t want to even think about the consequences.

We Canadians need to pull our noses out of the flowers and get the country moving. The best way to start doing that is to change our attitudes about politics and the ways in which we do politics.

Politics here, and in the United States, have become far too polarized. Politics no longer is the art of the possible. It is the art of political theatre.

We need to get back to prioritizing what needs to be done and get doing it without hyper-partisan debates. We need to elect people who will do the right thing for the majority, not people who will do the right thing for their political party.

Anyone in politics should be free to review a position and change his or her mind without fear of being smeared as weak or disloyal. 

Most importantly, we the voters need to become more informed and rational. Taking time to understand issues and to see the value in opposing ideas is an important part of being a citizen, and critical to our democracy.

Winston Churchill was quoted as saying the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Most of us are not nearly informed as we should be. We know what the problems are but solutions can be complex and require information culled from a variety of sources.  

Information is everywhere and easy to get to these days. We just need to spend a few minutes each day absorbing some of it.

When we buy a new car or a TV set we spend time researching the item. We need do the same for political issues.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

What’s with the birds?

He is a splash of brilliance on a gloomy, overcast day. Sunshine yellow body feathers standing out stunningly against deep black wings and forehead.

It has been a long time since I have seen a goldfinch at the feeder. They used to come in flocks, along with troupes of pine grosbeaks, nuthatches, chickadees and others. Not  any more, regretfully.

I am no expert, or even especially knowledgeable in the matter of birds. I sense, however, a general absence in numbers and species. They just are not around in large numbers any more, at least not at my lake place.

The lone goldfinch stays at the feeder a long time and the more I watch him, the more I wish we could talk. I’m sure he would have much to tell me about goings on in the bird world.

We cannot talk, of course, so I turn to a next best source, the State of the World’s Birds report 2018. The report was done by BirdLife International, a conservation group working to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity.

“The data are unequivocal,” said Tris Allinson, BirdLife’s Senior Global Science Officer, and Editor-In-Chief of the report. “We are undergoing a steady and continuing deterioration in the status of the world’s birds. The threats driving the avian extinction crisis are many and varied, but invariably of humanity’s making.”

Forty per cent of the world’s 11,000 bird species are in decline, says the report. Forty-four per cent are holding steady, while seven per cent of species are increasing. The other eight per cent or so have unknown trends.

BirdLife believes that a mass extinction event is occurring, the sixth in the world’s 4.5-billion-year history. However it would be the first mass extinction driven by a single species. You guessed it – humans.

“Scientists estimate that species are disappearing at a rate 100 to 10,000 times faster than the natural rate,” says the report, “with perhaps dozens of species going extinct every day.”

Not all the news is bad. The seven per cent that are increasing is positive news even if some of the species create smelly messes in our parks and on our lawns. Conservation efforts are believed responsible for increases among those species.

Conservationists believe that 25 more bird species would have gone extinct in recent decades if not for massive conservation efforts by government and many individual groups.

You don’t have to go to school and take courses to understand what is killing the birds. Agriculture expansion and the use of insecticides is a main cause, followed by urbanization and logging and climate change, which is developing into a major future threat.

The BirdLife report says that the earth once held six trillion trees. The number now is believed to be three trillion and the report says the planet is losing 10 billion trees every day.

Saving trees and growing more of them is an important way to stop this tree loss, which is a huge factor is declining bird numbers.

Thankfully we live in a society that seems to understand that. Roughly two billion trees are planted every year in the United States and Canada.

BirdLife, along with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the World Wildlife Fund plans to have one trillion trees re-grown, saved from loss or receiving better protection by 2050.

The BirdLife report says that as well as saving and planting trees we need to restore more of birds’ other habitats and eradicate or control invasive species. It has been estimated that 1,500 of various animal, plant and insect species have become established outside their natural areas because of human acts, making them invasive species.

It is not hard to watch the decline of bird life, shrug and move along. There are many other things to think about. Our lives really haven’t been changed that much because the passenger pigeon or Dodo bird no longer exist.

However, what is happening to the birds is a warning for our planet. Some scientists believe that biodiversity on earth already has dropped to unsafe levels.

When one species of anything disappears, others are affected. We are all connected, humans, other animals, plants and insects. When some start disappearing, especially at the rate we see today, we all need to become concerned.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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The Tecumseh connection

During the week of mourning and tributes to U.S. Senator John McCain it was difficult not to make comparisons with the life of another American hero. Correction: North American hero.

That other was Tecumseh, the leader, warrior, diplomat and rebel who became a hero in both the United States and Canada. He was a man who did not recognize borders and believed that a peoples’ strength lies not in diversity, but in unity.

Connections to Tecumseh were present, but unnoticed, when McCain’s body lie in state in Washington’s Capitol building rotunda, and later at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland where the senator was buried.

Just below the Capitol building’s dome windows is a belt of recessed space with19 painted scenes from U.S. history. One of the scenes is ‘The Death of Tecumseh,’ depicting the Shawnee chief being shot during the War of 1812 Battle of the Thames in southern Ontario.

At the U.S. Naval Academy there is a bronze statue named Tecumseh. Midshipmen at the Academy often offer prayers and pennies to the statue in hope that it will bring them good luck in exams and sporting events.

Tecumseh lived at time (late 1700s) when Europeans were feverishly colonizing North America, grabbing lands Indigenous peoples had occupied for hundreds of years. These people lived in tribes, separated by distance and language, and had no central organization or leader to oppose colonization.

The horse, brought to the Americas by the Spanish conquistadors, and Tecumseh, born in a village along the Scioto River just south of modern-day Columbus, Ohio, changed that.

Tecumseh, a name generally believed to mean Shooting Star, travelled thousands of miles on horseback speaking passionately against colonization and attempting to build the pan-Indian movement begun by Joseph Brant, the Mohawk leader who supervised building of the Grand River Iroquois settlement now called Brantford, Ontario.

Tecumseh became a powerful orator who travelled relentlessly, urging tribes to join together to save their land and their culture.

He was a diplomat who turned fulltime warrior when he was betrayed by William Henry Harrison, the governor of Indiana Territory later elected president of the U.S. Harrison gave 12,000 square kilometres of Indigenous lands to settlers of Indiana and Illinois, an act which Tecumseh said was illegitimate and caused him to begin what now is known as Tecumseh’s War.

Immediately after Harrison’s land grab, Tecumseh allied himself with British Canada, which was about to enter the 1812 war against the U.S. Harrison’s troops chased Tecumseh and his warriors into Upper Canada, killing him and ending his confederacy near present day Chatham on Oct. 5, 1813.

Many years later, in 1840, Harrison was elected U.S. president. He caught pneumonia and died 31 days after his inauguration. Some attributed his death to ‘Tecumseh’s Curse’ placed on him by Tenskwatawa the Prophet, Tecumseh’s brother, for destroying the Indigenous way of life.

Tenskwatawa had said Harrison would die in office and when he did everyone would remember Tecumseh.

“. . . I tell you Harrison will die,” Tenskwatawa is reported to have said. “And after him, every chief (president) chosen every twenty years thereafter will die. And when each one dies, let everyone remember the death of our people."

Since Harrison’s death six presidents elected in 20-year intervals have died in office: Lincoln (elected 1860}, Garfield (1880), McKinley (1900), Harding (1920), Roosevelt (1940), Kennedy (1960).

Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, was shot but survived. George Bush, elected 2000, was the first bypassed by the supposed curse.

None of this has any connection to the McCain funeral. There was, however, a strong connection between Tecumseh and McCain: both believed that tribal rivalries must be set aside to get things done for the common good. Strength is found in working together.

“A single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong,” is a quote widely attributed to Tecumseh.

McCain was a strong, if sometimes conflicted, advocate of American indigenous affairs. He was the longest-serving member of the Senate committee on Indian affairs and twice its chair.

Something Tecumseh also said, although it is sometimes attributed to other Indigenous sources, would have been appreciated by Senator McCain:     

“Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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