A Beacon on the Hill

April 8, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | by | 2 comments


The other day I came across news of what might be the most inspiring project I’ve heard about in years. In an age where cities are often hard-pressed to find time and space for garden plots, Seattle is embarking on an ambitious effort at edible reforestation. On Beacon Hill in Seattle, seven acres of land recently added to Jefferson Park are being converted into an urban food forest, the first large-scale urban example of it’s kind I’m aware of. This is being accomplished through a little city funding and a large volunteer effort, as well as training and design help from local permaculturalists. Best of all, the food grown there will be free to anybody who wishes to come pick it.

This food forest plans to combine fruit trees, berry bushes, herbs, vines and other plants to create a self-sustaining, food-producing ecosystem. It’s something that many have written about, but which has (so far) few examples in this part of the world. Forest gardening takes the principles of permaculture to the next level by imitating entire forest ecosystems, and in theory it’s one of the most productive and sustainable ways possible to grow food.

Unlike a traditional farm which grows single crops in huge multi-acre fields (monoculture/monocropping), permaculture uses a mix of different plants in the same plots (polyculture/polycropping). This has been shown to produce higher yields, since not all the field’s plants are competing for the same nutrients or growing/fruiting at the same time of year (when they need the most water). Even 2-3 different crops or flowers combined with “companion planting” can produce impressive results, but once larger plants get involved there are even more benefits. Trees have roots which reach much deeper than garden crops, and can feed on water which has drained far past their reach. They provide shade, mulch and windbreaks for smaller, vulnerable neighbours and anchor the ground in place preventing erosion. The right mix of plants can be self-fertilizing (as are forests) and dense enough to prevent weeds from getting established – eliminating the need for chemicals. It can provide a steady stream of fresh food through the whole growing season (it’s already maple syrup time, dontchaknow…), and ideally, needs very little maintenance of any kind.

There are many more ways I could list in which permaculture or similar systems easily multiply yields. Trees allow for more contoured land, which has much more surface area per hectare than flat farmland. Proper soil management makes plants far more resistant to pests and diseases, as well as larger and healthier. Mulch, itself, has more benefits than I have space to list. Most of these are well-known, but not in practice because they’d make large-scale machine harvesting very difficult. Thankfully, for this project, that’s not an issue.

Urban agriculture, in itself, is almost always more productive per square foot than farmland, 15 times over by FAO estimates. This is due to many factors, but most can be summed by how much more attention each plant gets. On a backyard scale or community garden scale, this has obvious limits, but given more space this opens up amazing opportunities for reducing our impact on the rural environment and addressing important questions of food security.

A single dwarf fruit tree can produce hundreds of pounds of fruit, which is about what the average human needs for a year.

The implications for cities like Hamilton, where huge regions suffer from poverty and de-industrialization should be obvious. There are countless multi-acre sites which now sit vacant. Many are already returning to a forested state, though others are paved or mowed constantly to keep this regrowth at bay. Most won’t be “developed” for decades, if ever.

What would such an effort look like? It could be as small as one of the (admittedly gargantuan) parking lots downtown, or as large as some of the former factory sites. Besides any necessary work with pickaxes or jackhammers and soil testing/remediation, much of the hard work would happen through natural regrowth. As saplings mature, there’s plenty of time to let land fallow and regenerate, and any “weeds” which grow can later be cut and used for mulch or composted for fresh, on-site soil. With a combination of both (and perhaps neighbourhood kitchen/green waste), mounds and beds can be built up to create land contours, increase soil depth and create space for smaller bushes, shrubs and herbs. Nearly all of this could be managed with on-site materials, such as fresh-cut wood and stone or crushed concrete “urbanite” for pathways and patios.

On a smaller scale, parks and community gardens could plant rows or clusters of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and herbs. These could line pathways and boulevards or break up our many large, unused lawns. Our city already spends millions on “landscaping”, to say nothing of the space, labour and fertilizer. Forest gardening allows us the ability to cut those costs substantially while actually producing something. Aesthetically speaking, it’s hard to imagine these getting uglier than Hamilton’s many, tacky, might-as-well-be-plastic flowerbeds.

From a human perspective, our city desperately needs a source of free food which isn’t mediated by mountains of paperwork. At present, this usually means raiding dumpsters or picking weeds down by the tracks. Food banks only allow a few visits per month, and community garden plots often involve applications and waiting lists (some give their foods directly to food banks). A forest garden would offer instant fresh produce to anybody willing to visit. The food produced would be some of the healthiest possible – vine-ripened and fresh-picked, it wouldn’t lose taste, texture and nutrition to weeks of truck-ripening and storage. Beginning with smaller volunteer-led initiatives at the neighbourhood level helps ensure the expertise needed to plan, plant and maintain a project like this isn’t limited to a few “experts”.

It will be fascinating to watch the Beacon Forest Garden take shape, and see if such an ambitious project can function in the middle of a major, modern city. If so, it opens up opportunities for transforming many more. Free, local food turns the traditional economy and ecology of cities upside-down – free, collective food production means freedom for those who would otherwise depend on shitty jobs and government handouts. It creates real, immediate, local value in a way that call centres never can, and does so by breaking up our sterile and lifeless expanses of concrete with a thriving ecosystem. Forest gardening may one of the oldest systems of food production known to humanity, but it also may well be our future.

beaconfoodforest.weebly.com (Homepage)
www.facebook.com/beaconfoodforest

The End of Television

April 6, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | by | Leave a comment


For decades, the television ruled North American life. It was our alter, our teacher, our babysitter and our almost-constant companion. Despite years of fiery criticism, it seemed hard to believe that more than a tiny minority would ever give up their infernal boxes.

Well, numbers just released tell a different story. Sometime next year, the number of Americans watching “television” and movies on the internet will exceed the number watching actual televisions. This trend has been coming for a while, as cable subscriptions have been falling for years, especially amongst young people.

Speaking from my own experience, I’ve never owned a television nor lived with anybody who owned one since moving out from my parents many years/rentals ago (contrary to popular belief, most anarchists don’t live with their parents). For virtually everybody I know my age, the idea of getting a cable subscription is lunacy. Those who own TVs us them as computer monitors, stockpile seasons of shows on their Xboxes or rent DVDs from the library. To my young son, television is a quaint old technology at grandma’s house, like telephones with wires.

There are still, of course, many millions of cable subscribers, but for once there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It might seem strange now, but when I was young many hours of television a day was considered “normal” for children, and I can only shudder to think of the lingering effects on all of us. As mind-numbing as computers and the internet can be, it really doesn’t compare.

Which brings me to a certain video recently posted by the Globe and Mail, which warns of the dangers of cutting your cable. In a word, it’s embarrassing, and reflects the sad state of Canada’s mainstream press (to their credit, they’ve added an “editor’s note” putting the numbers in context since I first saw it). Do read the comments – they’re worth it. Aside from using laughable numbers, the only real argument they make regard sports, and they don’t seem familiar with any options beyond Netflix and Itunes.

Here’s a hint, guys. There’s this thing, it’s called “YouTube”…

Then, of course, there’s the other option mentioned in almost none of this coverage. This option offers just about every show you can name, extending back decades, and generally appearing online within an hour of their first appearance on television. Even in Hamilton’s somewhat eastern time zone, this often means seeing hit, prime-time shows hours before they hit local cable networks. The one downside is that it’s not entirely, technically, “legal”.

On the plus side, they call it “piracy”.

If this Infographic is any judge, it’s a rather popular choice, making up about a fifth of total internet traffic. To put this in perspective, last Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” premier was downloaded over a million times on bittorrent alone within 24 hours of airing, making it the most pirated episode of television ever (and largest torrent swarm). I can only guess at the number of times it was streamed, or the number of other keen nerds who managed to get their hands on the Walking Dead finale or the much-awaited new episode of Doctor Who. I, of course, would never do such a nefarious thing, but rest assured, it is happening everywhere around you right now.

The rise of this level of thoroughly and openly illegal service shows a couple of things. The first, of course, being that it’s now possible to replicate all the services of a modern cable network without so much as using your real name to sign up (and while dodging the law). Looking deeper, though, we see why this is possible – levels of input which were never possible with a channel-changer. The internet is still largely ungovernable, which gives me some hope. Complain, if you will, about the dangers of unrestricted speech, thought and expression, but I’ll take them any day over their absence. For all it’s flaws, the internet allows me to post hours of video on a (sometimes) weekly basis, on subjects and to a depth which would rarely, if ever, grace the Discovery Channel.

Then, of course, there’s the increasing amount of content now being produced exclusively online. Some are youtube shows, others are fan-films, but they’re growing quickly in number and quality. I’ll admit I was amazed a few years ago when I learned fans had set about filming entire seasons of their own Star Trek productions, but never got into it. I loved “Chad Vader, and even watched a few of the independent Ghostbusters flicks (like “Freddy vs The Ghostbusters“), but when I saw “Dark Resurrection“, the Italian Star Wars fanfilm, I was blown away. If the new Disney movies are half that good, I’ll be satisfied. The special effects technologies which once cost millions are now open to high school students, yet Hollywood can’t seem to make much of a movie for under $100 million. Then they complain (despite record profits), of “losing money” to illegal downloads.

The death of television, even if we still end up watching the same content (sans commercials) online, comes as a welcome relief for the human psyche. As Marshal McLuhan quipped all those years ago, “the medium is the message”. What separates television from other mediums is the centralized and one-way nature of it’s broadcasts. The implicit message is one of passivity and spectatorship. For decades we sat on couches and busied ourselves while choosing between the few channels and shows we could tolerate. We adjusted our lives to it’s schedules and often defined ourselves by what we saw on the screen. TV was our drug, our school and our religion. Now, finally, increasing numbers are waking up from that nightmare.

As we awake and escape, though, we’re met with new kinds of screens which dictate our lives in ways even the television generations couldn’t imagine. These screens react, they connect with each other, and increasingly, they stare back. How will we look back on the era they defined our lives, I wonder, when it draws to a close?

The New Blacklists

April 5, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | by | Leave a comment

A blacklist (or black list) is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle.
- Wikipedia

The New York Times just broke an interesting story about the growth of private, retail industry databases used by employers to track former employees suspected of theft. As these companies and their lists grow, they’re being used by a growing number of major retailers (Target, etc) as a part of their hiring process, in an attempt to exclude “dishonest” individuals.

Even the NYT can’t sugar-coat this. Getting on one of these lists is as easy as being suspected of not reporting small thefts, but clearing your name is next to impossible. No convictions are necessary and in many case very little detail or evidence is provided. Though the lists are (considered) “legal” (for the moment), they’re facing scrutiny and lawsuits from both regulators and workers.

Comments posted by readers were quick to point out a bunch more problems with this practice. By focusing on “employee theft”, it ignores problems like the epidemic of wage theft by employers and the well-documented connection between bad managers and theft. Many mentioned the relationship between petty theft, poverty and wealth inequality. Also, as one poster pointed out, it provides a frightening opportunity for personal retribution against women who spurn advances or report sexual harassment (or any number of similarly awful motives). One person even asked how it wasn’t considered libel, which under other circumstances it almost certainly would be.

There’s a very simple answer to that last question, and it cuts right to the heart of the matter. There are all sorts of laws – slander, libel, defamation, tortious interference, product disparagement, etc which might apply to a similar list of businesses, businesspeople or their goods. Suing somebody costs money, though, which chronically-unemployed victims of these lists don’t tend to have. The defendants, on the other hand, are large wealthy and influential corporations with very good lawyers. For the same reasons, most employees don’t dare speak out about what they see on the job. Those who blog about such things, or even some who’ve gone so far as to write bad reviews often get sued for their troubles. When the “little people” want to win a lawsuit, they have to join by the thousands into class-action suits, like one which settled with database giant LexisNexis last week for $13.5 million over “background checks” for debt collectors.

“Retail theft” is of course not the only area where such lists are taking off. Landlords are subscribing to “do-not-rent-to” lists of “bad tenants”. Colleges and universities are hiring social media sleuths to scour for data on their student athletes. Never has so much data existed about the population at large, nor has it ever been so easily searchable. Detailed information about our spending habits, credit history and virtually everything we do online. Did you know that the European Union is challenging Google over it’s database and “privacy policy” right now?

As the technologies which keep and collect these records become more complex, the possibilities get exponentially more frightening. For anybody with a bit of grounding in computers and statistics, it isn’t hard to imagine how one might write a simple program to identify any number of “sins” or “crimes” at least as well as today’s police. Combining phone, ATM and potato-chip purchase records, it shouldn’t be hard to identify thousands of dope-dealers, but how many others would be caught up in such a net? And, more importantly, what kind of “crimes” would it be directed against? It’s been years since MIT students were able to write a program that determines sexual preference based on one’s Facebook data alone, and Facebook’s own advertising software is now sophisticated enough to pick out gay teenagers and offer them help coming out. Target, the big-box retail chain that just landed all over our region, stunned the world (and at least one teenage girl’s father…) when it revealed it’s ability to determine not just when customers were pregnant, but even a rough estimate of their due dates, simply through a purchase history.

Of course, in a society which is already incredibly unequal, any simple test is only going to reveal what we already know. Most easy measures of crime (georaphy, demographics etc) tie it closely to factors like race and poverty. This happens for a lot of complex reasons (desperation, abuse, etc) and shows a very clear “research bias” in terms of what we consider to be a “serious crime” (usually not “white-collar crimes”), well-established racial biases by cops and courts and incredibly unequal access to decent lawyers. The temptation, unfortunately, is to go with an “easy answer” based on superficial observations, especially when they’re backed up by new, revered and largely misunderstood methods/technologies. Do we really need to create a new high-tech justification for not hiring or renting to people who are young, black and/or poor?

This isn’t such a stretch, either. Google’s already found itself in trouble when extensive testing showed searches for traditionally “black” names like “Ebony” or “Deshawn” generated 25% more ads for things like “criminal pardon services” (I get these too…). Google was quick to promise that it wasn’t intentional, which is (at least) plausible. There is any number of ways statistics could have linked “black” names to “crime” that wouldn’t have occurred (at first) to naive programmers, whether they looked at geography, media coverage or convictions. What’s important to note is that this would be true for many crimes (like pot-smoking) which white people commit at least as often.

There is no doubt that these private registries reflect, in many ways, the prejudices of the employers who contribute to them. When suspicion is all that’s required, how many people are going to end up barred from employment because something went missing and an idiot manager took the opportunity to blame the black guy or the girl with all the tattoos? How often will the lists be used for personal retribution against those who’ve raised complaints about pay, working conditions or sexual harassment? Blacklisting “troublesome” employees has a long and ugly history, and it’s not

Legal or not, these lists run the risk of becoming de-facto laws in themselves. With the number of us in “precarious” jobs on the rise, the ability to stay employed increasingly depends on our ability to get new jobs on a regular basis. When trying to make ends meet under these conditions, it’s only natural that some will turn to theft to make ends meet. Further marginalizing some of the poorest employees isn’t going to change this state of affairs, it’s only going to be one more step in the creation of a permanent, criminalized underclass. Workers are people, not products to be reviewed online on pay-per-view databases, and if we were we’d probably have more legal recourse. These lists and databases set a frightening precedent, and we’d be wise to fight them now before they become established.

For a real picture of theft in today’s world of precarious retail employment, you’re better off looking at studies like this. It surveyed thousands of “low waged” employees in several major cities. Two thirds, it found, experienced at least one form of “wage theft”, for an average loss of over $50/week or $2600/year for full-timers, or 15% of their earnings. For New York, Chicago and Los Angeles alone, this would total around $56 million each week. Against this, the departments which deal with labour law have seen a national loss of staff and resources. In some places, they’ve stopped even trying and simply refer plaintiffs to law firms. There are no “theft insurance” policies one can buy to avoid this, and no large private armies of “loss prevention” experts hunting the culprits. Unlike stolen merchandise, we don’t get to replace stolen wages at wholesale rates or raise our prices accordingly. We just get ripped off. Fifty bucks is an almost insignificant loss to most retail chains, but could make all the difference to a poor worker. Yet, while theft from the boss gets you charges and blacklisting, theft by the boss goes largely unpunished.

They don’t call it “precarious” employment for nothing, I suppose.

Canada: Alone in the Desert

March 28, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | by | Leave a comment


The Harper government just announced plans to pull out of the United Nations Convention on Desertification. This move, which caught the Convention’s offices in Bonn by surprise, would make Canada the only nation on earth outside the agreement. Minister Fantino cited high costs and a “lack of results” as the move’s reasoning.

To put those costs in perspective – as much as $350 000/year – it’s a little more than what Hamilton libraries are budgeting to fight bedbugs this year ($200K) or what it’s cost Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital to drop “Memorial” from it’s name as a part of their new re-branding effort ($290K). Hardly cost-prohibitive in the world of international relations, where people often make many times that much in a year.

But what is desertification, anyway, and why does Harper like it so much?

Desertification is what happens when an ecosystem dies. Through removal of plants and degradation of soils, regions can lose their ability to attract and retain water, resulting in a breakdown of the water cycle. This can be caused by agriculture, grazing, logging and climate change and it threatens to displace fifty million people over the next decade. It’s one of the most dramatic effects of humanity’s effects on the environment, and given the drastic changes it brings about, one of the most undeniable.

Climate, it turns out, isn’t just a product of sunlight and air chemistry. Plants, soils and trees play a large role in regulating temperature and rainfall. Think of plants as tiny, branching wells which dig deep into the earth. Some produce shallow webs of roots, like grasses, which hold the soil in place even on steep hillsides. Others have deep tap-roots which bring up water from many metres deep which would otherwise drain away. They then breathe out water, helping to seed clouds and produce rainfall through a process called transpiration. Other benefits include holding and storing water in both droughts and floods, and breaking down to produce a rich soil when they die. Without all of this, soils become sand and wash or blow away easily and rainfall levels fall to those of a desert.

A lot of work has been done in recent years regarding climate change on a local level across history. Global climate change might require all the technologies of industrial civilization, but regional climate change doesn’t require much more than axes or fire. Deniers like to remind us that climate change has always been happening, but it’s important to remember that for thousands of years now, it’s been happening by our own hands. The tragic spiral of rising populations and dwindling rainfall seems to have played a fairly significant role in the fall of many ancient civilizations (Anasazi, Maya and Harrapan Valley, for instance), going right back to the collapse of Babylon through irrigation which salted their own fields. When this process began, the Middle East was one of the most rich, lush and “fertile” places on the planet. Today, it exists largely as desert.

As for desertification in the modern world, it’s likely to become a much larger problem in the near future. Our over-reliance on water buried in “fossil” aquifers which see little natural “recharge” means many regions which are now the world’s breadbaskets may soon become dust bowls. One such area, spanning the eight states dependent on the Ogalala aquifer, produces around a fifth of America’s wheat, corn, cotton and cattle. Added pressures from climate change will only add to this, as will the growing industrial and urban demand for fresh water. These threats are real and have the potential to starve and/or displace millions of people.

Withdrawing from an important global efforts like the fight against desertification is, of course, just another day on the job for Stephen Harper. This kind of blatant disregard for the natural world fits his record like a glove, and I’d be surprised if there aren’t some profits to be made by disregarding these restrictions. This careless and wanton disregard for international agreements evokes dark memories of George W., and given their common origin in national centres of oil production, it’s hard not to see a pattern developing. It doesn’t take many G8 nations dropping out of conventions such as this to cast doubt on all of them, as most nations will be hesitant to limit their economies (or arms stockpiles) unless they’re sure their competitors are going to play along. Policies of rabid economic expansionism tend to drag neighbours down with them, forcing a ‘race to the bottom’ as others are forced to lower their own standards to remain “competitive”. While I’m often critical of such agreements (too little, too late…), abandoning the little progress they have made is no way forward.

Desertification isn’t just a crisis, it’s the culmination of many crises: climate change, deforestation and careless agricultural and pastoral practices. It’s a frightening reminder of how easily an entire ecosystem can shatter under our weight. Failing to deal with our environmental problems at this stage, especially for these paltry sums, shows a complete incapacity (and unwillingness) to address ecological issues at all. Harper is playing a very dangerous game here, and with a billion and a half people already affected by land degradation worldwide, it’s hard to imagine how much more callous his policies could get.

How much longer are we, as the people of (or at least, residing in) this nation going to let this maniac represent us on the world stage?

Harpereaganomics

March 27, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | by | Leave a comment


One of the big risks of electoral systems like ours is that a minority of the population will vote in a government who undertakes a radical transformation of traditional institutions. Harper, who recieved votes from less than 1/5 people in this country, is a prime example of these fears. During his time in office he’s transformed Canada along lines we used to associate with places like Texas, much to the dismay of most Canadians. These changes, senseless as they might seem, follow an ideological agenda reflecting both the desires of his ‘sponsors’ and a strongly-held personal belief that capitalism can solve all problems.

In the latest Federal budget, two glaring examples stand out and have gotten a fair bit of attention. The first is the demise of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which had formerly been responsible for international aid. The second is to tie aid to young First Nations people on reserves to “job training” and similar initiatives. Both are obviously odious for plenty of reasons, but what I find most galling is the willingness to use the plight most vulnerable as an easy venue for this agenda, and to tie it in so deeply with questions of basic survival.

Capitalism, both in theory and practice, has always relied on the most destitute. On paper, they provide a constant demand for more growth and progress. In practice, they supply a cheap, flexible and massive workforce without which the system couldn’t function. While in past times this meant local slums, today entire countries and regions have been transformed into Dickensian landscapes. The spectre of Third World poverty has been used many times by the likes of Monsanto and the World Bank to promote their products and policies, though not to much (positive) effect. Instead, through “trade-based” policies, these areas have become the site of 21st century plantations and sweatshops. Canada’s role in this process is well-acknowledged, we’re the mining powerhouse so often cited for questionable mining claims and human rights abuses.

The demise of CIDA and incorporation of aid programs into the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) will accelerate the process I warned about last December when Harper started cutting the agency and talking of using aid to promote foreign investment. The Canadian press has taken a remarkably friendly view of this move (Star, Globe, Macleans), but the UK’s Guardian takes a much harsher tone,

Cida has pulled back from Africa and increased its programmes in Latin America, where Canada’s mining industry is especially active. As China is synonymous with global industry, so Canada is synonymous with global mining – although its activities in the sector embrace more than 100 countries. About 75% of the world’s exploration and mining companies are headquartered in Canada, partly because the country acts as a major banker for the extractive industry, but partly also due to weak corporate governance and enforcement.

Moves like this set a frightening precedent. Turning aid workers into the official missionaries of foreign investment poses a very serious challenge to their perceived neutrality. Conflicts over Canadian mining operations often get violent, and we don’t need to give foreign rebel groups any more reason to shoot at aid workers.

For the “Fourth World”, Canada’s internal colonies, Harper is pursuing a very similar policy. He’s making available $241 million in job training to reserves, but only on the condition that welfare support for young people on those reserves is tied to participation in those programs. The training in question will prepare native youth for the booming “resource development” industry in the North. First Nations youth are of course the country’s fastest-growing demographic and suffer horrible rates of poverty. This policy aims to use that desperation.

For those familiar with on-reserve politics, there’s other clear motives at work in this scheme, as well as a sick, assimilationist logic.. Many bands are bitterly divided over questions of resource development – deeply opposed but also dependent on projects for jobs and payments. These mirror deeper questions about the future of traditional ways of life, local autonomy and governance, as well as how to recover from centuries of colonization. Harper, obviously, would love to see one side of these arguments prevail, as the other has been one of the largest national thorns in his side. Those willing to oppose pipelines and logging with direct action, such as the Unist’ot’en blockade in BC, have threatened billions in infrastructure and investment, and given the national successes of Idle No More actions, stand to pose a much larger threat in the months to come.

There will, of course, be many, both here and overseas, who cannot manage the rigours of working resource extraction. There will also be many communities who just aren’t conveniently located near oil or precious metals. They’ll simply be left out. Others will see first-hand what these kinds of projects do to communities and ecology. The benefits, of course, will flow back toward Toronto and Vancouver, as that’s the point of investment. After all, this isn’t (really) charity.

The problem with any charity, especially of the welfare-state variety, is that it rarely does much to resolve the underlying problems. It relies on, maintains, and all-too-often exploits the inequalities and power relations it claims to help, usually in the name of religion, donations or social control. This kind of lifeline provides power over the recipients, and the temptation to abuse it can be overwhelming. As they say, charity is no substitute for justice denied – if we truly want to help, then we shouldn’t be setting terms.

As for Harper’s sick take on Reaganomics, I really doubt it’ll ‘raise all boats’ any more than his other many tide-raising policies. “Primary” (extractive) industries are notorious for not providing the kind of poverty alleviation they promise – the most successful economies have always been those who focus, as well, on processing those materials (“secondary” and “tertiary” industries). Exporting raw ore, bitumen or logs does little, even by capitalist standards, without the associated milling and refining jobs. Instead they engender an atmosphere of corruption and petty despotism among local officials, and often leave regions in ruin once the ‘mines run dry’. This shift in policy is dangerous, as is the self-serving ideology behind it. No matter what people tell you, subsidizing large, rich coporations rarely, if ever, does much for the poor.

How to Destroy the World

March 22, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | by | 2 comments

These days, many big numbers are being thrown around these days regarding the Tar Sands. It’s said, for instance, that there may be a total of 1.8 trillion barrels of oil or something like it in the sands of Northern Alberta. That’s a lot of oil, but what does it mean in terms of our climate?

Well, according to Wikipedia, there’s around 3 000 gigatons, or three trillion metric tons of carbon in our atmosphere, making up around 390 parts per million (by volume) of our atmosphere. As far as global warming is concerned, 350ppm is considered (probably) safe, if we’re to keep warming under two degrees centigrade over the next century. If, instead, we chose to see what happens if take a more apocalyptic route, what would that require?

Say you wanted, for some reason, to add a trillion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere. This would add roughly another third to global CO2 levels, pushing them to around 520ppm (390×4/3), and twice what is needed to push us into the 450ppm “danger zone”. This would be a larger increase than we’ve seen since the dawn of the industrial revolution (~280ppm), and would likely threaten to end civilization as we know it. So, ethics aside, what would that take?

Well, by EPA estimates, burning a barrel of oil yields 0.43 metric tons of C02. At that rate, it would take about 2.3 trillion barrels of oil to achieve this devious goal. Not exactly cheap, at today’s prices.

1,000,000,000,000 metric tons / 0.43 tons/barrel = 2,325,581,395,348.837209302 barrels

In order to cut costs (super-villainy gets expensive), you could turn to a cheaper source of crude. Thanks to the dreaded “bitumen bubble”, Canada’s Tar Sands exports are selling for a great discount these days! In addition, they require much more carbon per barrel to process due to their viscous nature. A barrel of “synthetic crude” can require from about 60-180kg of emissions, compared to 24-35kg for processing conventional crude. If we make a conservative estimate of 100kg of CO2 (0.1 metric tons), that pushes the emissions per barrel to around .53 metric tons. At that rate, you could save yourself almost half a trillion barrels, bringing the total down, almost, to a somewhat familiar number…

1,000,000,000,000 / 0.53 = 1,886,792,452,830.188679245

Or just under 1.9 trillion barrels. See the problem?

We can only hope there’s no mad scientists lurking with CO2-powered death rays bent on destroying the world. The unfortunate thing is that if one wanted to, they’d hardly have to lift a finger. We are already hard at work extracting and burning these fossil fuels as fast as we can manage for reasons which aren’t a lot more noble. The “development” of these “resources” has become a national priority, eclipsing every other economic, social or political goal. Environmental laws, First Nations treaty rights, free speech, manufacturing industries, scientific research – all of these have become second-tier concerns in the rush to support and expand Tar Sands production. In return, we’re told, there could be billions or even trillions in royalties and revenues awaiting us, an awfully tempting offer in times of austerity. Keep these numbers in mind when politicians and industry officials are promising you the world, as we can’t sell billions of barrels of oil without the reasonable expectation that they’re going to be used.

Of course, this is about as simplistic and cartoonish as anything resembling a climate model can get, but I wanted to break it down to middle-school math for a reason. There’s a lot of very complex ideas and numbers being thrown around, and the resulting confusion has only served to stoke the (unfortunate) controversies. We need to bring these numbers down to a level people can grasp, instead of asking them to choose between complex, projected scenarios. I encourage you to run these numbers yourself, and experiment with others. Computers, after all, are nothing if not glorified calculators, and the internet a giant database of numbers. We can’t be afraid to check the numbers ourselves, once in a while, if only to put dire, contrasting claims in context.

To go into a little more detail, with present-day technologies, only a little over a tenth of Alberta’s Tar Sands is considered “recoverable”. That’s likely to grow, but it still only represents a dozen parts per million if. What’s important to remember is that we only need around 60ppm more until we hit the 450ppm level, and so this could easily get us a 20% or more of the way there. While that’s (probably) not apocalyptic on its own, there’s always the problematic issue of every other emission on the planet.

Alberta isn’t the only place where massive new “unconventional” oil resources are bursting onto the scene. As conventional crude oil reserves start to enter a serious decline, a desperate search for replacements is taking place. Alberta is pioneering Tar Sand extraction techniques, but it’s far from the only place such bitumen is found (Russia, Venezuela and Saskatchewan come to mind). There’s also Shale Oil – deep rock formations seeping with oil or gas which can be “fracked” out. Then there’s Oil Shale – rocks made partly out of very heavy petrochemicals which can be melted out or burned directly (the dirtiest of the bunch). Adding to these, new technologies are making deep, offshore oil accessible, perhaps soon in the Arctic as well. For Coal, mining now often demolishes entire mountains for their fuel-rich interiors. This is the real legacy of Peak Oil – increasing costs, diminishing returns and a widespread lowering of standards.

It’s crunch time. Last year we witnessed a record setting drought cut crop yields, a near-total melt of the Greenland ice sheet and a superstorm which sunk parts of NYC. Let’s cut the bullshit – either we’re serious about climate change, or we’re not. The two-faced duplicity inherent in talking about it while embracing petro-development on an unprecedented scale is both offensive and dangerous. As long as these resources exist, there will be promises of fantastic profits. As other supplies dwindle and economies fumble, they’ll only look more enticing. We’d be wise, though, not to forget the greatest value and service provided by the Tar Sands. With close to a trillion metric tons of carbon locked up underground, they may be single-handedly holding off an apocalypse.

Until we choose otherwise, that is.

Mulcair and Keystone

March 20, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | by | Leave a comment


Thomas Mulcair just can’t win. First, he tried to distinguish himself from other New Democrats though a mix of centrist politics, in the hopes of becoming a kind of NDP “Tony Blair”. That hasn’t worked out as well as hoped, failing to impress critics on his left and right, but ya know what they say about trying to please everybody…

That being said, he’s impressed me more over the past week than the entire rest of his tenure as leader combined, but that doesn’t say a lot. First, there’s his supportive statements toward Gary Freeman, extradited for a shootout with police dating back to 1969. Citizenship and Immigration minister Jason Kenney had branded Freeman a “Black Panther” and a “cop killer” in parliament, opposing his re-admission to Canada on “terrorist” grounds. As Mulcair (and even his American prosecutors) point out, there’s no evidence he was a Panther and only managed to hit the officer in the arm. Also worth mentioning is that Canada doesn’t officially consider the Panthers a “terrorist” group, and doesn’t seem to have a problem allowing Angela Davis to cross the border for a speaking engagement here next week.

Mulcair’s recent troubles, though, relate directly to one issue: pipelines. He recently made the trip to Washington, as so many other Canadian politicians have done recently. Unlike the rest, though, he didn’t pressure Obama to sign off on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Instead he warned about climate change and the economic plight of Eastern Canada. These remarks have not been well received across Canada, infuriating premiers like Alberta’s Alison Redford (Cons.) and Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall (NDP), as well as many federal politicians and media across the country. Viewed as scandalous, possibly treasonous, he’s accused of “not acting in Canada’s best interest”.

Now, as Mulcair and others have pointed out, there is nothing particularly scandalous about the Leader of the Official Opposition choosing to oppose government plans, even while abroad. That’s his job, and it’s the same thing Harper did when he held the position. So why is Mulcair in the spotlight? Because he criticized the Tar Sands, and chose one of the worst possible times to do it. Obama is heavily conflicted over the Keystone XL Pipeline – on one hand, he obviously wants to allow it. On the other, a very large part of his (possibly former) supporters are staunchly opposed to it, to the point where they regularly show up outside the White House in the tens of thousands, and line up by the thousands to be arrested just to make their point.

What makes this “scandal” all the more laughable is that Mulcair isn’t even “against” the Tar Sands – he simply favours a (longer) eastern route for the bitumen, hopefully involving some refining jobs along the way. For him, this might be an alternative, but for the industry itself, it would be a bitter compromise. They’ve been demanding the western (Gateway), eastern (Line 9, etc) and southern (Keystone) and more for years, with dreams including the infamous McKenzie valley pipeline proposal, Arctic shipping hubs and nuclear reactors in the oil patch. Whether or not other routes are constructed, the loss of Keystone would severely limit these ambitions, cutting billions or more out of projected profits.

These potential profits are increasingly becoming Canada’s new political Holy Grail – sought by all with the power to cure all ills. Far more than just the money, this development offers valuable political currency as well, such as the ability to fund budgets without unpopular tax rates and the massive number of new jobs created. Alberta, over the last decade, has shown how this can drive both economic prosperity and national political dominance, with our Prime Minister coming straight from the heart of Calgary’s financial district. Seeing this success in contrast to stagnating manufacturing in central Canada or collapsed fisheries in the east, many are hoping for a piece of this pie, whether it be in taxes, transfer payments, refining jobs or their own new dramatic resource extraction projects like Plan Nord and the “Ring of Fire”.

As many have noted, there’s plenty of precedent for what happens when nations become overly reliant on new oil revenues to pay their bills – it’s called the resource curse. Selling off natural capital to pay operating budgets can be a very popular move, as any number of Middle Eastern government officials can tell you, but what it does to the political process is usually downright ugly (as you’ll hear from most of their people). Excepting a few who’ve opted to charge high royalties and save large funds (ie: Norway), most lead an ugly path toward despotism, environmental destruction and/or war. Alberta’s financial strategy, of course, is the latter – charging low royalties and saving little for the future. The increasingly shrill cries over the fate of the Tar Sands from politicians across the spectrum and the big national papers only underscores how much these revenues are now being coveted. The more serious effects, though, are now being seen in widespread attempts to muzzle federal employees such as scientists, and now even Librarians. That the leader of the Official Opposition is not even “allowed” to threaten this agenda is telling, and it’s to his credit that he did it anyway. Whether it will have any impact remains to be seen.

It won’t be all that long until we have another election, and for once, it seems like the NDP might be fielding a serious contender. Harper and Mulcair are now roughly tied in polls approval ratings (though Harper leads by a distance at disapproval). Barring the entry of a certain political dynasty, Mulcair stands a chance of becoming our next Prime Minister, and it’s still hard to tell what that might mean. These latest moves have given me more hope than most so far, but I must admit, I’m still apprehensive. There’s a good interview with local Professor and notorious activist Kevin McKay on the subject which just came on CFMU’s Progressive Voices the other day, which articulates these concerns well. If “winning” means making big sacrifices in the party’s traditional beliefs, is it really winning? On the other hand, after all these years of Harper, I’d almost settle for Bob Rae. Such are the limitations of electoral politics.

The real battles with the Tar Sands are taking place at the local and grassroots levels right now, on both sides of the border. Through a growing network of civic action and civil disobedience, these pipelines and others are being challenged across North America (did you know Hamilton’s Council discussed Line 9 today?). Left to their own devices, there are few if any who’d stand up to the allure of petro-profits from the Tar Sands and it’s subsidiaries, but the growing popular pressure is proving difficult to ignore. Instead of a debate over who or where gets this infrastructure and the associated risks and profits, it’s starting to verge on a debate about whether we want this disastrous gigaproject to happen at all. That might be the conversation they’re afraid of, but it’s also the one we need to be having right now.

Sunday Night Movies: Angela Davis

March 17, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | by | 3 comments


Angela Y. Davis is one of the best-known names from 1970s American radicalism. Born in 1944 in the heartland of segregated America, Birmingham, she began a lifetime of political engagement before even entering high school. Quickly rising to prominence in the Communist Party as well as the burgeoning racial and feminist politics of the time, she became known as an associate of the Black Panthers and countless others.

This notoriety exploded in 1970 after Johnathan Jackson, a black teenager, took a Marin County courtroom hostage, ending in his own death and that of several prisoners, cops and a judge. Davis, was sought for her involvement, having written the prisoners he was attempting to free and allegedly purchased the guns he used. First as a fugitive then one of the country’s best-known political prisoners, and even managed to become the third woman in history to make the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. After 18 months in jail, she was acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury, but not before becoming something of an international sensation. With hundreds of support groups in 67 countries, as well as songs from both the Rolling Stones and John Lennon/Yoko Ono.

In the decades since, she’s been a teacher, two-time vice-presidential candidate (Communist) and the author of many books, including Angela Davis: an Autobiography, Abolition Democracy and The Meaning of Freedom.

Davis’ writing focuses on themes of race, class, gender and political freedom. Since her time in prison, though, her work has taken on incarceration as a main focus. As a co-founder of Critical Resistance and author of books such as Are Prisons Obsolete?, she describes herself as a prison “abolitionist” and draws parallels between the modern prison-industrial complex and old institutions of slavery. As she points out, this view might sound radical today, but during the 60s and 70s it was widely accepted, even among industry experts (then Reagan happened…). While it’s notoriously brutal, racist and ineffective, Davis argues our prison system is inextricably rooted in our “democratic” system, which tends to be defined by the loss of it’s freedoms, first through the “civil death” of slavery and now incarceration.

In a little over a week, Angela Davis will be visiting the Hammer! On Wednesday March 27th (doors @ 6pm) she’ll be lecturing at LIUNA Station, giving a speech entitled “150 Years Later, Abolition in the 21st Century”. The event is both free and wheelchair accessible.

On Guns and Control

March 16, 2013 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | by | Leave a comment

Once again America is mired in a national debate about gun control in the wake of horrific and inexplicable mass-shootings. While this is one of the definitive issues of American political culture, I must admit, I find it more annoying than anything else. I can’t really place myself on either side – I’ve never even fired a gun (city boy…), am no big fan of them and would just as soon see every damned one gone. On the other hand, I hardly trust the state to carry out such a task, and in general find suggestions to that effect a little offensive, like any other kind of prohibition. If, someday, communities govern themselves, and people want to pass the idea of a gun free zone by my neighbourhood assembly, I’ll gladly hear it out. As long as those proposing to enforce such a decree have tanks, cruise missiles and war-planes, though, I’ll maintain a healthy skepticism.

This simple but obvious reality overshadows the entire gun debate. The state is, by it’s very definition, a fundamentally violent institution. It maintains kinds and amounts of weaponry which civilians can only hope to glimpse at from a distance. The irony of debates over “assault rifles”, particularly the AR-15(pictured above), is especially telling. The AR-15, for those who aren’t familiar, is better known by it’s military variants, like America’s famous M16 (along with it’s replacement, the M4 carbine) and Canada’s C7. It’s one of the best-known guns of modern warfare, and the main rifle for nearly every NATO and allied army (including Afghanistan’s “national” army). This weapon is synonymous with western imperialism – if the last fifty years had been viewed by aliens in space, it would appear as largely one giant war between those who carry M16s, and those wielding AK-47s. So, frankly, when the US government wants to talk about prohibiting this rifle, I can’t help but giggle.

If it sounds like I’m siding with “right-wing gun nuts” here, it’s because on this matter, they actually have a point. No privately owned firearms means no Black Panthers, no AIM, and no OKA-style stand-offs. Controversial as these groups and incidents might be, the contribution they made to national discussions can’t be denied. Nor can the fact that they were comparatively very lightly armed (mostly old rifles) and rarely fired shots, even against overwhelming odds, armaments and a thoroughly trigger-happy mentality. In the 1995 Gustafsen Lake standoff in BC, for instance, the RCMP fired as many as 7000 rounds, but hit only an older woman (in the arm) and killed only a dog. During the only serious firefight, one older man with a rifle managed to drive off two Armoured Personnel Carriers, allowing the above-mentioned woman and another man to escape to safety (he later escaped to the US, and they refused to extradite!). If it weren’t for a few of these small occupations, we probably never would have had the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and it’s hard to imagine what First Nations politics would look like today, to say nothing of what an actually nonviolent Civil Rights movement could ever have accomplished.

Droning On
A number of recent stories underscore the hypocrisy. First there’s the drones, an issue which is finally getting some official attention, especially after (Republican!) Rand Paul of all people launched a 13-hour filibuster, delaying the appointment of a new CIA director. Paul demanded to know whether Americans could be targeted for assassination by drones, and whether drone strikes are permitted on American soil. To this, the president’s press secretary replied, “the president has not and would not use drone strikes against American citizens on American soil”, for whatever that’s worth. In the context of a global, borderless policy of assassinations unconstrained by either judicial process or formal declarations of war, what would legal or constitutional restraints even mean to somebody with the authority to declare Martial Law? American and Canadian police forces are already being equipped with unarmed surveillance drones and other robots, how long until “concern for officers’ lives” demands some for a combat role? And, as always, why do the moral implications only become an issue when Americans find themselves in the crosshairs?

Then there’s the obviously-relevant story (now a big Forbes op-ed!) of Homeland Security purchasing 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. As Forbes points out, this would keep the recent Iraq war effort going for over twenty years, begging the obvious questions of who they plan to shoot with them. Along with these bullets, there’s also the recent DHS mass-purchase of surplus MRAPs (heavily armoured vehicles) from Iraq and Afghanistan, now being put to use by local police forces. This fits perfectly into a growing trend of police militarization in which local law enforcement is granted the tactics and equipment of more formal armies, now the subject of a major ACLU investigation.

If you want to see what happens when a government directs serious military vehicles at it’s own populace, a video is now making the rounds online (allegedly) shot from the perspective of a Syrian tank in action. It shows a largely destroyed and almost entirely depopulated Darayya, a suburb of Damascus and “rebel stronghold”. Shot from the position of the main gun, which fires building-shattering blasts as the tank is strafed with (hopelessly ineffective) rifle fire.

On a similar note, there’s the case of Libya, also struck by civil unrest against a notorious (but formerly somewhat friendly) dictator. This is an important cautionary tale about the dangers of arms-dealing and foreign intervention. First, countries like the US and France made their peace (piece?) with Gaddafi and began selling him weapons. Then the Arab Spring broke out and his harsh response shocked the world. When NATO intervened with air-strikes and flooded the area with military aid, the rebels managed to overcome him, among them many militant Muslims and indigenous people from across the region. After defeating Gaddafi, many, including Al Qaeda affiliates and Tuareg separatists, left Libya in the hopes of returning to ‘liberate’ their homelands – places like Mali and Algeria. With them, they brought the arms stockpiles so generously donated by the west, or liberated from Gaddafi’s armories. Now, France’s army (and others) finds itself embroiled in an African quagmire, dodging bullets their own governments supplied.

Bringing it back home, the neighbourhood of Flatbush, in Brooklyn has spent much of the past week under siege, following the shooting death of Kimani Gray, a 16-year-old (black) neighbourhood resident at the hands of police last Saturday night. Gray was accused of pointing a gun at police (which witness testimony disputes) and shot seven times, three in the back. All week there’s been nightly protests, some of which escalated into fairly intense rioting and dozens of arrests, injuries and have brought an enormous police presence in the area.

More Than Just Gun Violence
For America, this violence is structural, and it often takes lives without firing a shot. While Canada’s still reeling from the shock of our own prison statistics and the appalling treatment of indigenous peoples in our justice system, America still exists in that state of national denial over well-acknowledged statistics regarding their own prison’s racial make-up. Even with a black president, little is said about the sad fact that 60% of their inmates are black, amongst a prison population which alone makes up about a quarter of the world’s inmates. Many more are indigenous or Hispanic, poor and/or mentally ill. This tough-on-crime approach, of course, has yielded few results since prison grown started exploding under Reagan. American is still far more dangerous Canadian cities (or most others in the First World). Even in the immediate absence of guns, you’re still more likely to be murdered with a knife in the US than up here in Canada (where knives are used in around twice as many murders).

Why that’s the case goes back to many of the above examples. Maintaining the world’s largest military budget and prison population isn’t cheap, and it leaves little for social programs, which evidence shows are much more effective at curbing “crime” than any amount of prisons. As a result, despite being the world’s richest nation, it has some of the First World’s poorest poor people in truly staggering numbers. Poverty, as Gandhi says, is the worst form of violence. From it stems countless crimes of desperation, which are met by a “justice system” which tends to be hostile to anybody who can’t afford a good lawyer. Along with this comes a culture of violence and machismo, both a result of the national self-image of “the world’s policeman” and daily needs of survival in crime-ridden ghetto hellholes. News, fiction, music and history all reflect this deep-seated violence, as well as the sexism, racism and classism which drive so much of this carnage. Ever look into how many of the victims of American gun violence are shot by their husbands?

Forget the shallow-but-popular controversies. Forget assault rifles, Eminem, Taratino and even gay marriage. If America wants to get at the roots of this problem, it’s going to have to start having serious national discussions about topics like straight marriage. Guns in homes raise the risk women will murdered, threatened or coerced considerably, and are very used very rarely for self defence, comparably. Focusing on the weapons and not the people, though, distracts from more fundamental problems. Guns or not, you are far more likely to be murdered or raped by a partner or family member than any stereotypical “criminal” shown on the news and in action movies. How’s that for “family values”?

This is a fundamentally sick society, and gun control isn’t going to fix it. Until America takes a hard look at the inequalities which pervade it, this violence will continue.

On the subject of guns themselves, it’s time to break out of the limited frame of “gun control” and talk about actual disarmament. Unlike the statist philosophies of a domestic Pax Romana, this would ask something in return from our government. Disarmament, as anybody who’s followed negotiations from Northern Ireland to Washington and Moscow knows, is a matter where you ‘give a little to get a little’. No more “assault rifles”…alright…how about no drones in domestic airspace? No military-style armoured vehicles policing our streets? Perhaps they could even sign onto some landmine treaties as an act of goodwill…

This is the same government, after all, which spends almost half of the world’s yearly military budget. America is the world’s biggest arms dealer, using them to support numerous tyrannical regimes (like the Saudis) and terrorist groups (like the Libyan and Syrian rebels). It maintains a massive nuclear stockpile, much of it atop launch-ready intercontinal missiles, as well as numerous chemical and biological weapons facilities. It flaunts numerous global arms-control treaties, amongst many other international laws. Against it’s own population, it directs the world’s largest prison system, largely as a method of social control against the lower classes and racialized populations.

If we’re going to talk about this, then yes, advocates of civilian “gun control” have my attention. Bringing the American state’s guns under control would save an almost immeasurable number of lives around the globe. If the registration and confiscation of civilian firearms (especially those of military value) is going to take place in conjunction with the militarization of police forces, extension of domestic surveillance and challenging of every serious restriction from Habeas Corpus to international treaties on torture and nuclear proliferation, then don’t expect my support. Restricting firearms does alter the basic civil balance of power, and it’s yet another worrying sign that states are beginning to seize totally unprecedented levels of power, which is in itself a decent argument for resisting such restrictions.

For those who still wish to own guns, I won’t try to stop you. I will say only that safety means a lot more than gun-safes, trigger locks and simple rules (“never at a person”, “always assume it’s loaded”, etc). The power to kill or maim at a distance comes with an incredible responsibility, and that starts with yourself. It isn’t just guns or people that kill people, it’s hatred, anger, carelessness and ignorance that drives them to do it. It’s the “gunstore cowboy” mentality that consumer culture built up around small arms and the ever-present fear of young, urban, males of colour. It’s notions of “the family” which evoke images of East-Asian “honour killings”, viewing disobedient women and children as fundamentally disposable. And, of course, it’s a product of the poverty and twisted justice system that turn inner cities into warzones and make guns a way of life. None of these problems are limited to guns or gun owners, but they all become much more serious once guns are involved. This makes it more important than ever to challenge your own preconceptions and deal with your own issues, before they drive you and your gun to do something you can’t take back. Really curbing gun violence means addressing it’s roots in our society, but the first step towards that change is taking a long hard look at ourselves.

Canada’s Two Tiered Justice System

March 8, 2013 in Uncategorized | by | 1 comment

Yesterday, Canada’s parliament was confronted with the ugly reality of our nation’s prison system. A new report, detailing deep “systemic inequalities“, was tabled calling attention to the incredibly disproportionate number of native people in Canada’s jails. With only about four percent of the country’s population, aboriginal peoples make up 23% of the prison population, an incarceration rate roughly ten times as high as the general population. Between 2001-2 and 2010-11, these numbers increased by 40%, in spite of parliamentary promises to address them. Once inside, incarcerated natives are more likely to see punishment like solitary confinement once inside and less likely to be released soon.

The report came from Howard Sapers of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, a little-known institution created forty years ago as a watchdog for the prison system. This was the second time in its forty-year existence it’s seen an issue as so pressing that it had to be brought before the House, the first coming in 1994 after a brutal, all-male raid on Kingston’s (now closed) Prison For Women. Among the new recommendations the report makes are a dedicated “Deputy Commissioner for Aboriginal Corrections”, creation and funding of more community-based healing lodges, better processes for releasing prisoners to their communities and better training for corrections staff. It also called attention to the decade that’s passed since any funding or attention was devoted to the problem.

Critics, of course, seized the opportunity to lambaste the Harper government and it’s “tough on crime” agenda, which has meant rising incarceration rates and dwindling prison budgets. In response, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews claimed, “the only identifiable group that our tough on crime agenda targets is criminals”.

Oh really? So they haven’t focused law enforcement resources on their environmentalist and activist adversaries? On refugees or toward First Nations before? (To be fair, this is one of Vic’s more honest and intelligent public statements…)

Also in the news yesterday was damning testimony from the late Ashley Smith’s psychologist at the inquiry into her death in custody. He stated that he’d opposed her transfer on the grounds it would separate her from family supports and threaten to destabilize her condition (which it did). Smith later strangled herself while guards watched on their superior’s orders, provoking a national outcry.

The poor treatment of indigenous people in Canada’s justice system is one of it’s worst-kept secrets. These statistics are nothing new, though they still aren’t showing any improvement. Sapers and Toews may assure us this is unintentional, but how many decades of neglect does it take to characterize ill intent? The Harper government flouted indigenous groups while taking concrete steps to underfund and overcrowd prisons. What did they think would happen?

This study, like many others, lays bare the racist face of Canada’s justice system. This is no accident – First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples have been a prime focus of Canadian police since the inception of the North-West Mounted Police (later RCMP) under Sir John A, modelled on the Royal Irish Constabulary. Louis Riel’s Red River Rebellion had just shaken the country, and tasks like “maintaining order among Indians” and “enforcing treaty relations” (making sure tribes surrendered their children to residential schools) were considered top priorities. Modern policing emerged out of this framework, just as it did from slave patrols and debtor’s prisons, and that’s a legacy which it’s never really managed to escape. As overt racism in law started to dwindle in recent decades, policing and prisons have picked up the slack. In America, this process has been called the new Jim Crow – does that make it our “new Indian Act”?

Though he got the details ass-backwards, Gary McHale is right about one thing. Canada has a very well-established system of two-tiered “justice”.

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