Two books that every social democrat, labour activist and self-styled progressive in Canada should read

In the winter of 1995, I taught a course on Comparative Political Economy at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine. One subject stands out in my memory, both because of its poignancy in that historical and geographic context and its relevance to our own: the role of labour in economic policy. Were there still agreeable, meaningful options that latter-day social democrats with a simple, direct, undeceived intelligence could believe in, but that would still serve to distinguish them from their fellow liberal democrats?

I remember being particularly fascinated by the example of the Swedish Labour Organization (LO) and its role in Swedish economic policy making, typically under Social Democratic governments. In the early 20th century, socialists and trade unionists were able to create a strong and unified organization of the working class. Swedish employers responded by creating a highly centralized national employers' association, forcing a comparable parallel centralization on the unions. Paradoxically, the very intensity of class conflict in Sweden had created the conditions for organized class cooperation and peaceful industrial relations.

During the long period of Social Democratic rule from 1932 to 1976, the LO came to exercise considerable power, but its leadership also came to recognize and accept a quid pro quo: that the welfare of Swedes depended not just on the strength of socialist ideas and working class organization , but also (in this small, open export-driven economy), on the operation of a dynamic and competitive capitalist economy that could compete internationally and increase the size of the national economic pie.

The neoliberalism and economic globalization of the past two decades have not left the Swedish model of cooperative social democracy unscathed, but they have not destroyed it, either. This enduring success can be explained in public choice terms. A sufficiently large percentage of the labour force is directly represented in the LO that leaders and members alike can see that by propping up inefficient industry at the expense of more profitable sectors, they end up hurting themselves. The costs of such policies cannot simply be displaced onto others--there are no "others". Hence unions are not only useful in sharing the benefits of growth more equitably, but also in sharing the costs of adjustment and decline more equitably as well. Back in 1994-95, I couldn't help but think how much NDP governments then struggling with the difficult economic conditions in Canada could have benefitted from that kind of industrial relations.

That is why Bob Rae's From Protest to Power: Personal Reflections on a Life in Politics (Viking, 1996) and Janice MacKinnon's Minding the Public Purse: The Fiscal Crisis, Political Trade-Offs, and Canada's Future (McGill-Queen's, 2003) are political memoirs of a particularly instructive kind. They describe social democratic governments attempting to implement their values under the most straitened of economic circumstances. The combination of recession, free-trade adjustment, high interest rates and debt crisis that characterized the Canadian political economy in the early and mid-1990s did not force these leaders to simply adopt the policies of their Conservative opponents, but it did force a painful re-thinking of many cherished beliefs on the left. Foremost among these was the commonly-held view that "globalization" was primarily an ideological construct, and that the unions and NDP governments should simply refuse to go along with it.

Rae claims that when organized labour failed to support his proposal for a "Social Contract" in Ontario that would in effect alter collective agreements to save jobs and reduce public debt, it missed a glorious opportunity to demonstrate to Canadians that unions were not a narrow, self-seeking interest group. Based on the historical success of the Swedish model, I am inclined to agree with him.

"Collective bargaining had shown its strength in dealing with a world of more; the issue was, for both the private and public sectors, how well could collective bargaining respond to a world of less. ...Darryl Bean of the Public Service Alliance of Canada opined that he couldn't see any difference between us and the worst of the Conservatives...[Bob] White asked, "Why can't Ontario just do like the Reichmanns and declare bankruptcy, maybe pay 50 or 60 cents on the dollar?...I learned that the leadership of the public-sector unions were more interested in the "sacredness" of contracts than they were in the importance of jobs, more concerned with protecting the full benefits of survivors than the fate of the people tossed overboard. They, as does Buzz Hargrove, think that this makes them better socialists. I disagree. It puts short-term expediency before long-term solidarity. ...Every social democratic government in existence across the world has had to learn this lesson, and every trade-union leadership has had to come to terms with the consequences. I am convinced that if we had been able to persuade the leadership of the trade-union movement, and the professions, of the necessity and logic and fairness of what we needed to do, we would still be in government today." (From Protest to Power, pp.206-207, 210, 216.)

MacKinnon relates a similar story:

"In 1993 Saskatchewan led the way out of the quagmire with the bold stroke of a four-year plan to actually balance the budget...by leading the way out of the debt trap and doing so with compassion for the less fortunate. ...To my horror, the response to my argument was that there was only one choice that was both politically sensible and would save us from abandoning fundamental NDP principles --default. ...I would have liked to ask Bob White if his idea of default meant offering up the pensions of his members, since many pension plans had invested in what were considered safe government bonds on which White and the others were now proposing that we default." (Minding the Public Purse, pp.115, 118-19, 121).

In crass political terms, the Romanow-MacKinnon strategy can be termed a success because Saskatchewan has continued to elect NDP governments; the Ontario NDP and its Social Contract can be considered a failure (even by Rae's own admission) because of the NDP's resounding defeat in 1995. But arguably both have been vindicated by the contrast between their policies and those of their Conservative opponents. In Saskatchewan, it is plain (if ironic) that the Tories' cynical plan of building hospitals in constituencies where there were more gophers than people helped to create a mess that Romanow and MacKinnon had to clean up. In Ontario, simply applying neo-conservative policies would hardly have softened the blow of losing 300,000 manufacturing jobs between 1989 and 1992; nor could it have saved Spruce Falls or DeHavilland, the restructuring of which were two of the most notable achievements of the Rae government. It might have brought on the Walkerton crisis a few years sooner, however.

In British Columbia, one of the greatest achievements of the Harcourt NDP government was the way it was able to draw upon its strong roots in both the labour movement and the environmental movement in order to hammer out broader social compromises which formed the basis for the land use plans and the government's approach to the treaty process. (The B.C. Liberals had a much flimsier basis for their policies, and still operate far too much according to the wonkish whimsy of Gordon Campbell.) Unfortunately, the NDP's failures also prove the point: labour-environment compromise; an emphasis on consultation, transparency and due process; and a commitment to institutional and constitutional reform in the first half of the nineties gave way to "process is for cheese", "environmentalists are the enemy", and "proportional representation is for losers" in the late nineties. MacKinnon's observations about British Columbia during this period are worth repeating, for they illustrate the costs of abandoning consensus-building, due process, and compromise as guiding principles:

"The resignation of Harcourt and the defeat of Cull in the 1996 election dramatically changed the dynamic of the finance ministers' club. Cull's replacement, a law professor, Andrew Petter, was bright and moderate, but as he readily conceded he was not calling the shots. While Harcourt had run a decentralized ship in which able ministers such as Cull could chart a course and get the backing of both premier and cabinet, the new premier, Glen Clark, ran a much more centralized operation. A demoralized Petter regularly bemoaned his new premier's practice of calling finance officials to his office to vet their recommendations before treasury board meetings, without the courtesy of even informing the finance minister. A finance minister who is not calling the financial shots and does not have the backing of the premier is like a rudderless ship being tossed to and fro by each passing wave.[So that's how the Fast Ferries project got past the treasury board officials!--MC] The advent of Clark also marked a change in British Columbia's approach to the rest of Canada. ...With politics rather than policy driving the agenda, Clark took a much more hard-line approach to Ottawa, a tack that was more in tune with British Columbians' distrust of the east but made reaching compromises difficult, if not impossible..." (Minding the Public Purse, pp. 163-64).

Rae and MacKinnon help us to see that the Bob Whites, Buzz Hargroves, and Glen Clarks of this world, whatever their undoubted merits as negotiators and political combatants, are also increasingly anachronisms. The lessons they hold for governments attempting to navigate the uncertain economic waters of the early 21st century are mostly of the negative kind.

What to Do About Betty Krawczyk

Are any of you really in a quandary about what the justice system should be doing with 78-year-old Betty Krawczyk?

The title of her book, Lock Me Up or Let Me Go, appears to complain about our collective ambivalence on this matter, but I don't see it as very difficult question at all. She tells of her struggle to prevent logging of old-growth forest in the Elaho Valley, and of her time in the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women. Now, she has once again defied a court order, refusing to sign an undertaking not to go near logging trucks until the end of her trial. Elected government, according to Betty, is not doing a good enough job of balancing social, ecological and economic interests and therefore she refuses to obey it. She even refuses to obey courts that have ruled on the law's application to her specific case. Yet she must recognize that we would live in a state of anarchy if everyone could pick and choose which laws to respect; it is not even clear that the trees would be safer in such an environment. She should therefore be willing to accept the consequences of her actions. She should go to jail for contempt of court, and ten months seems a reasonable sentence for a repeat offender like Krawczyk.

With respect to her prison conditions,however, the issues are a bit murkier. Here is what she wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Rich Coleman, in 2003:


"When any women is incarcerated she has a human right to cleanliness. To clean bedding and a clean mattress, to clean clothes and to clean femine (sic) hygiene, to clean food and clean eating utensils, and a space to put her belongings. All of this becomes problematic if not impossible under the conditions of extreme over crowding that is now the norm at BCCW."

Let's see--is she saying that women who are incarcerated are treated differently from how men are treated? Or that they are not, but that they should be, because females need more closet space? Since her view of what ails the world is rooted in an analysis of "male violence", she should clarify--is she a liberal feminist demanding equal treatment (i.e. that men stop treating women like "animals"), or is she a radical feminist complaining that similar treatment (i.e. incarceration according to lower "animal" standards of males) is somehow unfair to the fairer sex?

I get the feeling that, if only life were more comfortable behind bars for women who engage in civil disobedience, Betty would be a happier person. Maybe it is actually her own ambivalence that she is complaining about.--MC

John Kenneth Galbraith, R.I.P.

The late John Kenneth Galbraith has been receiving many backhanded compliments from his eulogists on the political right. His old friend and skiing partner William F. Buckley Jr. repeated this quote, from his review of Galbraith's last book, The Culture of Contentment, in his article "John Kenneth Galbraith, R.I.P." on May 03, 2006:

"It is fortunate for Professor Galbraith that he was born with singular gifts as a writer. It is a pity he hasn't used these skills in other ways than to try year after year to bail out his sinking ships. ...I for one hope that the next time a nation experimenting with socialism or communism fails, which will happen the next time a nation experiments with socialism or communism, Ken Galbraith will feel the need to explain what happened. It's great fun to read. It helps, of course, to suppress wistful thought about those who endured, or died trying, the passage toward collective living to which Professor Galbraith has beckoned us for over 40 years."

Does this accurately describe Galbraith's career? It strikes me as rather odd that we should venerate the economic genius of John Maynard Keynes's macroeconomics, the enormous contributions of Chamberlin and Robinson to incorporating a real-world picture of imperfect competition into microeconomics, Schumpeter's insights into the evolution of modern capitalism, Berle and Means' theory of managerial control, the wit and social acuity or sociologist Thorstein Veblein, or the journalistic style of Henry Luce, and yet not revere the man who best combined all of these various qualities. But I won't regale my readers with an account of Galbraith's life, or re-hash all of the debates about his theories, which are widely discussed on the internet and elsewhere.

Instead, I wish to concentrate on what Galbraith had to say about the central, implicit assumption underlying Buckley's quote: that his brand of liberalism was a "passage to collective living"--in other words, a slippery slope to socialism, a "road to serfdom" in Hayek's phraseology. For a cardinal tenet of all right-wing neoliberals and neoconservatives is that there is no happy medium, no optimal "Third Way" which finds a stable and pragmatic balance between laissez faire and socialism. In stark contrast, John Kenneth Galbraith was the 20th century's original Third Way theorist. Arguing as much against socialists as against conservatives (there is an overlooked comparison to George Orwell here), the young Professor Galbraith once gave a stern Scottish lecture to the more utopian English musings of radical social reformer and biologist Julian Huxley:

"Broadly speaking the choice for postwar social organization lies somewhere between two poles. ...One cannot regulate without impairing the freedom of contract and the control over private property, for private property is nothing more nor less than the privileges which are associated with private ownership. One cannot have perfect individual freedom and at the same time a greater effort to regulate relations between individuals in the community interest. ...So far as individual comfort, health, recreational opportunities and the like are not forthcoming otherwise, the central authority provides them as a matter of course." (Cited in Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics, p. 133, emphasis added). This strikes me as the sensible core of Galbraith's approach to economics: the market delivers much that is of value, but (even in the long run, as Keynes had famously said) it also fails to deliver much that is of value.


While conservatives like George Will and Bill Buckley may see The Affluent Society as condescending and elitist--because it calls into question "consumer sovereignty" in an economy dominated by giant corporations spending billions of dollars on advertising--the twin themes of want creation and the imbalance between public and private goods seem as relevant today as they were when Galbraith's book was first published almost 50 years ago. Indeed, the very successes of conservative politicians in limiting the welfare state have made it so. Had John Kenneth Galbraith simply couched his arguments in the technical language of externalities, market failure, social efficiency, asymmetric information and game theory, no doubt more of his fellow economists would agree.

Milton Friedman, R.I.P.

Why the Liberals Should Have Chosen Bob Rae

{“It’s the delegates, stupid”. When I appeared on CBC Radio's Daybreak program on the morning of Monday Dec.4 to read the entrails of the Liberal Leadership Convention, I had to admit that I was slightly surprised by the results. I shouldn't have been. In the end, neither the leadership debates, nor the length of the campaign, nor the speeches, nor the public opinion polls concerning "winnability", nor the steadily gathering endorsements by MPs and leadership candidates in Rae's favour really mattered much. What really mattered was the swiftness and the discipline of the Kennedy-Dion alliance. Kennedy --despite finishing just 2 votes behind on the second ballot--immediately went to Dion, bringing 92-94% of his delegates with him. Ontario MP Mark Holland, Justin Trudeau, and BC Dion organizer Mark Marissen deserve much of the credit for cementing this deal.

Dion is a decent and intelligent figure, genuinely committed to taking greater action on climate change, but I have been more impressed by the character and intellect, as well as political skills, of Bob Rae. I relished the prospect of him skewering Emerson and Harper over Softwood Lumber and besting Harper in political and parliamentary debate. I liked the idea of someone with Rae's qualities having governed the nation's largest province under the most difficult of circumstances, and then going on to be prime minister--something that never happens in our country, which punishes such "baggage". And I liked the story of the Comeback Kid, which apparently has greater resonance in America than it does here in Canada.}


---A Decima Survey in released November 18, 2006 showed that 37 per cent of respondents said they would vote Liberal or consider doing so if Mr. Rae were the leader, compared with 34 per cent for Stéphane Dion, 33 per cent for front-runner Michael Ignatieff and 31 per cent for Gerard Kennedy. Mr. Rae appeared to have pulled even among Ontarians, who've apparently forgotten or forgiven his rocky tenure as an NDP premier in the province.

---The battle-ready former premier was feared by Conservatives as someone who already had experience bringing down Conservative minority governments. Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, The Order of Canada recipent, chief of staff to Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and former President of The Institute for Research on Public Policy, had this to say on CBC Radio after the Convention: “My feeling, and the feeling of most Conservatives, was that we dodged a bullet when the Liberals failed to choose Bob Rae as their leader”

--- My former boss in the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Tim Armstrong, was a Deputy Minister under 4 Ontario premiers from 3 different parties. Uniquely qualified to compare and assess their leadership qualities in context, he had this to say(I reproduce the article in full) :

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Political mythmaking, Ontario style
The drumbeat theme of those opposing Bob Rae's Liberal leadership candidacy is, "A smart guy, with a terrible record as premier of Ontario." It's difficult to fathom whether this myth is the product of ignorance, malice, or both.

I was appointed as a Deputy Minister by Premier Davis and served under him and his three successors, Premiers Peterson, Miller and Rae. None of those premiers would claim to have achieved perfection. But the suggestion that the Rae government did not live up to -- and in some areas exceed -- the standards and accomplishments of its predecessors on behalf of the people of Ontario is untrue.

When Bob Rae assumed office, the province was faced with an economic crisis -- a deepening recession, unprecedented competitive challenges from a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., high interest rates, an overvalued dollar and a budget deficit of several billion dollars rather than the surplus predicted by the prior administration. Over 300,000 manufacturing jobs were lost between 1989 and 1992.

When the Rae government approached the end of its term, Ontario led the way in growth among the provinces and had one of the strongest economies in the G7. Surveys showed strong consumer and business confidence.

Private sector investment was back with billions in capital spending. Labour productivity was at an all-time high, as were manufacturing exports. Health-care costs were under much improved control as part of a broader strategy that was reducing the deficit.

My most memorable work with Premier Rae involved the restructuring of Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie and Dehavilland Aircraft in Downsview. From the outset, the premier made it clear that he was determined, in the interests of the employees, the affected communities, and the provincial economy, that both companies would survive. His personal efforts in achieving success exceeded, in dedication, intelligence and shrewd negotiating skills, anything that I had previously experienced.

The costs incurred by Ontario in these restructurings, as well as those extracted from the federal government, have been recovered, many times over, in tax revenues alone. And the dismal alternatives to success -- weeds in the companies' parking lots, padlocks on their gates, and thousands of discouraged unemployed workers, their families on welfare or seeking social assistance -- were all avoided. These achievements were repeated, at Spruce Falls Pulp & Paper in Kapuskasing and other communities across the province, under the Manufacturing Recovery Program, a program designed and implemented with the full involvement of the Premier.

Bob Rae was, from the outset, under attack from many in the business community. After taking office, he faced vigorous opposition from organized labour, principally for his efforts to curtail what he perceived to be excessive wage demands and his commitment to share the necessary cuts in government spending fairly. In my experience in the labour relations field, if you displease both labour and management, you are likely on the right path.

There were other noteworthy achievements during this time. The Rae government successfully promoted the Jobs Ontario program, with increased investment in child care and training; incentives to employers to hire people on welfare and those whose employment insurance had run out; the elimination of payroll taxes on any new employee hired -- policies that, combined, created in excess of 50,000 jobs.

Ontario's welfare system was renewed, focusing on the needs of children living in poverty; the child-care budget was expanded; hundreds of thousands of poor families were removed from income tax rolls; and the new Trillium Drug Plan gave affordable access to all in need of therapeutic drugs.

The Rae government placed a renewed emphasis on aboriginal affairs, leading to the first Statement of Political Relationship between a provincial government and aboriginal leadership, acknowledging the need for government-to-government relations and providing new funding to address native poverty, with emphasis on housing, child care and improved sewer and water facilities.

Finally, as premier, Bob Rae held a deep commitment to the success of our federal system, and in particular, one that would accommodate Quebec's goals and aspirations, without jeopardizing Canadian national unity. He played a leadership role with the First Ministers that produced an affirmative vote in Ontario on the national referendum on the Charlottetown Accord.

Many other reforms were set in motion, many of which have been continued by successive governments. As to the Liberal leadership race, may the best candidate win. But in the process, the trumped-up myth that Bob Rae presided over an ineffective government needs to be put to rest.

Tim Armstrong was Ontario's Deputy Minister of Labour and Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology and was the province's Agent General for the Asia- Pacific region, 1986-1990.

Source: The Hamilton Spectator
Monday, August 14, 2006
by Tim Armstrong
Page A15

Will the Liberals’ New Leader Bring the ‘Third Way’ to Canada?

{The following 650-word essay was written for the Thompson Rivers University "TRU Stories" series, and appeared in local newspaper(s)on Thursday December 7, 2006. Clearly, it was written before the selection of Stephane Dion as the new Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada on December 2, when I anticipated a Bob Rae victory. The "Third Way" prism remains a useful one, however, and one that cuts across the NDP and Liberal policy agendas with conspicuous perpendicularity.}

Political events like leadership conventions take place on a larger canvas. While the selection of a new leader for a major party does not determine the future, it plays a significant role in determining when and in what form new policy trends develop, and whose interests are served in the process.

Political trends have a habit of running in long cycles. The 1950s to the mid-1970s saw the massive expansion of social spending and the routine use of deficit spending to ensure full employment: this was the heyday of traditional social democracy. The late 1970s and 1980s saw the rise of “neoliberalism” (also called, somewhat confusingly, “conservatism”), led by Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in America. This period has been characterized by the deregulation of markets, the privatization of government enterprises and services; tax-cutting; and “free-trade” agreements.

Arguably, the turn of the new century has seen the advent of a “third way” of thinking about public policy. This perspective sees neoliberalism as a deeply flawed approach to politics, because it fails to take responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of market-based decisions. At the same time, the third way recognizes that in a world of globalization and the post-industrial ‘information’ economy
there is no sense turning back to traditional welfare state’s preoccupation with public ownership and national redistribution of wealth. Instead, what is needed is a more pragmatic political project which is willing to break free from the straightjacket of left/right politics.

Claims that such an approach could promote both wealth creation and social justice at the same time have been made on behalf of Tony Blair’s “New Labour” government in Britain and the Clinton –led “New Democrats” in the United States in the 1990s. It also informs the policies of Segolene Royal, the Socialist Party candidate who is favoured to win the 2007 presidential election in France. Former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien sometimes made similar claims for the Liberal Party, but less convincingly. The third way is not simply the middle way, but rather the renewal of social democratic values in the context of globalized markets. It is the politics of the center-left, not merely the centre. This perspective does not fit easily into either the New Democratic Party, the left wing of which has been “anti-globalization” and which fiercely resisted the steps necessary to bring the debt crisis under control in Saskatchewan and Ontario; or the Liberal Party, which has usually realized its most progressive policies only under pressure from the NDP. Where, then, does it fit? One possible role for the recent Liberal leadership contest was to answer this question for Canada.

Certainly, Bob Rae is a Canadian political leader who fits the “third way” label perfectly. In leaving his former party, the New Democrats, Rae was consciously following Blair’s example and criticizing the federal and Ontario NDP for not doing so as well. His emphasis on education and student aid as “the one policy that combines prosperity and opportunity”; his proposal for an earned income tax credit to encourage people to get off welfare and work their way out of poverty, clearly have the stamp of third way thinking. The role of policymaking in this view is not merely to shield citizens from the greater risk and insecurity that globalization brings, but to provide ‘proactive’ government which invests heavily in social and human capital, as well as environmental sustainability. Trade liberalization and greater flexibility in labour markets , anathema to trade unions and to the old left, are seen as necessary but not sufficient for meaningful full employment. They must be combined with minimum wages, strong health and social policy, massive investments in training, and public work projects where necessary—all anathema to the new right. Other Liberal candidates, such as Gerard Kennedy and Michael Ignatieff, expressed some of these views, though not as clearly or comprehensively as Rae.

Of course, if the ‘third way’ theorists are correct, this trend will eventually be confirmed in Canada regardless of who the major parties choose as their leaders. The only question is—will we be ahead of the curve, or behind it?


Mark Crawford currently teaches political science at the Williams Lake campus of Thompson Rivers University. His most recent publications describe the new linkages forming between domestic health policy and international trade regimes.

Environmental Assessment Law Weaker Under B.C. Liberals

{This entry, first published as a letter to the Williams Lake Tribune Thursday November 30, 2006, p.A5, concerns the two coal-fired power plants currently being considered for construction in Princeton and Tumbler Ridge. In my view, these projects should either be cancelled or delayed until the feasiblity of carbon sequestration--possibly financed by federal-provincial-industry partnership--has been thoroughly examined.}

November 25, 2006

Dear Editor:

At the local forum on climate change on November 16, I learned that just one of the new coal-fired power plants being planned for Princeton and Tumbler Ridge is expected to produce 1.3 million tons of CO2 emissions annually, and that if both projects go ahead, emissions for the entire B.C. electricity sector can be expected to more than double. No doubt the B.C. Government would say that both of these projects are being subjected to a thorough Environmental Assessment (EA). I am not so easily reassured.

BC’s Environmental Assessment Act was rewritten in 2002, replacing one of the country’s most progressive provincial EA laws with one of the weakest laws. Strong provisions that were eliminated include a purpose section emphasizing sustainability, requirements to examine cumulative effects, the need to detail alternatives, and innovative public participation requirements, including a mandatory role for First Nations. All of these functions are now being performed more ‘flexibly’ and ‘efficiently’ by a more ‘streamlined’ Environmental Assessment Office.

You might think that a strong case for a federal environmental assessment exists, and it does. The national and indeed international dimensions of coal burning (i.e. global warming and Kyoto obligations) are obvious. Federal review panels also generally provide the most comprehensive EAs in Canada. But don’t hold your breath waiting for effective federal oversight. The 1998 Canada-Wide Accord on Environmental Harmonization contains a Sub-Agreement on Environmental Assessment that aims at avoiding “duplication”, in part to answer extensive complaints from the business community about compliance costs. In this case, the B.C. coal industry also happens to be a major contributor of funds to the B.C. Liberal Party.

That just leaves the citizens of British Columbia. If Premier Campbell and Minister of Environment Barry Penner actually asked all British Columbians whether they would be willing to forego a cheaper supply of energy and undertake strenuous conservation and alternative energy efforts in order to be part of the solution to global warming instead of being a steadily worsening part of the problem, they might just be surprised by the answer.

Mark Crawford
3744 Hillside Road Williams Lake, B.C. V2G 5A2 tel. (250) 989-0483