Food 2030

The UK government recently unveiled Food 2030 – a food strategy designed to ensure that Britons have access to high quality, sustainably farmed/grown, food that benefits both the farmer/grower and the consumer. At the same time Food 2030 should ensure that people have good jobs, a reduction in greenhouse emissions and food waste.

Not bad for something that only went out for public consultation in August 2009! That’s right – the British government invited citizens and other stakeholders to comments from August till October 2009. It seems Defra took the results of the consultation away, compiled the strategy and released it last week to the masses. The 24 page strategy summary (PDF) goes over what the UK wants by 2030 (informed consumers making good choices, less impact on the environment, a secure food chain, etc), along with how the government proposes they get there. The BBC covered the announcement here.

Tomatoes by Ben

Overall, there isn’t much to gripe about. I’m sure that some folks won’t like the mention of research and science helping to produce crops that require less water, fertilizer and chemicals but the reality is that high yield crops are a must if we are to food a growing population. Earth will hit 7 billion before we know it and we all have a responsibility to make sure those folks get the nutrition they need.

It would be great to see the Canadian government be so forward thinking. Just one year after massive drought caused food prices to skyrocket (more so than they did here) and caused riots, the UK has taken the initiative to put together a plan that will encourage citizens to take more responsibility for themselves. It’s especially encouraging that 3 major grocery stores only sell free-range eggs now – a move by Loblaws/Real Canadian Superstore or Metro like that would further sustainable food cycle efforts immensely!

Web Communities

Farmers and consumers alike are increasingly turning towards the Internet in order to identify where the nearest source of sustainably grown food can be found. Change.org identified 5 popular websites where people are connecting and I particularly like Local Harvest because it includes Canadian sources. If you’re a Canadian farmer producing organic, sustainable or low impact produce please add yourself to Local Harvest to make it easier for the rest of us to find you! Better yet, if you know of a good Canadian directory please leave me the link in a comment.

Vertical Gardens

There are many examples of people growing vertical/urban gardens. Again, Change.org has linked to several different ways you can setup your own urban/vertical garden, from thrifty to eco-chic. One of the greatest benefits I see from the vertical garden boom happening is a greater amount of plants taking carbon dioxide out of the air, a much cheaper way to grab fresh produce when you need it and also something nice to look at in your home. This is also a good way to use typically unused space in a home or apartment.

I hope that provides you with some food for thought – both literally and figuratively! While it’s becoming easier everyday to get your hands on food that was produced in a sustainable manner, it will still be some time before all the pieces of the puzzle come together. We can all chip in and help out though.

I will also mention that I’m going to be speaking to the folks over at Local Food Plus soon about their organization – how it works, how we can get it to expand beyond its current Toronto-centric focus, where they get their funding, etc. I hope it proves to be a mutually beneficial conversation!

Recently I went through my inbox looking at past issues of the newsletter I receive called Project GiftED. While I don’t always find myself in agreement with everything said in the newsletter or on the blog – mostly because the blog entries aren’t always about education – I do find myself intrigued often enough to keep subscribing. I got really interested when I came across an article that was actually written by the folks at zenhabits entitled “27 Skills Your Child Need to Know That She’s Not Getting in School.”

Recognizing full well that I completed high school over 8 years ago and then entered the Computer Systems Technology program at Fanshawe College, I asked a colleague of mine, James Costa, what he thought about the list.  His response below has been edited for brevity and clarity:

I guess what it comes down to is life skills not being taught enough in life. You’re taught mathematics, and sure, in Accounting and Introduction to Business you’re taught basic accounting principles and that sort of deal, but you’re not taught how to pay bills, how to budget, taught about credit, or RRSPs, or anything like that. You learn that on your own, unfortunately.

In the TCDSB I was taught about positivity, etc, but that was because I was fortunate to be a part of the leadership program and did keynote speeches across Ontario. Some schools budget for having keynote speakers come to their school, but it isn’t often enough, and apparently the high school I went to was special because (at the time that I was there) they had 1 speaker per month. As for practical things like housework, organization skills, etc… Only organization was taught by some teachers in the beginning of the year as brushing up on tips on how to stay on top of their work and how to use your agenda. Pretty rudimentary ideas. Social skills were taught to me through clubs and extra currirculars I was a part of, but I can’t think of a time people were taught how to mediate conversations, find middle grounds, etc etc… You would only be taught these things if you were in the Guidance department for bashing a kid’s face in.

In terms of thinking and reading, those are taught in the curriculum. Every course has some factors they take into play when marking… I could find out what all of them are but one is Thinking and Inquiry. So yes, it’s marked and graded… They more just tell you to think about things. Really, English was the best for me learning these two skills as you had to not only read samples of Shakespeare, etc, but understand them and find hidden meanings. I was also fortunate all 3 years (missing my last English credit..) to have amazing English teachers and was in gifted English. Other than that, Thinking and Inquiry is important in all of the courses, so yeah, I guess you could say they “teach” that.

[...]

I interacted with different opportunities in high school and found them rewarding – in many ways it was through these opportunities that I learned all that I have today. Ask any of my friends about any of the above topics or the ones in the article and I guarantee they MAY know about 75% of them, and even 25% of them I guarantee is only knowledge of what they are, but have no experience in any of them (whether practical or textbook).

That’s coming from someone who only very recently completed high school, so he knows far better than I do what’s being taught now in K-12 than I do. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like much has changed. I remember hearing from friends that they were being taught how to manually calculate taxes in the General math class, while the students in the Advanced class (myself included) were being taught how to calculate sin, tangents and plenty of other formulas I haven’t seen since.

I believe that the biggest hole that needs to be addressed the from zenhabits list are the items under Financial: saving, budgeting, investing, credit, etc. These are crucial life skills, yet we’re left to ask our parents or speak to (typically) biased financial advisors who may or may not be giving you good advice. I’ve seen the cycle of people who are bad with their money passing on their life lessons to their children and, consequently, their children are just as bad – if not worse – with their money. One way to help fix that would be to teach at least basic financial skills in school. Really, truly prepare children for the world instead of simply preparing them for college or university.

Some of the items under Practical and Happiness make sense too. Again, these are usually things you end up asking your parents or friends about – some basic information and teachings around these things would be great, like why you can’t run a diesel engine all the way to empty like you can a gas engine and finding purpose in life, or a real career you enjoy, instead of simply finding a job (Walmart “lifers,” I’m looking at you).

I guess my real issue is that most schools/courses/programs don’t prepare you for life – they prepare you for more school. The usefulness of that reaches an end for many people when they’re 17 or 18 years old, and for the majority of people by the time they reach their mid-20s. From there on out you need to be prepared for life and having moved away from home at 18, moving back for 18 months when I was 20, then back out again at 21 my lessons were learned the hard way. I’m better for it now, but having a better foundation for starting out on my own would have been helpful.

Not good enough anymore

While researching innovative approaches to educating our children, I came across a pilot project that was run this past summer at a single school in New York City. It’s been dubbed “School of One,” and the approach is very similar to the types of things I mentioned as possibilities in “The Textbook of the Future?” To quote this New York Times article:

The program [...] consists mainly of students working individually or in small groups on laptop computers to complete math lessons in the form of quizzes, games and worksheets. Each student must take a quiz at the end of each day; the results are fed into a computer program to determine whether they will move on to a new topic the next day.

[...]

Now, he added, “we’re looking in a way that I don’t think anyone has looked at — at the way children learn, pacing them at their own pace, all of it tied to the mastery of content and skill and achievement.”

[...]

Once the students arrive at school, they receive their individual playlists identifying the lessons they have to complete for the day, which could involve virtual tutoring online, computer worksheets or small-group lessons with a classroom teacher.

This is exactly the type of thing I think we should be moving toward! If done right, School of One should ensure that all students get the education they need, via the best learning style for them, and by the end of the year all of the students should have had the chance to complete all of the core curriculum along with, hopefully, some bonus activities based on their interests. One child that participated in this program actually said that the educational games he played making solving mathematical equations fun! Imagine that!

Skype in the Classroom - Better

If you pair up my vision of the future textbook with School of One, with a little additional effort and funding I think you have a solid base for the future of education. In the article, an HR professional for the New York City school where this took place said that running schools this way should cost about the same as running a school the way it’s done now. Many detractors of moving to more technology-focused schools claim that costs would be much higher — that may not hold up after all!

In fact, many of the things that schools traditionally pay a lot of money for are available for free, as pointed out by The Innovative Educator. Chief among them – Microsoft Live@edu and Google Apps for Education. Both are completely free (as in puppies). A school using Google Apps can provide word processing, spreadsheet, website building and presentation software along with e-mail completely free to students and teachers! Just make sure the Internet connection is up and running (or install Google Gears for offline access).

I guess the chief reason for this post is to point out that things are happening despite the naysayers. School of One is exactly what I hope my son will experience when he begins school. With some luck, funding and pressure from parents, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for those of us who believe that the continuous evolution of major systems is the only way forward.

After being exposed to nothing but European news for almost 2 weeks, I began thinking about ways that Canada could improve it’s government in (probably) 12 months or less. Some of these require lengthy explanations, others don’t because others have done the explaining family. So let’s get right into it!

1) Proportional Representation
Though I hate to see the type of power fringe groups on both the left and right-wing of the political spectrum might obtain, the fact is people vote for them and therefore they deserve a seat at the table (as long as enough people vote for them to warrant handing them 1 out of 308 seats). For more information on proportional representation, click here.

2) Senate Reform
I’m not referring to the full-of-fluff Senate reform that Prime Minister Harper has been asking for. No, I’m referring to the Senate reform that I wrote about back in October 2008. Lower pay ($122,700 is far too much), fewer senators (105 unelected Senators is far too many for a country of 32 million people), they shouldn’t be able to hold other jobs and they should be elected. Much of the reasoning for these proposals are on that older post.

3) Actively Solicit Feedback on New Bills
The Canadian government, and Members of Parliament, should be actively pursuing public comment on new bills far more often and in a far more engaging way than they do now. While I don’t appreciate the waste of paper (and campaign-style leaflets), the Conservative MP in my riding actively sends out messages to his constituents. And why not? If he communicates more actively, the chances of him being re-elected are much higher and you also have a more highly educated constituency. That’s good for politics, despite the fact that it may not be good for most politicians.

The Canadian government needs to get involved in social media sites, and so do more MPs. The Canadian government needs a newsletter system that people can sign up to in order to receive alerts on new bills; it should setup accounts on sites like Identi.ca, Twitter and Facebook so that people can receive alerts outside e-mail; more MPs should be holding townhall meetings using their own websites along with social media sites to organize them; and the Canadian government should allow online voting of new bills on a secure site, ideally using a unique identifier (like your SIN) in order to prevent fraud, as a way to gauge popular sentiment for new bills.

4) MP Websites
Some published standards for MP websites, ideally giving them some standard templates to follow and a choice of 2 or 3 different content management systems for them to use. The website for Ed Holder, my MP, is horrendous. Irene Mathyssen’s website, on the other hand, follows the standard NDP template and is much, much easier to use. This way, if your riding elects a new MP, you can expect the new MP’s website to look at least somewhat similar to the old MP’s website, albeit the backend may be entirely different.

5) Fixed Election Dates
This is a no-brainer. October, April or May every 4 years. Why those months? Well October would avoid overlap with the American elections in November (if they fell in the same year), and April or May would place the elections out of winter for most of us (very northern areas possibly excluded). No one wants to trek to the polls when there’s over a metre of snow on the ground, and summer elections will negate the possibility of many people even being near home to participate in debates leading up to the election or being at home when the actual election happens. Those months just make sense to me.

6) Webcast CPAC
Actually, this one’s already happening. I had no idea until I checked, but CPAC is available in both official languages live online. Kudos to CPAC for getting that going! What disappoints me is that it’s encoded in Windows Media format, so it’s not available on every type of computer. If CPAC were to offer the stream in an open format, like Ogg Theora, that would be much better for the public at large (and their, and in the end everyone’s, wallets).

What do you think? What other quick-win ways could we improve government?

Let’s start with a great example from Vancouver: The roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre has been turned into a green roof. What does that mean?

Well take a look at this article from Fast Company and then take a look at the Vancouver Convention Centre’s website – it’s quite the marvel to behold.  Not only are they decreasing their cooling costs by doing so, but look at some of these statistics from the Fast Company article:

The Vancouver building also has black water treatment systems and desalination machinery to water the plants, a heat pump that uses seawater, and cooling via radiant floor. The bottom line is a water-use reduction of 60% to 70% over similarly sized convention centers.

I know darn well the Thames River is filled with fresh water, and not saltwater, but surely taking some of these ideas (plus others in the same vein) and incorporating them into city-owned buildings here in London would benefit us and our environment in the long-term! In fact if we end up reducing the bill, maybe we can get a cut on our taxes?

The six-acre “living roof” atop the convention centre also recovers rainwater for irrigation thanks to the over 400,000 plants it houses, and the West Building expansion was built to LEED standards. And living/green roofs have been around in Europe for over 30 years – why are we often so slow to adapt things like this in North America?

Next up – solar power trash compactors. Boston began installing these almost 3 years ago and the press I read on the issue was largely positive.  Basically it’s a trash bin with a solar panel on top and a sensor activates the compacting functionality whenever necessary. They hold over 567 litres of trash and clearly need to be emptied less often. I’m certain the city of London (and all others) could still sell advertising on the sides as they do now.

Just a few of the BigBelly trash compactors would probably handle all of the needs the city of London’s public trash bins handle now, but I’m looking at the reduced manpower needed to empty them out. Another potential big money saver in the long run especially in places like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. Plus the added capacity would certainly help eliminate the spillover that I so often see downtown in London and in Toronto – and that’d just plain disgusting.

It seems there are design issues that need to be addressed, according to some of the behaviours that Boston residents took to as opposed to opening the compactor’s door and depositing their no-longer-wanted/needed items, but I’m sure the manufacturer would be willing to hear some ideas in return for business.

Third – Find someone who can deliver smart grid technology. What’s smart grid technology? Click here to read up a bit on it. Basically what I would really like to see happen is smart meters on every house in London that can eliminate the need for manual reading (either by London Hydro or the homeowner). AT&T and SmartSynch are already delivering the functionality to a utility in Texas – why can’t we do it here?

The smart meters in that EcoGeek story enable a utility to remotely connect and disconnect the power when people move out/in of houses, immediately alert the utility of power outages and therefore allow London Hydro to deliver their services in a smarter way. Rogers, Bell and Telus all have robust enough networks to facilitate this or we could even build our own WiMAX network here – so why not?

Fourth – Free bus fares! I won’t go too much into this because Tyee Magazine has already done a 5-part series on the benefits and how to pay for it. It’s terrific – check it out.

Fifth – Open our data. Vancouver did it recently and I’m confident they can expect bountiful tools and revelations to come out of it. There’s something very freeing, both to the city and to its citizens, when data about the city is open to all.

And lastly I want to end off with some related articles. Fast Company announced their top 13 cities of 2009 – only 1 Canadian city made it on. Guess who? That’s right, it’s Vancouver. Is it any wonder why?

I really like this video about New Urbanism and urban planning. Please watch it.

And finally there’s on article by ComputerWorld on using technology to build “City 2.0” which basically takes in all of the initiatives I mentioned earlier into account and then some and how this will shape our cities going forward and why how technology can make our lives better.

Please comment – I’d love to hear your thoughts even if they contradict mine!

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of people trying to blame a third party for their own losses and problems. With all of the evidence that goes against the bad habits, or addictions as people may refer to them now, like smoking, constantly eating out and the potential for losing money and causing problems with your friends and family if you gamble too much – not to mention all of the ads on TV and radio -  how can you still feign ignorance?!

The latest debacle includes Peter Dennis, a self-described gambling addict, who is suing OLG for “allowing him” to gamble away $350,000 in about 4 years, even after signing a voluntary self-exclusion contract giving the ability to casinos and racetracks to kick him out if they recognized him. He lost $350,000 – and so he’s suing OLG for $3.5 billion! What?! That’s an increase of 1000x the amount Peter lost. Where’s the sense in that?

[One can only assume his lawyer told him he could probably win that much. I'm sure the lawyer will take a hefty percentage if Peter wins or settles out of court too!]

So first – where does Peter get the gall to sue OLG for his own shortcomings? I know plenty of people who gamble, only one of which has ever recognized enough of a problem to join the self-exclusion program. The difference? She actually stayed away from the local casino (and she lives in Sarnia, about 10 minutes away from the Port Edward Casino). If she had enough strength to do that, why didn’t Peter?

And why, instead of signing a voluntary program, wouldn’t Peter try to get professional help? None of the stories I’ve read have mentioned Peter seeking counselling or alerting extended family members that they might try seeking him out at local gambling agencies if they couldn’t find him. If I had a drinking problem, the first thing I would do after admitting it is tell my friends and family that if they can’t find me, check the bars! One would think that’s what lengths one would go to if they seriously want the help they need.

In fact, where was his family when all this was going on? The lawsuit’s been launched on behalf of him and his wife – doesn’t sound like she did anything to stop him. Why does Peter sue his wife? Or his kids? Or his parents? Seriously now…

I’m sick and tired of people trying to offload their problems onto other people. No one’s forcing you to smoke cigarettes, or drugs for that matter; no one’s forcing you to eat at McDonalds, Burger King or Wendy’s; no one’s forcing you to play Lotto 6/49 or to bet on the horses! Take some responsibility for your own actions already! You have a choice! You have free will! USE IT!

Secondly, $3.5 billion? That’s a gross amount beyond belief. That’s the equivalent of me punching a neighbour in the arm and him then cutting both my legs off. The restitution/retribution does not equal out in any way, not even when you factor in the time Peter might have lost from work or family relationships he may have lost. $5.5 billion is probably more than the GDP of at least a couple of countries. Unless he’s planning on donating the majority of that to charity, which by the way is where some of the money he already gambled away went anyway, then there’s no way to justify $3.5 billion.

You can’t expect any casino or racetrack to recognize any one of the 12,000 people who have joined the self-exclusion program. I come from a town of 15,000 and I don’t know even a quarter of them, let alone 12,000 of them. Face tracking technology doesn’t work as well as it does on TV either, nor is it very affordable. OLG says they’re experimenting with it, but with the false positives likely to be recorded by any piece of face tracking software they definitely have to be careful.

You can only expect government to look after you for so long. At some point you need to step up and admit that you have a problem and then actively seek help – even if that help is paid for by the government. If Peter wants to experience George Orwell’s book “1984″ then maybe he should go live south of the border where the USA PATRIOT Act can account for almost everything you do, or in England where there are CCTV cameras almost everywhere in metro areas.

The latest example: Using Ilaanaq, the inukshuk logo being used for Vancouver’s 2010 Olympic games, in their material against the annual seal hunt. Really PETA? You want to go there? Okay, let’s.

First off, you will never get any Olympic organizing committee, especially one based in the same country as the “atrocity” you’re protesting, to agree to help you stop such atrocity. In case you haven’t noticed, the entire “Olympic movement” is really based on 2 things: sports and money. If the International Olympic Committee (IOC) really cared about human and animal rights in any potential host country… well, let’s just say the Olympics would have a really hard time finding a suitable host city.

Every country, every state/province, every city has it’s problems, Canada, B.C. and Vancouver included. Last I checked the games have also been hosted by Beijing, China (human rights issues abound), the United States (basic civil rights still not afforded to all people on an equal basis) and Greece (very well known for it’s ancient philosophers and wars, though seemingly no large problems since the military junta ended in 1974 – so good for them).

And so it is in Canada that we still allow the native people of the north to continue in an ancient tradition with their annual seal hunt. Perhaps PETA doesn’t quite understand how sensitive aboriginal issues are in this country, or perhaps they simply don’t care? It’s not as if all Canadians participate in the seal hunt – I don’t know a single person who does, then again I’m part of the majority of Canadians who live in urban areas.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m all about animals being treated, well, nicely. Ultimately any animal on a farm is going to pass away and, likely, get eaten by something or someone. Does that mean they can’t live a harmonious live in the meantime? Of course not. I do believe, however, that we have larger issues at hand to deal with first… more on that in a minute though, because I still need to address PETA’s marketing tactics.

Like Sea Kittens. What was PETA thinking when they came up with Sea Kittens? I have news for you PETA – I would hurt a sea kitten. Why? Because it still tastes like fish. Dressing up a fish as a cat doesn’t instantly make it adorable and, therefore, non-edible. In fact, rabbits are quite tasty when roasted in the oven with potatoes and Portuguese sausage. Seriously.

Or their ever-famous push for people to go vegetarian. Sorry, not happening. We have been eating animals since the dawn of time, and eating different things in the proper amounts has never led any human to live an unhealthy life. I’m not going to rely on vitamin supplements to make sure I got the right amount of protein in my diet.

Overall I would like to thank PETA for bringing attention to issues like animal clinics using gas chambers to put down unwanted animals or abuse in circuses, but when that message gets mixed with calls to shutdown operations like Superdogs (see “Animals Are Not Ours to Use for Entertainment“) or for people never to get animals from a breeder, and I mean any breeder, well then the message gets lost. When you start sounding off-the-wall, people begin to feel that everything you stand for is dumb or weird. Focus on just a few core issues and you will get more good work done.

And while PETA certainly has a right to exist and to promote it’s message of anti-cruelty toward animals, there are still bigger fish to fry. We still see ridiculous human rights abuses happening everyday across the world in places like Sudan and China. We have global climate change to deal with because, if there isn’t a habitable planet for us and the animals to live on, what’s the point in treating animals well? We may all be headed for hell in a hand basket.

More and more, people need to realize that your world doesn’t end as far as you can reach, nor can you only let the issues that you feel most strongly about be the only ones you pay attention to. We’re all in this together.

And if you read this very well-written article at The Globe & Mail, it could very well happen. Personally, I think we all need a reality check on how we got here and the many players that have played parts in the problems that Ford, Chrysler and GM are having right now.

1) Ford, Chrylser & GM – For many years now, Detroit has succeeded in creating reputations for themselves of putting out unreliable products and pairing them with expensive and poor service. Clearly I’m generalizing, but it’s necessary in order to avoid a very long explanation of what products and services don’t fall into this trap. If you walk up to almost anyone on the street and ask them how long a Ford engine will last compared to a Toyota engine, I’m willing to be a significant amount of money that the majority of those surveyed will tell you that a Toyota engine will last roughly twice as long. When I tell people that my Chevrolet Aveo has gone 187,000km without any issues they are amazed. Unfortunately the Aveo is a poor example since it’s built in South Korea.

To address the service issue – the dealership where I bought my vehicle routinely tries to screw me out of $600 to $700 worth of repairs pretty well everytime I bring it in. When I take it to “my” mechanic, the problem is fixed after only $100 or $200. Either the mechanics at the dealership are poorly trainined at their jobs or they have been trained by GM to try and extract as much money as possible from someone that they think knows nothing about cars. My father has repeatedly said he will never buy another GM car after suffering through owning his 2000 Oldsmobile Alero and 1999 Chevrolet Venture. They have caused nothing but headaches since just after the warranties expired (how convenient!) on both vehicles and my parents treat their vehicles very, very well.

Not to mention ridiculous ideas like the entire Hummer brand, huge SUVs that no one truly needs and still very fuel inefficient vehicles. I test drove a Ford Edge – it told me I was getting 13mpg on the highway. That’s ludicrous! The Ford Flex is no better and is hardly a crossover. Sorry Ford, but it’s true.

2) The UAW & CAW – The unions are one of the biggest problems plaguing North American automakers. This is clearly seen when you see in the G&M article that GM spends an average of $71 per employee per hour compared to Toyota spending $47. The UAW & CAW have demonstrated time and time again that they care about nothing more than getting more money out of the automakers. The result? Massive layoffs, huge inefficiences and oversupply on the market. The company my father works for has treated him very well for the past 25 years, and indeed I have worked for said company two separate times, however all but one of it’s contracts are to supply Ford, Chrysler and GM. The company has consequently suffered massive losses over the past few years and things are looking grim.

The real problem here is that everyone expects automotive-related jobs to pay well. And yet the automakers constantly want the parts their buying from companies like Magna, Meridian and Wescast to be less expensive, meanwhile the manufacturers are expected to increase pay every year. The formula doesn’t really work out in the long run unless you increase productivity and yield in return for the decrease in price – and in my experience, that simply cannot be sustained.

And things are worse at unionized plants. The union goes in, gouges the automakers for better wages and benefits and then gets irate when an automaker has to cut jobs. I can support the idea of a union, but the CAW and UAW, among others, really do nothing but cause American and Canadian-based manufacturing jobs to be less and less viable. Corporations have a legal mandate to increase shareholder value which means doing everything they can to iron out inefficiencies, increase productivity and decrease costs. A few years ago, in St. Thomas, that meant shutting down a truck-building plant and moving the work to Mexico.

Congratulations CAW! You are so good and making sure Ontario remains a competitive and viable area for companies to assemble their products here!

I know, I’m oozing with sarcasm right now. But really, the CAW and UAW need to realize what’s going on here. They look after themselves more than making sure that doing business in Canada or the US even makes sense for a company, and in the end they ended up biting the hand that feeds them… several times. The unions are a humongous part of the problem and they are only making the situation worse.

3) The executives – Wow they take home a lot of money, don’t they? Even when the companies they run are losing money, they take home millions! Why?! I remember a few years ago reading a story about one of the North American automaker’s CEO’s taking home a several million dollar bonus after the company he ran lost several million dollars that year. How does that make any sense? And then, just this week, they all flew in private jets to Washington, D.C. in order to plead for emergency loans. Whose bright idea was that?! Heaven forbid they fly with the rest of us on normally scheduled flights!

Ford has 8 private jets, GM currently has 7 but is getting rid of 2 because they aren’t being used enough. Boo hoo! Did I mention that GM CEO Rick Wagoner took him $15.7 million last year? Oh, but wait, he voluntarily reduced his salary by 50% this year, allowing himself to take home a paltry $7.85 million in 2008. The poor thing, he must be resorting to food stamps in order to get by!

Amazingly, Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli’s salary, to my knowledge, is $1 a year. However, he has other means of compenstation that Chrysler no longer has to disclose since they’re a private company now.

Ford CEO Alan Mullaly took home $22 million last year. How does he sleep at night?! Isn’t $1 million enough? The U.S. President makes $400,000 a year and his decisions affect over 300 million people directly. Our Prime Minister takes home roughly $280,000 a year for running a country of roughly 32 million people. You do the math.

4) Old, stupid laws – The G&M article has some information on this, but apparently there are many states in the U.S. that have laws prohibiting the automakers from selling their vehicles directly to the public.

The king is GM, with more than 6,700 dealers, or nearly five times as many as Toyota. And the average Toyota dealer outsells his GM rival by a factor of three-to-one vehicles a year. All told, the Detroit Three have more than two-thirds of all dealers, but their cars account for less than half the market.

That situation does not make for an efficient supply chain – another problem for the North American automakers. I know plenty of people who gladly drive to a different city to buy a new car if need be.

5) Letting Toyota & Honda take over – Really, that’s what happened. Toyota’s been producing good cars for a long time now, so has Honda. Every year they evolve their vehicles in order to make the more attractive, more fuel efficient and more reliable. And for years Ford, Chrysler and GM let them catch up and eventually overtake them. Even Hyundai has made decent in-roads in North America, and I know a few people who would like a Mitsubishi to be their next vehicle. I don’t know anyone clamouring over the Ford Fusion or Dodge Caliber to be their next vehicle.

The big 3 fell behind and now they’re struggling to play catch up. GM is hoping the Volt helps propel them ahead of the competition again, and I don’t know what Ford or Chrysler are doing in order to truly stay competitive. Sync, available on a few Ford models, is nice and all but it doesn’t help change Ford’s image. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Mercury vehicle with Ontario plates on it.

The bottomline is that the big 3 have dug themselves a huge hole and there’s a chance that none of them will survive. The good news is that Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Volkswagen will benefit almost immediately and there will still be the need to increase production in North American by those companies. That will also make it easier for some of the European automakers, Fiat especially, to come back to North America and possibly use some of the then abandoned factories to produce their parts and vehicles for this market. So how dire is the situation? Very. Possibly not as bad as Wagoner, Mullaly and Nardelli would have you believe, but there would certainly be plenty of short-term pain.

Maude is the chair of the Council of Canadians which, among other things, has been looking for leadership on the issue of water and the sustainability of some of our practices for some time now. Finally someone as realized that Maude has some very important, intelligent and insightful things to say on the issue and has recognized her for it in one of the best ways possible.

So congratulations Maude, make us proud!

Thumbnail photo on homepage taken by KaterKate.

As I sat in my car earlier today listening to Placebo’s “Once More With Feeling,” I got to thinking about the differences between my parents’ generation, Generation X, and the ever originally named Generation Y, of which I am a part of.

As a 23 year old male living in southwestern Ontario, the child of migrant parents and whose grandparents barely speak any English, I don’t believe I’m in a terribly unique position in my life. Many of the members of my generation who also grew up in Strathroy have a very similar background, the only real differentiation that their parents might be from a different part of Portugal or that their parents are actually of Dutch descent.

Yes, there are that many Dutch and Portuguese immigrants in Strathroy. No, I don’t know why. I can speculate, but that’s not the point of this.

This is more about the differences between the last 2 generations who are actually old enough to have an impact on what is going on in the world today. For these purposes, anyone born between 1950 and 1974 I am placing in Generation X and, clearly, anyone born between 1975 and 1999 I am placing in Generation Y. I’m fairly confident that those are the general guidelines used in historical terms. I could be wrong, but I’m confident that I’m not.

If you think in your head, right this moment, about a lot of the people who are making the news these days, many of them either preceded Generation X or are a part of Generation X. Certainly many of the “big movers” in the tech industry like Michael Dell, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are part of Generation X. Many a great athlete came from Generation X like Wayne Gretzky, Dan Marino, Mario Lemieux and Greg Maddux.

However, upon thinking about what’s going on in the world today, I came to the realization that while there are indeed many “do-ers” in Generation X, right now it seems like the majority of them are “thinkers.” There are also those born on the cusp of the generational transition that might fall into one generation but were able to keep up with the next or act more like their predecessors in the previous. I’m not going to be so bold as to claim this is actually true or that I have any research to back it up. Again, these are my own thoughts and revelations.

The baby boomers clearly did their best to raise children after a major world war, and I can’t say they’ve done a bad job. Obviously not every nation was even affected by World War II, however the USA and Canada certainly were. Personally I believe you have to do the best with what’s given to you, and that is I believe something the baby boomers attempted to do. The problem is that they didn’t afford X’ers much freedom, and therefore X’ers rebelled.

We’ve all ready the history books, so I’m not going to regurgitate much here. We’ve seen the videos of Woodstock, the demonstrations at universities, etc. But what about Generation Y?

The most immediate example I can think of, since I’m a complete geek, comes in the way technology. Baby boomers created the first computers; Generation X’ers created better programming languages for them and then used them to create Windows, Mac OS, Linux, the original protocols used for communication across the Internet, and many of the popular applications you use on any of those platforms today. But whereas there were a few do-ers who got things moving back in the 80s and 90s in order to bring computers to the mainstream, and X’ers continue to create a lot of great ideas on how to use technology for bigger and greater things, it’s Y’ers that are actually building the applications that will do these things.

Then again, that may always be the case. Perhaps that’s what the next generation is for? To take the ideas that the previous generation has come up with and expand on them and then actually implement them.

But here we come to the glaring discrepancy. It seems to me that Generation Y is full of individuals who are not only happy to come up with brilliant ideas, but also capable of bringing them to fruition on their own. If I recall correctly, the majority of entrepreneurs who were responsible for creating the websites/companies involved in the first dot-com boom were, for the most part, born after 1975. And while the people coming up with Yahoo! and AltaVista and other such sites were part of Generation Y, all of executives at the venture capital firms backing these organizations are members of Generation X (or potentially the baby boomers).

Again, do-ers versus thinkers.

And now that the increasingly obvious climate crisis is coming to its peak, X’ers are finally putting things in motion in order to help us fix the problem. Why? Because they run the companies who can effectively fix it. However the people on the ground actually getting things done, I would be so bold to say, are likely mostly members of Generation Y. Not only that, but we’ve also been pushing for people to recognize it. We’re the ones who have been using the Internet ever since we had access to it at a young age (I first got an Internet connection at home when I was about 15 years old) and could see the evidence in the news stories and in the photos. The journalists writing about the problems are X’ers; the people first demanding a response to the problems are Y’ers.

Yes, I know that Y’ers (pronounced ‘why-ers’) sounds incredibly awkward, but I think it’s actually a fairly appropriate term.

“Y’ers” is appropriate because we, like X’ers, are constantly questioning the world we live in today. I think the difference is that we’re doing it more fervently and certainly through different mediums. We are more liberal than our parents when it comes to expressing oneself in simple ways like colouring our hair and more elaborate ways like getting tattoos and piercings. We are more liberal when it comes to experiencing things that come from different cultures whether it be foods, cultural traditions, ways of life, etc. My parents would like to see traditional vacation places like Spain, France and Italy. I’m eager to visit nations like Egypt, Japan and Sweden. Why? Because they’re different.

Even today was rather amusing. My dad first of all couldn’t believe that I have retained some of the French I learned in elementary school, and then tried to make me look like an idiot by asking me how old I was (en français). I countered with “J’ai 23 ans.” For some reason he was surprised. A small bit of easy French coming from me, who speaks fluent English and Portuguese and is attempting to learn Japanese.

Insert eye roll here.

My problem with my parents’ generation is that they played everything safe. Yes, clearly moving to a foreign nation requires a bit of courage, but as soon as they got here they played everything very safe. Learn the language, go to school, starting working somewhere and just stay there. My mother’s been working in the same place for over 30 years now; my dad’s been at the same job for over 23. They found a job they can bear with and that pays well. Simple as that. Why leave?

Myself and the majority of my friends, on the other hand, are far more content to find careers we actually enjoy, whether or not they fall into the neat little box that was our post-secondary education or not. I didn’t go to school for sales, and yet that’s the main source of my income at the moment. Why? I thought it would be fun, so I applied for a sales job and was lucky enough to get it. I moved to a different city with almost no money, a city where I knew a grand total of 3 people, and I’m not done. I own one company, I’ve co-founded another (we’re incorporating in a few months), and should be co-founding a third soon. Why? Because…

Our world rewards the risk takers. I’m not sure how it works on other worlds, if there are any other populated worlds, but that’s how it is here on Earth. Welcome to it people. I don’t know about you, but I’m not one of those people who are content to watch life pass me by. All my life I’ve been striving for independence, looking for new things to do, new ways to amuse myself, new things that interest me and to learn about. That’s me. I think one of the problems with Generation X is that many of them were content to be wallflowers at the time. Too many of them were far too willing to just come in, get a job, get married, have kids, and at the end of their life they’ve got nothing to show for it.

As an aside, I myself am not looking for fame or glory. Not at all. What I do want to do is make a difference. It can be a small difference or a big difference. What kind of impact I make is left to be seen, but I definitely want to make an impact and have my voice heard. And it’s not for the sake of being heard, but because I think I am an intelligent individual who actually has something to offer.

The only issue with just getting by when they were younger is that so many X’ers felt like they were left out, so now they’ve brought up their children to believe that they are the centre of the universe and therefore deserve to be heard.

Fergie’s parents, I’m looking at you.

It’s a gift to be able to give your child a high self-esteem, but most of those people don’t really have anything interesting to say, which is really a shame. They have spent so much time making themselves physically strong or pretty that they don’t really have an opinion on anything of substance, and therefore the majority of their “rants” have to do with how much they hate their BFF for stealing their b/f or how they can’t believe that Coach Johnson is gay.

Ugh.

This last point will be brief. I think one more difference between X’ers and Y’ers is that Y’ers, on a whole, feel much more strongly about people being accountable for themselves. Far too often we see our politicians really bung something up, whether it be a financial scandal, sex scandal or a bogus war, and then try to squirm their way out of it. I don’t stand up for that type of behaviour and I don’t know anyone who does. Personally I think it would be much more admirable to witness a politician screw up and then actually come out and admit to it.

And a huge kudos to Barack Obama for displaying this type of behaviour when he admitted to doing some drugs in college. How many of you can say you didn’t try drugs in high school or college? Not many, I’m sure. So why not own up to it? If you’re really that ashamed of it, then maybe you shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place.

In conclusion, I believe Generation Y is poised to make a huge impact on this planet and how we go about our business. As the tail end of our generation comes of an age where their voice finally begins to matter and the things they do can actually be noticed, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of changes we make. I’m certainly looking forward to a day when my generation, likely your generation too, begins to take power of the world’s largest corporations and the over 200 national governments on planet Earth.