CKNW Editorial
for August 2, 2001

I have a couple of things on my mind this morning.

The premier of New Brunswick states that health care should be the same right across Canada. With respect I disagree. That every Canadian, no matter where he or she lives, ought to have decent health care I agree with but that’s quite a different thing. If every Canadian had equal health care people in Kamloops would have the same health care as people in Vancouver. And people in Clearwater would have the same as those in Kamloops. And those in McBride would have the same as Clearwater and so on down to the remotest farm in the remotest part of BC.

Secondly, this argument doesn’t take into account the different types of Health Care needed in different provinces. Many parts of B.C. are retirement destinations – not so many places in Saskatchewan are. Different kinds of health care bear different price tags.

Thirdly, people vary from province to province in their desires and expectations not just from health care but from life in general.

This leads into Premier Mike Harris of Ontario’s suggestions that "have-not" provinces have the earmarks of welfare dependency. This might not be polite but it’s none the less true for that. We now see the preposterous argument being put forward by Nova Scotia and Newfoundland that they should be able to retain all their oil and gas wealth as well as full equalization payments. This on the spurious argument that they are entitled to a bit of luxury like the have provinces enjoy.

Nonsense. Here’s what has happened as an unintended consequence, I’m sure, of Equalization. When my great great grandfather could no longer earn his living, he did what thousands of other Scots did – he emigrated. He got into a leaky, cramped sailing vessel and went half way around the world to settle in a most hostile environment in a place called New Zealand. This was tough. He had to leave home and, unlike today with it’s air travel, with no real prospect of seeing home again.

With equalization we haven’t made it easy for people from have not provinces to live well – what we have done is taken away the incentive to do much better. We’ve clung to the sentimental notion that everyone is entitled to stay put, even though there simply isn’t enough work and never will be. We have, in short, created a welfare mentality where the income isn’t enough to live well on but is enough to keep you from making a big effort to do better for yourself and your family.

Is this cruel talk? I suppose it is unless, like me, you don’t think it’s your patriotic duty to support those who could well support themselves if they went where the work is.

On another subject. I once supported Greenpeace but I won’t any longer. I listened to the head of Greenpeace Canada yesterday tell me about their world wide duties taking preference over matters in BC waters. He also pleaded that Greenpeace’s efforts on behalf of the Great Bear Rain Forest, evidently any stand of timber located somewhere on the coast of BC, showed the organization’s deep commitment to BC, the place it was born.

I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. Without minimizing the efforts Greenpeace and others have made on the ground in BC its active boycott in Europe was grossly unfair. Intended or not, it caught up all forestry companies regardless of their environmental record and commitment. Moreover, by inference, it painted all British Columbian and even Canadian products with the same brush. Even worse, it said to European consumers that forest products produced elsewhere were somehow free from any taint of environmental lethargy.

I make no apology for the forest industry – they have plenty of high priced folks to do that for them both on the union and management side. What I do know is this – you can’t chop trees down without making an environmental impact. The question is one of compromise and commitment to reforestation with respect for some area’s inviolability. Those matters ought to be settled here in BC by the people of BC through their governments, unions and managements. It is the clear right and perhaps duty of those who feel strongly about how our forests should be treated to make their views known in every possible legal way – even in non violent illegal ways provided the consequences are accepted. What British Columbians don’t need is an international environmental mega corporation, complete with PR slogans involving a mythical Great Bear Rain Forest, bad mouthing our province abroad.

The other aspect, namely Greenpeace’s commitment to world wide causes deserves some comment. Fair enough – but I as a contributor must make a value judgment. I am concerned about whales because I see and know whales. While I am concerned also about turtles in the Galapagos and tigers in India they are down the list for me from whales and I fully understand how they would be much higher on the list for Peruvians and Indians. My contribution for the preservation of whales goes to Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Society. Any man who makes a lot of money from his own books and movies and plows it back into his organization gets my backing. Plus his track record is second to none.

But my anger at Greenpeace was spawned, pun intended, by their attitude towards caged fish farms in British Columbia. They acknowledge that they are a bad thing but have withdrawn their active participation in the issue. Is it so surprising, then, that I would offer my support to the David Suzuki Trust and several other worthy BC organizations that are prepared to take on environmental threats to the coast upon which I live?

Of course there are world wide concerns and we all should have them. But as long as the place where I live suffers man made environmental degradation I will support people and organizations who intend to do something about that.

I don’t think that’s narrow parochialism at all – it is simply akin to the maxim that charity begins at home. I have a duty as a citizen of the world but I’m damned if I’m going to put my efforts into tigers and turtles when I see the sacred salmon of our coast threatened by greedy and mostly foreign corporations. It’s not that I love tigers and turtles less – it’s just that I have an even bigger obligation right here in my backyard, an obligation Greenpeace, born here, no longer wishes to honour.