Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

WCR Letters to the Editor

Live, speak and do what is true during Lent

I was delighted to read theWCR editorial of March 26: "Limit growth for sake of future generations." We live today with falsehoods that by force of repetition by "experts" become "truths."

Several times during Lent, I reread Pope Benedict's Ash Wednesday message. The pope writes the central program of the Lenten season is "to listen to the word of truth, to live, speak and do what is true, to refuse falsehood that poisons humanity and is the vehicle of all evils."

The words of the last section of this Lenten program seemed exaggerated. They reminded me of George Bush's "axis of evil." Then on March 12, I read an article by economist Brett Gartner, author of You Get What You Pay For, a report prepared for the Canada West Foundation. He claimed that for the Canadian government "to attract top quality people to the senior ranks of public service, pay packages must be at least somewhat competitive with the private sector."

While the maximum salary and performance-based pay for the deputy minister of finance might have been $340,000 in 2005, the lowest-paid CEO of Canada's five largest banks earned $8.1 million in 2005. The highest paid brought in a cool $29.5 million.

We get what we pay for, Gartner argued. People are no longer drawn to government by the notion of "making a difference." The craziness of exorbitant corporate CEO salaries and benefits has become the norm.

How will this affect the poorest sector of society? Is it fair? Is it just?

Does it help any of us that the 10 richest people on earth have a net combined worth of US$255 billion - roughly 60 per cent of the income of sub-Saharan Africa - or that the world's 500 richest people have more money than the total annual earnings of the poorest three billion?

What is more important: that 1,000 BMO employees keep their jobs or that the jobs are cut so that the bank can meet its 2007 targets after one of its most profitable years ever? Faced with a US$3 billion deficit, why does General Motors cut jobs and annual employee health expenses by $3 billion instead of the cream at the top?

What do we Albertans have to gain in the long run from uncontrolled development of the oil sands? Is it fair that Canadian farmers face a 50 per cent drop in income in 2007?

Is it fair that some 12 to 15 per cent of Canadians still live in poverty?

Does it help the 30 million Mexicans who live on less than $2 a day that a Mexican, the world's third-richest man, owns their phone company and therefore determines how much they will pay?

Why are Canadian mining companies allowed to violate with impunity, human, aboriginal, property and environmental rights in Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Honduras and just about every other country of the Global South and still get handsome economic benefits for being registered in Canada, still qualify for huge loans from the World Bank?

Why doesn't our government contribute 0.7 per cent of our gross domestic product to international aid as promised and why can't economists agree that it would be an excellent "investment"?

Let's make Pope Benedict's Lenten program our Easter season program: "To listen to the word of truth, to live, speak and do what is true, to refuse falsehood that poisons humanity and is the vehicle of all evils."

Cecily Mills
Edmonton

Take a second look at Kyoto and revise your own actions

If we really care about the poor, we need to abandon our support for the Kyoto Protocol. According to a 2000 PBS documentary entitled, What's Up With the Weather? the climatologist Tom Wigley states that there is little evidence that the protocol will have a significant effect on climate change (www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate).

In the same documentary, Henry Jacoby states there is evidence this protocol will raise energy prices substantially and put a hardship on lower income people in the Western world, as well as prevent Third World countries from catching up to the developed world economically, which they might otherwise do by the end of the century.

I recently heard David Suzuki state that we don't need to listen to scientists who disagree with the report summary issued by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change because these scientists are small in number. Since when does majority determine truth?

It seems that in our quest to be good stewards of the earth we are forgetting that climatology is an area of science that is influenced by politics and money, as noted by Dr. Fred Singer in the 2000 PBS documentary on weather changes.

Case in point, the report summary issued by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was written by political appointees and not scientists.

Thus, it is more important than ever to listen to both the proponents and the skeptics of the link between global warming and climate change before endorsing policy changes that are going to hurt the poor and threaten the common good.

For some added balance on the issue consider these items;

• an article by Richard S. Lindzen atwww.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html
• a Nigel Calder story atwww.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

The federal Conservative government needs to be complimented for the environmental initiatives that they have taken thus far and for their restraint in implementing the Kyoto Protocol.

As a first step to improving our individual stewardship of the earth, we would do well to try and simplify our lifestyles by implementing one or more of the 10 suggestions outlined in Dr. Suzuki's Nature Challenge (www.davidsuzuki.org/NatureChallenge/at_Home/sign_up.aspx).

As well, Glen Argan's idea of a moratorium on tar sands development sounds like a good idea (WCR Editorial, March 26).

Mary Ellen Robinson
Edmonton

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