It’s been a few weeks now since the government announced that, in order to honour its Kyoto commitments, it would need 10 billion dollars over the next six years. And since that’s just plain ridiculous, they’re not going to do it, they’re not going to try, and you can’t make them. So there.
I mean, we can’t do it. Right? 10 billion dollars. Where do you find that kind of money?
Oh, wait a minute. What was that in last year’s budget speech? That Canada recorded a budget surplus in 2003,04 and 05, and is projected to do so again in 2006 and 2007? I think I heard some trumpeting to the effect that in fact, Canada is the only G7 country to do so. And that we have the lowest national debt of all the G7 countries too. In fact, in 04-05, our surplus was 1.5 billion. The projected 05-06 surplus is 8 billion.
Hey. I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we use that?
Okay, I know – silly me. Things just ain’t that simple when it comes to budgets. I’d better look at it in a bit more detail to make sure I understand it properly.
Here’s a good bit in the “Budget Overview”. The Treasury plans to “restrain the rate of spending growth” in government offices “to save 1 billion in both 2006-07 and 2007-08”. 1 billion plus 1 billion makes…er…
No. It can’t be that easy. We need that money for other important things. In fact, thank goodness we’ve got it, because I see that we’re increasing funding of the Dept of National Defence by 5.3 billion over the next 5 years. Let’s have a look at what it’s for.
1.1 billion is to “rebuild Canadian forces”. Since they plan to put 5,000 more troops in front-line positions, they’ll need to fill the gaps back home. After that, we’re going to “initiate establishment of territorial battalions in major cities”. This means 14 Canadian cities will have “territorial response bases” in case of terrorist attack and/ or natural disasters. The funding will also go to provide “equipment to support combat-capable Canadian Forces”. (by the way, there is an additional 101 million tagged to create “safe and open borders”, which is then defined simply as arming our border officials).
Finally, just over a billion is going to “defend national sovereignty”; in particular, our Arctic sovereignty, to which end a Northern Sovereignty Support Centre will be built and staffed in Goose Bay, Newfoundland.
And this brings us to Hans Island.
Since 1973, this half-mile square bit of barren Arctic ice has been the site of a territory dispute between Canada and Denmark. “This land belongs to me!” “No, this land is my land!” Denmark has periodically sent naval forces to erect a Danish flag on the island. (see also “sticking your tongue out”). Then in 2005, Canada sent its own military to build an Inuksuk and erect a Canadian flag (see also “flipping the bird at”). Not only that, but Defence Minister Bill Graham (and some of the media) accompanied military personnel to the island, presumably to stomp his feet and wave his arms and shout “Mine! Mine!” (an unconfirmed report states that he also threatened to “scream and scream and scream until I’m sick, and I can too” unless sovereignty was awarded to Canada).
Since then we have all calmed down a bit and agreed to talk to each other nicely and not rough each other’s hair up or call each other names (although every time someone issues a balanced, grown-up statement about it, they finish it with “but it’s still ours, so there”). Either way, we still had to spend a heck of a lot of cash sending all those people back and forth to the island to show off.
But here’s why this is all so significant. Hans Island itself is no use to either country. What will be of use is the nearby (and also disputed) Northwest Passage and other linked waterways in the Arctic. Why “will be”? Because they’re no use now. They’re frozen. They “will be” of use…when global warming turns them into waterways.
Yes – we are pouring money into our Arctic Sovereignty plans in active preparation for when we have poisoned the globe enough that the Arctic becomes politically and economically important! We are preparing for the time when our purposeful refusal to ratify the Kyoto Treaty makes the Arctic available for our use. I don’t really need to add “instead of putting the money into making sure the disputed currently-frozen waterways never become unfrozen”. But why would governments come up with systems to do so, when as Marilyn Waring says in her book Counting for Nothing, “no economic model provides the means for understanding how both economic growth and environmental sustainability might be possible”. Although she wrote these words in the 1980s, how chilling that enough has stayed unchanged that it is still relevant.
It’s interesting that we’ll spend on “response units” in case of natural disasters, because these have a direct and measurable economic impact - the cleanup, the physical rebuilding, the tourism adverts. But natural non-disasters, like the ice caps not melting, and us not ending up living on small islands, breathing through masks, surrounded by warm shallows blooming with toxic algae, are economically immeasurable by current systems. (Incidentally, in comparison with the 5.3 billion in Defence funding, only 64 million is going to fund anti-terrorist prevention activities, such as investigating and stopping terrorist funding at the source). A fence at the top of the cliff, or an ambulance down in the valley?
This brings me back to Lucy Wanja and her knitting. She isn’t economically countable for her subsistence work. Nor is the ice that stops the globe from flooding economically countable. Nor is the oxygen produced by trees that are growing, although once you make them into lumber there they are, in the UN System of National Accounts: labour, product, export, money. It is because this internationally-agreed System doesn’t count those things that they’re not going to spend that 10 billion on the fence of Kyoto, and instead spend it on the ambulance of Arctic Defence. There’s no economic value to legislating for the environment, just as there is no economic value to legislating for Lucy and her colleagues. So there’s no reason to change it.
Tuesday 20 February 2007
Monday 19 February 2007
an owl counts
An owl recently appeared on our bookstore countertop. It’s a knitted owl, grey and brown and owly in a cute knitted way, and it retails for $26.99. And you know what it made me think of?
The United Nations System of National Accounts. (you can click this - it's a link)
The bookstore in which the owl currently sits is one in which I spend something close to 40 hours a week. I do things like ordering books and putting them on shelves, talking to publishers, giving schoolkids tours, holding events for teachers, helping grandmas find the right book for their four year old grandson, dealing with invoices, checking what’s selling and what’s not, adjusting the balance accordingly, planning fun book launch parties, writing a monthly newsletter. Outside of my 40 hours I read 5-6 books a week so I can recommend what’s good to teachers and teenagers and parents and kids. For all this, I receive an income that indicates that I am productive and part of Canada’s economy. I have an economic value and thus I appear in the UN System of National Accounts – my government knows I exist because of my productive contribution.
When I go home, I knit. I’m still visible in the economy, because I pay for the wool at a wool shop, which markets a product that has been in some cases imported, in all cases created by shearers and washers and graders and carders and spinners and dyers who have been paid to make it. However, once I make my sweater or shawl or half-finished sock, my work drops off the horizon. Unless I sell my sock – which frankly is unlikely – if I use it only to clothe myself or my family – the work I have done is not accountable by the UN System.
“Subsistence” work like that doesn’t have economic value. Let’s be honest – I’m not making knitted clothes and socks because I or my family need them, but knitting or sewing to clothe yourself or your own family is “subsistence” work. If I had grazed my own sheep on grass and on hay made from my own pasture, shorn and washed and graded and carded and dyed and spun and knitted, my work would be off the map altogether. No money out, no money in.
The owl made a trip of over 8,000 miles to get to a Saskatoon bookstore. He started life in Njoro, Kenya, where his creator, Lucy Wanja, is classified by website http://www.kenanaknitters.com/ as a “rural woman”. Her husband farms; she works at domestic subsistence level: collecting water, cooking for and feeding a family, raising a vegetable garden for food, making clothes.
The owl as a product that has been exported several thousand miles can be counted as having value to Kenya’s economy. Money has changed hands. In the same way, the animals Lucy’s husband raises have a concrete economic value, because they can be sold for meat and milk. The vegetables she raises don’t. The animals are a cash crop, the vegetables, subsistence.
As a rural Kenyan woman, the chances that Lucy is involved in what Marilyn Waring calls “shitwork” – that is, making fuel from animal dung – are high. (Waring discusses all this, and the UN System, in a lot more detail in her books). This job involves collecting dung, making it into packed briquettes at a mixture that emits the least smoke, drying it, and storing it. Dungwork, needless to say, is also absent from the UN System’s account.
But here’s the thing. Fuel is expensive. With the world running largely on fossil fuels, many countries have to import those fuels in large quantities and at great expense. If not importing it, they are extracting it, at an economic cost of billions of dollars in equipment, transportation and manpower (productive people who have a market value). When Lucy and her colleagues do dungwork, they save the government from having to build and pay for an infrastructure by which they could get fuel to remote communities, save them from importing expensive fuels from other countries, save them from using up limited and expensive resources. Her vegetable garden does the same thing. She saves the government money by being a producer of product that has direct daily usage right where she is.
And still, the UN System of Accounts is for her a System of No-Account. Until she started knitting owls for Saskatonian children, she was off the economic map.
The Kenana Knitters website stresses that Lucy will directly receive our $26.99 for the owl, and that this will give her valuable income in a world where she is marginalized and prevented from earning money. At the same time, it says that knitting is an ideal job for the Kenana women because it can be fitted into their regular day “in snatches” – ie you can grab a pair of knitting needles and do a row while you’re waiting for the water to boil on the stove. So though her owls have economic market value, her “real” work still does not. And while Kenana is undoubtedly a Very Good Thing, it doesn’t solve the fact that Lucy and her colleagues can only be “counted” – like a Canadian housewife could only be “counted” – if they make a product that appears in the market.
The United Nations System of National Accounts has been created by economists, academics, political scientists, and is an internationally-agreed “best-fit”. So how do we expect governments to create legislation that benefits people who, by the UN’s account, simply don’t exist in the method by which their country is valued?
I’m coming to a point. It has to do, among other things, with Hans Island. I’ll see you tomorrow.
The United Nations System of National Accounts. (you can click this - it's a link)
The bookstore in which the owl currently sits is one in which I spend something close to 40 hours a week. I do things like ordering books and putting them on shelves, talking to publishers, giving schoolkids tours, holding events for teachers, helping grandmas find the right book for their four year old grandson, dealing with invoices, checking what’s selling and what’s not, adjusting the balance accordingly, planning fun book launch parties, writing a monthly newsletter. Outside of my 40 hours I read 5-6 books a week so I can recommend what’s good to teachers and teenagers and parents and kids. For all this, I receive an income that indicates that I am productive and part of Canada’s economy. I have an economic value and thus I appear in the UN System of National Accounts – my government knows I exist because of my productive contribution.
When I go home, I knit. I’m still visible in the economy, because I pay for the wool at a wool shop, which markets a product that has been in some cases imported, in all cases created by shearers and washers and graders and carders and spinners and dyers who have been paid to make it. However, once I make my sweater or shawl or half-finished sock, my work drops off the horizon. Unless I sell my sock – which frankly is unlikely – if I use it only to clothe myself or my family – the work I have done is not accountable by the UN System.
“Subsistence” work like that doesn’t have economic value. Let’s be honest – I’m not making knitted clothes and socks because I or my family need them, but knitting or sewing to clothe yourself or your own family is “subsistence” work. If I had grazed my own sheep on grass and on hay made from my own pasture, shorn and washed and graded and carded and dyed and spun and knitted, my work would be off the map altogether. No money out, no money in.
The owl made a trip of over 8,000 miles to get to a Saskatoon bookstore. He started life in Njoro, Kenya, where his creator, Lucy Wanja, is classified by website http://www.kenanaknitters.com/ as a “rural woman”. Her husband farms; she works at domestic subsistence level: collecting water, cooking for and feeding a family, raising a vegetable garden for food, making clothes.
The owl as a product that has been exported several thousand miles can be counted as having value to Kenya’s economy. Money has changed hands. In the same way, the animals Lucy’s husband raises have a concrete economic value, because they can be sold for meat and milk. The vegetables she raises don’t. The animals are a cash crop, the vegetables, subsistence.
As a rural Kenyan woman, the chances that Lucy is involved in what Marilyn Waring calls “shitwork” – that is, making fuel from animal dung – are high. (Waring discusses all this, and the UN System, in a lot more detail in her books). This job involves collecting dung, making it into packed briquettes at a mixture that emits the least smoke, drying it, and storing it. Dungwork, needless to say, is also absent from the UN System’s account.
But here’s the thing. Fuel is expensive. With the world running largely on fossil fuels, many countries have to import those fuels in large quantities and at great expense. If not importing it, they are extracting it, at an economic cost of billions of dollars in equipment, transportation and manpower (productive people who have a market value). When Lucy and her colleagues do dungwork, they save the government from having to build and pay for an infrastructure by which they could get fuel to remote communities, save them from importing expensive fuels from other countries, save them from using up limited and expensive resources. Her vegetable garden does the same thing. She saves the government money by being a producer of product that has direct daily usage right where she is.
And still, the UN System of Accounts is for her a System of No-Account. Until she started knitting owls for Saskatonian children, she was off the economic map.
The Kenana Knitters website stresses that Lucy will directly receive our $26.99 for the owl, and that this will give her valuable income in a world where she is marginalized and prevented from earning money. At the same time, it says that knitting is an ideal job for the Kenana women because it can be fitted into their regular day “in snatches” – ie you can grab a pair of knitting needles and do a row while you’re waiting for the water to boil on the stove. So though her owls have economic market value, her “real” work still does not. And while Kenana is undoubtedly a Very Good Thing, it doesn’t solve the fact that Lucy and her colleagues can only be “counted” – like a Canadian housewife could only be “counted” – if they make a product that appears in the market.
The United Nations System of National Accounts has been created by economists, academics, political scientists, and is an internationally-agreed “best-fit”. So how do we expect governments to create legislation that benefits people who, by the UN’s account, simply don’t exist in the method by which their country is valued?
I’m coming to a point. It has to do, among other things, with Hans Island. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Tuesday 6 February 2007
chimera
It was harder than you might think to get this photo here.
First, I had to knit the object in question.
I did not follow The Pattern. Would you, by now, expect such a thing of me? I started with good intentions and followed The Pattern to the letter. Then as this very beautiful yarn knitted up into some very beautiful mixy marly colourful material, I realised I did not want to wear this particular very beautiful sweater.
Yes, sweater (or jumper, for those who speak English properly). And since I very much liked the very beautifulness of the wool but not in its sweaterish form, I had to do something to enable me to still wear the very beautiful wool. This led to a lot of measuring and a very large amount of GCSE maths (without a calculator, mind you) and, ultimately, a skirt. Hence, a chimera of knitting: half-sweater, half-skirt; two genetically distinct lines of provenance. Though if any scientist would like to tell me conclusively whether this actually is a chimera or a mosaicism (I'm a bit hazy on the zygote side of things), I'd be pleased to know.
So to photograph it, I had to haul down our one and only mirror to stand it on the floor (sat on top of a French and an English dictionary), and then stand in front of it. And then remove my jeans and put on the skirt, and stand in front of it again. And then stand so my legs didn't look like one giant leg (not sure if I managed that bit). Once I had darkened the room sufficiently for the flash to work I had to discard several attempts because the flash reflection in the mirror looked like I had spilled something suspicious down the front of the skirt.
Then after removing the disk from the camera (yes! We actually have a camera that takes disks! What Luddites! No wonder all my photos are rubbish.) and replaced my jeans, and hunted for the disk that I had lately removed from the camera and put down somewhere, I had to transfer the photo from the disk (via a plug-in floppy disk drive, because computers don't have such outdated technology any more) onto the computer so I could play about with the funny photocorrecting thing (yes! This is a corrected version of the photo, with enhanced contrast and colour! Imagine what the original looked like.) and finally upload the thing onto here, during which time I also spilt something suspicious (oh, all right, it was only tea) down my jeans.
That's a whole lot of mucking about for one chimera. Next, I shall be tackling the Fibonacci sequence. Watch this space.
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