"It's not what people don't know that hurts them, it's what they know that ain't true..." -Will Rogers
"Economic Diplomacy" is the new buzz phrase in governance.
You'll be hearing more of it on newscasts regarding Canada's foreign policy, and business pundits are using it to discuss diversified trade and investment plans. Where there's a new action plan in the works, "economic diplomacy" is bumping out "opportunity cost" as the right phrase to wow the hicks.
Most of us believe in the importance of economic development. Even tiny Bhutan with its "gross national happiness" principle, has export considerations nowadays - if those little bottles of its Druk mustard sauce popping up around town are any indication to go by. It's good sense to welcome opportunities that benefit us without bringing any residual bad karma.
So what are we to think of the heavily-funded advertising campaigns that are starting to put big economic interests smack in our municipal face? The Canadian Concrete
Masonry Producers Association campaign to promote use of concrete over wood in construction projects is one current version of economic "diplomacy." Noticed their expensive advertisements? That photograph of the seniors' home back east tragically ablaze in winter is frightening, but here we live in a temperate rainforest. What the advertisement doesn't point out is that in terms of genuine sustainability, wood is our only carbon neutral, non-toxic renewable building product. From a local economic perspective, ecologically, and in terms of job creation throughout the province, it's good sense to build with wood. In April, 2009 new building code requirements increased the allowable maximum building height for wood-frame residential construction from four to six storeys. That's the real issue, so what we're seeing is pushback. Municipally, concrete and glass towers with interior metal frames have spread like a rash across the Lower Mainland and concrete producers are protecting their market share. Let's think B.C. first and keep guys working the woods and in mills throughout the province.
Meanwhile May 19 is kick-off day for the Multi Materials BC recycling program. Heard about it? Despite three years of planning, this huge Victoria scheme continues to fly under the radar. A broad coalition of B.C. businesses opposes this wholesale takeover of B.C.'s recycling efforts and it includes B.C.'s Agriculture Council, Bottle & Recycling
Depot Association, Landscape & Nursery Association, Printing & Imaging Association, B.C. & Yukon Community Newspapers Association, Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, Newspapers Canada, and the Waste Management Association of B.C. When these free enterprise supporters get mad at the Liberals, it makes you wonder what might be wrong.
The RethinkitBC website notes, "The program set out by Multi Materials BC (MMBC) will annex most municipal and regional district curbside/discarded material collection and will cause great harm to the economy: in job losses, business failures and increased costs for B.C. households. The confusing Ministry of Environmentendorsed program creates a veritable monopoly to control much of B.C.'s currently thriving and competitive waste recycling industry. MMBC is governed by a board made up of international business interests with Ontario/Quebec representatives from: Unilever Canada, Metro Inc., Walmart, Tim Hortons Inc., Loblaw Companies Limited, Coca Cola Refreshments Canada and Procter & Gamble.
None of those board members has a head office here. Most are U.S. based. Consider what Eastern corporate business decisions have done to B.C.'s forests. Think of what the oil industry-dominated National Energy Board has done for the oil and gas developers. Isn't this like hiring the fox to look after the henhouse? Steve Ono, manager of engineering systems for the District of North Vancouver, acknowledges there has been unhappiness with the impending shift. "It's changing an existing system that's working," he says; however, "the way the new regulation reads, in a nutshell, means those who produce packaging - printed paper and plastic - are going to be responsible for it from cradle to grave."
Ono says curbside blue-box pickups will continue and a wider range of recyclable plastics, metal foil and paper will be collected. In theory the new MMBC program is a way to deal with recyclables and keep them out of the garbage stream similar to how bottles, car batteries and tires have been filtered out of mainstream landfills. "Overall, I think it's a good news story," he concludes, adding candidly that "we're a little nervous."
With good reason. It's a complicated story. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is desolate at what it regards as another looming wasteland of government red tape. Heaven help local businesses that have to deal with its complex reporting and taxing system: the CFIB anticipates that the new program will collect $110 million annually in fees. That should ensure job creation nirvana for overpaid administrators and their political fixers. Why don't Premier Clark and her Liberals explain all this? Meanwhile, it's not so long ago that Bob Rennie "the Condo King" expressed the condo industry's view of living an independent civic life. Just dump the whole idea of having a historic municipal identity. Get more salesfriendly! Make it easier to hustle what in New Westminster used to be called "a piece of the air."
Rennie used the occasion of an economic development forum keynote speech in The Royal City to suggest that "If you refuse to change, you run the risk of becoming irrelevant."
That has now blown up again in The Royal City. Local nutbars there are questioning whether the old provincial capital should junk its Royal heritage.
A good salesman gets people thinking. Maybe Bobville or New Rennieburg would be more hip, like the Condo King's presumed buyers who really need the coolness of Druk mustard sauce availability 24/7. Alas, this is the dark side of these multicultural times when eager salesmen will sell away the soul of a place. And if the buyers are foreign and can't be bothered to learn the history of the place they're now willing to call home, why let's just invent a slick new history for their convenience.
Strange that Paris, "the City of Light" and Rome, "the Eternal City" haven't felt the need to change their names. What the snake-oil salesmen don't understand is that honorific titles like "The Royal City" are earned the old-fashioned way, not by some marketing department selling rabbit hutches in Yaletown. You don't surrender them because they're not yours to give away in the first place. History accords these honours. Vancouver still hasn't earned one for itself.
It's a town without a song, yet never stops pumping its tires about being worldclass. That indicates a confidence problem, a town still trying to prove something.
What happens when the condo kings across the moat decide North and West Vancouver aren't sexy enough either? - "The North Shore has too many big trees, too many old geezers, not enough downtown neurosis. You have to make the changes to be relevant."
That's what happens when economic diplomats from someplace else start weaselling in on our local civic life. It's time to get out and plant our gardens instead. Like Huey Lewis sings, "It's hip to be square." poeticlicence.ns@gmail.
