CAA calls for safer drivers, safer vehicles, safer roads

Posted on December 17, 1999 by Other News Sources

Canadian Accident Association

December 17, 1999

Ontario motorists face third highest traffic injury rate in Canada.

Toronto: Ontario is the third most dangerous province in which to drive, based on injury statistics from Transport Canada, says CAA Ontario. Transport Canadaís recently released 1998 Motor Vehicle Traffic Collision Statistics shows that drivers face the greatest risk of injury in Manitoba, followed by British Columbia and then Ontario.

“We are concerned that, despite new programs to combat drunk driving, young-driver crashes and unsafe trucks, Ontario remains among the most likely places in Canada to be injured in traffic,” says CAA Ontario spokesman David Leonhardt. “The one bright spot is that Ontario has an enviable record in avoiding the most severe injury – loss of life.”

Ontario government figures from 1997 show that lower limb fractures are the most frequent injuries requiring hospitalization, followed by neck and trunk fractures; non-fracture intracranial injuries; internal chest, abdomen and pelvis injuries; upper limb fractures and skull fractures. Had they been part of the list, injuries that lead to fatalities would rank fourth.

Because the need to make Ontario roads safer is so desperate, Leonhardt says CAA Ontario will participate in Transportation Minister David Turnbullís Safe Driving Advisory Group. “If the Group’s work leads to even a few road safety improvements, it will be well worth the time and effort.”

Leonhardt cautioned, however, that focusing on drivers alone will have limited benefits. “Roads will have to be improved too. We need safe drivers in safe vehicles driving on safe roads.”

Growing population and expanding trade have increased the number of cars and trucks on the road, says Leonhardt, but road expansion has not kept pace. Despite increased road-spending this year, he says that needs are increasing faster. “Grid-lock not only threatens to stifle economic growth; it puts our very safety at risk.”

Posted in Toll roads | Leave a comment

Farming hazardous to our health

Posted on December 14, 1999 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
December 14, 1999

Subsidies support an industry that is a major polluter

It’s one of Canada’s most polluting industries, yet so sacred a cow that environmental authorities shy away from clamping down on it. It provides one of Canada’s most dangerous work environments – so dangerous that it not only fells its workers but also seriously injures one worker’s child in seven – yet Canada’s occupational health authorities only whisper about the need to regulate it. It hasn’t turned a profit for the country in more than a decade, yet, insisting it’s economically indispensable, it demands continuing subsidies from the successful parts of the Canadian economy. It is the family farm.

Although the family farm conjures up a pretty picture of humans living in harmony with nature, the reality is anything but pretty. Farming today, as it was when homesteaders first deforested so much of our country, is predominantly about conquering and controlling nature. Despite the Western world’s overproduction of food, and despite our farm sector’s miserable economic record – farming has required a cumulative $80-billion in subsidies since 1986, the year the government began systematically counting the costs – Canadians continue to lose wilderness to farmland, whose acreage is increasing at approximately 10 times the rate that suburban sprawl eats up farmland.

To control nature in modern times, most farmers have turned to herbicides, insecticides and other poisons. To counter soil erosion and other costs of depleting the soil’s nutrients, they have turned to intensive fertilization, through both chemicals and manure from increasingly concentrated animal feedlot operations. The result – as tests throughout Canada in the past decade show – is a disturbing degradation of our nation’s rural water supplies: In Nova Scotia, 13% of surveyed wells were so contaminated as to be unfit for drinking, in Ontario 34%, in Saskatchewan 33% and in Alberta 13%. In Alberta’s intensely agricultural areas, 96% of lake samples and 99% of stream samples were unsafe for aquatic life.

The human toll is especially borne by children, according to numerous studies, most recently one released this month by the Ontario College of Family Physicians. It found that the children of farm families – along with children who live near farms – suffer great risks of developmental and immune system damage from heavy pesticide exposure. In Prince Edward Island, largely to satisfy the needs of two new french fry plants, potato fields have sprouted among homes, schools and shops. More than half the schoolchildren now spend their days in classrooms near farm fields, which are sprayed 12 times or more during the four-month potato growing season. The public’s mounting alarm has been exacerbated by a spate of fish kills – the mass poisoning by toxic runoff of the fish, frogs and snakes living in rivers – that occurred nine times in a two-month period last summer. Tourists are also voicing concern. Unlike the profitable tourism industry, however, for every $1 a P.E.I. farmer earns, taxpayers provide $4 in subsidies.

Because intensive farming operations are often inconsistent with the lifestyles our health-conscious society seeks, farmers increasingly confront opposition from broad swaths of society: cottagers and rural residents who face inconvenience and expense in switching to bottled water; sport fisheries, whose lucrative fishing stocks are decimated by farm runoff; organic farmers, who resent subsidies to their chemical-dependent competitors; and municipalities, whose own water supplies are threatened by excesses in farm operations. New York City, to avoid building an expensive and otherwise unnecessary water filtration plant, is paying upstream farmers to curtail their operations.

To overcome public opposition, farmers in most provinces successfully lobbied for laws that give them special status, and deny others their age-old rights to take court action to protect their property against various forms of pollution and other nuisances. Anticipating other challenges, farmers are attempting to beef up these so-called “right to farm laws” even further, by having them override the environmental laws of the land. Far from upholding our cherished traditions, farm lobbies have eroded Canadians’ property rights and our access to the courts, all the while turning the old farm virtue of self-reliance on its head with demands for public assistance.

Only one Western country – New Zealand – has eliminated virtually all farm subsidies. Erosion-prone fragile land – that which never should have been cleared in the first place – has been steadily taken out of farm production, some returning to its natural state and some – an amount approaching two million hectares – planted for commercial forestry. Farmers use fertilizers and other chemicals much more sparingly, and they now emphasize cost control and quality rather than quantity. New Zealand’s largest food processor, Heinz Watties, aggressively increased the number of farms from which it is buying organically grown produce.

New Zealand’s agriculture labour force fell by 10%, but having fewer farmers has not hurt rural societies. Thanks to an improved quality of life and a boom in demand for rural services, the rural economy is reinvigorated and entrepreneurial, and the rural population is up 9%. Nor has having fewer farmers hurt agriculture. The farm sector is the country’s pride, and it is leading New Zealand’s export-led economic recovery.

As in New Zealand, Canada’s economic and environmental health would improve by ending farm subsidies. Though commentators despair at dislocations, the task need not be disruptive, and it need not harm those most vulnerable to change. Fortunately, the problem has largely been solving itself.

In Canada, people have been leaving the farm for decades, and today only 3% of the population remain on farms. This population is disproportionately old – 60% are age 45 or older, nearing retirement, and poor candidates for retraining. Those who wish to finish their careers in farming should continue to receive support. But to prevent the next generation from being trapped, and to give Canadian farming the bright future it deserves – a future the current system so utterly fails to deliver – the farm economy must operate as a free economy.

Posted in Agriculture (Rural) | Leave a comment

Return of citizens initiated referenda poll votes – reducing the number of MPs in Parliament

Posted on December 1, 1999 by Other News Sources

New Zealand Government

December 1/1999
Question: Should the size of the House of Representatives be reduced from 120 members to 99 members?

Click here to view .pdf table

Posted in Electoral Reform | Leave a comment

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecom Public Notice CRTC 99-16

Posted on November 30, 1999 by urbanrenaissanceinst

AT&T Canada Corp. and AT&T Canada Telecom Services Company

November 30, 1999

Review of contribution collection mechanism and related issues.

Introduction

AT&T Canada welcomes this opportunity to provide its perspective on the state of the current regime of subsidy collection within the Canadian telecommunications industry. At the outset, AT&T Canada wishes to note that it is committed to the concept of universal service and applauds the Canadian government’s goal of becoming the most connected nation in the world. AT&T Canada wants to continue to play an active and vital role in achieving that goal – a goal that will provide all Canadians with an opportunity to connect with and explore the world, linking them to a global market and a global community as close as next door.

In that spirit, AT&T Canada believes the Commission has the opportunity in this proceeding to put in place a new subsidy regime that, unlike the existing system, will effectively and efficiently achieve two of Canada’s most fundamental telecommunications policy objectives1:

1) To render reliable and affordable telecommunications services of high quality accessible to Canadians in both urban and rural areas in all regions of Canada; and

2) To foster increased reliance on market forces for the provision of telecommunications services and to ensure that regulation, where required, is efficient and effective.

Given the numerous deep-seated problems with the existing subsidy regime, it is AT&T Canada’s view that this proceeding could not be more timely and, to have the greatest positive impact, must be concluded (i.e., a decision rendered) with the utmost urgency. In the simplest terms, AT&T Canada strongly believes that the current subsidy regime is broken. The current system fails to achieve its stated goals and retards the development of competition. For these reasons, the current regime is not sustainable, even in the immediate future, and in turn jeopardizes the Commission’s ability to simultaneously achieve universal, affordable service and increased reliance on market forces.

Throughout the submission that follows, AT&T Canada will demonstrate that, failing an overhaul to the existing subsidy regime, both universal service and the sustainability of competition, as well as its associated benefits will be impossible to achieve. Instead, in its second submission entitled “A Proposal for Change,” AT&T Canada is advocating a system based on sound principles that ensures the ongoing availability of affordable service in a competitive environment.

AT&T Canada Supports a Principled Approach to Universal Service

AT&T Canada believes that the primary intent of this proceeding is to work through the detailed mechanics associated with the subsidy regime. That being said, AT&T Canada submits that the Commission must not lose sight of the fact that defining an appropriate framework of public interest principles within which this detailed work will be undertaken is critical to the ultimate success of the regime. Defining a framework ensures that whatever regime is finally put in place is consistent with the public interest principles that the Commission considers germane to a sustainable, successful marketplace. To establish an appropriate framework, the Commission must use this proceeding to re-visit and reaffirm the general purpose of subsidies, as well as the design objectives for a subsidy regime within a competitive environment. AT&T Canada submits that this exercise will make it immediately clear that the current regime is no longer effectively serving its intended purpose nor is it meeting its design objectives and must be replaced immediately.

Purpose and Design Objectives

In AT&T Canada’s view, the general purpose of subsidies in the telecommunications industry can be gleaned from the policy objectives spelled out in the Telecommunications Act. Specifically, Section 7(b) of the Act states that it is a Canadian telecommunications policy to:

“render reliable and affordable telecommunications services of high quality accessible to Canadians in both urban and rural areas in all regions of Canada.”

While this industry has been successful in bringing service to many rural areas, AT&T Canada must question to what extent the existing contribution regime necessarily contributed to this and whether in fact this regime is designed to serve the purpose stated in the Act. AT&T Canada understands that the contribution mechanism was intended to keep the provincial phone companies whole, yet implicit in that objective was the expectation that the funds would also be used to achieve the overall objective of universal service advocated by the Act. AT&T Canada suspects that not all of the subsidy funds currently collected are being used for their intended purpose, particularly in light of the fact that even after existing Service Improvement Programs are completed, over 20,000 Canadians businesses and households still will not have access to basic telephone service – many rural Canadians are still waiting to obtain benefits from the contribution regime.

This is particularly disturbing when one considers that the ILECs have collected over seven billion dollars from the contribution mechanism over the last 8 years. Needless to say, that is a great deal of money. One might think it was more than enough to cover the cost of providing service to high cost areas and to achieve universal service. To put the amount in perspective, consider for a moment that AT&T Canada started with a small, private-line network connecting the railroads in Canada, invested a smaller sum of money (slightly over $2 billion) and managed to build a state-of-the-art, long distance network from coast to coast as well as a facilities-based local network in 17 cities. AT&T Canada submits that this startling comparison casts a dark shadow on the efficacy of the existing contribution regime.

In Decision 92-12, the Commission laid out the design objectives of a subsidy regime. In that Decision, the Commission determined that a subsidy regime should: 1) be efficient from an administrative perspective, 2) be sustainable, support the achievement of universal service objectives, and 3) should allow all market participants equal pricing flexibility. While in theory these objectives may have been consistent with the contribution regime as it appeared on paper, based on behaviour readily observable in the market today, AT&T Canada is very concerned that in reality the regime fails to meet the design objectives the Commission set out. AT&T Canada submits that the current practice sacrifices accuracy and accountability in the interests of simplicity. In the end, the result is a regime that allows the ILECs to over-collect an inflated subsidy from their competitors, with an insufficient requirement to validate expenditures.

The Need for Imminent Change – Today’s Realities

AT&T Canada applauds the Commission’s decision to focus on and resolve the significant issues surrounding the contribution collection mechanism before exploring other matters impacting the telecommunications industry in Canada. It is important to understand clearly that this industry today is not poised for future success. In fact, if left unchecked, AT&T Canada is fearful that the eventual outcome will be a re-monopolization of the industry by the incumbent telephone companies.

The provincial phone companies continue to post ever increasing net income and high rates of return on capital, while Call-Net and AT&T Canada post increasing net losses, collectively running at the rate of approximately $1 billion per year. This dramatic dichotomy points to a serious industry structure dilemma, one not witnessed in any other country’s efforts to de-regulate, and the potential for re-monopolization of the Canadian industry.

Return on Capital figures are adjusted to remove impact of extraordinary items

Despite comparable revenue generation and capital development vis-á-vis competitors in other countries, alternative providers in Canada report lower EBITDA as a percentage of industry EBIDTA and larger net losses while the ILECs are profitable, and increasingly so year over year. This is a much different story than in the United States and the United Kingdom where new entrants were profitable after 7 years of competition.

Industry Metrics

Currently, the ILECs are the only companies in the industry providing a return to their shareholders; this situation is not sustainable in the long run. In all sectors, the ILECs still have a dramatic market share advantage, and are now beginning to regain share in some long distance markets.

In addition, it is AT&T Canada’s estimate (included in its business plans) that the ILECs will conservatively have 90% share in local business service, and 95% share in local residential service into the year 2004. Based on the following chart, and mindful of the provincial phone companies’ share in local service, one could easily foresee a return to monopoly.

ILEC Market Share Market Size (in *billions)

Long Distance Voice

Business 67% $4.2
Residence 73% $2.3
Total 69% $6.5

Data Services 71% $2.6

Local Services

Business 97.3% $3.9
Residence 100.0% $3.9
Total 98.6% $7.8

Internet/E-commerce 23% $1.0

Total Market 80% $17.9

In light of all the above, AT&T Canada submits that the Commission must question whether the existing contribution regime could possibly be meeting its objectives. In particular, it is AT&T Canada’s view that it is not possible for a rational, sustainable regime to produce a situation such as the one detailed above. AT&T Canada believes that the dominant market share of the incumbents (80%), combined with the fact that lower per minute prices (and increased demand) lead to significantly more contribution dollars flowing into the pool than needed or expected, causes there to be no incentive for the phone companies to maintain a rational price structure. In fact, the opposite incentive exists, contributing significantly to the demise of competition.

The Proposal for Change – A Principled Approach

If all Canadians are to enjoy the benefits of universal service and if the telecommunications industry in Canada is to be truly competitive and able to attract investment capital that earns a fair return, a number of significant changes must be made. Based on the evidence provided above, as well as results witnessed in the market, it is AT&T Canada’s submission that one of the most urgently required changes is in the contribution formula and the processes surrounding it.

AT&T Canada provides the following principles within which, it is submitted, a subsidy regime must be developed in order to rectify the above stated problems and render a system that meets both the purpose of a subsidy in a competitive environment, as well as the Commission’s more specific design objectives.

Principles for an effective, efficient subsidy regime in a competitive environment:

1. Universal service should be achieved and maintained for all Canadians, including the maintenance of affordable rates for residence customers in high cost areas.

2. The quantum of contribution collected should be limited to the amount of the total subsidy requirement, established on an annual basis. This would avoid the type of overpayment ($162M in 1998 and $78M in 1999) seen in the industry over the last two years. In addition, the quantum should be calculated in substantive and verifiable business cases based on the forward-looking, incremental cost (i.e., Phase II costs) of providing the subsidized services.

Amount should reflect the impact of productivity improvements and technological advances over time – requires a true-up mechanism to ensure that any over-collection would be taken into account in determining the following yearÂ’s requirement. Amount should be based on underlying cost assumptions agreed to by the industry participants. Contribution to this Fund should come only through this established mechanism and not through any additional surcharges/channels.

3. In a world of convergence, the contribution subsidy mechanism must be technologically and competitively neutral and therefore must include all communications players, e.g., wireline, wireless (mobile and fixed) and cable.

4. The subsidy collection mechanism should be structured in a manner that promotes competition and infrastructure investment in facilities-based local service by new entrants through a subsidy credit in order to promote other objectives of the Telecommunications Act, including those objectives dealing with enhancing competitiveness and efficiency of Canadian telecommunications;

5. An Industry Consortium should have oversight of the Universal Service Fund

The Consortium should be a small group (10-12 members) with representatives from all industry segments, plus government and independent representatives In conjunction with the use of a Phase II costing approach to pre-define the need for subsidy, the Commission must implement a tracking mechanism to be used by the fund manager to insure that money withdrawn from the fund is actually being used to satisfy the pre-defined need An independent auditor should conduct regular audits to ensure that the tracking mechanism implemented by the Commission is being applied properly by those receiving subsidy funds There should be no “net payers” – all participants should be required to pay into the fund, even if ultimately they are entitled to receive subsidy payments. All information associated with the disbursement of subsidy funds should be readily available for public review at all times Fund managers (appointed by the Consortium) should attain a minimum earnings threshold on funds held prior to distribution, and all such earnings should reduce future fund requirements.

Conclusion

In retrospect, the Canadian governmentÂ’s vision for telecommunications competition was a good one. As a result of competition, Canadians now enjoy the lowest long distance pricing in the world, innovation and choice have increased dramatically, the number of jobs created across the economy by the communications industry is growing and the entire Canadian economy, for which telecom is an increasingly fundamental enabling technology and engine of growth, is visibly profiting from the impacts of telecommunications competition. Canadians have truly benefited over the course of the last few years.

However, as positive as the story appears on the surface, there is a dark shadow on the horizon that cannot be ignored – the real danger of re-monopolization within the industry. Going forward, both in the re-design of the contribution regime, as well as in other significant proceedings, the Commission must be mindful of market realities. In fact, the once competitive consumer long distance market is now in the process of re-monopolization. The Commission must be wary of the same result in the business sector.

As David Colville said:

“Competition and deregulation are not synonymous. In moving from a monopolistic environment to a market-driven one, you cannot simply take away regulation. You need regulation to take you through a series of rebalancing steps until at least some competitors gain enough market share to sustain themselves in a free environment.”

AT&T Canada submits that current market reality demonstrates that some of the long distance deregulation policies of the past, including the contribution regime, though well intentioned at the time, are not working today as local service is being deregulated and significant investments are being made. Although the Commission has done an excellent job in taking the first steps towards opening up the local exchange market to competition, it is essential at this time that the Commission and the industry as a whole go back and look at the total picture. It is time to re-think and re-engineer policies to ensure that Canada can sustain universal, affordable service, healthy competition, and continued investment and growth.

In closing, AT&T Canada submits that its recommendations in this document and the accompanying submission are made in the same spirit as John Manley’s statement before the Empire Club:

“At the heart of this strategy was our belief in the power of a competitive marketplace. Competition leads to consumer choice. It leads to innovation. It leads to success in the markets of the world, and, therefore, to jobs for Canadians.”

AT&T Canada entirely agrees that healthy competition is critical to realizing CanadaÂ’s vision for the telecommunications industry. The need to achieve and maintain universal service is also critical to this vision. However, to truly be successful, these two objectives must be achieved concomitantly and not exclusively of one another.

This proceeding represents the Commission’s opportunity to implement a new subsidy regime that does just this.

Posted in City states, Cures, Municipal, Nation states, Sprawl | Leave a comment

Water export threat is trickling away

Posted on November 30, 1999 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
November 30, 1999

Farm conservation, desalination make shipments unlikely

Canadians have good reason to fear large scale water exports. The cost required to reroute rivers or build pipelines can run into tens and even hundreds of billions of dollars. Because the water is no longer needed south of the border, the Americans could cut off our exports at any time. And the ventures would be controlled by the very same people who have plundered our oil, forestry, fisheries and other natural resources — the politicians in Ottawa and in our provincial capitals.

Despite the solemn pledges spouting forth from Canada’s environment ministers yesterday in their meeting at Kananaskis, Alta., for two decades our political leaders have been ready and willing to sell off our water. Take the Grand Canal, which then prime minister Brian Mulroney and Quebec premier Robert Bourassa backed in the 1980s. This Soviet-scale public works project involved damming the mouth of James Bay to turn it into a fresh water lake, then annually pumping 20% of its runoff to the Great Lakes, whose water could then be redirected to dry regions of the United States and Canada. The Grand Canal — estimated in 1994 to cost $100-billion to build and another $1-billion a year to operate — envisaged a string of nuclear reactors and hydro dams to pump water uphill, and nine interbasin transfer locations. All told, 17% of the fresh water in Quebec and Ontario would have been captured and reversed.

Preposterous as the Grand Canal was, it’s dwarfed by its Western counterpart, the North American Water and Power Alliance. Estimated to cost between $300-billion and $1-trillion, and to take 40 years to build, NAWAPA would divert British Columbia and Alaskan waters via Canada to the United States and Mexico through 240 dams and reservoirs, 112 water diversions, and 17 aqueducts and canals. Smaller government-backed diversion schemes — generally subsets of either Grand Canal or NAWAPA — also abound. There isn’t an honest dollar to be made from any of them. The average cost of a large-scale water export would be about 12 times what the United States would likely pay.

Bulk water exports can be profitable, but only for short periods, and only in extraordinary circumstances, such as California’s five-year drought a decade ago. Because many of its jurisdictions were unprepared, water costs soared — in some places water fetched 10 to 20 times current prices — creating the illusion that a wave of profits could easily be had by shipping water south via obsolete crude oil carriers. Even under drought conditions, in the end the deals collapsed when the rains came. Prices plunged, sometimes by 90%. And thanks to new developments, no export deals are likely to occur in future.

Like Canada, the United States is a water-rich country that has been wasting its water for decades. But unlike us, it’s starting to tighten the taps by charging customers more. U.S. water rates have risen 43% in the last five years, spurring a revolution in conservation, not unlike the energy efficiency improvements that occurred in the aftermath of the 1970s OPEC oil crises.

While fewer than one million of the United States’ 35 million apartments are individually submetered for water today, virtually all new apartment-building construction includes individual water meters. According to the National Submetering and Utility Allocations Association, in California — one of the presumed markets for Canadian water — meters could be installed in four million of the state’s 5.5 million apartments, saving 85 billion gallons a year. That’s 35 times the amount that B.C. almost sold to California during the drought.

While residential consumers can do much to curtail wasteful consumption, the biggest savings lie in the agricultural sector, where farmers and irrigation districts hold most of the water rights in the arid and semi-arid West. Farmers pay nothing for the water itself and little to have it delivered to their farms, leading them to squander it. But during the California drought, farmers parted with their water — for a price — and with today’s rising water prices, they are increasingly willing to sell again. As subsidized farming shrinks, vast inexpensive water supplies become available — California, for example, consumes 80% of its water irrigating subsidized, low-value crops.

These growing U.S. water markets have effectively killed prospects of Canadian water exports in the short term, and there won’t be a long term. Over the last decade, desalination costs have been plummeting, giving the enormous U.S. population on the shores of the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico access to reasonably priced water. Early this year, engineering giant Stone & Webster won the contract to supply Tampa Bay Water for 30 years. Its offer: to finance, build and operate a system providing desalinated drinking water at a cost of 0.2¢ (US) per gallon — about the cost of shipping free Canadian water by tanker.

But why should anyone get our water for free? Despite its apparent abundance, Canadian cottagers, fishermen, farmers, municipalities, power producers, industrialists and tourist operators increasingly compete for this essential resource. Like the United States and other industrialized countries, Canada should remove subsidies from water. Once we pay full value for its use, export deals will never again be a threat, for our water will truly be too precious for any exporter to ever want to touch.

Posted in NaturalResources_Water | Leave a comment