Insurance for dummies

Posted on May 14, 2004 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
May 14, 2004

Lowering auto insurance rates doesn’t involve “rocket science,” Alberta Premier Ralph Klein scoffed last week. To prove his point, he vowed to sit his MLAs down together in the same room one day soon to lower rates for 80% of Alberta drivers. His ideal is one-size-fits-all insurance. “What we want to achieve is comparable levels of premium payments for the middle of the pack so to speak . . . you, me.” 
Alberta Premier Ralph Klein.
Credit: The Canadian Press

Klein doesn’t want insurance policies complicated by actuarial mumbo-jumbo. Nor is he alone in insisting that auto insurance be dumbed down to a simpleton’s comprehension level. Politicians across Canada are wondering why the aged should pay higher premiums simply because their eyesight is failing and their reaction times are slowing. Or why young single males should be hit with higher premiums to insure their souped-up vehicles. Or whether insurers should have the right to balk at insuring drivers with perfectly valid drivers’ licences, merely because they have had five or six accidents. The only provinces not considering dumbing down their auto insurance are those under public ownership: They’ve already hit bottom.

The dumbing down produces predictable results: More dangerous drivers on the road, higher claims costs, and, all else being equal, higher insurance premiums. Dumbed-down provinces can escape higher premiums, however, by limiting compensation: Alberta, for example, is considering capping payouts at $4,000 to lower the cost of auto insurance. That’s too much for provinces such as Prince Edward Island to fathom. It capped its payout at $2,500.

While Canada is busy dumbing down its auto insurance industry, the United States has been expecting more from its insurers, and getting it. Auto insurance rates south of the border will be falling this year, but not because governments have frozen rates (Ontario) or rolled them back (Nova Scotia) or rebated insurance premiums (New Brunswick) or given Canadians small savings in premiums coupled with big reductions in benefits (most of the rest). U.S. rates are falling because competition has forced auto insurers to provide consumers with more value: more choices, better service, more accurate pricing and lower costs. U.S. consumers like the result. In contrast to Canadians, who dislike their insurance industry whether it’s publicly or privately run, U.S. consumers give their auto insurers a satisfaction rating approaching 90%, and believe that more deregulation – not more regulation – would lead to even lower rates.

Canada’s politicians set up roadblocks to prevent insurance companies from offering meaningful choices. U.S. politicians allow insurers more of an open road, letting aggressive companies such as Progressive and Safeco hit the accelerator. Where these insurers once relied on a few simple factors such as age, sex and driving history to determine insurance rates, they now employ thousands of variables. Many of those variables make no sense to customers – “what does my credit history at Wal-Mart have to do with my driving record,” a customer might ask. Progressive’s answer: “We consider you a higher risk. Others may not.” Progressive, now America’s third-largest auto insurer, provides its rates alongside the rates of other companies – a practice it pioneered 10 years ago – to help consumers compare and decide which insurance product best suits their needs.

Safeco, another new-breed insurer, has likewise transformed its once-dumb business practices, such as putting everyone between the ages of 21 and 70 in the same age category. Now Safeco proudly discriminates: by age, by marital status, by neighbourhood, singly or in combination. Mostly, it discriminates in favour of safe drivers, who cost it least in claims, and who deserve, as a result, the best rates.

In part, insurance is becoming more accurate due to changes in technology. In parts of the United States and the United Kingdom, drivers are beginning to pay for their insurance by the mile – the more they drive, the more insurance they pay. But when and where they drive, and under what conditions, also matters. It costs less to drive on rural roads that have a good safety history than on dangerous roadways, such as congested inner-city expressways. The United Kingdom’s Norwich Union tracks the weather to vary rates by driving conditions – driving on roads that are slippery when wet now comes at a higher per mile insurance premium.

The pay-per-mile schemes set rates by using satellite technology to track the movement of vehicles. To limit their liability, auto rental companies now also make widespread use of tracking technologies – an estimated 25% of rentals are monitored in this way – to make sure their cars aren’t taken across borders or driven dangerously. Some rental companies even fine drivers for speeding to discourage reckless behaviour and lower insurance costs.

The best insurance-lowering innovation of all, however, may soon come from another United Kingdom market-oriented experiment: the pricing of roads. Just over one year ago, London began to charge road users to enter its downtown area. London hoped to lower traffic congestion, and in that it succeeded. To the city’s surprise, eliminating congestion also led to an immense reduction in accidents: 28% fewer cars were involved in accidents and 6% fewer pedestrians. If the safety improvements that London experienced carry through to all U.K. roads when they become tolled in the next five to seven years, U.K. consumers are in for premium reductions. The reductions could also come in Continental Europe, which is likewise developing smart technologies to allow it to toll its roads.

Meanwhile, Canada grows dumber and dumber. Each new interference in the insurance industry convinces either companies to leave, lowering competition, or investors to demand a higher return on their capital. Either way, consumers pay. The savings that politicians promise consumers, meanwhile, are either artificial and temporary, such as when government artificially freezes rates, or nonexistent. Alberta officials now acknowledge there may be no forced savings to be had, and that Ralph Klein may not be able to deliver on his promise.

But Klein does have a way to lower rates, and it doesn’t involve rocket science. He need only move aside and let the insurance market work.

Posted in Automobile | Leave a comment

Cities of the Future

Posted on May 5, 2004 by urbanrenaissanceinst

Lawrence Solomon

May 5, 2004

Lawrence Solomon, the executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute, delivered the keynote address at the 5th annual Edmonton Real Estate Forum on Wednesday, May 5, 2004. Mr. Solomon looked at factors such as demographic change, attracting a skilled workforce, continuing advances in technology, infrastructure investment and transportation and their impact on how effective cities function. He explored how these factors influenced the direction of cities as they headed into the future, as well as how cities would attract and facilitate growth, and where the funds would come from. His speech appears in full below.

It’s a pleasure to be back in Edmonton, here in one of Canada’s – and the western world’s – most dynamic city regions. It’s doubly pleasing for me to be back in Alberta. Alberta is the only province in Canada that has a powerhouse for a rural economy. In every other province, the rural regions are economically weak and a drain on the urban economy. Only Alberta has a strong rural economy that works hand in hand with its cities.

Greg asked me to talk about the cities of the future. I have a great crystal ball, so I can tell you a lot about how cities – as well as rural areas – will evolve in the future.

My crystal ball tells me that globalization will continue to bring prosperity to the world and that free markets will continue to expand in Canada and elsewhere, as they have for the past two centuries. My crystal ball also tells me that governments will continue to privatize more and more services, leading to ever-greater efficiency and to an ever-greater need for communities to be self-supporting, and not dependent upon subsidies. Many if not most rural areas will prove to be unsustainable, leading to a resumption of the great march of people from the rural areas to the cities.

Here’s the bottom line: Big cities are efficient and economical and will become bigger in future. Resource towns are generally unsustainable without subsidies and, because globalization and free markets tend to eliminate subsidies, small towns as well as small rural communities will disappear.

The beginning of the profound changes to come to our daily lives, and to our economy, can be seen in events that started in London a year ago. Most Canadian are unaware of the revolution that is now underway, and how dramatically it will be changing our own lives in the near future.

In London a year ago, the city government decided to introduce a user pay system to its downtown roads, by tolling for their use during congested periods. Car owners began to pay £5 per day – about $12 – to enter central London between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. on weekdays. Overnight, congestion all but disappeared. Until then, London was heavily congested, ranked among the six most congested cities in the world. Now traffic jams are a thing of the past. Not only that, the tolling of London’s roads is immensely popular.

Why does the public overwhelmingly embrace the tolls? Almost everyone benefits. Just about the only losers are parking lot operators. They’ve had to lower their parking rates by an average 14% to keep their customers.

It’s easy to see why the general public likes the road toll, if you put yourself in a Londoner’s shoes.

Imagine you’re a bus passenger. Bus passengers love the toll because the free flowing roads means that they aren’t stuck in traffic. Bus disruptions due to traffic are down by 60% in the central area and 40% across London as a whole, reducing the excess waiting time at bus stops by 33% in the central area, and by 20% across the whole system. With buses moving quickly, demand for public transit has soared. As a result, London transit companies have put another 300 buses on the road.

The bus companies like it, too. More customers translate into more profits. And the bus companies were profitable even before the tolls were introduced – in London, the bus system operates mostly without subsidy, and it is privately owned.

Or, imagine you take taxis regularly. If you take a taxi, a ride that used to cost you £20 now costs you £11 or £12, because the cab doesn’t sit idle in traffic – it now averages 35 miles per hour.

Your cabby likes it, too, because he makes more trips now, and he makes more money when his cab is rolling than when it’s idle.

Or, imagine you’re a pedestrian. Accidents involving pedestrians are down 6%, part of a great overall reduction in accidents: 28% fewer cars are now involved in accidents.

Most businesses like it, too. Less time spent in transit means more business deals can get done. Faster delivery times of goods translate into better service, lower inventory requirements, and lower costs. A survey of businesses in and around the central core found that 70% supported the road charges, with only 20% opposed. Those in central London’s financial services industry favoured the tolls in even larger numbers.

With road users no longer getting a free ride, people are weighing the costs and benefits of taking their car and they’re making different decisions than they did when the roads were free. All told, London now has 50,000 fewer cars entering its downtown area during peak hours. Many still come in by car, only they share rides. Or they arrive earlier, or leave later, to avoid the tolls.

All told, car trips are down 30% and truck trips are down 10%. Meanwhile, motorcycle and scooter trips are up 12%. Bicycle trips are up by 20%. Taxi trips are up by 20%. Public transit – the biggest winner of all – has trips up by 23%.

London has solved one of the last great drawbacks of large cities – traffic congestion. Because it eliminated the traffic jam, the London economy saves some £220-million a year in reduced travel time, fuel costs and accidents.

The cities of the future will look a lot like London, at least in terms of controlling traffic.

London’s success has led cities around the world – some 100 of them – to investigate moving in the same direction. Just a few weeks ago, Stockholm announced it would be introducing a similar toll system.

But road tolling isn’t just an urban phenomenon. The United Kingdom plans to toll all roads – urban, suburban, rural – within the next 6 to 8 years. The European Union has already passed legislation to toll trucks on all its roads.

The US has another road tolling innovation that will lead to profound change. The country’s fourth largest auto insurer, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, has launched a pay-by-the mile auto insurance system. In Texas, where it is in place, car owners who opt to pay by the mile are saving about 25% on their car insurance. These drivers, of course, are those who drive less than the average. In the past, they paid more than they should have, while those who drove more than average paid less than they should have, because the insurance industry didn’t have an accurate way to allocate the actual costs of insuring their customers. Now that technology allows accurate pricing, all this will change. Those who drive a lot won’t be subsidized by those who don’t. Rates for car-dependent people will climb dramatically. That will encourage them to drive less. But in Texas, even those who don’t drive much are deciding to drive less. Drivers are realizing that the cost per trip of their insurance alone – forget the cost of gas or depreciation on their car – can exceed the bus fare.

What will all this tolling mean for society? You know better than most. When people make decisions about where to live, they often make difficult trade-offs. Do I buy a house in the city, or do I go further out, where land costs less? Often, people decide to put up with a 20 or 30 minute commute in order to save money on their accommodation – in Toronto, sometimes they put up with a 1 or even 2 hour commute.

After road tolling comes in – and the future is not all that far away – that logic gets thrown out the window. There will no longer be a trade-off between the inconvenience of a commute and the saving on land. The commute will be both inconvenient and costly. People will no longer go further and further out. Suburban sprawl will not continue. In fact, it will begin to reverse. In the past, when suburbs began to decay, suburbanites abandoned them for newer suburbs, further out. In future, when suburbs begin to decay, people will abandon them for locations closer in. The decayed suburbs will become slum or, if they’re uneconomic, they’ll be abandoned as residential areas. Cities, meanwhile, will become denser and denser. And as they become denser, they’ll function better.

The denser that cities get, the less expensive it is to deliver basic services such as water, gas, electricity, and cable. The denser that cities get, the easier for neighbourhoods to support local bakeries, local flower shops, local green grocers, local hardware stores. The denser that cities get, the more opportunity for diversity in schools for your children – dense neighbourhoods can support art schools, religious schools, alternative schools, and all without busing. The denser that cities get, the larger the city’s tax assessment and the lower the taxes per household.

People often assume that high density neighbourhoods are undesirable, sometimes people even associate high density neighbourhoods with slums. While some slums do have high densities, the general rule is that the higher the density, the more desirable the neighbourhood.

In most cities, the older, denser neighbourhoods are among the toniest, and fetch some of the highest prices. They can be gentrified or they can be new; they can be affluent or neighbourhoods in transition, where the rich live next to rooming houses, but they have one thing in common. They are full of people and, as a result, full of life. People walk more in these neighbourhoods, they shop more on foot, they have more neighbourhood restaurants and more access to entertainment. Their kids have more options, too, and not just in schools: more museums and other cultural institutions offering programs, more sports and recreational opportunities, more local musicians offering flute and guitar and piano and violin lessons.

People love density. Because they love density, they bid up the price of real estate in dense neighbourhoods, whether the neighbourhoods are commercial or residential. The best North American example of density is Manhattan, where about 50,000 people live per square mile. You have to be very rich to live in Manhattan and when people become very rich – like Wayne Gretsky – they often move there. Manhattan’s density supports an incredible array of establishments, making it among the most desirable places on earth, and its real estate among the priciest. New York continues to grow – its population, at the last census, was its largest ever.

No other city in North America has even half of Manhattan’s density. Toronto’s density, before its recent amalgamation with suburbs, approached 20,000, making it North America’s second densest city. Yet even at that density, a city would need to grow two and a half times to reach Manhattan’s density, and be able to afford all the amenities that Manhattan has. Edmonton’s density is lower still, at 3,500 people per square mile. To reach Manhattan’s density, you’d need to grow 15 times.

I am not arguing that either Toronto or Edmonton have as a goal to reach Manhattan levels of population. I’m not in favour of social engineering to achieve something as abstract as a certain population density.

My point is that high densities should not be feared, and that governments should not have as a goal the discouragement of high population densities. Yet that’s what governments do, at all levels. They discourage high population densities through the tax system and through all manner of government policies. Governments are in the business of social engineering, to influence where we live. I would like to see the government get out of this business, and let people choose where they want to live – whether in cities, in suburbs, in rural areas – not because the government provides some incentive or disincentive, but because that is their true preference.

This social engineering started off as an Eastern disease. A century ago, Canadian governments had explicit policies to move people out of cities, and to discourage high densities in cities. High densities were associated with public health problems. The public health problems that concerned governments then were tuberculosis, sexual promiscuity, sewage, sexual promiscuity, fresh air, sexual promiscuity, alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, atheism and sexual promiscuity.

If people lived too closely, together, public health reformers believed, their morals would suffer. A big problem in eastern Canada was that people were leaving the farm for the cities, and most of those people were single women. These single women got jobs with Eaton’s or with the telephone company during the day and who knows what they were up to at night.

So governments decided to discourage high-density living. Because the single women often rented rooms in private homes or shared apartments to save on rent, cities began to discourage lodging houses and rooming houses and to ban apartment buildings. They forced public transit companies to service unprofitable routes to the suburbs, in order to move people out. They tore down high density districts, and replaced them with low-density accommodation or with parking lots. When the First and then the Second World Wars came, governments leaned on the returning servicemen to live outside cities, even if they had come from cities. To be eligible for housing aid under the Veterans Land Act, for example, servicemen need to locate either in rural areas, or outside the city’s municipal boundaries.

The government bias against urban living continues to this day. Property taxes are, in effect, based on location, not on the cost of delivering services. In dense downtown neighbourhoods, where there are many residents per block, garbage trucks can service many more households than in low-density neighbourhoods, which have few households per block. If households paid for garbage collection on a user pay basis, the dense neighborhoods would pay less, the low-density neighborhoods more.

So, too, if households paid for their firemen and fire stations on a market-oriented basis. Fire trucks typically must be able to reach a home within four minutes of being called. In a high density area, which might have three or four times as many homes within a four minute radium of the fire station, the cost of providing fire protection is one third or one-quarter as much. Low-density areas require more road per house, more city water pipe, more gas company pipe, more electrical wire, more telephone wire, more cable, more everything. Yet in the city of today, low-density neighbourhoods pay less property tax. High density areas – those in or near the downtowns of cities which are fairly dense – pay more.

The property tax system in the city of today is a redistribution machine, that, in effect, takes money from people living in a high-density areas and gives it to people living in low-density areas. Often it takes money from those who aren’t well off and gives it to those who are. It’s unfair, and it will change, as free markets continue to make progress and as hidden subsidies such as these are replaced by transparent user fees.

But property tax isn’t the only example of built-in government discrimination against density in the city of today. Our regulatory systems for utilities all overcharge city residents to subsidize those in lower density areas. The telephone companies, for example, by law must overcharge city folk to keep rural rates down. That subsidy amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars a year, at times it has topped $1-billion.

Subsidies to low density developments also apply to the water, sewage, and natural gas systems. Because it is uneconomic – in the city of today – to expand the infrastructure, regulators routinely finance expansions with surcharges on urban customers.

Often these subsidies are hidden, and don’t appear in anyone’s books, not even a regulator’s books. We all know that public transit is subsidized in Canada, but we don’t know that it isn’t subsidized for all users. In a study that my organization did several years ago of the Toronto transit system, we found that people who take short transit trips were being overcharged for their trips – the transit company made money on them. Those who took longer trips were paying less than the cost of providing the service. Those who took very long commutes received the largest subsidy of all. The government’s attempt at social engineering had some successes and some failures.

The government didn’t succeed in outlawing sexual promiscuity but it did succeed in discouraging urban living. The sprawling suburbs we see are mostly a consequence of government subsidies. Most of the farmland now cultivated is also a consequence of government subsidies. Low grade land keeps being brought into production – we now have more land under cultivation than ever before – again thanks to government subsidies.

And yet, despite all the subsidies designed to keep people on the farm, and away from the cities, urban Canada keeps growing.

80% of us now live in urban areas, because that’s our preference, even if we’re penalized for exercising our preference.

How many of us will live in the Cities of the Future? When North America was first settled, only 10% of us lived in cities, 90% in the countryside.

Then 20% of us lived in cities, then 30% and 40% and 50%.

Historians in the first half of this century thought 50% was the peak – and governments tried to make it the peak with all their programs to keep people on the farm.

But 50% urban became 60% became 70% became 80%.

In Cities of the Future, we will see 90% because there’s no economic basis for most rural jobs.

Some farming is economic, most is not, and hasn’t been for decades. For every dollar of profit that a farmer in Canada made over the last decade, Canadian society kicked in $3.60.

Some mining is economic, most is not.

Some logging is economic, most is not. Even in the BC coast, 60% of the trees are logged at a loss, only to keep forest jobs.

There are only two major rural occupations that are very economic – and that is a big part of Alberta’s strength. Oil and gas is economic – the only resource industry that is viable on a large scale. And rural tourism is economic. They aren’t making any more Rockies.

Because Canada will need to be internationally competitive in future, we won’t be able to continue to carry rural areas that are unsustainable.

Just last month, the Ontario government released a major report, endorsed by the premier, that suggests phasing out rural communities in Ontario. “We can’t subsidize everyone,” the report said.

This is the beginning of a hard but realistic assessment of our rural areas. The report calls for retraining rural youth for urban jobs. The youth won’t need much encouragement to head for the cities – that’s where they’ve been heading to anyway, generation after generation.

The rural areas of the future will be sparse. Rural areas should be sparse – that is their fate.

And the Cities of the Future will be sense. That, too, is their fate. That is the natural order of things. That natural order will assert itself as people finally decide where they want to make their homes.

Thank you.

Posted in Public transit, Sprawl, Toll roads | Leave a comment

UNICEF West Bank, Gaza camps to steer clear of politics

Posted on May 5, 2004 by Other News Sources

Haaretz Service
May 5, 2004

In October 2003, Urban Renaissance Institute criticized UNICEF for enlisting children in the aid of political activities, and broke the news that UNICEF was supporting Palestinian summer camps that encouraged children to become suicide bombers.

When parents in Canada and elsewhere began demanding explanations of UNICEF, UNICEF denied our findings, calling them “baseless and reckless.” In May 2004, however, it acknowledged that it had, indeed, been supporting summer camps that inspired suicide bombing, and pledged in future it would only promote camps that furthered recreation and an appreciation of the environment.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, will operate 50 summer camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip this year for some 7,000 Palestinian children, devoting special supervision to keep politics and conflict out of the program, stressing instead environmental issues and recreation, Israel Radio reported Wednesday.

UNICEF West Bank, Gaza camps to steer clear of politics

In the past, the radio said, “UNICEF had discovered that two of its summer camps had been named after shahidim,” a term generally used by Israelis to denote suicide bombers.

The camps are operated in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education.

“The whole idea of the summer camp is not only to help the kids continue with their education, but also to lead as normal and fun a life as kids elsewhere in the world do,” UNICEF official Michael Bociurkiw told the radio.

“A lot of these kids are traumatized and anxious, and we want to give them the experience of fun.”

The radio quoted UNICEF figures showing that nine of 10 Palestinian children showed symptoms of traumatic response to the violence of the last three years.

“What we concentrate on is to keep children out of the conflict,” Bociurkiw said. He said that could mean keeping them out of the direct line of fire, and away from exposure to military presence.

In addition, he said, “Kids also want to learn about things unrelated to the conflict, and protecting the environment is something that children all over the world should be aware of.”

Read Lawrence Solomon’s original article on this issue, “UNICEF’s ghoulish tricks”

Posted in Civil Society | 1 Comment

Asthma sufferers will benefit from reduced levels of traffic

Posted on April 30, 2004 by urbanrenaissanceinst

April 30/2004

London Green Party (UK)

It’s World Asthma Day on Tuesday, May 4 2004 and Shasha Khan the Green Party candidate for the Croydon & Sutton GLA constituency called for further traffic reduction measures to ensure that nitrogen dioxide levels in the air, a factor in exacerbating asthma conditions, met with EU limit values by 2010.

A recent report1 by the Air Quality Expert Group advises that, in 2010, 23% of major road lengths in London are likely to exceed 40 micrograms of nitrogen dioxide (EU limit value), compared with 5% in the rest of England and 0% in Wales.

Nitrogen dioxide is formed when fuel is burnt at high temperatures, principally from motor vehicle exhausts and stationary sources such as electric utilities and industrial boilers.

Children with asthma who contract a respiratory viral infection are likely to suffer more severely from their asthma when exposed to nitrogen dioxide.

Commenting on the report’s findings, Shasha Khan, Green Party Candidate for Croydon and Sutton said, “Speaking as an asthmatic, these predictions are shocking. The six fold increase in children suffering from asthma in the last 25 years, that’s 1 in 8 children, has been attributed to modern day living. In the last five years 51 people have died in Croydon because of asthma. There seems to be no panacea to buck this trend. However, what we do know, we must act upon immediately. The car has been king for too long. Motor traffic must be reduced by 25% within 8 years; this includes getting freight off roads and on to rail.”

The report indicates there is strong evidence that heavy-duty diesel vehicles are a major contributor of nitrogen dioxide.

Interestingly, the report concludes that when developing air pollution controls, there maybe trade-offs between different pollutants. For example, some measures to reduce particle emissions from diesel vehicles can lead to increased emissions of nitrogen dioxide. In view of this, the Air Quality Expert Group suggests “a more flexible and holistic approach to air quality management would create more effective control strategies.”

Green Party mayoral candidate Darren Johnson added, “For those with asthma or respiratory illness, high levels of nitrogen dioxide can be dangerous. My rivals for Mayor of London are either prepared to abandon congestion charging or refusing to extend congestion charging across the capital.”

In the last five years 51 asthma sufferers have died in Croydon.

Statistics taken from the National Asthma Campaign website (6):

On average, 1,400 people die from asthma each year in the UK. This is almost four people per day, or one person every seven hours.

  • About a third of deaths (34%) caused by asthma occur in people under the age of 65.
  • An estimated 75% of admissions for asthma are avoidable and as many as 90% of the deaths (1,500) from asthma are preventable.
  • There are 18,000 first or new episodes of asthma presented each week to GPs in the UK.
  • There are over 71,000 hospital admissions for asthma in the UK in 2001. This equates to 190 per day.
  • A primary care organisation of 100,000 people is likely to experience on average 2–3 deaths from asthma per year.
  • Respiratory disease now kills more people than coronary heart disease – that’s one in four people in the UK.Notes for editors:1. ‘Nitrogen Dioxide in the United Kingdom’ by the Air Quality Expert Group www.defra.gov.uk/environment/airquality/aqeg/nitrogen-dioxide/nd-summary.pdf

    2. World Asthma Day – Tuesday 4th May 2004

    What can you do? Take part in an Asthmacadabra day by dressing up down for work or school; or become an e-campaigner and campaign for better deal for people with asthma. These are just some of the activities that you could support to mark World Asthma Day on 4th May and raise money to help conquer asthma. To receive more information on any of these activities please call 020 7226 2260 or e-mail: worldasthmaday@asthma.org.uk

    3. www.protectingourhealth.org/newscience/asthma/2003/2003-0601chauhanetal.htm

    4. www.asthma.org.uk/news/media02a.php

    Further information Penny Kemp 07711 760692 Shasha Khan: 07941 369 780

    Notes to editors:

  • Shasha Khan, 31 has lived in Croydon for over 20 years. He is the Operations Director for the family run business. He is standing for the Green Party for the London Assembly Constituency of Croydon and Sutton.
  • The London Assembly and the European Parliament elections will be held on June 10th, the same day as the Mayoral Election. At the last Assembly elections the Greens scored one of their best ever results in the Party’s history, securing 11.1% of the vote across London and winning three seats on the 25-member Assembly.
  • Darren Johnson’s vision for a sustainable Green London can be found on his website www.johnsonformayor.org.ukMedia contacts: Penny Kemp – 07711 760692, penny.kemp@virgin.net Graham Lee – 07956 261902, media@london.greenparty.org.uk
Posted in Toll roads | Leave a comment

Rural phase out

Posted on April 21, 2004 by urbanrenaissanceinst

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
April 21, 2004

For the first time in memory, possibly for the first time in Canadian history, a prominent government panel is recommending that unsustainable rural areas in Canada’s heartland be taken off life support and allowed to die a natural death.

Most of rural Canada cannot sustain itself. Rural residents need help to cover basic needs, from airfare to city hospitals for their medical needs to subsidized energy for their homes. Rural towns need provincial subsidies to cover up to 90% of their infrastructure needs. Rural industries, agriculture above all, need subsidies, too. If the subsidies vanished, so, too, would most farming, logging and mining in remote areas.

Until last week, all of Canadian officialdom was in denial about the de facto bankruptcy of the rural economy, paying lipservice to the importance of rural industries even as officials continued to sign cheques to prop up rural institutions. Last week marks a turning point, at least in one government’s perception of the rural economy. A major Ontario government report, produced by its Panel on the Role of Government and praised by Ontario’s premier, dismissed the notion that the rural economy is a bedrock. The panel concluded that much of rural Canada is economically unsustainable, that it is futile to try to artificially sustain rural industry, that population decline is inevitable, and that the government should abandon regional development programs. Instead, the panel concluded, the government should retrain young people in rural areas who are willing to move away from their communities as part of a rural restructuring and – by implication – an eventual abandonment of much of rural Ontario.

“The province should phase out regional economic development programs, such as the provision of subsidies and tax incentives to businesses, which risk promoting permanent government-induced dependency,” the panel states. “The province, in co-operation with the federal government, should consider providing appropriate transitional arrangements, such as those aimed at retraining for those willing to pursue opportunities beyond their home community.”

The panel based its conclusion on “Small, Rural, and Remote Communities: The Anatomy of Risk,” a background study it commissioned to tackle the politically explosive issue of how to manage rural decline. Although the background study couched its recommendations in gentle language, it was often brutally honest in its assessment of the prospects for rural areas, which it defined to include most of Ontario, including much of Southern Ontario.

Rural areas have a rapidly ageing population that inexorably declines as young people leave, the study states. These areas have few industries, thin labour markets and little ability to attract either educated workers, entrepreneurs or immigrants. Apart from low housing costs, almost all consumer goods are expensive in rural areas. Delivering government services is also costly, and will become more costly as rural areas increasingly become dependent. As for highly touted panaceas for the rural areas, such as programs to bring the Internet and broadband to rural Canada, the study deems them all but worthless, and criticizes other government bodies, such as the province’s Smart Growth Secretariat, for raising false expectations about rural areas’ viability.

The real question for society, the study states, is how to mercifully manage the decline of the rural areas. It suggests doing so slowly, by maintaining basic services for the mostly older, less mobile rural residents who might want to stay in their home communities. At the same time, it would cut off subsidies designed to develop the rural economy, encourage the young and mobile to leave, and even walk away from government’s traditional responsibility to provide public services in future northern settlements. As a possible model for Canada to consider, the study points to the success that Sweden, Finland and Norway have had in shutting down unviable rural communities by resettling residents in regional centres. “An important issue of debate is whether communities that cannot survive in the absence of disproportionate senior government funding (when compared to other urban areas) should exist at all.”

The study’s bottom line: “Most communities in the periphery cannot be self-sustaining, economically, socially or fiscally,” making the fate of their residents one of welfare dependency. For this reason, “hard choices have to be made. The provincial government cannot provide subsidies to everyone everywhere in the province. Nor can all small communities survive, and provide a reasonable minimum level of services and jobs, within a climate of population and economic decline.”

The Panel on the Role of Government has taken the findings of the background study to heart. The future of the province lies in its urban centres, the panel concludes, but that future won’t allow the government to be all things to all people. “Against this fiscal backdrop, it behooves us to acknowledge that if the government were to commit to our priorities (or some variant on them), it will only be able to implement them if it is prepared to make a number of wrenching decisions. The reality is stark. … while fiscal reforms and working smarter are important, they are unlikely to be sufficient. [As a result], Ontario will have to face difficult trade-offs in a number of areas, including support for economically unsustainable rural and remote communities.”

The panel had, as part of its mandate, the task of determining for government “what and how it should start doing, stop doing, or keep doing either on its own or in partnership with others.” On what the government should stop doing, the panel has spoken with rare clarity and courage.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation. E-mail: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com.

Readers’ responses

Farm & Countryside Commentary

If you buy into the rhetoric that globalization is all there is, countryside does not matter much. If the technology treadmill to ever lower production costs is all there is, the countryside’s historical resources: food, lumber, energy and minerals do not matter much. If global capitalism is all there is, the countryside may be waiting a long time for some benefits to trickle down. If life – human beings included – is just so much DNA caught in a vast and remorseless evolution beyond our control, there is not much the countryside can do about its fate.

Some have bought in. Back in April, Lawrence Solomon wrote an essay in the National Post in which he gloats over what he calls a “prominent government panel,” that recommends that unsustainable rural areas in Canada’s heartland be taken off life support and allowed to die a natural death. The headline on the essay reads: “Rural phase out: In a major turning point, an Ontario government report suggests a restructuring and eventual abandonment of much of the provincial hinterland.”

I have not bought in. But globalization has a way of getting into our thinking and doing without realizing it – and undermining the future of countryside.

In London, last week, Avi Lewis came to the seventh rural development conference sponsored by the Ontario Rural Council with a message about constructive resistance to globalization. Lewis has just returned from Argentina where he has been engrossed in producing a documentary, The Take, a passionate tale of workers wresting control of the means of production from the global capitalism that has failed them.

The conference sparked some fresh thoughts about our circumstances.

Globalization creates distance between decisions and effects. Head office is somewhere else than in rural Ontario. Laws are for the benefit of others. Solution: welcome more local decision-making. Downloading more responsibilities to municipalities is the right agenda. It’s high time the resources are there to do the tasks well.

Globalization is top down. The management structure is a pyramid where CEOs rake in vast rewards. Solution: favour cooperatives, partnerships, networks and local democratic decision-making.

Globalization favours “one size fits all.” It reduces us to “units” and consumers. Solution: make every community different. Build on the uniqueness of our local countryside. Capitalize on the strengths of local people.

Globalization wants governments to stay out of the way of markets and be an ambassador for trade expansion and the profit principle. Solution: demand that governments return to first principles – public service and fairness for competing interests.

Finally, globalization wants us all to shrug: there is no other way. Solution: stand up to the shrug and set an example.

For details about The Ontario Rural Council, visit www.torc.on.ca/.

Elbert van Donkersgoed P. Ag. (Hon.) is the Strategic Policy Advisor of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, Canada. Corner Post has been heard weekly on CFCO Radio, Chatham and CKNX Radio, Wingham, Ontario since 1997.

You keep Yonge St.

Two writers from Alberta take on Lawrence Solomon’s view that rural Canada is an unviable drag on cities. What about all those urban subsidies?

Lawrence Solomon has written several columns about rural Canada. His main points: the rural economy is grossly subsidized, the resource sector – also heavily subsidized – generates only 6% of Canada’s GDP; rural Canadians are fat and depressed; and both the rural economy and rural communities should be encouraged to die.

While we wholeheartedly believe the Canadian economy should be de-subsidized and, above all, deregulated, much of what Mr. Solomon has said is factually wrong. First, the issue of subsidies. He seems to regard the rural economy as singularly subsidized and, therefore, a parasite on wealth-generating urban Canada. But he’s letting his urban idyll deceive him.

Let’s spend a night on the town and play “spot the subsidy” as we go. After a hard day’s column writing, we’re ready to cut loose with our thin urban intellectual buddy. We eschew our cars, more likely than not built in federally and provincially subsidized auto plants, for mass transit.

Purchasing massively subsidized bus fares, we settle in for a good read. One opts for Canadiana, published by a house kept alive by federal subsidies and protectionism. Another leafs through that other national newspaper, whose owners benefit from such anti-competitive measures as foreign ownership restrictions.

While passing through the charming inner city, we glimpse youths breaking into an automobile – no bus riding for them dudes – as we peer down an alley at some ghost-like figures shooting up heroin and dealing Ecstasy. In the city of light, you can never be too thin or too happy.

On the great white way lies our municipally, provincially and federally subsidized concert hall. Tonight it’s gloriously lit, thanks in part to subsidized nuclear energy provided by a tax-exempt Crown monopoly. Inside, we rub shoulders with professors, doctors, teachers and government officials – all owing their livelihoods to state outlays. Some of the bureaucrats work for agencies doling out subsidies, including to those fat, depressed Ruritarians. Mr. Solomon chortles when we point out the irony. The uniformly thin, happy multitudes are delighted by the Heritage Canada-funded musicians and singers.

Our point should now be clear. Rural subsidies are dwarfed in number and magnitude by the subsidization of urban life and the urban economy. Nor are rural areas singular repositories of social pathologies. Rural people may be chubby and downbeat, but they are far less likely to die of AIDS or be raped in a parkade.

Still we’re unclear why Mr. Solomon is obsessed with destroying a part of Canada that, by his own reckoning, is so inconsequential. There may be some aesthetic elegance to rural depopulation, but it defies economic and social realities. His underlying, imputed urban-rural divide, while true for some isolated communities, is typically not two solitudes, but a continuum.

Look at Calgary. A high-density business/residential core is ringed by older neighbourhoods, in turn by vast, expanding suburbs, then acreage developments and country-style subdivisions, then former farming towns mushrooming into bedroom communities, and finally still more acreages and hobby farms. Hundreds of thousands live in a rural setting, but work in an urban environment, thereby supporting urban and rural economy alike.

One of us lives on an acreage. Some days he works in the city, others he avoids the lengthy commute. Is he urban or rural? Office work makes him fat and grumpy, while yardwork and fly-fishing restore physical form and contentment. Reading or watching the sun set over the Rocky Mountains doesn’t make him feel isolated. He doesn’t confuse solitude with loneliness. His neighbours are farmers doubling as commercial pilots, city travel agents married to rural contractors and retirees – are these rural or urban?

The same false dichotomy extends to the economy. Remove the resource sector that Mr. Solomon claims generates almost no wealth and you essentially wipe out two major cities. The office workers shuffling paper in the shiny towers are tallying all the oil and gas the rural “rig pigs” produce and process.

And what about the claim that Canada’s entire resource sector generates a heavily subsidized 6% of GDP. News flash: In 2003, Canada exported $62-billion worth of energy. One portion of one branch of the resource sector accounted for 6% of national GDP. The entire resource sector is much larger. By any measure – revenues and profits, taxes remitted, employment created, capital appreciation (including for urban pensioners) – resource industries generate enormous wealth. The Hemlo gold deposit alone is worth upwards of $6-billion – and how much infrastructure has been built north of Superior?

If subsidies are out, then urbanites must choose: Either pay real prices for hinterland products or import from Botswana.

We itch to annihilate Canada’s nasty apparatus of subsidies and subsidy-granting agencies, plus all the anti-competitive, protectionist, anti-foreign-investment regulations. While that should include killing farm subsidies – not least supply-managed poultry and dairy in Quebec and Ontario – our “night on the town” shows there would be a vastly greater harvest downtown than on the farm. The savings should enable major tax cuts.

Ironically, Prairie grain farming is one of the few substantially de-subsidized sectors. Begun by the Crow freight rate phase-out in the 1980s, our grain farmers are now much less subsidized than their counterparts in Europe and the United States. This Western contribution to balancing the Mulroney government’s budget sadly fell short in part because the same bracing medicine wasn’t administered to central Canada’s hugely subsidized aircraft industry.

If “unsustainable rural areas” were “taken off life-support and allowed to die a natural death,” as Mr. Solomon recently suggested, the consequences might surprise him. Many rural communities, in Alberta at least, are booming. Alberta’s “Highway 2 Corridor” between Edmonton and Calgary was recently named Canada’s most productive economic zone. This mixed area, from farms to small cities, has an economy based on energy, agriculture and related industries – transportation, manufacturing, services. It’s one reason we fat, depressed rednecks can afford to transfer a net $11-billion per year to Canada’s “have-not” provinces.

Don’t all cities spring out of the countryside? London, England, began as a Roman military camp – talk about “unsustainable.” Calgary was buffalo pasture 150 years ago. If we neglect rural areas, aren’t we aborting our next cities?

Fort McMurray in Alberta’s oil sands is the scene of the greatest capital investment in Canada’s history, with investors worldwide awakening to the implications of a 500-year supply of oil. In our lifetime, Fort McMurray has soared from little more than an outpost to a population of 47,000. If this is the unsustainable rural economy, then Canada needs more of it.

Cut off rural communities’ infrastructure funding, but allow our big city mayors to subvert the constitution and get their grubby fingers on federal tax dollars? It’s a false economy to crow about saving, say, $500,000 by re-wilding McBride, B.C., if you then hand Montreal $500-million in tax points.

Mr. Solomon specifically mentioned cutting loose northern communities. Obvious political suicide, but he also seems unaware that Canada’s North is on the cusp of becoming a net wealth creator for the first time since the fur trade. This is thanks to diamond mining, two massive planned natural gas pipelines, possible oil development, hydroelectric projects and, at long last, some highways. Canada’s resource sector has a lot left to give. What is needed is a campaign to free up the machinery of wealth creation everywhere.

George Koch and John Weisenberger are Calgary-based writers. This response was published by the National Post on Saturday, May 15, 2004.

Slowly and methodically over the past years, rural communities have had their post offices, schools and churches (all community establishments) closed. The latest affront has been the forced amalgamation of our townships. It now appears the Ontario government’s Panel on the Role of Government is recommending relocation of communities.

Rural areas are burdened with regulation heaped on regulation. They are harangued by every conceivable government ministry. They are tired of being the fall guys for major pollution problems, which are actually traced to heavily populated urban areas – e.g., regular urban sewage spills that are polluting our rivers lakes and streams. Infrastructure in urban areas is so old and fragile it is unable to contain the vast amounts of waste coming from heavily populated areas. Urban centres seem to be allowed to continue on their regular pollution kick without too much government intervention. If that were to happen in a rural area, the authorities would sit on our doorstep and impose stiff penalties or even incarceration. As for polluted air, just step out in the city and take a deep breath.

The panel suggests rural communities are not worthy to receive funds for assistance. Let me assure them, urbanites are just as quick to sidle up to the trough as rural folk. Listen to the news, read the papers. Who cries for financial assistance any more than city politicians? As for giving support to rural communities, Mr. Solomon, our hard-earned tax dollars are just as valuable as urban money. We deserve good roads, education and health care as much as any citizen of this province.

Farmers are the lifeblood of the nation. The slogan “If you ate today, thank a farmer” should be emblazoned in every home. Dedicated farmers work their soil, tend their animals and harvest their crops so the likes of columnist Solomon and other Ontarians will have food on their tables.

Frances Thurlow, secretary, Frontenac Landowners, Godfrey, Ont.

Lawrence Solomon‘s column illustrates the contempt and ignorance with which the far-removed urban and bureaucratic mindset views rural communities (Rural Phase-Out, April 21).

It’s no wonder the “Rural Revolution” started in Eastern Ontario is gaining wide acceptance and broad support when such people as Mr. Solomon have the government’s ear and common people and common sense are absent from our democratic process.

The only dangers and obstacles threatening the rural economy and culture are government intrusion: legislation such as the Nutrient Management Act, which slowly starves family farms; new Ontario water regulations that parch all rural businesses of profits; the gun registry, which creates lifestyle criminals; the Environmental Protection Act, which cuts down our logging operations because sawdust is thought to be toxic; and the Species at Risk Act, which endangers all property owners with legislated theft of our lands.

These are but a few examples of the government’s assault on rural communities, but the list is as endless as a bureaucrat’s quest for meaningful tasks. Leave rural people and communities alone and we will thrive and survive long past the cities’ demise, just as we have for hundreds of years, and throughout history.

It is evident the rural economy is being dismantled, and its people are under siege, but this is being done by people such as Mr. Solomon and urban bureaucrats who legislate misplaced urban standards and regulations upon rural residents and their businesses.

Metropolitan legislation intended to protect urban dwellers from the dangerous effects of an intensive and dense living environment has no place or purpose in the wide-open and clean countryside.

The consequence of urban legislation on rural communities is hardships and a dying culture and heritage.

Clearly, the same consequence would befall urban communities if rural living standards were allowed in densely populated cities.

To suggest that rural residents and communities cannot sustain themselves and require the guidance and support of the cities is to have a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of rural people and our lifestyle. It is a clear contradiction of reality: It is the densely populated cities that need rural people and their communities, in order to protect Canada’s environment, food supply, culture and heritage of democracy.

Government academics are building fences that divide rural and urban, causing each to look upon the other with disdain, but rural people know who will climb to the other side first.

The only question is will we in the rural areas let them in and allow them to escape the culture of socialism that entraps them? Or will we create a new rural province first, in order to protect our rural heritage, culture, property and democracy – and separate ourselves from the dangers of academic minds empty of reality and filled with ignorance.

Randy Hillier, president, Lanark Landowners Association, RR2 Carleton Place, Ont.

Rural Phase Out suggests that financial support to rural areas in Ontario be phased out because “most of rural Canada cannot sustain itself.”

The comment goes on to applaud the government of Ontario’s Panel on the Role of Government, saying its report has spoken with rare courage and clarity.

To add to the panel’s courageous suggestions, perhaps the government should examine a few other unsustainable programs. Welfare, subsidized housing, breakfast programs in schools and drug needle programs should be phased out. Employment Insurance only encourages workers to take holidays and should be abolished. Arts and culture programs, libraries, museums and publicly funded recreational centres should be 100% privately funded. The government cannot afford to support public entertainment.

All irony aside, we don’t have to look far to find programs that heavily burden the taxpayer. Some tax-supported programs or services should be eliminated immediately, namely the Ontario government’s Panel on the Role of Government.

This panel has conveniently overlooked the high cost of supporting the infrastructure of high-density urban areas and has focused on the lightly populated rural areas with fewer votes.

The motive for this report is transparent and serves only to alienate urban and rural dwellers and further the government’s attack on rural residents. The government of Ontario is waging a war against the rural lifestyle through studies such as this, onerous environmental regulations and complete disregard for property rights.

We will not back down from the attack and will not surrender our rights. We pay taxes, as do all other citizens, and demand the services and respect normally expected by other residents. What we really need is to phase out the government of Ontario.

Terrence MacLaurin, Woodlawn, Ont.

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