Is Canada’s North a Third World Country?

Today my child came to me and said her best friend’s family could not afford to pay their phone bill, they lost their land line. My child’s friend is an Aboriginal teenager.  Our area is just recovering from a hurricane.  Many of us lost freezers full of food had major repairs to deal with, that just where not planned for.  Our local food banks put out a call for food to feed children that required no refrigeration.  So paying the telephone bill rates low on the needs scale.  It is a mind boggling concept.  I live in a G7 country, how is this possible.

When we look at what is occurring in the north the problems easily quadruple.  The Inuit people use to follow the food and migrate with the herds they hunted and all that has changed.  They have been moved into towns and houses, their way of life completely changed.  These communities may consist of three thousand people; eighty percent are under the age of 19, and 1 in 10 of them will commit suicide.  If they move away from “home” to other major cities all the structures put in place to protect their mental health are unavailable.  They often end up in major trouble such as drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness, etc. in the outside world they face discrimination, exploitation, and they do not have the skills to manage life in our major centers.  The United Nations states Canad's North has a suicide rate that is one of the highest rates in the world.  The homes in the Inuit communities are in need of at least one major repair, many live in a dire state of poverty, and their water supply may be compromised / contaminated.  Modernization has done the Inuit people no favors.  The cost of keeping up to the outside world is out of reach to most.  Everything has to be flown and even staples put a dent in their budget.  Provincial and federal governments have gone to considerable effort of late to increase structures to tackle mental health issues, isolation, education and health, but it is a daunting problem, with no easy answers.

Organizations are working hard to educate, tackle health issues and improve the lives of women in these regions.  Just last week I had a talk with a new family in our church, they adopted two Inuit children while they were living and working in the north.  I asked if the mother had fostered the children, and she said no, they had them since they were babies.  The babies came from poor families that could not manage any more children.  Their natural parents already had nine children and could not manage more.  The idea that “Canadian” families do not have the knowledge about family planning and pregnancy prevention is mind blowing.  The pain of giving up children for adoption is unimaginable.  Women continue to suffer from abuse, deal with sexually transmitted diseases, and the devastating effects of sex trafficking.  Violent crimes against women are still under investigation, crimes of abuse and missing women.

We as Canadians took resources from these people.  How did we let this happen?  Inuit art is common in the market place, are we trading fairly? Or are we still exploiting and discriminating against these people. http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fniah-spnia/promotion/suicide/index-eng.php

Finding ways to Encourage Major Retail Outlets to offer the Ethical Choices

First of all, it is of great importance for us to teach the consumer about what shopping “locally” of for “fairly traded” means to the people involved.  I personally have done considerable research or the past year, after some really aggravating trips to the store.  

Case in point, I am completely frustrated by the “junk” that surrounds me in my home.  It’s cheap and seems to break when you want it most.  My electric tea kettle broke, yet again, and I was fed up.  I could not find anyone willing to fix the one I had and this one was barely a year old (so past its warranty).  I decided this time I want one made in Canada or at least made in North America and I was going to pay the price.  Into the store with “Canadian” in its name I went.  There were at least a dozen different kettles on the shelf.  Every kettle was manufactured in one country, and it was not Canada.  I was mad, so home I went without a kettle.  I took out my computer and started surfing.  It seems in our love for “junk” we have lots our ability to manufacture most small appliances in Canada.  So I surfed across the border, but you need to be careful because many are inclined not to list where the product is manufactured.  It was two weeks and still no electric kettle.  Needless to say my spouse had enough and went and bought me a kettle and sorry folks, it’s manufactured in the country we shall not name.

My next consumer frustration came when I decided to replace my Christmas tree lights with a “Greener alternative”.  I wanted LED Christmas lights mostly because I intensely dislike my December electric bill and I wanted nothing to do with the frustration of finding which bulbs were done on the strings I had.  So I went back to the store with “Canadian” in its name.  Why you ask?  It’s in the town where I live and means I’m shopping locally.  Once again the shelves are lined with lights of every size and shape, oodles to choose from.  They were all manufactured in the country I will not name, every last set.  Every other store I went to, same story.  Canadians don’t manufacture Christmas lights?  The land of snow and ice? How did this happen?

Needless to say it has started me down a path where I wanted to see and learn how to be a more socially responsible consumer and has me working a little harder to do the right thing.  I stay out of the mall, which is no small task with two teenage girls.  We buy gently used clothes whenever possible.  We plant our own vegetables.  The shopping gets done at stores and businesses that carry Canadian made products, fairly traded products, or local products.  I am more willing to do without.  I educate others about shopping ethically and I applaud the stores like; Costco, Sobeys and Tim Horton’s, that make the effort to offer me the products that help me be the ethical shopper.  I noticed just a few days ago, that bulk amounts of fairly traded sugar have found its way on to shelves in Costco. Chocolate is the hard part, as a confirmed
“chocoholic”, finding ethical chocolate to eat and bake with is still a challenge.  More and more I do without, which are good for the waistline but affordable choices, are making their way into the market place.  Cadbury sells bars that are clearly marked and Kirkland (Costco) sell a bulk bag of chocolate chips.  Internet research helps to teach us where to spend our money more ethically too.  I find it amusing that I find more and more North American product in our local dollar store.

Why do I go to this much trouble?  We have been exploiting the countries and their people for decades just to satisfy our need for more stuff without any thought to the harm we are causing.  Surfs and child laborers never went away, they just moved to someone else’s back yard, so consumers don’t have to see what they have done.  Business continues to ‘make money on the backs of the world’s poor and needy.  How much does it cost to put a small clinic and school on a plantation so workers and their families can stay healthy and children can learn to read and write?  Exploiting the world’s poor in just wrong, especially when the cost to help isn’t that great.

Agriculture Marketing Boards aren’t Helping the World’s Hungry

People are malnourished and starving and yet countries like Canada still have supply management based marketing boards,an organization that holds a monopoly on the marketing of an agricultural commodity, such as dairy, poultry, eggs, etc.  Producers, i.e. farmers, are required to sell their product to the marketing board or must follow the rules imposed by the board.  In the case of supply managed boards the farmer must purchases quotas.  Any surplus production must be disposed of.  So in order to follow rules of a failed system put in place several decades ago, Canadian farmers are pouring milk down the drain.

I recently read an article published by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it was written by Janyce McGregor and she feels that we cannot get rid of our marketing boards.  But she’s wrong.  First off, it’s believed that supply management create stable and predictable prices.  Canadians pay higher prices and there is very little competition in the market place.  All other business entrepreneurs are told to sink or swim and a farm is a business, so why do tax payers continue to support them.  Many feel it is too expensive to purchase back the quotas.  Australia did it with a simple tax to consumers and once the cost was paid, the tax was removed.  Simple changes turn into a huge effort because of a complicated multilevel legislation that involves our federal and provincial governments.  Don’t consumers have a say?  Canadians are continually told to make better food choices, but most of these are controlled by marketing boards, who continue to set the price out of reach for even Canada’s poor.  It’s hard to buy milk and bread, when pop and chips are cheaper.

Marketing boards were put in place to accomplish the following objective:  create conditions where farm families would make income that were comparable to the “average Canadian” family, to boost the farm’s income, to assist in stabilizing income on the farm, and to allow more farmers to keep the “family farm”.  A marketing board is not going to increase a family’s income to the level we are seeing in Canada.  Most spouses go out and work off the farm in order to increase the family income.  Only those boards that have supply management powers can affect the farm’s ability to increase its income, but it would all be dependent on quotas and circumstance.  If you have owned the quotas for generations or took out a loan to increase your quotas, interest rates are going to have a profound effect on the farm’s  income.  Only supply managed marketing boards are going to have stability in their market place, they are after all a legalized cartel.  And let’s face it farming is hard work, just like any other business and operations shut down whether there is a marketing board in place or not.  Farmers are closing up shop globally, not just here in Canada.

It’s time to give the consumer a voice.  Most of us want fairly priced Canadian grown commodities.  We want to make more healthy choices when we are filling the grocery store cart. Farmers should be treated right globally, we have no business subsidizing Canadian Farmers in order to keep global prices lower.  Market place competition is good and it’s fair to all consumers.     Case in point, a local store in the province of New Brunswick, advertised milk on sale in its weekly flyer.  The milk was from another province.  The milk was not allowed to be sold as advertised.  Governments across the country spend thousands in advertising, telling people to eat better and get fit.  But a Dairy marketing board prevents young moms from purchasing milk at “on sale” price.  Just as they force farmers to toss their excess milk down the sink.

Daily we can turn on the television and see starving children, with their distended bellies and bowed legs.  Yet marketing boards force producers to those excess commodities out to the trash.  Eggs and milk are easily turned into powder to be shipped to third world countries.  There are children in Canada that go to school without any food in their stomachs and there is no need of it.

The boards came about to try and solve problems, to get the production to meet the demand for farm goods.  I’m not blind I can see the demand is greater than the supply, but only if you pay for it.