A Challenge
I was making my quarterly drive to the recycler and this challenge popped into my head and this challenge is for those Greens who are focused on policy and will be submitted tons of policy motions at the Toronto BGM…
Draft a rural strategy.
Sounds pretty simple but one of the major complaints I’ve heard about the Green Party since I joined was a lack of understanding of rural issues. Too often are our policies geared towards urban centres and/or some utopian view of how we should be living by minimizing our ecological footprint.
The problem is that many of these policies don’t resonate with rural voters. It’s not that rural voters don’t understand the issues but many of these policies are not feasible from an economic or even realistic perspective. We, as a Party, fail to connect with these voters because we fail to comprehend their realities but we expect them to comprehend ours.
Let’s put in some context here… many urban Greens (or greens) take the opportunity on the weekend to drop off recycling at whatever centres are available to them. During my time in Calgary, that was a normal routine every couple of weeks. Throw all the recycling into the car and down to the bottle recycler for cans, tetra packs, bottles, etc., then off to the city recycling spots for cardboard, paper, milk jugs, etc. Total time – less than an hour. Gas usage – minor.
Today I live in rural Saskatchewan community. I have to drive 120 kilometers (round trip) to recycle my cardboard, cans, bottles, etc. The trip takes over an hour not including unloading a van full of recycling and the gas is barely covered by the bottle refund… and today I found out that the cardboard/paper recycler is closing down next month. That means 100% of the area’s paper is going straight to the landfill. After April, I have two choices with much of my recycling… throw it away in the landfill or load up the van and drive 360 kilometers (round trip) to be responsible.
As many Greens and greens are making plans for “celebrating” Earth Hour tonight, I have to reflect on the multiple “Earth Hours” we had this winter. Several times over the course of the season we went without power. One weekend we were without power more than we had it and that includes a lack of heat as well (anyone making sure they don’t have heat tonight???). Of course, when the village loses power, it loses water (electric pump) which results in us having a boil-water advisory for the next week.
So my challenge to Greens is not an easy one but here it is… draft your policies to take these factors into account. How is your policy going to connect with a voter who has to drive for several hours just to recycle? Is this new policy one that is applicable to a potential supporter who regularly loses the basic essentials on an irregular basis?
Sure… being ecologically focused is supposed to be the “right” thing to do but are we proposing measures that are not realistic for the rural citizen? Do we expect an environmental standard that is unachievable by a voter outside an urban or suburban setting? If we ever want to see electoral success in this region of the country, we need to be able to relate to those voters and understand what their issues are.
Until we manage to do that, we should not expect them to relate to us.
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Crossposted at http://ReportonGreens.blogspot.com
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Possible Areas for Rural
Well, in Ontario we do well in semi-rural areas - I know in my riding we did very well in farming areas as our policies fit them quite well.
Still, I do hit this issue when I'm up north where my wife is from (Atikokan - a town dependent on lumber, coal, and mining). How do we appeal to these people who wonder where their next paycheque is coming from? To whom public transit is walking with a group as the town is too small for a bus to make any sense.
These people actually are closer to nature than the vast majority of city-folk. They see the lakes being ruined by pollution, the clear cut forests, the mess left by companies that don't care and aren't investigated. Yet they feel helpless to stop it as any policies are met with the company pulling up and leaving them stuck with a choice between unemployment or moving from the place they love.
First steps are policies on co-generation getting more publicity - as that is a way for companies to make more money and to help the environment at the same time, plus it makes a lot of logical sense on the surface without too much explanation. Other ideas, taking into account Mark's issues above, are helping people become more self-sufficient for energy via government guaranteed low-or no-interest loans and making it easy to get/sign up for them. Ensuring public transit in some form (via regional buses going through these areas to a major centre twice a day or something) so people aren't trapped in town and can get braces, glasses, etc. without having to own a car (a major issue in Atikokan recently with the buses threatening to stop altogether).
I don't know if those are in our policy statements right now, but these are things I can easily see a Green Party MP fighting for in their areas that rural residents would say 'good idea' to.
John Northey
Wellington-Halton Hills
Thoughts from a rural Canadian!
Most readers will know that one MPP recently created some discussion on this subject by suggesting the provincial government was Torontocentric (see http://ruralcanadian.blogspot.com/2010/03/province-of-toronto.html ) it is, as Mark says not as simple as it sounds. Not least of which is to decide exactly what we are talking about when we say “rural”! For those that want some ideas on this a darn good place to start is the, now somewhat dated, senate report on rural poverty – its much more than its title suggests – and even they to struggled with “what is rural”. The report was endored by many rural municipalities however the Government largely ignored it, for their response see http://ruralcanadian.blogspot.com/2009/12/response-to-beyond-freefall-report-part_26.html . For some links to the report, a similar one from municipalities and a few more thoughts from myself please see http://ruralcanadian.blogspot.com/search?q=define+rural .
Probably the biggest single thing that came out of these reports was that one size does not fit all and that top down rules and regulations (particularly when formulated by URBAN politicians) do nor work for the rural communities. Flexibility and giving local municipalities the tools to help their citizens without excessive red tape appears to be the answer.
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