Thinking inside the (Good Food) Box

Lately there’s been a lot of ink spilled about the high cost of living, like the cost of electricity and municipal tax and water increases. Since none of those are things we can immediately address at the household level, we need to look for other ways to save, particularly if we are struggling to put food on the table in the face of rising food prices.

Luckily, Barrie has a program which does just that, by providing a deep discount on a box of fresh produce every month. Called the Good Food Box, this no-membership food-buying club runs in many cities and in Barrie is administered by a collaboration of local organizations led by the Canadian Mental Health Association, who know that food is a key contributor to physical and mental health. And under the Urban Pantry Project, a partnership between the Good Food Box and FruitShare Barrie funded with a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Barrie’s Good Food Box has grown and expanded considerably over the past year, and may now be just what you need to ease your grocery budget woes and boost your healthy diet.

All you do is order and pay for your box by the 2^nd Wednesday of the month, and then pick it up on the 3^rd Wednesday. There are now 4 pickup locations for your convenience: Barrie Free Methodist Church from 11:30 am – 4:30 pm, City Hall Rotunda from 12 – 4, Georgian College from 2 - 5, and Holly Rec Centre from 5 – 7 pm. Hopefully one of these times and locations works for you. You can order and pay online, or order in person and pay cash at the CMHA, Barrie Community Health Centre, or Barrie Free Methodist.

You have two choices of box: the small for $12 (for 1-2 people) or the family-size for $17. A typical small box includes 5 pounds of potatoes, 2 pounds each onions, carrots & parsnips, 3 pounds of apples, 4 oranges, and a cabbage. The large box doubles the potatoes & oranges, adds more apples, and throws in 2 pounds of beets. Contents vary month-to-month and come from Giffen Orchards, who ensure high quality fresh produce mainly sourced in Ontario and as local as seasonally possible.

The Barrie Good Food Box is a non-profit program run with the support of community volunteers who sort and pack the boxes and distribute them at the 4 pickup sites. Buying in bulk and passing along the savings means you get more for your food dollar. The price has not risen for several years and will continue to stay stable so you can plan your food budget with confidence.

To order, to find handy recipes, or see the calendar of upcoming Box days and other events, visit BarrieGoodFoodBox.com. Or if you’d like to volunteer or have questions, visit Facebook.com/Barrie.Good.Food.Box or call 705-791-BGFB (2432).

The Urban Pantry Project will soon wrap up its successful first year, and is planning to apply for longer-term funding to further expand Barrie’s local food security measures beyond the two current projects with possible initiatives like community gardens, fleet farming, indoor gardens, or other innovative projects. A special Let’s Get Growing event on April 12 will explore new ideas and start planning their integration. If you have a passion to contribute to a food-related project and would like to take part in this event, email UrbanPantryProject@gmail.com for an invitation. With citizens like you, Barrie can become a food paradise!

Published in the Barrie Examiner as Root Issues: Good Food Box program continues to expand in Barrie

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins serves on the boards of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Green electric plans are great

(One of the 4-part series "Game of Shells" about the electricity plans of Ontario's 4 major political parties)

Over the past decade or more, Ontario’s electricity prices have steadily risen. Once a bastion of too-cheap electricity, far below national or world averages, Ontario’s prices are now more in line with global rates, which has been painful for a population long accustomed to receiving subsidized electricity for a relative pittance. Because old habits are hard to break with infrastructure already in place, we seems stuck with paying the bill whatever it is, causing cries to turn back the clock and lower rates again. If only it were so simple!

Of course this creates huge political pressure, so both the Liberal government and the NDP opposition party have advanced plans to lower bills and the PC opposition has promised their own plan soon. However, none of these plans seem to do much to truly lower the real cost of providing electricity; all they do is push it off to future generations, or move it from the power bill to the tax bill, still leaving us (or our children) to pay, in what I’ve called “The Game of Shells”.

What it comes down to is that there are only 3 real ways to reduce electricity prices: produce electricity at lower cost, buy it from other places for lower prices, or simply use less of it. Cancelling existing commitments, as we learned with gas plants, is either impossible or horribly expensive.

We can’t just wave a magic wand and make cheaper power: climate pressures mean we must shift off the old “cheap” fossil fuels like coal and natural gas or pay a premium for carbon emissions. Nuclear brands itself as an affordable “carbon free” source but always costs far more than expected and provides less power than promised, years behind schedule. A big part of today’s high costs cover vast nuclear power overruns from the past. Large-scale new hydro is challenging, while wind, solar, and small hydro are becoming more affordable but present challenges in matching supply and demand which require better management or new power storage facilities. The best we can do in this area is avoid committing to costly new nukes and curtail expensive refurbishment or life-extension operations at existing plants, instead allowing them to retire on schedule.

Glowing object reported hovering over writer's head

On the other hand, there is a huge opportunity for us to use more clean, cheap hydro from Quebec. Not only is this a better deal than pouring more money down our own nuclear pit, it also lets us balance peaks and valleys of renewable generation by “banking” power behind large hydro dams, essentially storing surplus renewable energy until needed. There are other technologies we can implement within Ontario allowing us to store energy between when it is produced and when we need it, narrowing the expensive supply-demand gap.

The most important and reliable way to reduce power bills will always be to use less to begin with. No matter the price, the less you use, the less you pay! While government and opposition plans feature some meagre conservation measures, we need a major commitment of resources to upgrading our business and household technology so we can more efficiently use electricity, or draw more of it at times of low demand, which will reduce overall costs.

Luckily there is another opposition party which has long promoted solutions like this, and on Sunday you can be a part of that conversation. Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner will be in the region this Sunday, April 9, ready to listen to your ideas and share his on how we can truly lower electricity costs, not just move them around. He’ll be at the Innisfil Public Library Lakeshore Branch’s Community Room from 1:30 – 2:30, then at the Grilled Cheese Social Eatery at 53 Dunlop St. E. in Barrie at 6. You are welcome to attend either (or both) of these events and discuss concrete actions to lower Ontario’s electricity costs. Take this chance to be proactive and seize the (electrical) power in your own hands!

Published in the Barrie Examiner as Root Issues: Greener electricity plans out there we can tap into 

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins serves on the boards of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Minister Against Democratic Reform, the sequel

Years ago I wrote a series of “Minister Against Portfolio”columns, because while a cabinet minister is theoretically appointed to champion a particular area of society, it seemed that under the anti-government Harper administration, many cabinet members were hostile to the mandate of their own ministry, whether it was environment, finance, agriculture, or justice. (I planned to write about the Minister Against Women but that seat kept being vacated and treated as a secondary portfolio for other ministers.)

Barrie residents holding government to account

However, with the change in power, I thought the series finished. Little did I realize appointing a minister to retard rather than achieve progress was also in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s toolbox. This government is now on its second Minister Against Democratic Reform.

I guess this was telegraphed when Trudeau formally renamed it the Ministry of Democratic Institutions, taking “reform” right out of the name. (Not that having it in the name led to any actual reforms under Stephen Harper). Nevertheless, Minister Maryam Monsef’s original mandate included steps toward electoral reform, a key 2015 Liberal election plank. This was so important it was even included in the Speech from the Throne. Trudeau promised 2015 would be the last election held under first-past-the-post voting over 1,800 times: on the campaign trail, in office, and of course in the aforementioned Throne Speech. Which means through his volte-face on this issue, he makes not only himself but his party and our Queen into liars.

But back to the Minister. Although it was in her mandate to establish a committee to consult on electoral reform, it seemed that having done so, Monsef did her best to undermine and sabotage that committee. Delay in set-up plus a very tight reporting schedule made the committee’s task challenging, yet they were troopers and held an amazing number of hearings in a rather short time, hearing from hundreds of experts and thousands of citizens all over our great nation. Having gone above and beyond, however, and even having reached a consensus recommendation between the Conservative, NDP, and Green parties (and when was the last time that happened?) their work was spurned and even mocked in the House by the Minister. Which I guess we should have expected, given that the holdouts on the committee itself were the Liberal MPs.

Which brings us to the new Minister Against Democratic Reform, Karina Gould. From the start, I had misgivings. In an early interview, she said every vote counts because “We literally count them 1, 2, 3, 4 up to the majority that wins,” showing a breathtaking ignorance of the difference between a majority (what the Liberals have in Parliament) and a plurality (the less-than-majority vote which gave them those seats). Only a minority of MPs ever win on a majority of votes, a serious flaw of our existing system. This dismal portent proved all too true when Gould’s mandate was released, clearly stating the falsehood that no consensus on electoral reform has emerged.

Because the reality is this: in the largest consultative process in Canadian parliamentary history, a strong consensus of experts and regular citizens called for a more proportional system (PR). A survey completed by more than a third of a million people said they want multi-party coalition governments, a feature of PR.

The more recent assertion that reform would somehow empower extremists is even more counter-factual, but more on that will have to wait for a future column. For now, the take-away is this: the Trudeau government seems no less willing than their predecessors to appoint Ministers whose job is to sabotage their portfolio, not advance it. To quote America’s Tweeter-in-Chief: SAD.

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner.

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins serves on the Living Green and Robert Schalkenbach Foundation boards.

Improving politics: less money, more representation

Less than four months ago, I wrote about ways our election systems were improving. Back then, progress at both provincial and federal fronts was good, but I noted some key drawbacks. Amazingly enough, over the course of an exciting summer, both of those problems were addressed and we are now on an even stronger track to improvement.

At the provincial level, reforms to election finance have leapt beyond what was first floated. The current super-high contribution limits exceed $15,000 per party per donor, double that in an election year. $30,000 can buy a lot of political influence! Reforms floated in the spring would have cut that down to $7,750, still too much. But a recently-announced amendment has cut that in half, and further proposes banning MPPs, candidates, and party leaders from political fundraising events. It also includes per-vote funding for parties and for local riding associations, one of the fairest ways to replace our current wealth-based fundraising model. This new funding is set to diminish and be re-evaluated after 5 years, but I expect it will be maintained and even increased, as people see the benefit of politics funded by votes instead of by big cheques from deep-pocked donors.

At the federal level, things are also progressing well. Rather than wait late into their mandate to act on their “last election under first-past-the-post” promise (an error the McGuinty government made a decade ago, dooming Ontario’s electoral reform hopes), the Liberal government has set things in motion rapidly. The last time I wrote on this issue, I was critical of them for addressing our distorted election results by creating a distorted electoral reform committee, with a Liberal majority that could outvote all the other participants, even though Canadian voters gave over 60% of their support to other parties. But a month after I wrote, the government saw the error of their ways and organized the committee to reflect the preferences expressed by your votes last fall, still with more Liberals but with no single party holding a majority. This means whatever the committee recommends will have to pass muster with at least two of the parties in the House, and hopefully have the support of most or all of them. This radically lessens the chance that the Liberals will try to force through a ranked ballot or instant runoff system, a fairly minor tweak that would give them a major advantage in future elections.

After spending the summer consulting with experts on all aspects of voting systems, the committee has entered a phase of wider public consultation with Canadian citizens. Several town halls have been or are being held in our area to discuss electoral reform, with results forwarded to the committee for consideration. You can also make your views known online at the ERRE website. By the end of November the House will receive their report and start drafting a bill to present next year, in time to make changes before the next election in 2019. As democracies around the world have been moving to more proportional systems, and since the significant failings identified in our own system lie largely with results not proportionally reflecting voter preference, it is fairly likely that some kind of proportionality will be added to our current system of local representation.  

All in all, 2016 may well go down in history as the summer when Canada’s and Ontario’s electoral and political finance systems made great strides toward fairness and better representation. After more than a decade of pushing for these kinds of improvements, I couldn’t be happier to see them finally coming to be.

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner as "Electoral system improving"

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins serves on the boards of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Still time to add The Sassafras Crossing to your summer reading list

Recently a friend handed me a copy of his recently-published first novel, and I promised to review it here. But as I started reading it, I realized my promise might be harder to keep than I first expected. You see, I have reviewed several books in this column in the past, but all of them were non-fiction. I like to read about history, politics, science, and social movements. When I read fiction, I usually head for the genres, what many might consider escapism. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, action/suspense, political satire, comedy, mystery, even alternate history share my bookshelf. But what my friend wrote doesn’t fall into any of these genres; as far as I can tell, it’s just fiction. So I didn’t know how to approach it.

Lindrith (Lindy) Davies usually writes about economic justice and the fairer, more sustainable society we could have if we funded government with land and resource rents, instead of taxing our wages and productivity. He also teaches courses on the topic and edits the related Georgist Journal. But this is his first foray into writing fiction, as much as it was mine into reading it.

At first, I couldn’t immediately relate to characters who were just regular people, or understand where the narrative was heading. But as pages turned and I dug into the story, I grew truly curious about how or if they would connect or come into conflict. The novel, The Sassafras Crossing, covers about a year in the lives of several young people who are somewhat adrift, post-college but pre-career, trying to find their place in the world. With their unexpressed ambitions and reluctance to dive into the corporate rat race, their semi-dependence on parents while working minimum wage service jobs, they evoke the so-called “millennials” many love to mock today. But this realistic tale set in the early 1980s clearly demonstrates that this so-called new phenomenon of an indeterminate or even shiftless period in the lives of young adults is nothing new. What really matters is the opportunities for fulfillment society ultimately offers.

Another compelling side to this story is the struggle of some of the characters to find their place in a world where their sexuality is not recognized or condoned. While this is still often a challenge today, it was even more so 30 years ago, yet people then were just as likely as now to find themselves not fitting into society’s heterosexual norms. How this plays out for various characters, or even that it is an issue for them, is something that is only gradually exposed and explored through the story.

The lift bridge whose action provides the title is itself a character in the story. This antique yet still-functioning engineering feat facing replacement by a more convenient, newer-style span is both a setting for much of the story and a metaphor for the ways our world is a constant weaving of old into new. In the intersection of road and river, the cars that drive across whose movement is interrupted to allow pleasure craft to navigate the channel below, the need for expert human operators to mediate these conflicting uses, we find metaphors for many of the life changes and decisions negotiated by human characters.

Meanwhile, the story also weaves in a mix of musical styles and cultures, attitudes about work and family, the tug-of-war between succeeding in the rat race or chasing your personal dreams, and the way these decisions may be re-evaluated and reconfigured at later stages in life.

If you enjoy reading fiction, I expect you will enjoy this novel, while if, like me, you aren’t usually a fiction reader, this is an excellent place to start.

Published as my Root Issued column in the Barrie Examiner as "A Foray into Fiction".

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

The real reason the Tigers roared

Michael Den Tandt recently opined that Canada’s government should heed the example of Taiwan and the other Asian Tigers’ rapid economic growth, by freeing up trade and pushing through new pipelines.

In some respects, he is right, we should copy some of the economic policies the Four Tigers rode to success. But he misconstrues what those policies really were.

Of course, one key aspect to their early growth was authoritarian governments, run by generals or former generals who engineered their election as “president”. As he noted in another column the same week, Taiwan only began holding free elections in 1996; I add Korea elected its first non-general President around the same time, while Hong Kong has never known truly free elections, and Singapore has been dominated by the same party for the past 57 years, with the same President for 31. Various studies have concluded authoritarian governance played a key role in accelerating economic growth. I expect most Canadians would not rush to give up our democratic freedoms for a few more dollars or jobs, and one consequence of this democracy is that major projects like pipelines must earn their social license by proving their environmental and other bona fides before approval.

Asian "tigers" grew due to land value taxation

Besides that, though, Den Tandt praises the merits of “capitalism” and thus seems to believe the secret to their success is a pro-economic, laissez-faire, low-tax approach. However, this is a bit of a mis-read. It is true these economies mostly had low tax rates on income, profit, and sales. However, they all balanced that with a higher tax on land, as well as instituting land reforms to discourage or break up the large land holdings of rich families and make affordable parcels of land available to farmers or homeowners. It is this key approach that sets the Asian Tigers apart from most Western economies.

You see, the founders of the Republic of China, Sun Yat Sen and General Chiang Kai-shek, understood that a fair and just economy is based on using value created by nature and the community to fund government. They did this by fully taxing the value of land and any increase in land value. Nature creates land, and the presence of a growing community gives it value; this value is either returned to the community, or else pocketed by private land owners who managed to call “dibs” on it. If the community collects that rent to fund government services, then confiscatory taxes on wages, income, profit or trade aren’t necessary. But if private owners keep the benefit of land values, then government has no choice but to seek other revenue sources: you and your business.

The benefits of land value taxation are many. It is fair, because it only taxes what people take or use for themselves, instead of taxing what they produce for the community. Instead of a value-added tax that punishes enterprise, it serves as a “value-subtracted tax” discouraging waste, hoarding, or living off land and resource rents. People are free to keep what they make for themselves, while passing back to government the wealth created by nature or the community. In this way, land stays in private hands for optimal use, while land values are shared fairly by all.

So yes, Canada could learn about successful economic growth from the Asian Tigers; not through authoritarianism or low taxes, but by replacing unfair taxes on wages or added value with fair taxes on land, resources, government-granted privileges and monopolies. With the dead weight of poor taxation removed, our economy would be free to grow in a fair, efficient and ecologically-sound direction.

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner as "Poor taxation needs to be removed in order to let economy grow".

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins serves on the boards of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

FruitShare program only scratching the surface

“The most natural food is fruit” – Anonymous.

You may not realize it, but our city is full of farmers, and you may be one of them! The number one urban crop is fruit, particularly apples, and you’d be amazed by the amount of apples that grow in our backyards. FruitShare has managed to pick as many as 5,000 pounds in a single season, and we’re just scratching the surface.

The ever-growing FruitShare team
is on the job!

The whole FruitShare team is so excited to be working with our amazing volunteers and tree owners this summer; we know from experience everyone will find it a rewarding experience. Though we are not picking a lot of fruit right now, we are working to get ready for what we anticipate will be a busy season. We want to keep you updated on our planning and preparation activities.

We need more fruit tree owners.

Several tree owners from last year have reported that their trees did not fare well this spring: very few blossoms if any and bleak possibilities of fruit on those trees. But every back yard is its own micro-climate and local ecology; in past years, while some trees did poorly, others thrived. Please consider whether you have friends, family, or neighbors with fruit trees that just need to know about our program so that they can get involved. The Barrie community has hundreds of trees that yet could be a valuable source of fresh, local, healthy food for those who need it. Registration for tree owners is simple and straight forward at our website www.FruitShareBarrie.ca. You can easily sell them on the benefits: we clean up all the fallen fruit, clear as much of the ripe fruit from the tree as we can reach, and have a special deal with a professional arborist who will provide free advice and discounted help improving their trees.

This harvest season, we are going to have 'designated pick days'. Our hope is that this will help to make our planning more efficient, and allow both tree owners and volunteer pickers the ability to anticipate when their efforts might be needed. For this summer/fall we are going to make Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays our pick days, and will plan tree harvests on these days. We always work to give as much notice as possible before the pick date for everyone’s convenience.

Volunteers can also register at www.FruitShareBarrie.ca and communicate what days they would prefer to pick on. From there, we will plan to have 'teams' of volunteers designated to these specific days.

If you like face-to-face contact, we invite you come meet us at the Barrie Farmers’ Market, this Saturday, July 16th! We are bringing a table display and bushel-baskets full of energy, and will be sharing information about the Barrie FruitShare program to the patrons there.

We wish to thank the community for all the support and work to make this program great. We could not do it without you! And with your help, we can “rescue” even more fruit this year. Our goal is to see not a single tree go unpicked, not a bushel of food wasted, and you can help us meet that goal.

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner.

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins serves on the boards of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.