I just sent an …

I just sent an email to our Beloved Leader from this page on the excellent LeadNow.ca site. I thought i’d better put a copy of my letter up here, in case the PMO’s security squad decides i’m a danger to his highness and want to disappear me. Seems like anything’s on the table with this guy, now that he’s got his democratic majority — even tactics that undermine the democracy that gave him the majority.  Anyways: 

Dear Prime Minister Harper,

Ho-ly cow, i can’t believe what i hear coming out of your office these days. I know you’ve got a real hard-on for Tar Sands development, and i know those mega-corporations are putting a huge squeeze on you. But for you to come out and diss a whole raft of concerned citizens — legitimately concerned, if science carries any weight with you, which i realize it may not — and actually attempt to undermine the whole legal democratic process in order to get what you want … well, that’s going beyond the pale.

As a British Columbian, i kind of reserve the right to decide what takes place here in BC. We’re a pretty enlightened bunch, environmentally. And if you resort to your usual skullduggery and backroom sneaks to try and ram your Tar Sands agenda through against the will of the people … well, we know how to fight back. And we will BRING YOU DOWN, Mr. Dictator Wanna-Be. Believe it.

See, i can make threats too, when my plans — for clean air, a stable atmosphere, an unpolluted ocean for future generations of BCers — are threatened.

Ooh, that was fun; i can see why you like doing it. On a more constructive note, please:

1. Stop your government’s public and private campaign to silence environmental groups.

2. Tell the NEB to rescind its directive that the hearings be prohibited from considering the costs of expanding the tar sands.

3. Instruct the NEB to respect the rights of First Nations to free, prior and informed consent on any project that affects their territory.

That should help to make up for the past two weeks!

Sincerely,
~greg blanchette
Tofino 

Attack of the Arts Administrators

This post is prompted by the District of Tofino’s Request for Proposals for a “cultural scan” (on tofino.ca, the 3-page PDF downloads from this link). Scanning the document itself, i am struck by how little it has to do with actual art. In fact, the thing is pure 200-proof bureaucracy in its wording and its thought process, and as such is 180 degrees opposed to art. I suppose i’m not saying it shouldn’t be done; presumably the district’s bureaucratic mill needs it. I am saying nobody should even begin to confuse it with making or advancing art.

When i think of arts and culture, scans and reports are last on the list, and arts events of various forms are first: artists doing art, and “the public” seeing/experiencing artists doing art, and “the public” making its own art (for a healthy society does not silo off its creativity into any one sector). All else is dross. I think of events: arts talks, spontaneous shows … happenings with passion in them (or intellect or intention or anything but bureaucracy!).

In my experience, bureaucracy is the vampire of the arts world. A certain amount of it is unavoidable – the setting up of concert tours, the booking of venues for shows, the simple organization of events … even the buying of supplies might be considered a low-level bureaucratic chore. But when you bring the whole arts granting scene into the picture, then you’ve entered the big leagues of bureaucracy. It’s shocking to me how much raw artistic passion and vision gets sucked away into triplicate forms and applications and phone calls and infinitely regressive procedural loops, to the point of undermining or outright stifling the creative impulse that is supposedly the raison d’etre for all this activity in the first place.

And because the first priority of any bureaucracy is its own survival, a huge chunk of the resources purportedly “made available” to arts and culture is also sucked away, into a bottomless pit of minions and their administrators. If regular businesses were made to operate on the “business model” that arts organizations are forced into … well, there would be no regular businesses.

Along those lines, one thing i realized tonight is that nowhere in the district’s call for  proposals does it stipulate making an estimate of how big Tofino’s arts-and-culture sector is, economically. If one were studying any other business sector, question #1 would be How many dollars does it bring in? — a primary measure of how “important” the sector is. With the arts, for some reason, it doesn’t even come up. The reasoning behind this lapse would be an interesting study in its own right, but let me propose that it’s based on the buried assumption that art and culture is a frivolous, expendable luxury – just a hobby, and not a real business, or even a serious activity.

This line of thinking is one that should be exposed for the self-fulfilling prophecy it is. And for the arts-crippling attitude it is. Those audacious artist who attempt to make a living from their art in Tofino deserve a better valuation of their passion and their toil. Tofino deserves better. And if Tofinoites are going to throw money at arts and culture (and i strongly think we should, for a whole bunch of hard-to-articulate reasons), that money should go mostly to arts and culture, and only peripherally to arts bureaucracy. I hope we’re not starting down the opposite path.

An open letter back atcha, Minister

It’s nearly 1 a.m. but i could not resist a short diatribe in response to Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver‘s open letter recently published in the Globe & Mail. Give it a read; it’s short, but it’s a remarkable document both in the lines and between them. Ridiculous, unsubstantiated accusations, a transparent wish for concerned citizenry to just get out of the way and let the oil-soaked Conservatives do what they want to do … it boggles the mind. And this is one of our leaders? Heaven help us.

Joe’s email, in case you want to write, is:  joe.oliver@parl.gc.ca. For added spice, i cc’d the message below to my MP James Lunney (Lunney.J@parl.gc.ca) – a medical man, and thus one who clearly must care more about the future of humanity at large than he does about oil companies’ bottom lines. Right?

My rant:

Wow, Minister Oliver. Your recent “open letter” to the people of Canada was, hands down, the most insulting thing i’ve ever read from an elected MP. Your sweeping characterization of me as a helpless dupe being manipulated by shadowy “foreign funders” was truly breathtaking. And here i thought i was a concerned citizen, trying to keep up with many issues, and making my best judgement on each of them, with one eye on legitimate science and another on the sustainable future world i would like to live in and leave for the children around me.

If you want to see someone being manipulated by foreign funders, i daresay you need only look in the mirror each morning when you shave, before heading out to Parliament Hill for another day of mortaging — nay, selling out wholesale — our children’s future to a world laid waste by climate change and the bottomless greed of Big Oil and its blinkered, shameless patsies. Of which it is now abundantly clear that you, sir, are one, in company with your hallowed leader.

In over 20 years, i’ve never written an insulting letter to an MP. But now you, Minister Oliver, have taken the cake. With all due respect — and in my opinion, markedly less is due this week than last — you ought to be stepping down. Your attitude toward public process is clearly warped beyond the bounds of participatory democracy.

Dr. Lunney, you are my MP, and as a constituent i strongly urge you to call for Minister Oliver’s immediate resignation.

Your very truly,
greg blanchette

The ups and downs of bathroom etiquette

A short essay that has never seen the light of day, on a topic that must surface daily in the bathrooms of the world. On this page.

Giant jails are not a solution

This new crime bill, C-10 (referred to by one commentator as the “jail solves everything” bill), does not IMHO move Canada toward being a safer, more civil society. Indeed — thanks to the wisdom of my fellow Canadians who voted Harper & Co. to a majority — we seem to be heading pell mell down the same road that has made the U.S. such an exemplar of sanity and civility. I have small faith that a petition will do much good, but i do feel it’s important to push back against an ideological, anti-scientific, secretive regime.

Petition against C-10 here: http://www.leadnow.ca/keep-canada-safe. I was signer number 18-thousand-and-something.

ISA, fish farms, inaction, etc.

I’m getting in a letter-writing mood again. Here’s today’s missive, sent to the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans via the Wilderness Committee‘s convenient letter-writing tool (in case you want to write one yourself).

It is time, and well past time, for our provincial and federal government, and especially the DFO, to take some meaningful action on protecting wild salmon from the effects of salmon farms. The tactic of waiting for 100% incontestable scientific proof before even beginning to act is no longer supportable, and hasn’t been for years.

There is enough circumstantial evidence — indeed, this recent ISA discovery is beyond circumstantial, it’s a smoking cannon — to justify strong action. Wild salmon are the backbone of this coast in so many ways, and if we let them they can replace every lost job in the fishfarming industry, with the added extra benefit that they will be locally owned and any profits will stay in BC, not be siphoned off to Norway.

I’m really getting angry at my governments, at all levels, stalling on this issue. It just offers up further proof that they are in the pockets of the corporations, and no longer care about what is good for the people or the province. Please prove me wrong on this and get going, REMOVING FISH FARMS FROM PUBLIC WATERS.

Yours, etc.