Prarie Blake dot com

Time to get political.

We as a country are falling behind. Our model for government is not changing as conditions require. Instead, policies are set by looking at economic measures originating in the thirties. The creator of this measure himself warned against using it for any policy setting as was written about in a Harper's article. The measure is Gross Domestic Product or GDP. Unfortunately, this has—stupidly and blindly—guided our government, no matter who's in power, for far too many years.

There's an easy answer to this. Shift the measure. There's an idea (discussed in the article linked to above and in all kinds of other places) that deals with this problem by also measuring the effects socially and environmentally. Imagine the total contribution to the economy of the tar sands with the measure of carbon released and destruction of habitat of plants and animals also included in the contribution to what we call Canada. I have no doubt that the result would be a dramatic example of how our current measures have failed us completely.

This isn't some environmental rant about how the world could be a perfect, happy land with rainbows and unicorns if only everyone could respect our mother. This is economics as needs to be practised if we are serious about getting ourselves into a world we will actually want to inhabit.

Here is where I get political. The Liberals, though far from perfect, are the only party in Canada right now that have shown any real plan for how to get there. It has to be a slow purposeful shift into a new way of thinking about taxation and spending. The Green Shift outlines how the Liberal Party will guide Canada into this new way of thinking. Let's just hope they actually carry through with this one when they win the election that's going to be called soon.