It’s opera. My wife is listening to opera while jogging. The heroine will, one assumes, come to a tragic end. But the batteries won’t, because she’s using a digital player. On which, I trust, I can record the sound of environmentalists applauding the technological advances capitalism brings. Strange. I hear nothing. But I’ll keep trying. For like most journalists, I tape things a lot. That once meant a “tape recorder,” huge wobbling inconvenient piles of cassettes or microcassettes and a pile of batteries to warm the heart of any pink mechanical bunny. Not any more. Now my digital devices record MP3 files I store on my computer, and their batteries recharge right through the USB cable while I download.

Searching an MP3 file for a clip is much faster than rewinding a squealing microcassette. MP3s don’t snap at bad moments and are way, way easier to make backup copies of, with no loss of sound quality. It’s also way easier to search one CD or DVD than three dusty (my wife’s word) desk drawers full of cryptically labelled tapes. And because they don’t have to drive a tape around a spool, digital recorders use a lot less power so you don’t have to lug 10 extra batteries up, say, the Golan Heights so your tape deck won’t die at a bad moment.

They’re also cheaper for much the same reasons. You don’t have to keep buying batteries, tapes and furniture to store the tapes in. Did I say cheap? I just bought an external sound card for about 70 bucks that lets me digitize all my old tapes and chuck them. And an inexpensive scanner lets me preserve documents I accumulated in half a lifetime of pack-rattery before, in a similar process, going digital with my letters and file storage. The stuff I keep may still be rubbish, but it won’t fill a dump. PDFs, like MP3s, should bring a smile to the face of any environmentalist.

Permit me, then, to wipe it off deftly by pointing out that self-interest is what’s driving this greener technology. Most of us value the environmental benefits to some extent. But for all of us, digital technology means going green without suffering. Which will displease some in the organic-hair-shirt crowd.

It will upset others that companies are succeeding where governments often fail. The European Union’s environment commissioner just admitted that biofuels promote rainforest destruction. Legally mandated efficient light bulbs may give some people skin problems. The failure of governments to build nuclear plants has contributed massively to greenhouse-gas production. But over there in the private sector, it’s just progress progress progress. Wretched, isn’t it?

The progress is enormous. That digital dictaphones use less power not only means fewer dead batteries full of weird metals chucked into landfills, it also means fewer new batteries manufactured then schlepped about using fossil fuels. The DVDs we store MP3s on require far fewer resources to manufacture, and generate far less trash when they’re history, than LPs, spools or the aforementioned three drawers’ worth of microcassettes. (And just wait until I discover external hard drives.) Fourth, a subtle refinement, early digital dictaphones required proprietary software CDs and connection cables that also had to be manufactured, transported and, one day, discarded; newer ones send standard files through standard USB ports or wireless. Fifth, we e-mail, FTP and stream this stuff instead of couriering or mailing physical copies.

If you’ve ever been in a darkroom while “film” was being “developed” (Google it, kids) the stench of sodium thiosulphate tells you instantly that digital photos convey at least equal benefits. (And how, incidentally, do you dispose of old photos you no longer want? Landfill? Burn? Yuck. Whereas now it’s right-click, delete, empty recycle bin, goodbye ex-mother-in-law.)

Some greens advocate going back to a time when the human “footprint” on the environment was smaller. But we actually have to go forward, technologically speaking. The “footprint” of a portable cassette device was far larger than that of a digital player, while a medieval monk would have had to lug some nit with a lute on his back to enjoy Greensleeves while he jogged, to say nothing of plucking geese, skinning sheep and mixing who knows what gunk to write down the sheet music.

True, he would have heard something less appalling than opera or rap; technology can’t make moral or aesthetic choices. My wife is, as I noted, listening to opera and I can’t fix that.

Oh wait. I can. Press one little button and it’s all erased, leaving lots of room to record the stormy applause for capitalism I expect to erupt among environmentalists. My finger’s hovering over the record button. Yup, any moment now …

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. And you don’t have to go all the way back to the Danegeld to get the experience. Try this Monday’s release of the latest report by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. At the risk of seeming weird, I should explain that on the weekend while clearing atrocious junk out of my attic, I wound up digitizing some old cassette tapes including, it turned out, a 2002 Citizen editorial board meeting with the NRTEE. On that occasion, they told us global warming was a crisis, urgent action was needed, there was substantial scientific and corporate consensus and market mechanisms were needed but they hadn’t yet worked out the details.

Fast forward six years. Monday, January 7th, 11:00 a.m., the National Press Theatre. Key members of the NRTEE told us global warming was a crisis, urgent action was needed, there was substantial scientific and corporate consensus and market mechanisms were needed but they hadn’t yet worked out the details. I recognize that I personally may, when in my cups, repeat anecdotes. And I know environmentalists favour recycling. But this is ridiculous.

If you’re a climate skeptic, then you have horns and a tail. No, sorry, I mean you’re happy enough to sit through this presentation every six years. But what if you really believe we have one decade to solve the climate change crisis, which has been the orthodox position for the last 15 years? Does it not disturb you that we just spent six years running in place?

Of course you’d have to know about it first, and it wasn’t prominently featured either in the NRTEE presentation or in subsequent coverage of same. Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail did observe that “the NRTEE’s message repeated the obvious, since even the Harper government and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives accept the need for a carbon-emission trading market.” But why say “even the Harper government?” I remember when it was a distinguishing mark of the right-wing lunatic to think market methods had something to contribute on environmental problems.

It was in the early 1990s, when I worked at the Fraser Institute. In a familiar pattern, the idea provoked ridicule, then hostility, then agreement, at which point its origins were quietly forgotten. (See also “let’s measure health care waiting lists.”) Indeed, that incentives matter, in environmental and other areas, is now so broadly accepted that it’s hard to believe it was once routinely denied in principle or that it’s still so widely ignored in practice. In intellectual matters one does see movement in this country. Policy is another matter.

Here I would also like to remind you that in 2002 (Sept. 4, to be exact), in this newspaper, I dismissed environmental hopes and economic fears about the Chrétien government’s decision to ratify the Kyoto Accord. I said there would never be a plan, that the government “will never even try to implement the treaty.” I also said tradable emissions permits were theoretically sensible, but stressed how difficult it would be to work out the details.

I don’t want to rehash the scientific arguments about global warming, or more precisely the refusal of its advocates to argue the science. Been there, done that. But I do want to rehash the serious problem of governance in Canada in which a lot of high-flown rhetoric about consensus and compassion and crisis accompanies failure to come to grips with practical details, on issues from the gun registry to rebuilding the military to reforming health care to Kyoto.

The NRTEE (you can find them, and their latest report, online at www.nrtee-trnee.ca) are clearly not fools. But something is seriously out of whack when all that energy and intelligence goes into a cycle of planning to have a plan (see especially page 47 of their latest report). At Monday’s press conference Brian Lilley of CFRB radio pointed out that the price of oil tripled in the last decade without causing consumers to conserve energy and asked whether a carbon tax wouldn’t have to be pretty onerous to make a difference. The answer he got was that a computer model says it would all be OK.

If true, the NRTEE, or their computer, must know what could be done, in detail, and what would then happen. So why doesn’t somebody do it? Six years ago I was recording on environmentally unfriendly, energy- and resource-intensive microcassettes. Today I’m clean, green and digital. But in 2002 the government was planning to have a plan and in 2008 it apparently still is. Six long years out of the only decade we then had left.

Oh well. See you all in 2014 for the NRTEE press conference where … you know.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

The auditor general’s report on how government money is being misspent was trumped on Tuesday by the Finance Minister throwing a bunch of it in your face. Welcome to modern democracy. But it’s no way to run a railroad.

Some journalists showed up for the AG’s lockup under the impression that if the government was suddenly dropping a mislabeled mini-budget on top of her report there must be something they wanted to bury. Not so. The timing simply indicates that Mr. Harper’s respect for Parliament is as high as ever. It was contempt, not cunning.

In any case, we weren’t distracted. The auditor general’s reports can’t all be Adscam and there was nothing here especially embarrassing to the current administration. But if you read the Citizen (and if not what are you holding now?) you’ll know all of Wednesday’s page A3 was taken up with her findings, mostly troubling national security issues from poor medical care for military personnel to egregious lapses in border security to failure to follow contracting policies.

At the risk of appearing controversial or archaic I’m a bit concerned about lack of focus here. When you think auditor, you probably think of rows of numbers in small sans-serif print. (If by contrast you think Canada Revenue Agency, and what nations don’t we have extradition treaties with, I won’t detain you although the RCMP might want to.) And in the old days, the auditor general’s report on a far smaller government was a far larger document, perhaps 2,000 pages in the late 19th century, listing every pencil and envelope. But since 1977 the AG has been charged with doing “value-for-money” audits that ask questions about efficiency and sound management. And although I agree that someone needs to do such things I can’t help thinking it’s mostly Parliament’s job to decide whether programs make sense.

I grant that there’s a grey area here. An auditor can rightly ask not only whether the budget for pencils was spent on pencils but whether the pencils worked. And a number of MPs have told me that the AG’s reports are invaluable to them in knowing where to start questioning government officials and agencies. But note also that her office has about 600 staff whereas each MP has about four and parliamentary committees are woefully short-handed. If they had better staff support the AG could focus a bit more on old-time auditing.

Mind you, when the federal government spends more than $7,000 a second it’s a lot of pencils to count. And neither the auditor general nor anyone else needs to count them all. It’s perfectly sound economics that people’s propensity to be careless or dishonest is determined by the risk of getting caught times the pain if they do. If the AG’s office has fairly dependable ways of finding egregious wrongdoing, as it does, then as with the old British practice of hanging the occasional admiral it will certainly encourager les autres.

Here I can even insert a brief defence of journalists’ preference for the lurid. Yes, we tend to read (or skim) such documents looking for scandal. But people in government offices across the land know it, and try reasonably hard to avoid appearing in the auditor general’s report in that sort of setting. Sometimes, of course, they fail, and we get to read about their antics.

Curiously, this brings me to my biggest worry about the whole process. In her 2007 Main Points summary, the AG describes some behaviour ranging from sloppy to downright appalling, then declares that every department or agency in question agrees with every criticism and suggestion her office made.

It’s hardly surprising. When the AG comes calling, what’s your strategy? Argue, deny, bluster and get a nasty writeup in the report and then in the press, or nod, grin and promise? But now turn to the report by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, bundled with the AG’s this year. His main complaint is that for a decade departments have been nodding, grinning and not doing anything useful. And why would they? Who’s going to make them?

There’s where the wheel hits the steel. And where we should be careful not to expect more of the auditor general and her department than they can reasonably do. Modern governments are very good at promising but rather feeble at delivering, and I wouldn’t want MPs, or citizens, to get a false sense of security about who’s keeping things on track. It’s Parliament, or nobody.

We could certainly have waited a week for the executive to distract citizens and legislators from how public money is disbursed by flinging heaps of it at us. At that speed it’s easy to derail.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Hey. I finally found a public policy problem I can solve. Let’s tell Miloon Kothari to buzz off.

Not high on your list? Perhaps you missed the Tuesday Citizen story that after a quick tour of Canada this month, this international man of meddling pronounced himself “disturbed” by the lack of adequate housing in Canada. As opposed to where he’s from, namely India?

Mr. Kothari is the UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur on adequate housing. Which pretty much lets you guess what he’d say about housing in an advanced western democracy after a whirlwind tour talking to the usual advocates and activists. He’d say it isn’t up to international standards because we have a wretched exploitive market economy. And he did.

What I want to know is why the official reaction wasn’t “Ah shaddap!” Canada is a wealthy democratic country with lively debate on public policy and megabillion dollar social programs to solve every imaginable crisis including some we made up ourselves. If we haven’t solved the housing problem it’s not because some nit failed to do a fly-by and recommend socialism.

Mr. Kothari even had the gall to accuse us of not obeying international law, specifically the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. OK, we did sign it. So let’s withdraw from it, pronto. Where did we ever get the idea that a superior method of creating fundamental law was an international body full of supercilious bureaucrats, scaly dictators and failed states instead of a parliament full of people we elected?

Does anyone out there honestly suppose we’ll give better attention to social issues because some representative of a body composed of nations like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Gabon tells us we don’t measure up to their high standards? Tell me: What’s the housing situation in Gabon?

The funny thing is, there are people who suppose exactly that. Mr. Kothari’s verdict was greeted with predictable enthusiasm by the Ottawa-based Alliance to End Homelessness. But it also prompted a spokesperson for Human Resources and Social Development Minister Monte Solberg to say the minister will review the recommendations, and whine that federal spending on housing is at an all-time high. CTV gave Mr. Kothari favourable coverage half-way through his tour and suggested that one in 100 Canadians are homeless. And when he was done the federal NDP aboriginal affairs critic chimed in that regrettably the Tories do indeed favour a market-based approach to housing. Uh, except on aboriginal reserves. Where the housing situation is, um, yes well …

When we’re handing Mr. Koothari his hat I suggest he make his next stop China, where the government has displaced over a million people to flood the reservoir behind the wobbly, environmentally disastrous Three Gorges Dam and plans to remove four million more. Lovely house. A bit damp, though. Is having running water in your house a right? What if it extends dozens of meters above your roof?

China is not just an egregious human rights violator. It is also, of course, a member of the UN Human Rights Council. So what’s the UN doing about repression there, including deliberately erasing the culture of Tibet? Sort that one out and a few other things like Darfur then get back to us about housing in Edmonton.

If Canada has a homeless problem it’s because homelessness is complicated, not because some high-falutin’ bureaucrat from the other side of the world didn’t drop in to hector us about bad economics. As for Mr. Kothari telling us to use a national housing strategy instead of markets, isn’t India, after wasted decades of Soviet-style planning, finally enjoying real economic growth because its government decided to let markets work?

Oh, and how’s everything in Mali? Also a member of the Human Rights Council. Would you like to try to explain why Mali is sending someone to criticize housing in Canada? Or why we let them? Of course in one sense these bureaucrats aren’t from Mali, Bangladesh or Djibouti (also HRC members) but from an international jet set elite, accountable to no one and contemptuous of ordinary people. But that doesn’t answer the key question. What on Earth prompts us to accept lectures from such people?

Obviously Mr. Kothari’s report is mostly harmless in the sense that it won’t produce anything besides headlines. But it’s discouraging that it doesn’t prompt bracing, common-sense, pro-democratic statements of contempt for him and the organization he flew in on.

There’s one problem I can solve. Shoo.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]