An Elephant in the Room?

Having followed the Ottawa Citizen throughout the summer, I have been surprised by the absence of what would appear to be one the bigger stories of the year, that is, if you consider civilization altering stories significant.

According to Abdalla Salem El-Badri[1], Secretary General of OPEC, world demand for oil in 2030 is likely to increase 25% to 106 million bpd from 84.2 million bpd in 2009 (a demand estimate that was revised downwards from last year). At the same time Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected and conservative International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, warns[2] that production from existing oil wells is declining at a rate of 6.7% per year. If you do the math, then by 2030 today’s wells will be producing over 60 million bpd less. This demand-supply gap is huge -- potentially as large as the global total of this year’s oil consumption!

Since 1984 oil production has continually surpassed new oil discovery. As a result, “even if demand remained steady, the world would have to find the equivalent of four Saudi Arabias to maintain production, and six Saudi Arabias if it is to keep up with the expected increase in demand between now and 2030,” cautioned Dr. Birol. As per the US Energy Information Administration (EIA)[3], Saudi oil production was 11 million bpd in 2008 or approximately 10 times the amount of oil being produced from Alberta’s oilsands. The likelihood of suddenly finding six new Saudi Arabias worth of oil in the next few years and bringing them online at full capacity is “almost certainly impossible”, says the UK government’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil (APPGOPO).

The good news is that this demand for energy is likely to drive major global efforts towards the development of renewables and other alternative, clean energy sources. As a consequence, we could potentially see Canada’s contribution to GHGs and climate change reduced. However, experts like David Hughes of Canadian Geological Survey[4], suggest the scale of the energy required to replace oil is so large “renewable energy technologies cannot hope to fill the energy-demand void left by hydrocarbons,” especially in Canada given the minor position they currently hold, roughly 5% of our total energy supply[5].

To facilitate an appreciation of the scale of oil energy being consumed annually around the world, consider 1 cubic mile of oil (cmo). At today's rates, oil consumption is approximately 1.3 cmo. One cubic mile of oil is the equivalent of any of the following operating for 50 years: 4 Three Gorges dams; or 104 coal fired electricity plants; or 32,850 wind turbines; or 52 nuclear power plants; or 91,250,000 solar panels. Alternatively, to completely replace 1 cmo with roof top solar panels, for instance, would require 4,562,500,000 panels at an estimated cost of $68 trillion and an area of 64,000 sq. km[6] -- roughly the area of New Brunswick.

The bad news is that this demand-supply gap is just as likely to trigger massive use of high intensity carbon-based energy such as coal-to-liquids, shale oil, oilsands, and ethanol – in fact anything we can get our hands on to burn. It is already evident that when the economy is hurting governments will ignore everything else, including climate change and environmental degradation, to ease the immediate economic pain of their citizens. Our own Canadian government is just getting used to the language of climate change and its commitment to it is untested. Should the economy once again falter, it is likely the government would do anything to alleviate concerns for economic stability, including massive federal infusions to the Alberta oilsands project, regardless of the climatic repercussions.

Why can’t we just invest more money to find new oil and gas reserves and bring them online? Well in truth that’s what every energy company the world over has been trying to do. However, from a global perspective oil discovery peaked in 1965 and has been on a steady downward trend ever since. We’re using hydrocarbon energy far faster than we can pull it out of the ground. Canada, for instance, has been drilling for gas like crazy in recent years but our gas reserves have been on a steadily declining treadmill nonetheless.

The most likely consequence of a supply shortfall will be the destruction of oil demand. If demand greatly exceeds supply, then oil prices will go through the roof, even more so than they did in 2008. This will, of course, have ramifications on the costs of food, transportation, manufacturing, tourism, and just about every other area of economic activity. The global economy, which at the moment has been pumped up on the steroids of public bailouts, will once again stall from a lack of cheap energy. Given that just about every government in the world has just put itself in hoc for decades to try and climb out of the current recession, when the next decline hits, maybe within five years, there will be no money for bailouts and it is likely to be quite painful. It will also slow oil investment and further strangle the future flow of oil from new sources.

However, any economic contraction will only partially dampen oil demand, as most of the demand growth is coming from increasingly prosperous and populous countries like Brazil, China and India. As these countries become more affluent, they naturally want the same energy consuming goods and services we have in Canada. We along with other western countries will be hard pressed to refuse them. If demand continues to grow and supply continues to contract as the IEA suggests, then at some point, the stage will be set for high prices, oil rationing or even major national conflicts over the remaining oil supplies.

We can expect therefore crash programs around coal and oilsands. These will be the cheapest and quickest to undertake in the short term. Nuclear is too expensive, as the Ontario government concluded this summer, wind and solar just aren't scalable, and big hydro projects take too long to complete. Canada can expect intense pressure from its southern neighbour to rapidly ramp up oilsands production, no matter how much natural gas is re-directed from eastern Canadian homes in winter or how dry the Athabasca river becomes. And don't expect Russia to back down from any face-off in the Arctic when the absence of ice makes oil drilling there feasible. Control of oil and gas is real power, and the Russians have already demonstrated both their understanding of that power and their willingness to use it.

Our economy, our food supply, our very civilization depends on access to vast amounts of energy which we have largely obtained from oil. The era of cheap oil and all that depends on cheap oil will soon be over. Just to reiterate, based on current IEA production estimates from existing wells, the supply gap will be larger than all the oil the world consumed in 2008. Think about it. Is it really rational to think that we can quickly develop a production capacity from new sources of oil or oil substitutes greater than today’s total – a capacity that took a century to put in place? Are we likely to find the trillions upon trillions of investment dollars needed? And can we do it in such an uncertain economy to boot?

In Canada, there is a growing chorus of prominent voices warning of peak oil, people like David Hughes, Thomas Homer-Dixon, and Jeffrey Rubin, the former chief economist for the CIBC, but there remains an eerie silence from politicians of all stripes in Canada, as well as from the media on the subject. In contrast to climate change this seems like the elephant in the room.

In the UK, it’s quite the opposite. The APPGOPO has recommended the Government put in place safeguards not only against energy price increases, but also against outright scarcity of fuels, while simultaneously creating an energy rationing system and reducing national dependence on fossil fuels. It also recommended that all these strategies be in place and be tested well in advance of energy shortages. Describing the need as “urgent”, “essential” and “non-negotiable”, the APPGOPO exhorted “Governments and other institutions to move beyond research and into development of effective frameworks to achieve a rapid phase-down in emissions, while reducing demand for fossil fuels and ensuring fair entitlements to energy as the economy moves into deepening energy scarcity.” Says Malcolm Wicks, the UK Prime Minister’s Special Representative on International Energy, “there is no room for complacency”[7].

So why are we so complacent? What are our options and why aren’t we talking about this? If the probability exists that in the near term Canadians could not only be saddled with sky high oil and gas prices, but also with no oil and gas at all, then isn’t this topic worthy of national debate?

---

^[1] Sarah Arnott, “Demand for oil in the OECD will not recover until 2013, says OPEC”, The Independent, 9 July 2009 accessed at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/demand-for-oil-in-the-oecd-will-not-recover-until-2013-says-opec-1738086.html

^[2] Steve Connor, “Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast” The Independent, 3 August 2009 accessed at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/warning-oil-supplies-are-running-out-fast-1766585.html

[3] US Energy Information Administration-Saudi Arabia-Oil Accessed at http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Saudi_Arabia/Oil.html

[4] David Hughes, “The Energy Issue: A More Urgent Issue Than Climate Change”, in Thomas Homer-Dixon, Carbon Shift, Random House, Toronto, 2009

[5] Natural Resources Canada: Renewable Energy, accessed at http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/eneene/renren/aboaprren-eng.php

[6] Wikipedia, Cubic Mile of Oil accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil

[7] Malcolm Wicks, Energy Security: A national challenge in a changing world, UK Department of Energy & Climate Change, London, August 2009

Response to Sibley's "Trust Us On This", The Ottawa Citizen, April 11, 2009

Recently, the Ottawa Citizen ran a column entitled “Trust us on this” (1) written by Robert Sibley with assistance from David Mitchell of the Public Policy Forum. I was very appreciative that they raised the issue of an overall, system-wide lack of trust that has emerged as a distinguishing and worrisome feature of today’s economic recession. They suggested that in going into this recession, the leaders of today’s private, public and not-for-profit organizations do not enjoy the same degree of public confidence that leaders have in the past, making the climb out of this recession likely to be that much more difficult. However, in attempting to map a way forward, their analysis got it wrong.

Just think, for instance, of the shocks that have been faced almost simultaneously by the citizens of Detroit who have been devastated by the dual bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler, were sent reeling from the perjury and sex scandal that saw its mayor removed from office, and then lurching from the collapse of the city’s Board of Education. But for the grace of God go we …! There, as elsewhere, leadership confidence, already at record low levels, is being battered daily.

To whom, therefore, should citizens turn with an expectation that their trust will be rewarded? Sibley suggests that without this underlying confidence, any economic improvement will remain fragile -- at risk from even the smallest hint of insecurity.

But, while I agree this is an important issue, I do not believe trust is the basic problem – it is merely a side effect of a deeper dilemma. As I see it, the problem is our society’s misplaced and deeply ingrained assumption that someone must be ‘in-charge’.

It is an assumption that even corporate icons today are beginning to challenge, as Jeffrey Immelt did recently when he commented to the Financial Times on the success of his predecessor, Jack Welch, as CEO of General Electric in the 1990s. Immelt said that, “anyone could have run GE and done well in the 1990s. A dog could have run GE.”(2) Why? Because there were so many good people in the middle of the organization that did the job of running and coordinating the company for him. Being in-charge was irrelevant. It was a figurehead position. A decade later the coordination challenge is even greater and the CEO even less in control. Again as Immelt sees it, “the most important thing is context. It’s how your company fits into the world and how you respond to it.” How does a CEO of a single organization hope to coordinate with the whole world?

This someone must be in-charge assumption proliferates throughout our public, private and civic institutions. It is a cornerstone of our management mythology that periodically a white knight swoops in to restructure and set right the great ship of organization. The current crisis of confidence challenges that view because it exposes the lack of influence that CEOs actually have. Concern arises not from what we know leaders actually did or did not do but from the difference between a) our over inflated expectations of them that were fuelled by their own hyped sense of importance; and b) our perceptions of their performance -- between what they promised to deliver and what we see them providing. Confidence is low because this organizational performance gap is large, regardless of the influence leaders may really have on that performance (3).

When things went well, as they did over the last decade, our leaders were quick to point out the impact of their wisdom and decisiveness. Now as fortunes fall, the chorus of leaders has changed its tune, suddenly claiming it’s not them but the system that’s been responsible all along. Having previously been persuaded of their crucial importance, we are now confronted with an overwhelming organizational performance gap (4). They were in-charge and so they must be responsible.

But today’s recession is the consequence of multiple policy and market decisions made in many places, many of which were well meaning in their intent. When combined, however, they created a house of cards which eventually collapsed last fall in a global cascade. It may be argued that these unintended consequences were beyond the ability of any individual leader to control so one should be cautious about falling prey to a leadership blame game. Yet if they didn’t get us into the mess are they equally incapable of leading us out? Consequently, we should give ourselves pause to question not just these contradictory claims of individual leaders but also the assumptions and systems under which they have operated.

“Large corporations are vast and complex entities, with customs and attitudes that are hard for any one leader to change. So why do we talk as if the CEOs are truly in charge... ”(5) The cycle of leadership mistrust ends, not by whitewashing our faith in leaders as Sibley suggests, but in evolving a more mature confidence in ourselves as the principal actors in our own lives and organizations. Without enlivening this sense of shared ownership, good stewardship will remain elusive, and we will fail to make the collective commitments necessary to close the gap between our expectations of our organizations and the shared outcomes we observe.

1. Sibley, Robert. “Trust us on this”, The Ottawa Citizen, April 11, 2009
2. Guerrera, Francesco. “A need to reconnect”, Financial Times, New York, March 12, 2009
3. A study of "superstar CEOs", for instance, found that companies run by top executives who won awards from the business press between 1975 and 2002 consistently underperformed the market after their honor. Fox, Justin. “Are Today’s CEOs batting a Thousand?, Fortune, October 20, 2006a
4. Collingwood, Harris. “Do CEOs Matter?”, The Atlantic, June 2009: 54-60
5. Fox, Justin. “The Limited (but real) Impact of CEOs”, Time Magazine, October 20 2006b, accessed at http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2006/10/20/the_limited_but_real_impact_of/

Ottawa in still life

Andrew Cohen's reflections on Ottawa's recent bus strike and and what that says about the quality of local citizenship. "The bus strike demonstrated that the people who live in the capital aren't really citizens -- their indifference has created our political malaise..." The Citizen, February 9, 2009, 9:01 AM

more…

Response to "Audit on Royal Ottawa Sought",The Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 26, 2009

I would like to correct the rather one-sided story on public-private partnerships (P3s) and their use in Ontario hospitals (“Audit on Royal Ottawa Sought” by Mohammed Adam) published by The Ottawa Citizen, January 26, 2009. The use of P3s is relatively new in Canada (compared to the US and the UK). They provide an opportunity to make use of the best elements of private and public organizations to serve the needs of Canadians better. Therefore it was disturbing to see so many misleading statements made in the story and a reliance on “expert’ sources who are clearly biased and represent a hyper-ideological and political opposition to P3s under any and all circumstances.

Lewis Auerbach, for instance, is a consultant given to scare mongering. His specialty is auditing not partnerships but he has also produced several reports published by unions across the country about the perils of P3s. In one such report that found cost savings at the Abbotsford hospital P3 in BC, Auerbach but is quoted as saying, “This may not really be a savings overall – it may even be more expensive – but rather a transfer of costs from the P3 parties to patients”. He calls white black and plays to the fears of the most vulnerable.

Natalie Mehra is the Director of the Ontario Health Coalition, a thinly veiled arm of provincial labour unions opposed to P3s. It is her claim that “P3s are just another form of privatization” and this is nonsense. P3s exist on a spectrum between full public ownership and full private ownership. P3s exist in the middle of these two extremes because they are “partnerships” and consequently they include aspects of both. Therefore they generate both profits and public goods as befitting their hybrid nature and that’s why they are called “private-public partnerships”.

The Citizen article claims P3s are overly secretive. Such a claim is hard to believe when each year my students interview stakeholders on all sides of the P3 equation. The Royal Ottawa Hospital and the William Osler Health Centre have been among them. The people in these institutions have been very generous with their time to help explain their history, their challenges, their responses to those challenges and their future prospects. If my students can do this, then why couldn’t the reporter or MPP France Gelinas?

While I wouldn’t impugn the reputation of the Ontario Auditor General, but when he says he found evidence hospital construction estimates were inflated for the William Osler Health Centre in Brampton between the 2000 and 2004 in ways not accounted for by higher material prices and inflation, might this be an incomplete cost analysis? He does not apparently factor in changes in market demand during a booming real estate period. The price of real estate and therefore construction moves primarily with market demand and the opportunity cost of not doing something else. Construction costs do not move solely with inflation.

Further, his evidence of poor financial management focuses on hospital costs being more with a P3 than if the Government built it themselves. Even if this was true, it is an incomplete cost-benefit analysis. Building hospitals with P3s is in some ways like leasing a car only on a grander scale. One of the many benefits of P3s is that citizens get the hospital sooner than if they had to wait until the Province saved enough money to build it on its own. It may have taken a decade for the Province to set aside the $150-200 million to build the Brampton or Ottawa hospitals and then another decade for them to be built. The Auditor General knows better than most that Ontario governments have traditionally been extremely neglectful of contributing to capital budgets. So why did he not assign a value to the 10-20 years of lost health care that would have occurred if the Province had waited to do it themselves? To say that the Royal Ottawa Hospital would have cost millions of dollars less if it would have been built publicly misses the point. The point is whether it would have ever been built at all! This is not a reflection of P3s but of the public choices being made -- increasing taxes, increasing indebtedness (neither of which was politically viable at the time) or using a P3 model.

As far the Royal Ottawa Hospital (ROH) P3 is concerned, the 2001 announcement for the project called for 284 beds at an estimated construction cost of $95 million. When the project went to the RFP stage in 2003 the government itself had reduced the number of beds to 188, increased its capital cost estimate to $100 million and set the construction time estimate to 2 years. Then the project was delayed by almost two years for administrative and political reasons. When the actual deal was struck between The Healthcare Infrastructure Company of Canada (the private consortium) and the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group (the public partner) it was for $142 million and 188 beds. These changes are frequently cited by critics like Mehra and Auerbach as proof the ROH private partners were over time, over budget and under delivering -- despite these decisions being made by the government. Similar deceptiveness appears in the numbers used at the end of the Citizen article. To the contrary, after construction finally began in December 2004, the new facility was completed early and $6 million under budget.

What the article does not say is that the monthly leasing payments are contingent on the ROH partners adhering to strict service standards and if not met those payments may be reduced. Who decides? The public partner. In addition, while it is the practice to let hospitals deteriorate until they need to be abandoned, when the ROH is returned to the public partners in 20 years it must be in essentially new condition. In fact the private partners will leave it in better than new condition having added at their expense all the technology that emerges over the next 20 years.

Is the ROH problem free? No, but no more than any institution its size. Claiming that the existence of problems is proof P3s don’t work is both misleading and disingenuous. If you want to really assess the ROH P3 it may be better to look at how the partners deal with those problems. The ROH stakeholders have invested heavily in good communication and the cultivation of positive healthy relationships to guide and steer the organization towards a shared vision. The hospital staff was fully engaged in designing the facility which they would ultimately use. Regular performance reporting is used and shared equally between the public and private partners. Effective dispute resolution mechanisms are in place. A climate of trust and mutual respect exists that allows the partners to amicably adapt to issues not dealt with in the original contract. Can they do it better? Probably, yes. And this goes to the point of Professor Angus. We do need to know more about what works and what doesn’t in these types of projects so we can learn from them. But we don’t need the type of posturing and ideological blather that has so often typified the public debate around P3s.

Ottawa's OC Transpo Strike

It is almost two months now since the OC Transpo strike began and any hope I had of a reasonable accommodation is now gone. What remains is strange sense of the complacency in an Ottawa public which is so willing to endure the strike at such a high human and economic cost to themselves and their community and over so little potential gain. Last week estimates were published that suggested the cost of the strike over the first month approximated $280 million, and which by now must surely have surpassed $300 million. City Council says it could save $3 million a year by clawing back scheduling responsibility from the union. At this implied rate of return, my grandchildren will be dead before the strike cost is repaid. Of course, this does not include the immense human costs of lost jobs, poorer job performance, strained family life, failed businesses, lost school years for students who take buses, poorer health for those most in need, and a poisoned work relationship between striking workers and City Hall that will persist for years to come.

These current costs guarantee any future ‘victory’ from this strike to be Pyrrhic. That said, who is paying for these cost? True the union has depleted its strike fund and its members have lost millions of dollars in wages. City Hall, however, is actually making millions of dollars on those same unpaid wages. Primarily, however, it is residents and taxpayers who are collectively paying for this seven-week old strike in orders of magnitude far greater than either City Hall or the union.

We have arrived essentially at a contest over who controls the bus service – a pissing contest to be crude. This is no longer about value for citizens. It is no longer about serving the public. If it were, the strike would be long over. It is about control and the collateral damage be dammed. In as much, what we have here is a failure of leadership at City Hall. They have broken their fiduciary trust with citizens whom they so callously and fraudulently say they represent. Equally, we have a failure among union leaders who purport to be looking out for the interests of riders and members yet who have so blatantly put their interests above the many, many residents of the community who have become ensnarled in their selfishness. These two groups would have done less harm to the City of Ottawa if they had walked into a local bank and stolen $300 million. Yet surprisingly we continue to tolerate their destructive behaviour as if it didn’t matter. And that behaviour continues because for them there are no consequences.

In my mind, both groups have made decisions that have caused irreparable harm to many people. Those decisions were made intentionally and with the full awareness of the potential costs, and pain and suffering to be caused to their fellow citizens. In most circumstances such decisions would make these individuals personally liable for the damages and harm they caused. Yet here we are, complacent as ever, worried how we will endure but seemingly unconcerned about how we got here. Did anyone say “class-action suit”?

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN CANADA’S MIDDLE-EARTH

The recent coverage by the Ottawa Citizen of the layoffs affecting the community around Smiths Falls and the issue of economic development in smaller Canadian towns and villages more generally, has painted a rather bleak picture. That pessimism may be warranted if the communities do what is traditionally done, which is to say, try and stave off change and cry loudly until either the provincial or federal government bails them out. Yet having observed for a number of years how communities can create new prospects for themselves, I believe there is a more optimistic future in store when communities are prepared to take the lead in realizing new possibilities for themselves. Indeed, the evidence suggests that much can be done by communities on their own, and that when local strategies and commitments are generated, senior governments may actually seek out them out as targets of funding.

Economic development is far from a uniform phenomenon. It is led by creative individuals and companies, working in supportive environments that are distinctly suited to their success, allowing for the formation of clusters and regional hubs that drag the rest of society along with them. In tackling local development there is a range of options for community leaders to consider - from “place-based” to “people-based” strategies - but there remains much uncertainty about what may work in any given locale. Traditionally, regional economic development strategies are constructed to support the development of physical and social capital that underpins economic and community progress in a given area. These strategies can involve investments in assets and capacities by various levels of government but frequently by private and civic groups as well, such as the Chambers of Commerce or the United Way.

However, economic development is often unplanned, evolving in fits and starts in response to broad macro economic conditions, the fashions of public sector philosophy and entrepreneurial enthusiasm. Where direction is consistently applied, it has often taken the form of “placed-based” strategies that try either to mitigate the effects of economic decline or to catalyze new economic growth with supportive infrastructures, cluster strategies, or sector investments (the picking of future economic winners).

Placed-based policies can work – but only indirectly. Such strategies have been used for years by governments to try and causally address the conditions that give rise to local poverty and economic sluggishness. They are often politically popular, but they have received mixed reviews by researchers. Some claim that place-based policies reduce the incentive of disadvantaged people to migrate to other places that offer better opportunities and therefore contribute to the formation of regional ghettos of dependency. Other researchers suggest the logic of placed-based strategies is rarely adhered to in real life. Yet despite these short-comings they can be effective, especially when conditions of workforce isolation or low worker mobility allow for more of the benefits of place-based strategies to be retained locally.

On the other hand, traditional “people-based” policies put public resources directly into the hands of distressed individuals in the form of income augmentation, training, assisted housing, relocation subsidies, etc. They reduce pain in the short term, however, there is little evidence that they are anything other than palliative, often proving costly for society in the long run because they do little to change the conditions that gave rise to the socio-economic distress in the first place and therefore fail to reduce the demand for support.

Regional development strategies are further complicated by the increasingly distributed nature of the decision making required to coordinate the local knowledge, resources and authorities that may be involved in addressing local challenges. Given that each community has a varying mix of contributors and capacities, this coordination challenge also necessitates effective processes of learning-while-doing and a strong emphasis on experimentation, social learning and unique patterns of collaborative governance. Unfortunately these processes and capacities are not always in place.

The OECD has observed, for instance, that in Canada, “there is a tendency for performance gaps to widen between regions, and the cost of maintaining cohesion is increasing. On the other hand, rapid technological change, extended markets and greater use of knowledge are offering greater opportunities for local and regional development but demand further investment from enterprises, reorganization of labour and production, skills upgrading and improvements in the local environment”. In other words, to benefit from the global knowledge economy and close the performance gaps between regions, greater attention is needed [in Canada] to help regions self-mobilize to provide better coordination of people, capacities and assets. The OECD also observed that it in the rural, non-major-metro adjacent towns, where roughly 1/3 of Canadians reside, only limited capacity and few sponsors exist to effect this community mobilization.

The OECD assumes this is due to scant attention from federal or provincial governments. And while it is true that senior governments tend to be fixated on either major metropolitan or northern regions, this assumption presumes it is the responsibility of those senior governments to “fix things” in small-town Canada – despite the fact that the necessary resources and capacities are most likely locally rooted. Not surprisingly we hear, as we have in the Citizen over the past month, the cries of concern about the futures of these towns and villages.

Yet I would suggest the key barrier to the adaptiveness of rural towns is not so much that no one is listening but the erroneous assumption that someone should be listening, that someone should be “in charge” and can make things better. Couple this paternal expectation with similar claims being made to the same authorities by hundreds of small communities across the country, then it is no wonder senior governments appear deaf.

The true development challenge for this middle region is two-fold – ownership and differentiation. Ownership accepts that the future belongs to the residents of the community: that the primary responsibility rests with them to marshal local resources, talent and capacities to realize their common future: and to do so sufficiently and in such a manner that it attracts the attention of non-residents – workers, companies or governments – who can see in their commitments to place an opportunity. Differentiation identifies the unique possibilities, contributions and leadership that distinguish one community from another and make it worthy of the engagement of non-residents as co-creators of a shared possibility.

Here the capacity to sustain community dialogue proves to be a fundamental development competence. The history, buildings, economy, infrastructure and culture of any community are essentially artifacts of the conversations that occur within it. To change the community, change the conversation. This is confirmed in results from the federal government’s Action for Neighbourhood Change program and from the Vibrant Communities Initiative, led by McConnell Foundation and the Caledon and Tamarack institutes. Through specific processes of conversation, residents assume ownership of both problems and solutions, often providing essential direction or assets that allow place- or people-based solutions to take root.

No one disputes that communities like Smiths Falls, Cornwall or Renfrew are not without attractors but they will prosper on the basis of the strength of their community – the very thing the mega-urban centres often have in short supply. In some small towns, effective community dialogue will generate clear ideas of who they are and what want they want to become. In others, it will foster shared ownership and creative contributions that enable new possibilities to unfold. Some communities will find better ways of coordinating their capacities and resources. Some will devise new ways of collaborating and governing together. Yet all of these conversations will demonstrate the power of community itself, of being together, and where, at the end of the day, creative enterprising individuals can find that they and their families are not alone.

Thus here in this middle-earth between mega and northern communities, economic and community development will hinge less on grand schemes and romanticized leadership and more on shared stories and local commitments. Facilitating these interactions will be of prime concern as it will serve to distinguish these communities from the larger centres. As a result, Canada’s rural communities should invest not only in marketing to persuade others of the fairness of their towns, but also in generating the kinds of conversations that can identify and engage residents and newcomers in possibilities that both can fully live into. For it is not an area’s past that newcomers typically seek -- it is its future and its promise of belonging.

Ten Criteria for Selecting Candidates

Since my post in May, I’ve spent much of the summer reflecting on the characteristics of community leadership and the collective capacities required to move a pluralistic society such as ours forward on any issue of consequence.

1. One of the tidbits I encountered along the way, was in a talk given by Benjamin Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, in his closing remarks to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum on January 27, 2008 (click here to see his presentation). He describes his epiphany when he realized that as a conductor he created no music. Yet by empowering his musicians to do great things together they produced great music. This led him to the conclusion that “a powerful leader depends for his power on making other people powerful."

Such an empowering sense of leadership stands in complete contrast to the current notions of romanticized leadership that permeate both our political and management discourse. In fact, if the juvenile behaviour on display in Canada’s current election is any indication, then our practice of democracy would likely fail to win the fifth grader test currently popularized on TV. Therefore, my first selection criterion is whether through their speech and actions a candidate is an enabler, making all Canadians, not just their partisan followers, more powerful. The message I want to hear is what the candidate is willing to do to help me achieve what I want, not do something ostensibly on by behalf and then stick me with the result and the bill.

2. Obviously, the ability of the candidate to foster serious dialogue about policies or issues is a must-have criterion…

3. But so also is how that candidate conducts that conversation. Is its purpose to advocate for an established position; to find fault with others; to meet out retribution; to market fear; to marginalize hope; to devalue the contributions that each and everyone one of us could potentially make? Does that conversation just seek to add to an already bloated and ineffectual system of rules and oversight?

Or, does that conversation direct us to those possibilities which we as citizens can potentially create together; does it empower us to take ownership of ourselves, our families and our communities; does it make us all accountable to each other for both problems and solutions; does it invite us to be generous and contribute what we can; does it discourage dependence and foster the self-reliance borne of a rich fabric of community life; and finally is that conversation about citizens rather than leaders? Therefore what kind of public conversation are they willing to create?

4. Elections are momentous times. Not just because of their potential to unseat a government, but because of their capability to renew our faith in ourselves, to celebrate the progress we have made together and to reflect on how things could be better still. They are a democracy’s primary tool for social learning. And if we’re not learning together then we’re not moving forward together either, as the latest edition of the Conference Board’s report, How Canada Performs, clearly suggests. So for my vote I want to see which candidate is contributing to our collective learning and presenting a narrative of the collective possibility we can all aspire to.

5. Democracy is about advanced citizenship. It requires informed and engaged citizens. But it is founded on the notion of voters as owners. As much as elections are about selecting representatives they must also be about re-affirming the individual and collective responsibility we all hold for the issues that confront us. It is ultimately the citizen who creates the future and who is accountable for society’s well being. If we did not somewhere believe this then for what purpose do we elect “representatives” to undertake our will? If they are not representing us, then who are they representing – themselves, their sponsors, an oligarchy of special interests?

Rather than re-affirming citizenship, however, the usual mix of sound bites and bribes proffered during an election campaign tend do just the opposite. They absolve citizens of their personal responsibility (it’s someone else’s fault); they obscure the need of citizens to make choices (we can cut taxes and increase services); and they steal the rights of citizens to act as owners of their own life, including the right to the consequences of their actions (behaviour must be controlled, the future can be legislated and morality mandated).

Imagine a parent who permits their child no independence, no mistakes, no risks, no challenges, no consequences to their actions? Such a parent does not permit their child to have a life only an existence. Similarly a candidate who creates no space for either collective decision making or consequences creates no ground for their community to have a life in common. Therefore, my fifth criterion considers: does the candidate affirm my ownership rights as a citizen and facilitate my coming together with other citizens to deal with the issues we share.

6. Asking questions is more important than giving answers. Why? Because in questions there is the space for creating something new. Despite Canada’s recent languid performance on many fronts compared to its OECD peers, it remains a country whose quality of life is desired by most countries in the world. However, to be better than we are we must be innovative. But that is not a problem to be solved with ready made answers. It is a possibility that must be collectively lived into. Stock answers will only serve to recreate the past in the present and the future. Questions create space for possibility. So are the candidates asking questions, or they just giving the same old tired answers?

7. In a pluralistic democracy such as Canada, learning to value our different perspectives and building on that diversity to create something truly transformative is not only an opportunity but an essential requirement for a small country like ours to retain its standard of living and position in the world. The accomplishment of this task does not rest with someone who pits us against each other in strategies of ‘divide and conquer’. It necessitates someone who can catalyze a dialogue that binds us all together and who is continually building bridges from one community to the next.

Such a candidate is a true partner, helping where they can, giving honest advice where asked, but they neither usurp the right of any community to be unique nor permit any community to usurp the rights of others. Such a candidate detects reason in conflicting claims, recognizes where each may be valid, senses where common ground exists, and brings competing communities into harmony. Therefore, I look for the candidate who is a good partner.

8. In a period where leadership has become thoroughly romanticized it can be tough to find an alternative view. Yet one has existed for much, much longer than the current notion of leadership. It is the idea of stewardship, that very traditional notion of holding something in trust for another. My childhood exposure to the principles of democracy usually took the form of stewardship with elected representatives acting as stewards on behalf of citizens. When this modern idea of leadership emerged I do not know but it has done little to strengthen my sense of democracy.

Taking Peter Block’s definition, “stewardship is the choice to preside over the orderly distribution of power”. This means giving people choices, it means empowering them in the pursuit of their choices and operating in service to rather than in control of others. Good stewards balance power; encourage ownership; inspire commitment to a larger community; engage participation and a willingness to be accountable; and ensures that rewards are equitably distributed. My vote belongs to the candidate who is a good steward not a good patriarch.

9. A good friend suggested that we need to find the candidate who in a crunch can be relied upon to take charge. I know this is how many people think but all evidence points to the fallacy of this believe. Good governance is not about having the greatest capacity for being the biggest control freak in exceptional times. Day to day governance is primarily about learning, about teasing out common ground, about making the other guys powerful so that you can draw on their strength as well as your own. And in exceptional circumstances, having mutually rewarding relationships already established is the only recipe that will provide you what you need when you need it. If they are not there, it's likely you'll find yourself in a bun fight among competing organizations all of whom may share the idea that they alone are in charge.

Voting for the fiction of someone “in charge” is a waste, a non starter, since no one has been “in charge” for a long time. Governance now is so extensively distributed among different levels of government, among government, business and the voluntary sectors; and among nations that the person who images themselves “in charge” is likely to be a major roadblock to institutional collaboration. The candidate therefore should be a facilitator, a networker, a broker, a champion who has the honesty to know that being “in charge” is a trap that lets many people off the hook. So my next to last criterion seeks a candidate who recognizes they are not “in charge”, and has the courage to demand that I be.

10. I want a candidate who has a strong commitment to democracy not to the trappings of leadership and a friendly dictatorship. I want a candidate who will inspire collective ownership and commitment. I want a good steward who I can count on to support my efforts and those of my neighbours in our efforts to better our community.

I am one of those that believe that Canada is not our geography, our history, our tall buildings or our roads and railroads. Canada is not the churches we attend, the schools we go to or the faces we present to the world. These are all the results of Canada. Canada itself is the conversation we hold among ourselves. So lastly, who among these candidates carries that conversation to new heights of possibility?

That's my ten criteria for selecting a candidate! Looking at the current roster though, I think I’m setting my self up for a great disappointment.