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In 1949 Newfoundland was a British colony with a standard of living roughly comparable to a Mediterranean country, such as Greece or Portugal.
The history of the island of Newfoundland is about fishing. Portugese and Basques fished the Grand Banks six hundred years ago. During the colonial era, schooners transported loads of salt fish to Europe and the Caribbean. The French retained the fishing rights of western Newfoundland until 1904.
Traditionally people settled on the island in small, isolated fishing villages. Boats were the means of transportation and many communities were only conneSted0by roads in the 1960s and 1970s.
The road across Newfoundland is more than 900 kilometres; it is the tenth largest island in the world. The population is less than 600 thousand.
One could argue that the history of Newfoundland is also a story of exploitation. The rich natural resources of the island continue to be taken away by Europeans, Americans and Canadians. The forests, slow to regenerate in this northern climate, are being clearcut for the "foreign-owned" pulp and paper industry. The province still produces 80 per cent of the iron ore of Canada; Newfoundland is dotted with communities trying to survive the closure of ravaged mines. Quebec is powered by electricity which it managed to wrangle from Newfoundland at a deal which refunds little to the provincial coffers.
Mining companies from Canada are now at work "negotiating" with the indigenous people on how they can exploit a huge find of nickel at Voisey Bay in Labrador. And what will oil development in western Newfoundland give to the people of one of the most economically deprived rural areas of Canada?
Rural Newfoundland is now at risk because of the closure of the cod fishery. On films of the 1960s, fishermen can be heard warning of the destruction of the species unless foreign overfishing by draggers is stopped. In 1989 a Coalition for Fishery Survival warned that overfishing by large boats dragging the ocean floor would destroy the fishery. The question now is what kind of fishery will government allow to return in the future? Logic would seem to suggest that a community-based, inshore fishery of small boats would mean a sustainable industry for generations. But people feel that government favors a controlled, corporate, high-tech approach which will employ a few people and create a profitable tax base. It's not difficult to see that isolated communities populated by independent people are a hindrance to the corporate scenario.
It is probably no accident that the Port au Port is one of the most economically deprived rural areas of Canada. As recently as 20 years ago, francophones were beaten for speaking French in English schools. Parents encouraged their children to become anglophones in order to succeed.
At the same time, the francophone communities for the most part resisted the resettlement program of the 1960s. During the 1970s francophone groups organized to promote their language and preserve their cultural heritage. L' Association Regionale de la Cote Ouest (ARCO) is based in a francophone Centre Communautaire. The peninsula now has a francophone school and newspaper, as well as community radio in La Grand' Terre.
The French history of the Port au Port is diverse, with settlers coming from the Magdalen Islands, Acadia, Normandy and Brittany. People talk of their grandparents coming from France. Breton has only recently died out as a distinct language.
The most distinctive cultural activity of the area is music. The fiddles, accordions and guitars of francophone Newfoundland offer a rich blend of diverse traditions.
For economic security, people depend on fishing, going away for seasonal work and increasingly on government support.
Fishing, farming and logging were the main industries. The economy benefited from the opening of an American air force base during the 1940s but crashed when the base closed during the Vietnam War.
The people of Lourdes also depend on the fishery and seasonal work. There is oil exploration on the Port au Port but so far it has only meant a few jobs, mainly in unskilled labor.
The Port au Port Community Education Initiative is a coalition of about 20 educational, funding and human service agencies which has been working with the people of the Port au Port to develop such programs as family resource centres; literacy training; alternative high schooling; community based curriculum, as well as parenting and pre-school programs.
The town is known throughout the province as the origin of the resurgence of the union movement during the 1970s. Burgeo was a resettlement growth centre during the 1960s. With a large, modern fish plant, its people prospered until 1992, when the plant was closed because of conflict between union and management.
Soon after, the cod fishery was closed and many of the townspeople now exist on a federal compensation package for cod fishermen and fish plant workers (TAGS). But now the government claims it vastly underestimated the number of people who would qualify for compensation. It has announced all retraining and compensation programs will end more than a year earlier than the people anticipated.
There is great potential for adventure and soft-adventure tourism on the south west coast of Newfoundland, but it would seem reopening the fish plant is the only hope for the survival of Burgeo. The union has replaced its executive and now meets regularly with the absentee plant owner. The people are repairing the plant as unpaid volunteers.
Burgeo was the first town in Newfoundland, if not Atlantic Canada, where residents collectively own and operate their own cable television system. Since the mid-80s the Burgeo Broadcasting System has produced its own local news and programming.
From 1874 to 1983, Ramea was dominated by one merchant family, the Penneys, who operated a fleet of boats and the fish plant. The plant was taken over by a multinational, Fisheries Products International (FPI), which reduced operations to six months and closed in the early 90s.
The people of Ramea are well organized. The townspeople bought their plant, repaired it with volunteers and brought in an American operator in 1995. The plant also houses the Ramea Economic Development Corporation (REDC) and computer/upgrading courses for adults.
REDC is actively pursuing other economic alternatives for the islands, such as harvesting kelp or aquaculture. But its probably reasonable to say that Ramea, like Burgeo, needs its traditional fishing industry to survive.
Ramea also lost its school to a fire in 1992. For years the people fought a reluctant government to rebuild. The school is now being built and will probably open in 1997 but in the fall of 1995 it seemed nothing would happen. Temporary "classrooms" were found in buildings all over town. The people of Ramea had to threaten to evict
government from the buildings and keep their children home in order to get construction moving.
Thetow~speople own their own television cable system. This means that, as well as bringing in American and Canadian channels, they also produce their own programming.
The communities use a wide variety of grassroots communication tools - such as newsletter; community radio; black and white photography; posters; brochures; videoletters; problem-oriented skits, and community television. Some activities include live phone-in public meetings on community cable television systems; students videotaping interviews, "streeters" and cultural events; community round tables; workshops on group development; students producing videodramas to send to other communities; forming black and white photography groups; volunteers producing posters and brochures to publicize local events and festivals; volunteers transforming a development corporation newsletter into a community newsletter; volunteers assisting a colleague to produce a regional newspaper, and regional steering committee meetings of volunteers to discuss common issues and strategies.
There are no technicians in this process - it is participatory. Resource people work mostly with youth and women in the communities - participants are students; itinerant farm workers; housewives; teachers; fishermen; unemployed fish plant workers; union officers, small business operators and so on.
Grassroots communications training focuses on popular methodology: informal, learn-as-you-do, no such thing as failure. The methodology is adapted from the Ryakuga four-stage skills training: 1. familarization, 2. skills training, 3. production, and
4. enhancing sustainability.
Similarly, how to involve the community-at-large and organizations within the community is, quite simply, a matter of life and death for the rural communities of western Newfoundland. As elsewhere, the volunteers who are leading the struggle are facing complete burnout as government support is being withdrawn across the board. But, not only that, these people realize that without the support and participation of the community-at-large, current efforts and successes cannot be experienced in depth or be sustainable.
There are no professionals in grassroots participatory communications; ordinary people plan the programming and operate the equipment. It is a common experience that when people take control of the technology that they grow in self esteem and therefore are better able to discuss their situation and plan for the future.
The community must take ownership over its own communication process. In order to ensure community ownership, we are careful not to overwhelm people with professional standards and try to identify technical resources in the community (VCRs, camcorders, TVs, microphones). Also when a 12 year old boy takes a camcorder home to interview his grandmother about changes in the community - it's quite obvious that her participation is quite different than when faced by a group of technicians that she doesn't know.
We are talking of communities which have cable systems by which they receive American and Canadian channels. Community television is "broadcast" from a public room in the community.
Let us focus specifically on community forums or discussions on the community channel.
The essential ingredients of our recipe are a speakerphone; a camcorder; a VCR and television; some taped programmimg, and lots of people.
There's lots of talk in Canada about the necessity of public consultations. It often ends in bureaucrats grumbling about nobody coming to the meetings and blaming the people for being lazy and apathetic.
There are a number of strategies which increase the possibility of ordinary people taking part in discussion and planning.
The community forum - which typically lasts for an afternoon or evening - consists of live and taped segments.
1. Taped scenery with music validates the people's own environment. It makes people feel good about where they live.
2. Taped interviews about the past. People are interested in their own
history. Remembering the past helps people realize their own unique
identity. A typical format for a television forum is remembering the past; analyzing the present, and strategizing for the future.
3. Taped interviews and activities of children. People feel proud of their children. They are less reluctant to participate in "serious discussion" when they have already heard their children speak out.
A community forum of taped and live programming also allows the people operating the equipment time to relax.
Some live ingredients are:
a. An early phone-in of birthday greetings, special occasions and
anniversaries.
b. School children reading local news.
c. Live entertainment - an important component.
d. Storytime for children.
e. Impromptu interviews with people who happen to drop by.
2. People are often invited to come to the "studio" and participate from the floor. When this is the case, experts are often asked to sit in the audience while the panel is composed of local people.
3. We have pages of resource material advice for panel moderators. The first rule is to entice people to phone in and express their views.
BACK1. Videotapes can be exchanged to be played on other community's channels.
2. When another community has experienced similar issues, a representative can call the forum to describe the experience.
3. Video letters are an effective use of grassroots communication. For example, students can produce skits on video and send to other communities for youth feedback.
The best way to encourage people to identify with the issues of peoiple outside their own community is face to face contact. Phase 8 of the Communiquer Pour Survivre/Communication for Survival initiative waS a skills development and rural issue oriented conference March, 1997, in western Newfoundland. The initiative is co-sponsoring the conference with Westviking College. We plan for continuous participatory televison programming with simultaneous radio broadcast and daily newsletters. The conference is designed for ordinary people working in community communications, people involved in social, economic or cultural development, and people leading the struggle for community survival.
The newspaper quotes a government funded report which says government should "follow a strategy akin to triage - that is, rescuing the most hopeful places and letting the truly hopeless places dwindle away."
Now triage, or the systematic culling of a species, is a difficult policy to openly pursue in rural Newfoundland. Back in the 1960s, the government introduced a resettlement program. Their purpose was to industrialize the island and they wanted the people to live in "growth centres." They withdrew government services, such as schools, and offered people a small amount of money to move. More than 300 communities were "disappeared."
It is difficult to convey the regret and passion felt by people who have experienced the loss of their home communities, some settled by their ancestors centuries before. One story tells of an old woman who returned alone by small boat to her abandoned home. She set fire to the building and died inside.
Forty years later it would be political suicide for a government to openly implement resettlement. Nevertheless, many Newfoundlanders feel resettlement has become a covert government policy. They cite such evidence as reduced ferry service; threatened closure of schools and hospitals; resisting the reconstruction of a burnt school, and reducing government support programs, such as unemployment insurance.
In 1995 the federal government made vast changes to the unemployment program so it could access another source of revenue. Support for seasonal workers is being phased out. One proposal yet to be put into effect is to require that workers collect insurance in the province where they work. This will be a disaster for many Newfoundlanders who go to other provinces for seasonal jobs and return to their homes and families to collect UI.
Other people suggest that the restrictive immigration policies adopted by the Canadian government in recent years is directly related to accessing a cheap labor force from within the country - from Newfoundland.
There is a strange paradox at work within the Canadian Mosaic - a few weeks before the government financed the "Let Them Die" government financed study, the United Nations released another report which stated that Atlantic Canada was one of the best places in the world to live, according to "quality of life" criteria.
Newfoundlanders have the highest rate of home ownership in Canada. There are no police, nor need for them, in most rural Newfoundland communities. People do not have to lock their doors nor guard their children when they play outside. Community life is supportive and family oriented. The local culture and traditions of rural Newfoundland are (along with Quebec) the strongest in Canada.
Should the survival of rural communities in Newfoundland be based only on terms of corporate profits and tax revenue? If the communities are experiencing economic problems, should government offer support or euthanesia?Whau aru thu root causes of the communities' economic problems? If Canada destroys its distinctive rural communities, will it continue to exist as a nation?
2. The Vikings built settlements in Newfoundland almost 1,000 years ago and, of course, the indigenous peoples were here first.
3. English author John Berger says he prefers the Cuban definition of underdevelopment - it's a transitive verb. In other words, underdevelop is what somebody does to somebody else - for profit.
4. Labrador is the mainland part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador which is far larger than the island itself. In many ways, its situation is distinct from the island. Personally, I think at the very least it should have a strong local government within the province.
5. The federal government closed the cod fishery to save the species in 1992 and 1993. However for years before fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador had been telling the government cod stocks were declining but nobody was listening. The problem was that the government was managing the fishery according to a computer model but they were entering the wrong information. Many people blame the destruction of the species on overfishing with modern, inappropriate technologies and also bad practices such as dumping fish. Government, which people say wants only a high tech corporate fishery, appears now to be blaming the decline of the stock on cold water.
6. A fisherman, who fished for 40 years, describes how fishers on the Port au Port fished from small boats through the seasons of cod, lobster and scallops to make a small but adequate income. Also the fishery would be sustainable. The fisherman, who also did income tax returns for his peers, says government has no desire to protect inshore fishermen because they don't produce enough tax revenue. (Conversation with Norman Young, L'Anse a Canards, July, 1996)
7. On April 8, 1904, France and Britain signed the Entente Cordiale by which for compensation France gave up her historical claims to an exclusive fishery on the French shore of Newfoundland. Theoretically, the French had only been supposed to use the land in the summer to dry fish but in fact during the nineteenth century many French nationals settled on the peninsula and intermarried with acadians and Miq-maq.
8. My understanding is that the practice was quite common elsewhere but I first heard of children being beaten for not speaking English in school from the Innuit of northern Labrador. The same thing happened to Port au Port francophones in the anglophone schools a generation ago.
9. Les Terre-Neuviens Francais was formed at Cap- St. Georges in 1971. For information about the francophones of the Port au Port contact Bob Cormier of ARCO at 709-642-5254.
10. Many of the French nationals who settled on the Port au Port came from Brittany. Nobody speaks Breton (a celtic language) now but people talk about their grandparents speaking the language.
"Axworthy brings in UI Changes: More work for less benefits"; "Union's worst fears come true." The Western Star, 2 Dec., 1995.
Barkham, Selma Huxley. The Basque Coast of Newfoundland. The Great Northern Peninsula Development Corporation, 1989.
Beeby, Dean. "Just Let Them Die: Ottawa advised to give up on some communities." The Western Star, 18 June, 1996.
Burkey, Stan. People First: A Guide to Self-Reliant, Participatory, Rural Development. London: ZED Books Ltd., 1993.
The Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development. Economic Adjustment in Selected Coastal Communities. Moncton: Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, 1995.
Charbonneau, Paul and Barrette, Louise. Against the Odds: A History of the Francophones of Newfoundland and Labrador, trans. Mike Luke. St. John's: Harry Cuff Publications Ltd., 1994.
Empty Nets: Excerpts from a Series of Forums on the Crisis in the Fishing Industry and Communities in Western Newfoundland and Labrador. St. John's: Coalition for Fisheries Survival and Memorial University Division of Extension Service, 1990.
Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, Vol. 1 -5, ed. Cyril F. Poole and Robert H. Cuff. St. John's: Harry Cuff Publications Ltd., 1994.
KPMG Management Consulting. A Comparison of 1996 Business Costs in Atlantic Canada and the United States. Moncton: Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, 1996.
Matthews, Aubrey. A Souvenir of Burgeo's Come Home Year. Burgeo: 1988.
McQuaig, Linda. Shooting the Hippo - Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths. Toronto: Penquin Books Canada Ltd., 1995.
Nelson, Joyce. Sultans of Sleaze: Public Relations and the Media. Toronto: Between the Lines.
Preparing for Tomorrow: A Community Profile. Ramea: The Town of Ramea.
Statistics Federal-Provincial Restellement Program: Community Consolidation Agreement (1965-1970) &Second Resettlement Agreement (1970-1975). 30 April 1974.
11. Many people on the Port au Port leave Newfoundland in the spring to work in the lobster plants or tobacco farms of Prince Edward Island or in agriculture and forestry of Nova Scotia. Usually their families will remain home.
RYAKUGA12. Contact Beverley Kirby, co-ordinator of the initiative at 709-648-9266.
13. TAGS is the Atlantic Groundfish Strategy. It was supposed to last until 1999 providing income support and retraining for fishers, plant workers and trawlermen affected by the cod moratorium. Unfortunately, the federal government, making up for saying there were more cod than there actually were, this time guessed there were far fewer people affected by the cod moratorium than there actually were. The result is that the program is being cut a year early.
14. REDC is a group of volunteers. For more information, contact Jim Marsden at 709-625-2235.
15. The Ramea Broadcasting Corporation is entirely run by volunteers with no paid staff. It is entirely financed within the community so profits stay on the island and don't go to the U.S. or southern Ontario.
16. Communication for Survival/Communiquer Pour Survivre was named by Elaine Keeping of Ramea at a meeting of community representatives in Stephenville in June, 1995. The initiative includes community partners from Ramea, Burgeo, Lourdes and area, and La Grand' Terre / Cap-St. Georges / L'Anse a Canards. Sponsoring partners are ARCO, REDC, Port au Port Community Education Initiative, Human Resources Development Canada and the Rural Newfoundland Cultural Survival Project.
17. There are many resource people in Communication for Survival/Communiquer Pour Survivre. In one sense, the whole community is a resource for survival commuication.
From a narrow perspective, the resource people for the current nine phases of the initiative include the staff of l'Association de la Cote Ouest; the volunteers of the Ramea Economic Development Corporation; the board members and staff of the Port au Port Community Education Initiative; the staff of the Burgeo Broadcasting System; the staff of Human Resource Development, Stephenville, and the Rural Newfoundland Cultural Survival Project.
18. Ryakuga is a non-profit development support communications organization based in western Newfoundland. It provides technical, human and print resources for Communiquer Pour Survivre/Communication for Survival. Contact ryakuga@web.net or see http://www.web.net/~ryakuga
19. Sustainability is the first priority of the resource people. The current commitment runs in ten phases - each of which contains a period of withdrawal of external intervention (in other words, the external resource people are working in other communities - hopefully, repeated nine times, this will maximize the opportunity for sustained community ownership). The goals, objectives and activities of the initiative are analyzed each month and evaluated three times during the phases. In addition, Ryakuga has produced a community communications needs, skills and resources assessment which, after an initial assessment, is developed incrementally to become a resource for the communities. But sustainability, of course, is ultimately a responsibility of the community residents.
20. In order to try to convey what's actually happening, we will narrow-focus on the components of a typical community television public forum and how it encourages the community-at-large to participate in public analysis and strategizing. The earliest television transmitter public meetings in rural Newfoundland were developed by the Memorial University Media Unit working with community groups and field workers from the university's extension department. The big difference with the current process is emphasis on continuity and sustainability in the community and a focus on a participatory communication process.
21. Trying to increase participation of the community-at-large is the main reason the Port au Port Community Education Initiative is involved in the initiative.
22. Another name for apathy might be inertia which is traditionally a protective mechanism of rural communities against change imposed from the outside. Aside from the protective nature of inertia/apathy, it is quite obvious that it's not going to be easy to encourage the disenfranchised to speak out when they have never been listened to before. If government decision makers are serious about consultation (a debatable point) then they are going to have to make sure they take action on what the people say.
23. In the 60's the National Film Board and Memorial University's extension service used film to convey messages back and forth between the people of Fogo Island and the provincial government. Video-letters are one of the most utilized forms of grassroots communication for Ryakuga.
24. JUST LET THEM DIE, by Dean Beeby, appeared on page one of the June 18, 1996, Western Star. It included an interview with the report's co-author Donald Savoie, who commented, "It's a cruel way of putting it, but why pretend?" The report is Economic Adjustment in Selected Coastal Communities, prepared by The Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, April, 1995.
25. Canadian ecofeminist Joyce Nelson examines the current government strategy of triage, or systematic culling of the species, in a chapter of Sultans of Sleaze called Triage: A Brief Conclusion. As an example of modern triage at work, she notes - "In the wake of the Love Canal, the New York state government's Department of Health conducted a risk/benefit analysis to estimate the financial value of saving people from exposure to toxic wastes... Triage - the systematic "culling" and dismissal of peoples and species deemed peripheral or superfluous to some larger agenda - is the underlying Zeitgeist that has replaced many other values as the basis for society. It is directly linked to an economy in which "worth" is judged by monetary standards alone." (page 149) Nelson quotes (page 148) Marc Ellis (Faithfulness in an Age of Holocaust), who writes "Such a world necessitates special types of people who dwell in abstraction and power, intelligent people who can create and maintain a complex society but who are, in essence, alienated from emotion and compassion."
26. See Statistics Federal-Provincial Resettlement Program-Community Consolidation Program-First Resettlement Agreement (1965-1970) &Second Resettlement Agreement (1970-1975). It has been suggested that the province's recent creation of 19 economic zones is disguised resettlement but, according to former premier Clyde Wells - "People can continue to live in their existing communities, but commute to the centre where economic activity will be available." Like a Rock, Atlantic Progress, September, 1995, page 28. The concept of resettlement is part of the heritage of the Port au Port francophones. Their Acadian ancestors suffered the Grand Derangement of 1755 with the British burning their homes and transporting them as far afield as Louisiana in what amounted to a massive land grab by New England planters. Resettlement does have its apologists, such as one Parzival Copes, currently residing in British Columbia.
27. As reported in The Western Star, December 2, 1995, page 1. The UI fund was self-supporting and funded by contributions from employees and employers. It, of course, had nothing to do with government's bogeyman, the deficit. Nelson describes how Canada's most powerful lobby group, the Business Council on National Issues (representing 150 blue-chip corporations) in 1986 publically called upon the federal government to make cuts in "family benefits, unemployment insurance benefits, old age pensions, health care funding, and university funTing>" (`age 92) It boggles the mind how successive federal governments, representing powerful business interests, have been able to cut social programs and raise unemployment levels, all in the name of reducing inflation and the deficit. Linda McQuaig, Shooting the Hippo-Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths. Toronto:Penquin Bollks Canada Ltd., 1995, describes why high unemployment and reduced social programs lower inflation (lower salaries and demand) and create a more docile labor
force. (pp. 147-156) She cites reports of an international bankers organization, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) which advocates using "unemployment as a desirable economic tool." Now, the current wisdom in federal economic circles is suspiciously similar to the social darwinism advocated by laissez-faire capitalism apologists of the nineteenth century. McQuaig notes that economist Albert Marshall, writing in the 1890s, said that government should not interfere with a marketplace which has a self-correcting mechanism - i.e. unemployment occurs when labor costs too much. (page 172) It's interesting to note that the last time in our history that there such a serious economic "recession" and such high unemployment was the economic "depression" of the 1930s. At the time a British economist, John Maynard Keynes, repudiated the theories of nineteeth century economists and laid the blame for the depression on laissez-faire capitalism. Keynes said governments should take a strong role in managing the economy and putting people back to work. Although we are taught that World War 2 ended the depression, it's certainly a worthwhile exercise to consider the influence of Keynsian economic theory on the programs of western governments designed to create employment for the people. The first act passed by the American congress after WW2 was The Full Employment Bill. When Keynes was presented with the same arguments we hear so much today, he retorted - In the long run, we'll all be dead.
28. This concept was a commonplace in St. John's development circles in the early 1990s. In 1994 a St. Vincent and the Grenadines development worker asked the author what is going on in Canada? He said that he had reports of police kicking down apartment doors in the middle of the night looking for Caribbean nationals who might be working in Toronto without government permission. (Conversation with Arthur Bobb, 1994)
29. Stan Burkey in People First: A Guide to Self-Reliant, Participatory Rural Development. London: ZED Books Ltd., 1993, describes (pp. 4-5) how methods of evaluating national wealth and poverty are changing. He shows how measuring by Gross National Product can be misleading when a few very rich can cancel out thousands of poor. Other measurements are the Physical Quality of Life Index and the Basic Needs Approach. However, Burkey notes that these do not take into account "immeasurable factors of welfare such as happiness, security, togetherness..." Upon reflection, the document that you are reading does not take into account the work being carried out, mostly by volunteers, to ensure the survival of communities in western Newfoundland. The organizations of REDC, ARCO , the Port au Port Community Education Initiative and Zone 9 are all working to develop economic strategies that will provide an environment for business opportunities. Related to this activity, the Atlantic Opportunities Agency has released A Comparison of Business Costs in Atlantic Canada and the United States, April 2, 1996. For further information about economic development in Zone 9, contact the economic development officer, Tom Hutchings at
LRREDB@thezone.net
30. In a CBC St. John's radio program, Outport Outlaws, Katherine Wellbourne describes the criminalization of the rural Newfoundland way of life. Traditional activities, such as fishing for food, berry picking and wood cutting are being made illegal as government puts in place elaborate and expensive policing to apprehend andpunYsh the 2wrongdoers".
31. A 1996 Human Development Report by the United Nations' Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation criticizes Canada for "a rising rate of poverty and continuing inequity in distribution of wealth." Who benefits from our currrent economic and political system?
32. Other countries, such as Switzerland and Japan, have seen fit to protect their small farmers, much to the chagrin of American corporate agriculture. What is being protected is not strictly an economy, but rather a way of life.
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