• Home
  • Archive by category 'Economy'

Archive for ‘Economy’

Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis

By DennisGruending

Michael McBane & Tony Clarke

On New Year’s Day 1983, Canada’s Catholic bishops released their controversial report, Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis. Tony Clarke and Michael McBane worked for Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) at the time and were staff members for the bishops’ Social Affairs Commission. Thirty years later, in April 2013, the two appeared together at a Catholic church in Ottawa to talk about the report and its release in 1983.

“It was a time of high unemployment and deindustrialization,” McBane told an evening audience of 40 people at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. “There was very little sense in the country of the social ramifications of high unemployment. There was a sense of inevitability about it, almost as if it was an acceptable sign of economic progress, but the bishops named it a moral crisis.”

Read More
 

Elizabeth May, churches and climate change

By DennisGruending

In October 2011, the leaders of about 30 faith communities met in Ottawa to talk about the urgent need to take a stand on climate change as a moral issue. These deliberations were organized by the Commission on Justice and Peace of the Canadian Council of Churches. The faith leaders crafted and released an interfaith call for action in advance of an international conference in Durban, South Africa. They held a news conference, lobbied politicians on Parliament Hill and created a petition that MPs could table in the House of Commons. Recently about 100 people, including Green party leader Elizabeth May and three other MPs, gathered in a meeting room near the Hill for a panel discussion about whether last October’s interfaith call is having an impact.

Read More
 

Jim Manly at Northern Gateway pipeline hearings

By DennisGruending

Jim Manly, Rabble photo

Public hearings are occurring for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would transport crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands to the northern British Columbia port of Kitimat. There the crude would be loaded onto oil tankers plying the B.C. coastal waterway and sent to China.

There are billions of dollars at stake and the Prime Minister, it appears, will not tolerate anything but a swift and affirmative decision for the project. Various government ministers have, in effect, labelled those who raise concerns as “radical environmentalists” and enemies of the state who are financed from abroad. The government signalled in its recent budget that it will have the Canada Revenue Agency crack down on charitable organizations considered to be too political. It is no secret that they are taking aim at environmental groups.

David Suzuki has chosen to step down from the board of the foundation that he created so that he can continue speak his mind – and he hopes that the Suzuki Foundation will not become a target of the government. The government has also promised that it will shorten the time that it takes to hold an environmental hearing. This kind of activity by governments is common in most petro states. The amount of money at stake is astronomical and that usually trumps democratic process or environmental concern.

Read More
 

Peruvians in Hampstead crash from Comas

By DennisGruending

Shanty town near Lima, circa 1979

Nine of the ten farm workers killed in a tragic automobile accident near Hampstead, Ontario on February 6 came from Comas, a shantytown on the outskirts of Lima. They, and three others who survived crash, were in Canada as migrant farm workers because there is little chance in Comas of providing the necessities of life for their families. The 38-year-old Canadian driver of the truck that collided with the 15-passenger van carrying the Peruvians was also killed.

Read More
 

Canadian churches, climate change and Durban

By DennisGruending

 I have at times been critical of Canadian faith communities for failing to make the environment a moral priority. But a good number of religious leaders in Canada and elsewhere, weighed in for the climate talks in Durban, South Africa. I will get to Canadians in a moment but will start with the fireworks that arose from an advertisement in the Globe and Mail newspaper on November 30.

Read More
 

Canadian churches and the Occupy movement

By DennisGruending

Occupy Ottawa (Koozma Tarasoff photo)

The young protesters of the Occupy movement who have been living in tents in urban parks from Vancouver to Halifax are being forced out or threatened with eviction. In one respect, the mayors are inadvertently doing them a favour  — sparing them the discomfort and perils of living outdoors in winter and also allowing them to leave and to plan for their next phase in the srping.  

What has been achieved is extraordinary. The simple slogan (“We are the 99 per cent”) focused attention on corporate greed and growing economic inequality in a way that no one else has been able to do in decades.  It is the willingness of these young people to put themselves on the line that speaks to their contemporaries and to older people as well.

Read More
 

Index of Wellbeing and the Un-Economy

By DennisGruending

 

Jim Wallis

Two recent pieces of information give pause to claims that our economies are serving people well in North America and other countries. Jim Wallis, the American evangelical who has long been involved with a group called Sojourners, writes about an “un-economy” that is “unfair, unsustainable, unstable, and is making many people unhappy.”

Read More
 
© 2011 dennisGRUENDING
Designed by EyeVero 2011