4 Just watch him
Most farmers know you need land to produce food you can export. But during his recent visit to Vancouver, federal agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay seemed so keen on overseas trade opportunities that the fact fell off his radar. Questioned by Country Life in BC during a media scrum after addressing the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade last month, he made clear that Canada’s farmers need access to foreign markets for their products. While declaring his tour of Vancouver port facilities “some interesting,” the PEI Member of Parliament didn’t appear to have been briefed on the port’s designs on hundreds of acres of local farmland. He wasn’t aware of how much agricultural land might be at risk even as the port has estimated its requirements over the next decade at 2,700 acres. “We do not want to lose agricultural land, but it’s no good producing products that you can’t move, either. So it’s one way or the other,” he said.
While he told board of trade members he was all for Canada’s food security, the idea that the potatoes, berries and greenhouse vegetables grown in BC might find a home in local markets wasn’t part of the day’s
message.
Combined with Ottawa’s endorsement of the Site C power project, which will create an 83- kilometre-long reservoir and submerge thousands of acres of farmland, and its support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, developing international markets is fundamental to the sunny ways Prime Minister Trudeau promises – clouding its ostensible support for local growers.
One of the hurdles the Liberals faced while campaigning a year ago was the widespread perception of the party being the voice of an urban elite that shops at farmers markets but would most likely squeal like a pig if it stepped in some stray nutrients (to use the polite term from Environmental Farm Plans).
Trudeau Jr has regained for Canada a large measure of the international goodwill lost during the Harper years. But the impromptu photos that bring new meaning to his father’s quip, “just watch me,” seldom take place in farmyards. Producers hoping to catch him in BC would need to look no further than up the Grouse Grind, surfing in Tofino or performing a two- step for the crowds in a parade. The challenges of getting Prairie
grain to port have been acute in recent years, but the cost of getting wheat to water shouldn’t be the loss of BC farms.
BC farmers face enough challenges without the federal agriculture minister telling them they’ve got to suck up yet another development for their own good. That runs counter to his pledge to support local opportunities for local farmers, and jeopardizes the $3.5 billion worth of BC agri-food exports
MacAualy says he wants to increase. A year into his term, Trudeau hasn’t faced the challenges that made his father one of the country’s most colourful prime ministers. The photo ops haven’t included a pirouette or the so-called Salmon Arm salute to jobless protestors, or anything that could be mistaken for “fuddle duddle.” With ministers like MacAulay telling BC farmers that overseas markets come first, he doesn’t have to.
The dangers of being distracted in a connnected world
On June 1, the Motor Vehicle Act was amended to increase the penalties for the use of a hand held electronic device while operating a motor vehicle. The fine for a distracted driving violation ticket is now $368, four driver’s license penalty points and a $175 ICBC Driver’s Penalty Point Premium. That’s a
The Back 40 BOB COLLINS
total of $543 for a first infraction. A second infraction within a year will add up to another $886. These are hefty fines but the really scary numbers are out there on the roads and highways: 20% of BC drivers admit to using hand held electronic devices while driving; the visual awareness of a driver using a cell phone decreases by 50%, and 27% of all BC car crash fatalities involve distracted driving.
Summer of 1967
Distracted driving isn’t new and it is not the exclusive domain of drivers on cell phones. It used to be referred to as undue care and attention. I remember seeing a classic example of it on West Fourth Avenue in Vancouver in the summer of 1967 when a young man gazing sidelong at an especially attractive pedestrian drove his Impala into the rear
COUNTRY
Vol. 102 No. 10 October 2016
end of a Mercury waiting to make a left turn. Fortunately, it all unfolded in slow motion and there were no serious injuries.
There will always be a certain number of daydreamers behind the wheel, absorbed in their thoughts and not paying proper attention to what they are doing, but it is hard to imagine that their numbers would come anywhere close to the 20% of drivers who admit to using electronic devices while they are driving. Some even profess to be good at it. Kind of like the intoxicated driver who believes that the alcohol in their system actually makes them more competent.
Of added concern is the total number of all drivers who have some sort of active device with them and are literally accidents waiting to happen. Cell phones and tablets are now ubiquitous. It is nearly impossible to be in any public space without being surrounded by people absorbed with a hand held something-or-other. Even if they’re not actively using, few seem able to resist the beep or chime that might announce another tweet from a millionaire sports celebrity or someone who liked their Facebook photo of yesterday’s lunch. To be fair, it’s not all so mundane. There are endless examples of the business and professional benefits of the wireless world, but you have to wonder at what point all of that connectedness crosses the line from practical to pointless. In the case of distracted drivers, it goes beyond pointless
Editor & Publisher Peter Wilding Phone: 604/871-0001 • Fax: 604/871-0003
Life
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to outright dangerous. The list is endless
Wireless distraction isn’t a phenomenon restricted to time spent behind the wheel of an automobile. It is a condition that can affect any human activity. Distracted pedestrians, distracted parents, distracted students, distracted employees – the list is endless. Increasingly, people are leading distracted lives. Today’s children have been born into a wireless world and few of them will escape a distracted childhood. As memorable as the distracted driver I saw in Vancouver in 1967 are the six and seven year olds I witnessed this summer taking selfies of themselves on a playground slide. It seemed much too serious to count as play in the traditional sense of the word. There were no delighted squeals and the rush to climb back up and go again was replaced by silent examination of the content just created: the unbridled exuberance of playing on the slide replaced by the distraction of an image of themselves taking a picture of themselves sitting on the slide. Shared onto the internet, those images become a distraction for others.
As our world becomes increasingly wireless and connected, the same peril faces us all: the more connected, the more distracted. Eventually you cross the line from being distracted to being A distraction. For the kid’s sakes, we really should be aiming higher.
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Country Life in BC • October 2016
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