11:46 p.m. - 2002-12-05
Deja NEP
I went downtown to pick up some documents from the company I have been working for as a consultant. Ended up sitting with the VP talking about the Kyoto Protocol. She said it was the main reason there weren't any assignments right now. Most Calgary companies are waiting until it is decided one way or another before they will commit to spending any new money. Some are already starting to cut back and lay off staff.
In this city it is a major issue, because we are the head office capital in Canada for oil companies. Any major action they take has a profound effect on our community. Right now, a lot of these companies are equating the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the Federal Government with the National Energy Program that was brought in as a national policy by the newly re-elected government of Pierre Trudeau in 1980. The aim of the program was said to be to gain more national control of primary resources. Reserves at that time were counted as low and decreasing and there was a fear of being forced to import more product from other countries. In short, the intent was conservation. The oil companies of the day, with the Provincial Government egging them on since they saw it as an opportunity to wrest some power away from both parties, responded by ceasing all exploration. Production on any new wells was stopped and they were "shut in" en masse. In a few short months, our city went from a booming economy and a massive population growth with interest rates at about 16-21% for loans and mortgages, to a bust economy where thousands of people had lost their jobs directly from staff cuts in the oil patch, or from the collapse of hundreds of businesses in the supply and service end of oil and gas or construction related industries.
My community was one of the newest in the city at that time. It was made up mostly of starter homes for young families. Everyone was "house poor" because of the cost of living at that time. In six short months, one third of the homes had been foreclosed by the banks because the owners had lost their jobs. I remember being in a meeting about the park we were trying to build, the lawyers who were volunteering with us were joking about owning that much of one community. I found it hard to find any humour in it when I knew a lot of the people personally who were represented by those deeds that had been "scooped up". Their pain and suffering was real and it was intense - multiplied by the despair of knowing that they hadn't done anything wrong. They had simply been trapped in a battle for power between the governments and the oil and gas corporations. They were deemed just "collateral damage" by all sides in the power struggle. Pawns for the "moral" high ground because, of course, each side was claiming they were doing what they were doing to "save the future" for us - the little folk. There was nothing moral about any of the sides' actions. We were never asked nor invovled in the determination of options for our "destiny".
Because I was heavily involved in community based volunteer activities, I witnessed the destruction of hundreds of average, healthy families who could not withstand the reality of long-term unemployment, poverty, and the loss of their homes - which had "lost" half their value in the housing slump - and their businesses. My name was on a lot of contact lists because of the committees I worked on, and I started getting several calls a day from these families who found there was no place to turn for help. Lack of formal support networks, either government or corporate, meant there was no place else to turn as desperation turned into family violence, alcohol and drug abuse, marital breakdown, in addition to a whole host of other issues that plague families at all socio-economic levels like catastrophic illness, incest, sexual abuse, and mental health problems. I was in my twenties and had never thought I would be asked to deal with such issues on a day to day basis. I got involved in a side of volunteering I had been barely conscious of until that time; that of dealing with systemic or catastrophic social problems. It was a type of issue I knew I didn't have the resources or skills to draw on to carry out on my own or even with a group of volunteers. Setting up parenting workshops on how to help ones' child study or how to deal with sibling rivalry or community workshops on how to budget or how to deal with "silly hall" - that I could do, no problem. But having someone call to say they'd swallowed all the pills in their house would I make arrangements for their children, trying to find a safe place for a woman who had been beaten and was being hunted by her spouse, being verbally threatened with the possibility of being shot by that male, or trying to find help for a couple of young sisters who had been sexually abused by a family member (none existed then) - that was more than I could carry in addition to looking after my own sons, running a day home and carrying on with the more tangible volunteer work in the schools and the community.
The lack of care or concern from any of the creators of the conditions that either caused or exacerbated a lot of these problems made me angry enough that I got involved and stayed engaged in the process for many years. I worked with people like me who wanted both the resources to deal with all these issues and accountability from services set up to do so. Some money was being spent but the results were dismal. Today things are a little better, but not good enough. Another round of being the pawns in someone else's power play makes me wonder if there's enough energy to draw on to get through this again. Sounds melodramatic but the signs of breakdown are already surfacing. An oilpatch worker - one who'd just started his own business - was in a custody dispute with his spouse over their two year old son. He was already showing signs of violence but there were "no grounds" for thinking he would harm the baby. He took the little guy out to a remote area a couple of days ago and shot him, then he shot himself. One could say, I suppose, that this was just an "isolated incident", and that it happens from time to time, (and yes I know each person is accountable for their own actions) but this is just too much like an echo from social conditions in this city in 1980. I'm afraid this kind of deja vu is just the tip of the iceberg if the Federal and Provincial governments and the energy companies decide to play "Mexican stand-off" again.
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