By Jason Logan
Private member’s bill to redefine well-being
The well-being of Canadians is inaccurately measured since social and environmental concerns are ignored, say some federal politicians and local activists.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the only way well-being is calculated, is inaccurate since it focuses solely on economic factors, says Liberal MP Joe Jordan.
The GDP is the total amount of income produced by a country’s industry and commerce. This is then used as a measurement of wealth and compared against GDPs of other countries.
But Jordan says this formula is misleading since it does not consider the greater conditions with which some money is generated.
The GDP includes compensation to sick or injured people, medical costs caused by pollution problems and money spent in the judicial system.
These are social flaws, Jordan says, and they should not reflect well-being in a positive way.
“What we need to do is talk about what it is people value and how that can be measured,” he says .
Jordan introduced the Canadian Well-Being Measures Act in a private member’s bill last year after witnessing hardships in Ethiopia and Hungary.
“The world on a global sense doesn’t work,” says Jordan.
However, the bill did not make it past the first reading. Because Jordan’s current position as a parliamentary secretary prohibits him from drafting a private member’s bill, Liberal MP Marlene Jennings reintroduced the measure as Bill C-268 on Feb. 14.
Andrew Jackson, director of research at the Canadian Council on Social Development, says the list of absences in the GDP’s measurement is even longer.
He says it ignores unpaid labour and employee overtime, health factors, housing shortages and income equality.
“The great virtue of the GDP is that we count everything in dollars, but the GDP is really a partial and inadequate measurement of well-being,” Jackson says.
The bill would inform the federal government and public of the social and environmental concerns through a non-partisan report by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
Mark Anielski, has been heading up research on the measurement of well-being with the Pembina Institute, an environmental think-tank.
He says that it will be interesting to see if the government embraces a non-partisan report such as this.
“We don’t necessarily trust the government to provide an objective report,” Anielski says.
But Jordan says a non-partisan report is necessary so the federal government can be held accountable for social and environmental problems.
“We want politicians to shake in their boots like they do when the auditor general speaks,” Jordan says. “If you have data gathered correctly, you can evaluate governments.”
The well-being of Canadians could be better measured by distributing surveys and questionnaires to the public in information kits, says Mike Nickerson, co-ordinator of The 7th Generation Initiative, who helped develop the act.
Nickerson says this would hopefully create public forums and indicate what social, environmental and economic concerns are most prominent among Canadians.
This information could then be compiled and revealed in a non-partisan public report so the House standing committee that deals with sustainability could address the problems.
Nickerson says he has sent out hundreds of faxes and established a mailing list to try to distribute the information kits to as many people as possible.
“People have concerns and they should be measured. Let’s look at these things more closely than positive and negative,” Nickerson says.
The draw of private member’s bills for the second reading is expected in the next few weeks now that Parliament has reconvened.
Jordan says he hopes the bill will receive support from all parties in the House of Commons.
That would bring the bill up for second reading automatically. He says he’s already received positive feedback from all parties .