Change of life

The Star's Peter Gorrie today neatly sums up one of the major flaws in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's supposed ''championing'' maternal health care and child mortality.

It's a point on which I have briefly touched several times.

Here's Peter, with linkage by me:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he wants to save the most vulnerable people on Earth.

"As president of the G8 in 2010, Canada will champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world's poorest regions," Harper said in a recent opinion article in this newspaper.

Some 500,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth every year, and 9 million kids die before their 5th birthday, he wrote. "Far too many lives and unexplored futures have already been lost for want of relatively simple health-care solutions."

Details are to come – in the federal budget scheduled for next month, and Harper's opening speech to the G20 summit, to be held here in June.

What should we expect from his sudden outburst of compassion?

Here's a clue.

A few days after Harper's article, Environment Minister Jim Prentice spoke in Calgary about climate change. Not only is Canada weakening its target for greenhouse gas emissions "to ensure that it matches exactly" the U.S. goal, Prentice said, but this country will also do nothing until the Americans act.

"We will only adopt a cap-and-trade regime if the United States signals that it wants to do the same. Our position on harmonization applies equally to regulation."

Since the U.S. Congress is unlikely to pass meaningful climate change legislation, and lawsuits will snarl any attempt by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose regulations, our government will happily continue the profligate status quo.

This approach hobbles Canada's ability to develop a thriving low-carbon economy: We'll leave that benefit to those with more ambition and imagination.

It also makes a mockery of Harper's pledge to help impoverished women and children. Even if Canada provides ample medicine and food to developing countries – an outcome that's far from certain – his "relatively simple" measures wouldn't suffice because poverty and disease result from social, economic and environmental wounds that require more than bandages.

Just about every major human rights organization I know has reported on how climate change has a greater effect on women than men -- including CIDA which is supposed to be financing this maternal health care initiative. Doesn't one hand know what the other is doing? Or is the Harper government that cynical?

Well, of course. This is the same government that cut off KAIROS -- which helps rape victims and works against environmental degradation -- because, or so Immigration Minister Jason Kenney claimed in Jerusalem, it's anti-Semitic. Which it is not.

Only goes to show how opportunistic Harper's initiative is. How can there be maternal health care and lower infant mortality when there's severe environmental degradation, causing droughts, floods, landslides?

It's women who walk miles to find water, kindling, fuel, food. It's women who are the back of the line when resources are scarce. It's women who are savaged when there are wars for food and water.

Continues Peter:

"If we invest in women's health while ignoring the impact of climate change, then, we're doomed to failure," says Robert Fox, executive-director of Oxfam Canada.

The most recent United Nations report on The State of the World's Population explains why:

"Women ... are among the most vulnerable to climate change, partly because in many countries they make up the larger share of the agricultural work force and partly because they tend to have access to fewer income-earning opportunities.

"Women manage households and care for family members, which often limits their mobility and increases their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural disasters. Drought and erratic rainfall force women to work harder to secure food, water and energy for their homes. Girls drop out of school to help their mothers with these tasks (creating a) cycle of deprivation, poverty and inequality."

As climate change threatens their survival in rural areas, people flee to cities; forced into crowded, squalid conditions where food and water are scarce and diseases flourish. The precarious homes of these climate refugees are usually first to be destroyed in a storm or flood.

In general, women are more likely than men to die in weather-related disasters, which have increased four-fold over the past 20 years.

Sending traditional aid into these situations could ease some pain, but it's akin to pouring water into a bottomless bucket.

If Harper were serious about his new campaign, he'd put Canada in the lead on climate change rather than keep us a laggard. He'd make that policy part of a coherent effort to change the conditions that condemn so many women and children to desperate, short lives.

"We don't see them connecting the dots," Fox says.

Worse, they act as if the dots don't even exist.

The Harper Government: Working Hard to Get Those Left-Wing Fringe Group Votes.

Comments

[Uptown]

Honestly, Antonia, the old hat SW arguments that fiscal restraint is racist, or bombing Serbia is really just homophobia, or failing to stop climate change is an attack on women (as opposed to, well men too), etc. - all of it just hurts your case and reinforces the crude perception that defending these causes is just another partisan talking point.

Harper's sudden, insincere interest in the maternal health issue and his longstanding disinterest in climate change both deserve deep, thoughtful - and separate - responses. There are no dots to connect here; each dot has merit on its own.

[CanNurse]

REPLY to Uptown. No, actually you're the one not "getting it". The fact is that it is well-established that Climate Change makes women's lives in developing countries even more difficult. The fact is that without addressing that issue, all the "aid money" poured into these areas to help women & children will be like trying to fill a bucket that has a big hole in the side of it. It's not that difficult to understand.

[Uptown]

Ok, then. I'll write letters tomorrow to every aid organization in developing countries and tell them to shift their resources to climate change, because that's obviously what's most important.

And any microcredit work that's ongoing - that's a waste, too, let's shift their dollars to green power construction so the rich in Bangalore can have greener air conditioning.

Thanks - you convinced me I was wrong all along!

[darla st.mary]

I've heard more the once that, Harper, doesn't want to help single woman. Why? Because single women are not married and therefore seem, less admireable? Less valuable?
LET ME TELL YOU,
single woman are preyed upon! By traffickers-organised crimisters, especially women who live alone and have little or no family ties.
IT'S TIME FOR THE 'NEW GOVERNMENT OF CANADA', TO GET RID OF THEIR LEADER! Then we will see how long it takes
to stand up and protect Canada's most vulnerable.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Esteemed and Beautiful Moderator,

"Klimate Change" is gradually proving to be the fraud of the century, as socialism was last century.

Like it or not, the oilsands are currently the engine of Canada's economy. Shutting them down or burdening them with overregulation will leave us all far poorer, and in far less of a position to provide any sort of aid to the less-well-off.

I just wish the government would drop the pretence that "Klimate Change" under any sort of UN auspices is a priority. Come on, Steve. Follow India's lead.

www.stevejanke.com

[MensRightsNow]

to stand up and protect Canada's most vulnerable.

who...the unborn?

[Jim M]

Yes, the unborn, MRN. Men's Rights Now would be called Men's Rights Then if 'it' was genuinely concerned about unborn children. But that was then and this is now, right Men's Rights Now?

[stellersjay]

Bob, the only worthy poor are abroad. Our own poor are just lazy and shiftless. As a neoconservative, Harper would believe in having an external enemy for the masses (who they hold in contempt) to hate on. But the poor at home are really a better enemy. Unlike an external enemy, they can't really fight back, since the public shrugs at the ever-greater abuses and violations of their rights, and with a compliant media onside, the sky’s the limit on vilifying them.

I continue to be puzzled by MensRightsNow’s visits. Isn’t there some forum where passing off hostility towards women as concern for children is less likely to be greeted with scorn? The National Post comes to mind.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Meanwhile, check out http://stevejanke.com/archives/298011.php

"Global warming alarmists at risk of losing California; McGuinty tries to slide by"

This "klimate change" shtick will actually do a lot of harm to the most vulnerable in society, by driving out a lot of the actual jobs they depend on, it's a sort of rich liberal fad, like so much of this "green" nonsense.

This could be the first positive trend out of California for years ......