Category Archives: health

Run for the Cure

health, toronto

I just got this email from my brother. I knew the friend Alex mentions below. He was one of those genuinely nice and fun guys who no one could ever dislike. Anyway, I wanted to share it with you.

i’m participating in a fundraiser for breast cancer on october 1st where i will be running 5k, imagining that i’m stomping on cancer with each stride. you might already know that i lost a really amazing friend last month to cancer, and while it wasn’t breast cancer, a number of his friends are running together as a team called, ‘the palligators’ to support the canadian breast cancer foundation. it should also be noted that he is not the first person this group of friends has lost to cancer.the point of this run is to raise money to research treatment, early detection and prevention in addition to supporting communities and families affected by breast cancer. so, having said that, i need your help reaching my personal fundraising goal of $500, and my team’s fundraising goal of $3000. i’ve included a link in this e-mail which will take you to my donations page. you can do it online with your credit card and it’s super quick and easy. you even get a tax receipt for your charitable donation. plus, i’ll be eternally grateful.

Click here.

even if you can only donate $10, it will put me that much closer to my goal.

thanks in advance.

alex.

Economy, Environment, Health

ecology, economy, health, polls

Those are the three most important issues for Canadians, in that order, according to a poll released yesterday. The status-quo parties are still treating them as three separate issues, but we know better. You can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy environment, and you can’t have healthy Canadians on a sick planet.

“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.” – Herman Daly, Former Senior Economist, World Bank

That’s good news for the Green Party, because we’re the only ones who can speak with credibility on all three of those issues, and how they relate to each other.

“The emergence of Stéphane Dion as the ecological conscience of the Liberal leadership campaign and the advent of Elizabeth May as leader of the Green Party, are blowing away the NDP’s chances of portraying itself as the champion of the environment.” Chantal Hébert, The Toronto Star, Sept. 13, 2006.

Our current economy is designed to use up our resources as quickly as possible. As long as we believe that “economic growth” can continue as it has for only the past millisecond of our existence, we will fail. We need to transform our economy.

Our environment is in trouble. A full two-thirds of the systems that support life on this planet are in decline. As long as environmental policies are focused exclusively on “spending money” on the environment and regulating against misaligned economic indicators, they will fail. We need to transform our outlook.

Our health system is sick. From childhood asthma in the young to a cancer epidemic in the increasingly young, costs of all kinds are rising. As long as we think we can fix our heath care system by increasing its funding in perpetuity, as we get sicker and sicker, we will fail. We need to transform the way we think about health.

Canadians are smart people, and have their priorities right. Now we’ve just got to vote like it.

Priorities and Leadership

conservative party, democracy and good government, economy, foreign affairs, health, social justice

I saw Stephen Lewis speak last night, and was not disappointed. One of the things that really impressed me was his ability to juggle despair with hope, death with life, dire statistics with practical solutions.

Stephen was of course speaking on the topic of HIV/AIDS, along with Mary Ash, filmmaker Norman Jewison, and others at an event organized by ICA Canada.

I won’t attempt to summarize the content of the evening. For one, as Stephen said, the issue is so huge and complex that it’s impossible to hold in your mind all at once, let alone to hold in a blog post. For another, the statistics are difficult to understand in any real way. I have a hard time imagining what it would be like if one in three Torontonians had AIDS, as is the case in too many parts of Africa.

In his closing remarks, Norman Jewison called AIDS the greatest crisis facing humanity, with the possible exception of (or second only to?) nuclear warfare. I would have said global warming in place of nuclear warfare, but either way his comment got me thinking about priorities. Specifically, those of Stephen Harper, who reiterated today that AIDS is not a priority for him.

Instead, his top five priorities upon getting elected were:

  1. An accountability act that does little for accountability.
  2. A GST cut (along with an income tax raise) that most economists think is a bad idea.
  3. “Cracking down” on crime. (Definition of “cracking down” is pending.)
  4. A child care plan that doesn’t create child care.
  5. A health plan that wont keep Canadians healthy.

Notably absent are the three crises above, at least one of which (the climate crisis) is being increasingly cited as a top concern of Canadians. To say nothing of democratic reform, water security, food security, or the inequality of Canada’s aboriginal population (which, by the way, has a higher rate of HIV/AIDS than the rest of Canada), to name but a few. But hey, at least now a can of Coke costs one cent less. (Oh wait, Coke still costs the same. How’d they get away with that?)

When Harper announced his list back in January, he said that “you can’t lead if you can’t focus and determine what really matters.”

I’ll give him that.

Climate Crisis Smoke And Mirrors

climate crisis, health

Greens have sometimes drawn comparisons between those who argue against the science of climate change and those who argue that smoking is not that bad for you.

As it turns out, we’ve been painfully right. As in, they’re the same people. A recent issue of Vanity Fair exposed a global warming critic named Dr. Frederick Seitz for having also been paid by the tobacco industry to deny the links between smoking and cancer.

I bring this up because my buddy Andrew Frank just emailed me to let me know about another double-agent, Steven Milloy, who’s recently been quoted with some frequency by the National Post. Read Andrew’s clever and well-written take on the subject here, and heck, share the link with your friends too.