Last semester, our class was asked to review national sustainable development strategies in Europe. This piqued my interest. I had known about the departmental sustainable development strategies (e.g. the one at Natural Resources Canada), but was not sure if there had been a Canadian one. There hadn't been one developed on a national level, but Bill C-474, the Federal Sustainable Development Act, passed the House of Commons on June 13, 2008. I was glad to see that all MPs in Canada who were present at Second Reading (in February 2008) voted for the Federal Sustainable Development Act - except Bradley Trost of Saskatoon-Humboldt, who voted against even all other Conservative MPs. I sent Mr. Trost the following message about this, and encourage you to do the same.
If you do email him, include your address; he is more likely to respond to you directly if you do so.
Dear Mr. Trost,
I was recently asked to study National Sustainable Development Strategies in Europe. Piqued by this request, I decided to analyse Canada's progress on developing a National Sustainable Development Strategy. I discovered that Bill C-474, "An Act to require the development and implementation of a Federal Sustainable Development Strategy and the development of goals and targets with respect to sustainable development in Canada, and to make consequential amendments to another Act", was passed on June 13, 2008. I was pleased to find out that all Members of Parliament had voted in favour of this act, save yourself. I am writing this message to ask for an explanation as to why you voted against this Act. Could you please provide your reasoning behind this decision?
Thank you very much.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
First update!
Hi everyone,
So, it has taken me a LOT longer than I expected to get around to this. I guess I had underestimated how much work a one-year Master's would be... Just to catch you up on school, I'm doing a Master's in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability (MSLS) at the Blekinge Institute of Technology (Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, or BTH). The program is divided into four semesters. We've just wrapped up the first semester. It was only one course during the first semester - the Introduction to Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability course. Our exam was on Hallowe'en.
I've divided this message into a few sections to try to cover what it's been like living in Sweden over the first 2 1/2 months.
Karlskrona
Karlskrona is a fairly small city in southeastern Sweden. The Karlskrona Kommun has about 60,000 people, but the city itself is far smaller, around 33,000. One of my classmates compared it to Kingston. I feel that North Bay might be a more apt comparison at times - it definitely looks like it could be on the Canadian Shield. The surrounding area looks a LOT like Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. Fall colours and the landscape definitely make this comparison stronger. The town was fairly depressed until about the late 1990's, when a technology area was set up. Ericsson and Telenor are in town, and BTH is growing and becoming more respected as an institution. It is a military centre, and the navy is important here. I have to admit a bit of ignorance on this point - I have not gotten to know Karlskrona as well as I expected to up to this point.
Weather
Well, autumn is not when we get the best weather in southeastern Sweden. It's the wettest time, and because I stream CBC Ottawa daily and hear the weather reports, I get jealous of the warm sunny fall days that those of you back home are having. That said, there have been enough nice days to enjoy (for those I have on Facebook, check out the pics of my bike rides), and it hasn't really started getting cold yet. The temperature dropped to 5C at night in mid-September, but it has kind of stayed around there. Temperatures right now range between daily lows of 6C and highs of 10C. The next few days are going to be lousy, windy rainy days...
I'm looking forward to winter, though, as the weather is about 10C warmer here on average than in Ottawa!
Transportation
I find getting around very easy here. I bike everywhere, and do it in lousier weather than I would've back home. That might have to do with the dedicated bike lanes that have curbs to separate bikes from car traffic on the road to school and into town, and, well, almost anywhere else I've gone. There is a shockingly good bus system for such a small town (probably as good as Ottawa's system, for 1/15th the population base). Space isn't as well planned here as I thought, however. The car-dependent suburbs still exist. But on the plus side, one has legitimate options for traveling around the city and to other towns – if not train, then buses.
Housing
Finding a place was a bigger stressor than I anticipated when I arrived. At the beginning, I was very jealous of those who had pre-arranged their accommodations. I didn't know where I was going to live or with whom, or if I'd be living alone, and the market looked really tight (and was, well, in Swedish…). Well, things really worked out. I live about 15 minutes by foot from both downtown and from school, on an island called Långö, just off of the main route between school and downtown. There's a grocery store about 5 minutes away by foot. It's a gorgeous spot in an 80 year old brown brick house that is distinct from the other houses on the island. I have two incredible flatmates – Josefin, who is from Norrköping, about 300 km north of here, and Carlo, who is from Melbourne. The house dynamic is incredible. I am lucky that this worked out as it did.
Shopping
This will be a short section. Stores in the centre of the town aren't open much – until 6 in the evenings on week-days, and 2 on Saturdays and not at all on Sundays. What a great way to save money and keep you from buying too much! My shopping tends to be geared towards food more than anything else. A little message for Tammy and others who noticed my wine collection in Ottawa – it gets hard to stock up wine bottles when the liquor store keeps those hours. ;) There are slightly better hours out at the power centre (yeah, they have power centres here – groan; but they're bike accessible and even have bike parking, which is nice), but even out there, week-end hours extend all the way to 4 p.m.
Travel
On of the nicest things about Karlskrona is that the train to Copenhagen runs every hour. :) This plays on a joke told about Stockholm in Gothenburg – what is the one good thing about Stockholm? There's a train to Gothenburg from there.
There are plenty of local buses to get us to all of the closest towns. I took advantage of this in September to go up to Kalmar to watch a football match with a couple of friends (which turned out to be the Swedish Cup Final). I haven't been out of Karlskrona nearly as much as I thought I would, though; other than Kalmar, I've only travelled to Denmark on a school trip. We stayed near Roskilde for the class workshop, about 40 km west of Copenhagen, and stopped in Copenhagen for the week-end. This may change soon, though – Germany is too close to go untouched. Poland is next door - there's a direct ferry from here to Gdynia, and Poland beckons at some point, as does Stockholm, Oslo, England, the Netherlands, France…
Class and Classmates
Classes are not what I expected! While there is a fair amount of technical discussion in some courses, it is as much about the strategic and leadership parts of the program's title as it is about sustainability. This is what I probably needed, without knowing so before I got here. I'll benefit most from learning how to have the discussion on sustainability, why we need to move towards it as a society, and how we can get there.
To summarize it, we have four basic rules that can be considered scientifically accepted principles for sustainability:
There are no systematic increases:
1) in materials moving from the Earth's crust to the biosphere;
2) in manmade compounds in the biosphere;
3) in physical degradation of ecosystems; and
4) there should be no degradation of people's abilities to meet their needs.
This does not mean that a sustainable world will be perfect. There will still be crime, there will still be occasional extinctions, and there will be occasional changes in the amount of material moved to the biosphere from the crust, and the amount of manmade compounds added to the biosphere. But, what it does mean is that these levels will no longer systematically increase in concentration. They will reach a steady-state, and so will society.
We have had some incredible speakers already. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, the founder of The Natural Step and co-founder of the program, has given several lectures to us. His first lecture convinced me that I had made the right choice in doing this. Göran Carstedt, formerly head of Volvo and IKEA North America, also came and spoke to us about leadership and organizational change for 1 ½ days. We've had other great guest speakers, and the roll call will only get better over the next two months. Our Engineering for a Sustainable Society course will be going to Gothenburg in three weeks to meet with Leif Johansson, the current CEO of Volvo. As you can guess, our program and The Natural Step both have a close connection with Volvo. The teaching staff is very knowledgeable. I think that all of them either had a hand in creating the MSLS program or are graduates of the program. BTW – let me know if I sound a bit cultish – it's been one of my worries.
There is a variety of backgrounds in the class. However, almost half of the class is Canadian and American – ten Canadians (though three of them are Canadians with other links) and thirteen Americans. Other countries represented include China (6), Pakistan (5), Brazil (3), Australia (3), Sweden (3), France (2), Mexico, Bangladesh, Nigeria, the UK, Greece, Taiwan and South Korea. They have a lot of different academic and professional backgrounds. Some of my classmates are fresh out of school (with about 2 to 3 years of experience); others have as much as 15-20 years of experience in the work world. The group is not as science and engineering heavy as I'd expected – which is good! I am learning as much from them as I am from the courses. I won't get into a detailed discussion about the people in the class, but I have become fast friends with a few of them, and know that I will be in touch with many of them once we're finished off here.
Language
So… Swedish is a bit harder than I thought. I still can't make heads or tails out of what I hear, and what things look like on paper still don't correlate to me to what they sound like.
I had applied for the Swedish class offered at school about 5 days before it started. Unfortunately it was full. After sitting in on it last week, though, I realized I should've been sitting in the whole time – the class is, at best, half full. Anyhow, having a Swedish flatmate has helped, but my Swedish is still at the level where my typical answer when asked anything is "Jag förstår inte Svenska." (I don't understand Swedish.) I've at least finally learned the numbers… I'm starting to learn more, but I need to work more at it, if the time presents itself.
Wrap-up
I haven't gone into everything here. I haven't talked about what I miss the most from home (the answer is 'the people in my life'), and I probably haven't hit on what I like and dislike about here directly (indirectly, there is a picture painted).
So, that's a bit of an idea of my impressions of my first 2 1/2 months in Sweden. Thanks for reading this!
So, it has taken me a LOT longer than I expected to get around to this. I guess I had underestimated how much work a one-year Master's would be... Just to catch you up on school, I'm doing a Master's in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability (MSLS) at the Blekinge Institute of Technology (Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, or BTH). The program is divided into four semesters. We've just wrapped up the first semester. It was only one course during the first semester - the Introduction to Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability course. Our exam was on Hallowe'en.
I've divided this message into a few sections to try to cover what it's been like living in Sweden over the first 2 1/2 months.
Karlskrona
Karlskrona is a fairly small city in southeastern Sweden. The Karlskrona Kommun has about 60,000 people, but the city itself is far smaller, around 33,000. One of my classmates compared it to Kingston. I feel that North Bay might be a more apt comparison at times - it definitely looks like it could be on the Canadian Shield. The surrounding area looks a LOT like Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. Fall colours and the landscape definitely make this comparison stronger. The town was fairly depressed until about the late 1990's, when a technology area was set up. Ericsson and Telenor are in town, and BTH is growing and becoming more respected as an institution. It is a military centre, and the navy is important here. I have to admit a bit of ignorance on this point - I have not gotten to know Karlskrona as well as I expected to up to this point.
Weather
Well, autumn is not when we get the best weather in southeastern Sweden. It's the wettest time, and because I stream CBC Ottawa daily and hear the weather reports, I get jealous of the warm sunny fall days that those of you back home are having. That said, there have been enough nice days to enjoy (for those I have on Facebook, check out the pics of my bike rides), and it hasn't really started getting cold yet. The temperature dropped to 5C at night in mid-September, but it has kind of stayed around there. Temperatures right now range between daily lows of 6C and highs of 10C. The next few days are going to be lousy, windy rainy days...
I'm looking forward to winter, though, as the weather is about 10C warmer here on average than in Ottawa!
Transportation
I find getting around very easy here. I bike everywhere, and do it in lousier weather than I would've back home. That might have to do with the dedicated bike lanes that have curbs to separate bikes from car traffic on the road to school and into town, and, well, almost anywhere else I've gone. There is a shockingly good bus system for such a small town (probably as good as Ottawa's system, for 1/15th the population base). Space isn't as well planned here as I thought, however. The car-dependent suburbs still exist. But on the plus side, one has legitimate options for traveling around the city and to other towns – if not train, then buses.
Housing
Finding a place was a bigger stressor than I anticipated when I arrived. At the beginning, I was very jealous of those who had pre-arranged their accommodations. I didn't know where I was going to live or with whom, or if I'd be living alone, and the market looked really tight (and was, well, in Swedish…). Well, things really worked out. I live about 15 minutes by foot from both downtown and from school, on an island called Långö, just off of the main route between school and downtown. There's a grocery store about 5 minutes away by foot. It's a gorgeous spot in an 80 year old brown brick house that is distinct from the other houses on the island. I have two incredible flatmates – Josefin, who is from Norrköping, about 300 km north of here, and Carlo, who is from Melbourne. The house dynamic is incredible. I am lucky that this worked out as it did.
Shopping
This will be a short section. Stores in the centre of the town aren't open much – until 6 in the evenings on week-days, and 2 on Saturdays and not at all on Sundays. What a great way to save money and keep you from buying too much! My shopping tends to be geared towards food more than anything else. A little message for Tammy and others who noticed my wine collection in Ottawa – it gets hard to stock up wine bottles when the liquor store keeps those hours. ;) There are slightly better hours out at the power centre (yeah, they have power centres here – groan; but they're bike accessible and even have bike parking, which is nice), but even out there, week-end hours extend all the way to 4 p.m.
Travel
On of the nicest things about Karlskrona is that the train to Copenhagen runs every hour. :) This plays on a joke told about Stockholm in Gothenburg – what is the one good thing about Stockholm? There's a train to Gothenburg from there.
There are plenty of local buses to get us to all of the closest towns. I took advantage of this in September to go up to Kalmar to watch a football match with a couple of friends (which turned out to be the Swedish Cup Final). I haven't been out of Karlskrona nearly as much as I thought I would, though; other than Kalmar, I've only travelled to Denmark on a school trip. We stayed near Roskilde for the class workshop, about 40 km west of Copenhagen, and stopped in Copenhagen for the week-end. This may change soon, though – Germany is too close to go untouched. Poland is next door - there's a direct ferry from here to Gdynia, and Poland beckons at some point, as does Stockholm, Oslo, England, the Netherlands, France…
Class and Classmates
Classes are not what I expected! While there is a fair amount of technical discussion in some courses, it is as much about the strategic and leadership parts of the program's title as it is about sustainability. This is what I probably needed, without knowing so before I got here. I'll benefit most from learning how to have the discussion on sustainability, why we need to move towards it as a society, and how we can get there.
To summarize it, we have four basic rules that can be considered scientifically accepted principles for sustainability:
There are no systematic increases:
1) in materials moving from the Earth's crust to the biosphere;
2) in manmade compounds in the biosphere;
3) in physical degradation of ecosystems; and
4) there should be no degradation of people's abilities to meet their needs.
This does not mean that a sustainable world will be perfect. There will still be crime, there will still be occasional extinctions, and there will be occasional changes in the amount of material moved to the biosphere from the crust, and the amount of manmade compounds added to the biosphere. But, what it does mean is that these levels will no longer systematically increase in concentration. They will reach a steady-state, and so will society.
We have had some incredible speakers already. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, the founder of The Natural Step and co-founder of the program, has given several lectures to us. His first lecture convinced me that I had made the right choice in doing this. Göran Carstedt, formerly head of Volvo and IKEA North America, also came and spoke to us about leadership and organizational change for 1 ½ days. We've had other great guest speakers, and the roll call will only get better over the next two months. Our Engineering for a Sustainable Society course will be going to Gothenburg in three weeks to meet with Leif Johansson, the current CEO of Volvo. As you can guess, our program and The Natural Step both have a close connection with Volvo. The teaching staff is very knowledgeable. I think that all of them either had a hand in creating the MSLS program or are graduates of the program. BTW – let me know if I sound a bit cultish – it's been one of my worries.
There is a variety of backgrounds in the class. However, almost half of the class is Canadian and American – ten Canadians (though three of them are Canadians with other links) and thirteen Americans. Other countries represented include China (6), Pakistan (5), Brazil (3), Australia (3), Sweden (3), France (2), Mexico, Bangladesh, Nigeria, the UK, Greece, Taiwan and South Korea. They have a lot of different academic and professional backgrounds. Some of my classmates are fresh out of school (with about 2 to 3 years of experience); others have as much as 15-20 years of experience in the work world. The group is not as science and engineering heavy as I'd expected – which is good! I am learning as much from them as I am from the courses. I won't get into a detailed discussion about the people in the class, but I have become fast friends with a few of them, and know that I will be in touch with many of them once we're finished off here.
Language
So… Swedish is a bit harder than I thought. I still can't make heads or tails out of what I hear, and what things look like on paper still don't correlate to me to what they sound like.
I had applied for the Swedish class offered at school about 5 days before it started. Unfortunately it was full. After sitting in on it last week, though, I realized I should've been sitting in the whole time – the class is, at best, half full. Anyhow, having a Swedish flatmate has helped, but my Swedish is still at the level where my typical answer when asked anything is "Jag förstår inte Svenska." (I don't understand Swedish.) I've at least finally learned the numbers… I'm starting to learn more, but I need to work more at it, if the time presents itself.
Wrap-up
I haven't gone into everything here. I haven't talked about what I miss the most from home (the answer is 'the people in my life'), and I probably haven't hit on what I like and dislike about here directly (indirectly, there is a picture painted).
So, that's a bit of an idea of my impressions of my first 2 1/2 months in Sweden. Thanks for reading this!
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