Zero-based governance for the CRD

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

o   Published as “How would we reinvent local government from scratch?”

What decisions should be made at the municipal level? The regional level? By the province? Federally?

Dr. Trevor Hancock

26 Jan 2026

700 words

This year the Capital Regional District marks its Diamond Jubilee. It was created in 1966 as a federation of seven municipalities and five electoral areas to provide coordination of regional issues and local government in the Greater Victoria region. At the time, it had a population of under 200,000. Back then nobody knew about climate change, the famous Club of Rome report on the limits to growth was still six years in the future, there was no internet, no social media and robots were firmly in the realm of science fiction.

Well, today, the CRD is 13 municipalities and 460,000 people and all those issues are today’s reality. So what is the system of governance we need to address the realities of the 21st century? Just amalgamating some or all of the CRD is not going to cut it, that’s a 20th century solution to 21st century problems.

So here’s an idea: Why don’t we mark the Diamond Jubilee by engaging the CRD’s residents in a participatory democracy exercise of zero-based governance design. It’s an idea inspired by my work in the 1990s on zero-based health planning, which was based on the concept of zero-based budgeting. The idea, popular for a while in the 1970s and thereafter, was very simple: Start with a clean sheet (zero base) every year and build the budget you need, rather than just taking last year’s budget allocation and tweaking it.

“Part of the problem that we face in health care planning”, I wrote in a 1991 article, “is that we are starting where we are now; our present system and all its facilities have evolved over decades, and as such all of the errors that we unwittingly made in the past are incorporated into the system. Only too often, attempts to improve the system begin with the existing system and figure out ways to change it without having a clear sense of what the system ultimately should look like.” (Does that sound a bit like the CRD today?)

So I proposed a thought experiment: Imagine the entire health care system disappeared overnight and we had to re-invent it from scratch.  The result of that thinking literally turned the health system on its head. We would begin with everything needed to keep people healthy and only at the end would we need specialty care and hospitals.

This wasn’t just an empty exercise. At the time I was part of a team of urban planners, architects, social planners and others developing a proposal for a planned new community, Seaton, northeast of Toronto. But our team was not just designing the hard infrastructure of mains and drains, roads and housing, but a complete community, including the ‘soft’ infrastructure of its social systems – health, education, social services and governance.

However, it’s not often that we get an empty slate on which to develop a new system, so in practice, we need to envision the system we need, then ensure all our system decisions move us in that direction. 

So now imagine the entire system of local government disappeared overnight and we had to re-invent it from scratch; what would we create? I suggest we start with a principle in governance called subsidiarity, which begins with an assumption that all decisions are local (how local, we might ask – street, block, neighbourhood?) and then asks which decisions does it not make sense to make at that level? (As an admittedly extreme example, we don’t want decisions about whether we should have capital punishment made at that level, I suggest.)

OK, so now what decisions should be made at the municipal level? The regional level? By the province? Federally? A related question for all of those levels is HOW the decisions should be made. Who should be involved, and how? – remembering that we now have social media and the internet, and increasingly, AI.

I don’t have a blueprint, I don’t know what the answers would be, but I think this would be a much more useful exercise than carrying on with business as usual and wrangling about various forms of amalgamation. Does the CRD have the political will and imagination to do something like this? Time will tell.

© Trevor Hancock, 2026

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Reclaim the economy for people and the planet

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

We too often prioritize the economy over people and the planet, putting both in service of the economy.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

19 January 2026

699 words

As readers of this column know, I often refer to a piece of wisdom put forth by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 2014: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work any other way round.” The root of many of our problems, of course, is that we keep trying to make it work the other way round. Our current society and economy too often prioritise the economy over people and the planet, putting both in service of the economy.

But as the WWF notes, it is society that creates the economy, which is – or should be – a tool to improve the wellbeing of all, now and in the future, while also ensuring we remain within planetary boundaries. That, not coincidentally, is pretty much the definition of a Wellbeing society put forward by the World Health Organization.

So it is not surprising that the second of five action areas identified in WHO’s Geneva Charter for Wellbeing is to design an equitable economy that serves human development within planetary and local ecological boundaries – what increasingly is being called a ‘wellbeing economy’.

Which brings me to ‘Reclaim the Economy Week’, which runs from January 26th to February 1st. Organised by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and Earth4All, two global organisations, the week focuses on two of the largest problems we face: “Our economies are driving inequality and environmental devastation.”

With respect to inequality, the latest World Inequality Report (WIR) noted: “Inequality has long been a defining feature of the global economy, but by 2025, it has reached levels that demand urgent attention.” The concentration of wealth has become extreme and it “is not only persistent, but it is also accelerating”.

In Canada, Statistics Canada reported in July 2025, “The income gap reached a record high in the first quarter of 2025; the highest income households gained from investments, while the lowest income households’ wages declined.”

Such inequality is not just about poverty, it has significant social implications, notes the WIR: “it reshapes democracies, fragmenting coalitions and eroding political consensus.” Importantly, they concluded: “These divides are not inevitable. They are the outcome of political and institutional choices.”

Extreme wealth also has ecological implications. A January 9th news release from Oxfam found that someone from the top 1 percent of the world’s population used their fair share of the world’s carbon budget – the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while staying within 1.5 degrees of warming – in the first 10 days of the year. It would take an individual from the poorest half of humanity three years to generate an equivalent amount.

These impacts of greed apply across all aspects of the natural systems that are our life support system. And yet we continue to urge economic growth, extol conspicuous consumption and market a high-consumption lifestyle.

The growing ecological disaster we face, driven by these forces, comes with a staggering economic impact, measured in the trillions of dollars, as the UN Environment Programme’s just-released report ‘Global Environmental Outlook – 7’ report makes clear:

  • The global cost of climate-induced extreme weather events in the past 20 years is estimated at US$143 billion per year . . . Costs have increased exponentially over the last five years, and cumulative costs from 2014–2023 are estimated at US$2 trillion, affecting 1.6 billion people.
  • Globally, the degradation of ecosystems will lead to a loss of services worth between US$10 trillion and US$44 trillion annually.
  • Globally, the estimated annual costs of land degradation are large, but uncertain, and range between US$18 billion and US$20 trillion.
  • The effect on global food production is a key concern, with a potential reduction of up to 33.7 million tons and a corresponding 30 per cent increase in world food prices by 2040.

Small wonder the report’s sub-title is “Why investing in Earth now can lead to a trillion-dollar benefit for all” – and actually, that should be ‘multi-trillion’.

Just as poverty and inequality are not inevitable, but “are the outcome of political and institutional choices”, so too is ecological devastation. As the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and Earth4All state, it is time “to unite to demand an economy that puts people and planet first.”

© Trevor Hancock, 2026

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Why become an UNESCO Urban Biosphere Region?

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Movement toward designating Greater Victoria a UNESCO urban biosphere region is a sign of hope in challenging times

Dr. Trevor Hancock

6 January 2026

698 words

Largely lost in the flurry of pre-Christmas distraction was a December 10th announcement from the Greater Victoria NatureHood (GVNH) that the Capital Regional District (CRD) Board had approved a staff recommendation to prepare nomination documents designating Greater Victoria an UNESCO Urban Biosphere Region.  This followed several years of work led by Martin Segger, an architectural historian and coordinator of the UNESCO Victoria World Heritage Project, together with the GVNH.

There are a several things here that need unpacking. First, what is the Greater Victoria NatureHood? And for that matter, what is a naturehood? Also, what is UNESCO, what is an Urban Biosphere Region and why does any of this matter? 

The concept of a ‘naturehood’ was developed by Nature Canada in 2012; it is “any place you go to connect with the earth’s natural wonders”, including “any green space in your neighbourhood . . .  an overlooked urban forest, a community garden, the park at the end of your street, or your backyard.”

The main point of a Naturehood initiative is to connect people of all ages – but especially children and youth – with nature so they are more inclined to protect and restore it. Here in Victoria, the Lieutenant Governor officially designated the grounds of Government House a NatureHood site in July 2017 and from this has grown the Greater Victoria NatureHood as a collaborative effort by a number of not-for-profit, public and private organizations.

That Vice-Regal interest was continued when, in August 2024, Government House hosted a Forum that unanimously endorsed a proposal to ask the CRD to prepare the supporting documents required to nominate the Victoria Region as an UNESCO Urban Biosphere Region. 

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and its purpose is to strengthen ties between people, building peace through the promotion of education, science, culture, and communication. One of its major programs is a World Network of Biosphere Reserves – 784 of them to date, in 124 countries, with 19 in Canada, 3 of which are in B.C.: Clayoquot Sound, Howe Sound and Mt. Arrowsmith.

These Biosphere Reserves are “sites of excellence that foster harmony between people and nature for sustainable development through participatory dialogue; knowledge sharing; poverty reduction and human well-being improvements; respect for cultural values and society’s ability to cope with change.” What’s not to like?

A small number of these are Urban Biospheres, a subcategory defined as a biosphere “where the natural, socio-economic and cultural environments are shaped by urban influences and pressures, and are set up and managed to mitigate these pressures for improved urban and regional sustainability.” Several other Canadian municipalities – Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal – are pursuing the idea.

So why does this matter? Because, in a nutshell, I see it as an important vehicle for bringing together people and organisations from all sectors – public, private, NGO, community and faith sectors and local First Nations – to address the greatest challenge of our age: How do we make peace with nature?

And what better place to do so than here? A November CRD staff report notes we live in a region that comprises over 300 watersheds, includes three federal Migratory Bird Sanctuaries and nine Key Biodiversity Areas. The natural environment “is constantly voted as the best thing about living in the region by the Victoria Foundation’s annual Vital Signs survey”; indeed, there are as many as “400 habitat conservation groups working in Greater Victoria.” Furthermore, the report adds, biodiversity is an important driver of the regional economy through tourism, outdoor recreation, and educational institutions, bringing millions of dollars and over 60,000 jobs to the local economy. 

Also, given the long history of Indigenous peoples as stewards of these lands and waters before colonization, and given that one criterion for designation is “Significant Indigenous representation in biosphere governance and management”, this initiative is an opportunity to further deepen Reconciliation locally.

The next phase of proposal development involves extensive community engagement which hopefully will spark a region-wide conversation about what it means to live well and sustainably within the limits of this one small planet, within the local bioregion that is our home. It is a welcome sign of hope in challenging times.

© Trevor Hancock, 2026

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Peace with the Earth, goodwill to all our relations

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Dr. Trevor Hancock

21 December 2025

703 words

Today is the Winter Solstice, an auspicious time for humankind for millennia, long before Christianity, ever since we first learned to keep track of the seasons and the sun. The turning of the year, when the sun in the northern hemisphere stops trending southwards, stands still, and then turns and heads back north, heralding a new year, spring, a new crop, new animals to add to the flock.

Solstice thus reminds us of our close relationship with and dependence upon nature, which my title also emphasises. It is of course a variant of the proclamation of the angels appearing to the shepherds: “on earth peace, goodwill toward men” (Luke 2:14). My version, however, speaks to a wider ecological perspective, eco-centric rather than anthropocentric.

The idea of making peace with nature has been championed in recent years by the United Nations. And the idea of ‘all our relations’ is a powerful way that Indigenous people think about our place in nature and our links to all the other species in the web of life to whom we are linked and on whom we depend.

Five years ago, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres gave an important speech on “The State of the Planet”. Mr Guterres was blunt: “To put it simply, the state of the planet is broken”, he said; “humanity is waging war on nature” – and that “is suicidal”. But, he went on to say, “Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere.”

An extraordinary and largely overlooked speech by David McGuinty, Canada’s Minister of Defence, at the 4th Montreal Climate Security Summit in early October is consistent with this idea. (If you want a clear distinction between Canada and Trump’s USA, read this speech and compare it to the brutal words that come out of the mouth of Pete Hegseth,  US Secretary of Defence.) Mr McGuinty’s speech has had me reflecting on making peace with nature, in the context of enhanced military expenditures and preparations for war.

Mr. McGuinty, an environmental lawyer and former head of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, was clear: “Our security and our prosperity are fully dependent on a healthy and functioning environment.” He went on to state “To truly safeguard Canada’s future, all our futures, it’s time to stop the fiction that our planet’s carrying capacity is unlimited . . .  that species aren’t being depleted and rendered extinct, that we’re not compromising the planet’s ability to restore itself.”

Mr. McGuinty very explicitly linked Canada’s national security to what he called our ‘natural security’: ““Investing in and restoring our ecosystems and natural capital is strategic preparedness. It is national defence. And it’s natural security.”


I found much the same sentiment at a provincial level in a commentary by Jim Pine (Times Colonist, 12 December). Mr Pine, who worked in the forest industry for 15 years “and has been advocating for systemic change in forest practices since 1988”, in essence calls for us to make peace with nature, specifically the temperate rainforest in which we live.

He points out: “These magnificent forests have evolved here for the last 10,000 years” and that “their life cycle is around 750 years.” But, he laments, “we will never, under current management, leave forests for 500 years to replace what we have clear-cut” and replaced with “monoculture fibre farms with 50 -100 year harvest targets.”

In a yet to be published article I have written with my friend and colleague Dr. Tim Takaro, a long-time environment and health activist who is committed to non-violent action, we have noted that Canada has a proud history of peace keeping and used to have a reputation as good environmental stewards.

So we propose Canada recognize that our security includes a livable planet and invest accordingly. Some of the 5 percent of GDP that is being committed to preparing for war should instead be diverted to reviving and expanding Canada’s peace-keeping role by creating a Canadian Environmental Peace Corps,

Making peace with nature would truly enhance our security. That is a thought to cherish and act upon at this time of peace, this turning of the year.

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

What part of ‘global ecological crisis’ do they not get?

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Most countries, especially the largest, the richest and the petro-states (which include Canada), continue to put their own national interests ahead of global concerns.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

25 November 2025

700 words

Another COP, another cop-out! As anyone who pays the slightest attention to the news must know by now, COP30 – the annual global climate change jamboree, this year in Belem, Brazil, ended, yet again, more with a whimper than a bang. The fact that the words ‘fossil fuel’ did not even appear in the final statement exemplifies that failure.

In an interview with The Guardian before COP30, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had said “we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years”. Said Simon Stiehl, the UN’s climate chief, after the final plenary “I’m not saying we’re winning the climate fight”, while Mr. Guterres stated “The gap between where we are and what science demands remains dangerously wide.”

COP30 was particularly embarrassing for Mark Carney and for Canada. Carney had once been the darling of the climate action community, as the UN’s Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. But the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which he co-founded in 2021 and co-led, and which was supposed to find $100 trillion – yes trillion – to finance the transition away from fossil fuels, voted to shut down in October.

As for Canada, on November 18th, at COP30, Climate Action International (CAI) awarded us the ‘Fossil of the Day’ dishonour “because the new government of Prime Minister Mark Carney has flushed years of climate policies down the drain, and is completely ‘Missing In Action’ at a COP”. Moreover, added CAI, “in addition to the backsliding on policies tackling Canada’s climate-destroying pollution, his Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin has chosen inaction and silence where leadership was urgently needed.” 

The core problem is this: The world’s leaders – whether elected, inherited, self-appointed or corporate – simply do not get any part of ‘global ecological crisis’, never mind take it seriously.

Let’s start with global. Most countries, especially the largest, the richest and the petro-states (which includes Canada), put their own national interests ahead of global concerns. In the case of Canada, it’s not unusual to hear fossil fuel apologists argue that since we are so small – only 1.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions – nothing we do makes much difference, so why bother.

But only 8 countries – led by China, the USA, India and Russia – emit more than 2 percent of global emissions – although admittedly they emit about 60 percent of total emissions; we are 10th, by the way, on a par with Germany and South Korea. So if the all the other countries in the world took the view that they are too small to matter, we would fail to take action on 40 percent of emissions – not small at all.

Second, let’s think about ecological. It seems governments have trouble even thinking about ‘environment’, never mind ecological. The Carney government is a case in point. His mandate letter to his Cabinet does not identify any aspect of the environment as either a challenge for Canada or a priority for his government; indeed the letter doesn’t even mention the word. As for ecological, forget it. The environment seems to be seen largely as a resource to be exploited, something over which we exert dominion. In reality, as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) wisely put it in 2014: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work any other way round.” In other words, ecosystems exert dominion over humans, a reality that is largely ignored.

Third, we are in crisis. Climate change, bad as it is, is just one of the seven (out of nine) Earth system boundaries we have already crossed. And the crossing of multiple planetary boundaries is just one of a multitude of crises that together constitute the polycrisis.

Back in 2020, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said “Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal.” It seems the memo did not arrive in the minds of those who are supposed to be our leaders. Well, they are leaders, in the same way that the lemming at the front of the pack is a leader, heading over the cliff. We need to stop being lemmings. And they need to recognise we face a global ecological crisis.

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Carney offers 20th century responses to 21st century challenges

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Both people and the planet are largely missing from the Carney budget. Instead, the government seems to be following the old Bill Clinton maxim: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’

Dr. Trevor Hancock

11 November 2025

698 words

It is said that during World War I, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau remarked that generals always prepare to fight the last war. Regrettably, it seems that this also applies to governments trying to manage our society. That seems evident from the Carney budget and his overall agenda, which propose a set of approaches more suited to the 19th and 20th centuries than to the new realities of the 21st century, focusing on infrastructure projects.  

As Ecojustice lawyer Melissa Gorrie and I pointed out in a recent article in the Hill Times “this government’s old-school idea of nation-building is focused on new infrastructure, as if Canada is just a construction company, not a society. But a nation is much more than a collection of infrastructure projects.”  

We went on to suggest that if Mr. Carney really wants a nation-building project he consider the task of making Canada a Wellbeing society. Such a society, according to the World Health Organization’s Geneva Charter for Well-being is one that is “committed to achieving equitable health now and for future generations without breaching ecological limits.”.

That focus on people and planet seems to me to be both a simple and profound statement of what should be the central purpose of government and the broader task of societal governance. As Dr. Theresa Tam noted recently in her final report before stepping down as Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer: “Well-being is gaining momentum globally as a shared policy goal and approach, focused on creating the conditions for current and future generations to thrive on a healthy planet”.

Yet both people and the planet are largely missing from the Carney budget. Instead, the government seems to be following the old Bill Clinton maxim: “It’s the economy, stupid”. I suppose if you hire an economist – a central banker, no less – as your Prime Minister, that’s what you should expect to get. But at this time of multiple crises, it’s not what is needed.

With respect to people, the Maytree Foundation, an organisation “committed to advancing systemic solutions to poverty and strengthening civic communities”, noted in its analysis of the budget: “The missing ingredient in the government’s nation-building recipe is people, especially those who live on low incomes and who continue to struggle with the high cost of living.”

Moreover, their analysis continued, “we had hoped the federal budget would acknowledge the growing crises of poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, and inequality, seeing them not just as social challenges, but as economic liabilities that undermine both productivity and cohesion.” Sadly, that is not the case, leaving Maytree to express the hope that as the government “finds its footing” it will come to realise that “For a true ‘Canada Strong’ approach, the government needs to start seeing social programs as nation-building projects worth investing in.”

As to the planet, at a time when we have crossed seven of nine planetary boundaries, it seems absent from the government’s overall understanding of the 21st century challenges we face. This is exemplified by Mr. Carney’s mandate letter to his Cabinet in May.

In it he identifies “a series of crises” Canada faces without once even mentioning the environment or the planet. He then outlines an agenda for his government that focuses on the economy, while climate change gets a brush-off reference towards the end: “We will fight climate change.”

So here we are, in the week in which COP30 opens in Brazil, amidst record-breaking global temperature increases, increasing and accelerating greenhouse gas emissions and record storms and wildfires, and Canada is backing away from Mr. Carney’s expressed commitment to fight climate change.

In an article in Canada’s National Observer Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, a senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, wrote: “In many respects, this is the most harmful budget from a climate perspective since the Harper era.”

At a time when we face not just ecological but serious social and technological challenges, the last thing we need is a 19th century set of solutions aimed at infrastructure and more growth in extraction and consumption. Our 21st century challenges need 21st century solutions, but Canada’s political establishment – Liberal, Conservative and NDP alike – seems incapable of responding appropriately.

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

The inconvenient facts Carney and the Premiers ignore

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Dr. Trevor Hancock

20 October 2025

701 words

Prime Minister Carney wants Canada to be an energy superpower, including in ‘conventional energy’ (read fossil fuels). Far from being the climate action champion we expected him to be, he seems to have swallowed his principles in a rush to get short term gain at the expense of long-term pain.

His “dismal” record was summed up recently by Anna Johnston, a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law: “In just a few months, Carney’s government has walked back key federal climate policies, including the consumer carbon price, the electric vehicle mandate, and – alarmingly – Canada’s commitment to its 2030 emissions reduction target.”

Add to that other policies that are supportive of the continued expansion of the fossil industry and it is easy to see why Johnston concludes that for Carney’s government “climate action is no longer a priority, even as the climate crisis worsens.”

The Premiers are no better. Danielle Smith is of course in a class of her own; there isn’t a fossil fuel expansion proposal she hasn’t fallen in love with. But in general the provinces provide various forms of support for fossil fuel extraction, transportation, export and clean-up, the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) noted in January. The IISD reported an OECD estimate that in 2023 the provinces and territories provided $4.6 billion in fossil fuel subsidies.

These subsidies are not going away. In a study released in September the IISD reported “The governments of Canada and British Columbia are set to provide more than CAD 3.93 billion in support to the [B.C.] liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry by the end of 2030.” That includes “$2.16 billion by the end of 2030 from the BC government through foregone revenue, reduced electricity rates, and investment in enabling infrastructure.”  

But there are a few inconvenient facts that Mr Carney and the premiers are either unaware of – which seems unlikely – or are choosing to ignore.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) just announced that CO2 levels increased by 3.5 parts per million (ppm) in 2024, reaching an unprecedented high of 424 ppm. This was “the largest one-year increase since modern measurements began in 1957.” Two other key greenhouse gases – methane and nitrous oxide – also reached unprecedented highs in 2024.

Unsurprisingly, The WMO reported that “the global temperature in 2024 was the highest recorded in the observational record dating back to 1850” and that “for the first time, it passed the significant 1.5 °C mark relative to the pre-industrial period.”

Three main factors drove the increase in CO2, the WMO reported: continued fossil fuel emissions, increased emissions from wildfires (themselves linked to higher global temperatures) and reduced land and ocean sinks that usually absorb a lot of the CO2 we emit.

When it comes to emissions, the September 2025 Production Gap Report found “Governments, in aggregate, still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.”

Those higher temperatures drive the other two factors driving higher CO2 levels. Both are examples of positive feedback loops at work; changes that are self-reinforcing. Higher temperatures bring more wildfires that create more CO2 that leads to higher temperatures. And those higher temperatures also lead to droughts that reduce the ability of forests and grasslands to absorb CO2, while warming of the oceans reduces their ability to absorb CO2.

Chillingly, the WMO reports, “There is a significant concern that terrestrial and ocean CO2 sinks are becoming less effective, which will increase the fraction of [human created] CO2 that stays in the atmosphere, thereby accelerating global warming.”

It now looks as if we are on the cusp of, if not already beyond, the first critical tipping point in climate change, according to the just-released Global Tipping Points Report. The authors have concluded that “warm-water coral reefs are crossing their thermal tipping point and experiencing unprecedented dieback . . . Polar ice sheets are approaching tipping points, committing the world to several metres of irreversible sea-level rise that will affect hundreds of millions.”

In the face of such evidence, ongoing support for expanded fossil fuel extraction and use is at best a moral collapse and at worst, the crime of ecocide.  

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

The problem is income inadequacy, not affordability

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

The bottom half of the population has seen its share of national income dropping, while the top one per cent’s share has grown dramatically.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

22 September 2025

702 words

Food Banks Canada just released its annual report on poverty in Canada. Key findings are that one in ten Canadians are living in poverty, over 40 percent are paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing (which is the Statistics Canada definition of unaffordable housing), and 40 percent are feeling worse off compared to last year.

Of course the core business of food banks is hunger and food insecurity. The latter is defined by Statistics Canada as being unable to or uncertain of the ability to acquire or consume an adequate diet or sufficient food in socially acceptable ways. A May 2025 report from Statistics Canada stated that in 2023 one in four people in Canada – and almost half of people in one-parent families – reported they were living in food insecure households.

That was a roughly 15 percent increase over 2022, and the third annual increase in a row. Moreover, most of that increase was among those -19 out of 25 percent – who experienced moderate to severe food insecurity. This situation has led a number of cities in Ontario to declare food insecurity emergencies. The CEO of Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank noted in a CBC interview that “we need to feed more than one in 10 Torontonians.”

This is happening, we should remind ourselves, in one of the richest countries in the world.

Often, this situation is presented as an issue of affordability; food, housing and other basic needs are just too expensive. But while that is true, there is another way to look at it, as Valerie Tarasuk – a prominent Canadian food researcher at the University of Toronto – notes in that same CBC interview: “I think we have a fundamental problem with income that needs to be addressed.”

That fundamental problem with income is not new. In its 2022 report the World Inequality Lab noted: “Income and wealth inequalities have been on the rise nearly everywhere since the 1980s, following a series of deregulation and liberalization programs which took different forms in different countries.”

What they mean, of course, is the adoption by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA of neoliberal economic policies that were then adopted more widely. That is true of Canada too, as the Lab’s report on Canadamakes clear: “Income inequality in Canada increased significantly from 1982 until the mid-2000s.”

Between the Second World War and the mid-1980s the bottom half of the Canadian population had around 20 – 22 percent of Canada’s pre-tax income, while the top ten percent had a bit under 30 percent and the top one percent had between 6 and 7 percent. By 2005 that was dramatically different: The bottom half of the population received just 17 percent of pre-tax income, the top ten percent had reached 38 percent and the top one percent got 14 percent.

In other words, the bottom half of the population – half, note – saw their share of national income decline nearly one fifth, while the top one percent more than doubled their share. Since then, the report notes, “income inequality has decreased slightly although it remains far above the levels observed in the early 1980s.”

This inequality was worsened because while pretty much everyone paid between 40 and 44 percent of their income in taxes overall in 2022, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported last year, the 90-95th percentile paid only 37 percent and the 95-99th percentile paid just 34 percent – less than the lowest ten percent, who paid 35 percent. Shockingly the top one percent paid a mere 24 percent of their income in total taxes.

The 2022 World Inequality Report made a vitally important point about this situation. Noting there are significant differences in the extent of the growth of inequality between different countries they concluded “inequality is not inevitable, it is a political choice.”

So it is up to us. Do we want to perpetuate the poverty, hunger and unaffordable housing situation for low-income Candians? Or do we want to go back to the decades after the Second World War when the rich paid their share and the bottom half took a larger share of the income?

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Let’s have a conversation about the future we want for this region

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

We have a tendency to both defer to and blame government, to expect it to solve all our problems

Dr. Trevor Hancock

25 August 2025

701 words

Last week I suggested we need a national People’s Wellbeing Commission to craft a new vision for Canada, one focused on how we become a society committed to equitable health now and for future generations while living within planetary boundaries.

As I noted in an article in July, we need a similar process to answer the same question locally: How do we govern this region to maximise the wellbeing of all who live here – and all who will live here in future generations – while reducing our overall ecological footprint and protecting and enhancing the bioregion and all our relations?

I am now in the process of developing a proposal to do just that. At the core of that proposal is a simple idea: We have to talk with one another, we need conversations everywhere we can, involving as many people as we can – and particularly young people, whose future we are creating – about the future we want.

Key to this idea is the difference between government and governance. We have a tendency to both defer to and blame government, to expect it to solve all our problems while we get on with our lives. Too often our default mode is to see ourselves simply as taxpayers, looking to get the most we can for the fewest dollars – and when we don’t get it, being grumpy! In that respect, we are not acting differently from our role as consumers.

But governance is different. I have always liked the definition put forth more than two decades ago by UN Habitat, the UN’s Human Settlements Programme. “Governance”, UN Habitat stated, is “the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, plan and manage the common affairs of the city.”

As a public institution – and not the only one – government is just one of the ways in which we do that. But decisions made by citizens, First Nations, businesses, civil society organisations, land-owners and developers, faith communities and many others also shape and manage the city. We are all in it together.

As Saul Klein and Arti Freeman (Times Colonist, July 11th) wrote: “To build a better future, it’s not enough to bridge divides, we must also re-imagine the systems themselves. That takes more than policy reform. It takes collective imagination as a strategy to envision new ways of organizing our economies, our democracies, and our relationships with one another and the planet.”

So the people, organisations and institutions of the Greater Victoria Region (GVR) must come together both to understand the challenges we face and engage in an act of collective imagination leading to a better future. Such an approach has been called ‘anticipatory democracy’, a concept proposed by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Future Shockand expanded on by my good friend and colleague Clem Bezold, who founded the Institute for Alternative Futures. There are good examples of anticipatory democracy projects from which we can learn from communities in Germany, Japan and elsewhere.

I suggest the creation of a GVR Futures Council that will bring together leaders from key sectors across the GVR. The Council would be responsible for providing overall strategic direction to a multi-year process of extensive public engagement to consider the challenges we face and potential responses. While some of that engagement can be virtual, the vast majority of it must be in-person, face-to-face conversation.

There are many ways in which such conversations can be organised, from a program of Kitchen Table Conversations – a well-established social technology – to citizens’ assemblies; from creating shared stories of place to neighbourhood vision workshops, from a computer model/video game of the region (think SimCity); from ‘idea and practice incubators’ to a web-based platform to identify, map and make available the people, businesses and organisations in this region that are creating the future we need.

In short, we need to shift from being mere taxpayers – grumpy or otherwise – to being engaged citizens, helping to co-design the future we want for our children and grandchildren, one in which we maximise the wellbeing of all who live here – and all who will live here in future generations – while living within planetary boundaries.

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Let’s talk about becoming a Wellbeing society

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Our economic and social system is trashing our environment, undermining our health, and creating large health inequalities.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

18 August 2025

702 words

Last month I noted a growing recognition that the many challenges we face, from environmental degradation to concentration of wealth, structural inequality and exclusion, are a product of the economic and other societal systems we have created. If that is the case, we clearly need to radically change the systems that are the source of the problems. As Saul Klein and Arti Freeman stated (Times Colonist, July 11th), we need to “envision new ways of organizing our economies, our democracies, and our relationships with one another and the planet.”

So how do we do that? That is work I have been doing, one way or another, for decades. My work on population and planetary health has led me to a deep understanding of how our economic and social system is trashing our environment, undermining the most fundamental determinants of our health, while creating large health inequalities. As a health futurist, I have led projects from the local to the global about envisioning a preferable future and figuring out how to get there. My work in public health and health promotion has had a strong focus on how we create healthy cities and communities.

Nowadays I am especially focused on how we create what the World Health Organization calls a Wellbeing society. To that end, I am the Interim Convenor of an emerging national health sector coalition that is working both to address the health implications of crossing multiple planetary boundaries and on the creation of a Wellbeing society as a way of addressing this and other elements of the global polycrisis we face.

One approach we are impressed by is the Welsh Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, the first and so far the only such legislation in the world. The Act requires “public bodies in Wales to think about the long-term impact of their decisions, to work better with people, communities and each other, and to prevent persistent problems such as poverty, health inequalities and climate change”.

It also establishes the position of a Commissioner for Future Generations as an independent officer of the legislature whose job it is to protect and promote the needs of future generations, report on progress, make recommendations and provide advice.

This laudable legislation came about because Wales, when it was created in 1998 as a country within the sovereign stateof the UK, put in its founding constitution an explicit duty to promote sustainable development.

This led, in 2007, to the public recognition that “we need to cut Wales’ ecological footprint by 75 percent to live within our fair share of the planet’s resources”. Then in 2009 the then First Minister announced a new vision, One Wales, One Planet, followed in 2011 by a Bill “embedding sustainable development as the central organising principle in all actions across government and public bodies”.

But what I find particularly important was that in 2014 there was a large national conversation about The Wales We Want “involving thousands of people sharing their views on what would improve their communities”. It was “one big involvement exercise – by the people, for the people”, and it was seen as crucial to supporting the passage of the wellbeing of Future Generations Act, according to the current Future Generations Commissioner.

Which is why I am proposing the creation of what I call a People’s Commission on Wellbeing, modeled on the People’s Food Commission of the late 1970s. Such a Commission should travel across the country – both in person and virtually – engaging people in discussing the Canada they want for their children and grandchildren, crafting a new national vision and considering how to get there.

The Commission needs to be based on the public recognition of the scale and severity of the ecological and social challenges we face – something that our governments have not yet done. But it also needs to identify the positive local actions already underway.

By bringing people together locally it would solidify and strengthen local networks and local action, while also weaving a national Wellbeing Society Network. Hopefully, it would also lead to the passage of Wellbeing of Future Generations Acts federally and across Canada and the creation of Future Generations Commissioners. What a worthwhile legacy that would be!

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy