The deeper challenges underlying our political unease

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Most governments go along with the agendas of powerful corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals, at the expense of people and the planet.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

27 October 2026

700 words

Surveying the political scene after the recent provincial election, it seems to me there is a lot of discontent and unease out there. We saw the NDP ejected in favour of a relatively unknown, inexperienced and potentially fragmenting alternative, the newly minted Conservative Party. I am not so sure this was a vote for the Conservatives so much as it was a vote against the NDP.

But as Fair Vote Canada points out, this was not what BC voted for. The Conservatives got less than half the vote (48 percent), but 69 percent of the seats. Meanwhile the NDP, with 38 percent of the vote, got only 29 percent of the seats and – even more unfairly – the Greens got just 2 percent of the seats despite winning 11 percent of the vote. There is something rotten in the state of the B.C electoral system!

What we have just seen, in my view, is not so much people voting for something as voting against the governing power. I think this reflects a sense of unease, not yet well enough defined or articulated except by the Greens, that at a quite deep level things are not working well, that we are in trouble; people know it, they know the government is not fixing it and they want a change – any change as long as it’s not the status quo.

What underlies this unease, I think, are a pair of larger problems. Almost 50 years ago, I wrote about what I found to be the two core principles of public health – ecological sanity and social justice. They have been the guiding principles of my work ever since. But sadly, the pursuit of ‘business as usual’, ramped up even more by neoliberalism, has left the world more ecologically insane and socially unjust than it was even then.

Last month Earth4All, an initiative of the Club of Rome in collaboration with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BI Norwegian Business School, released the results of a survey conducted by Ipsos across 17 of the G20 nations, including Canada.

In their report – titled ‘Rebuild Trust: Rigged economies, fractured societies and the case for change’ – they state:

“People across the G20 want their economies transformed, but they no longer trust their governments to achieve this change. Seven in ten say there is too much inequality (70 percent), that the system is rigged to benefit the rich and powerful (65 percent) and that the economy needs major change (69 percent).

Yet only 31 percent believe their government will make decisions that benefit people 20 or 30 years from now.”

Two years ago, they did a similar survey but focused on the global environment. They found 6 out of 10 people are very or extremely worried about the state of nature today, with 7 out of 10 believing Earth is close to climate and nature tipping points. Seven out of 10 also agreed that approving or permitting actions which cause serious damage to nature and the climate should be a criminal offence.

People aren’t stupid. They experience the obscene inequalities in wealth and power all over the world – why else do you think they are rioting in Europe? They also know we are losing the fight against climate change and are crossing other ecological boundaries and heading in the wrong direction.

They sense that the system is not working, and that more of the same will make things worse, not better. And yet they can see that for the most part governments are either actively or passively going along with the agendas of powerful corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals, sacrificing people and the planet for profits and power.

We need bold and visionary leadership to address these challenges, leadership that will squarely face the ecological insanity and social injustice of the 21st century, recognise its roots in a mistaken economic development paradigm – and the stark implications of this for future generations – and articulate a hopeful and transformative vision for a more sustainable, just and healthy future. I doubt we will get that from the Conservatives, any more than we did from the NDP.

© 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

Renewing democracy for the 21st century

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

At a time when we have an unnecessary provincial election and when there are polarizing forces all around, it is hardly surprising that many people feel that our democratic system is under threat and that we need to consider how to improve it.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

11 October 2026

701 words

In 1947 Winston Churchill famously remarked “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. He was also clear that “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise”, meaning it could be improved.

At a time when we have an unnecessary provincial election, when municipal elections are ignored by two-thirds of the electorate, when we see the craziness south of the border, when social media and AI are disruptive and sometimes polarising forces, it is hardly surprising that many people feel that our democratic system is under threat, that we need to consider how democracy could be improved.

But are we even clear what democracy is? The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives”. But that is a somewhat narrow, electorally-based vision; show up once every four years and vote, and you are done.

A broader vision of democracy would be that it should try to involve as many people as possible in the choices and decisions that shape their lives. People Powered, a global hub for participatory democracy, defines it as a process that “enables community members to make the decisions that affect their lives, together with government.”

Note, ‘together with government’ – not by government, on your behalf.  This is the process of governance, how we make decisions together, which can occur at all levels from streets to the whole society and involves all the players, of which government is but one.

So it is noteworthy that just this past couple of weeks I have attended two local meetings focused on the challenge of improving democracy and governance. The first, launching an initiative called ‘Turning Down the Heat’, was focused on deliberative democracy. It asked ‘how do we turn down the heat and create conditions for more respectful, thoughtful, and productive public conversations?’

Organised by the External Affairs Committee of the Baha’is of Victoria, with the support of the Greater Victoria Peace School and the Victoria Multifaith Society, the meeting brought together a group of 20 or so local leaders from various walks of life to discuss the issue. You can learn more at the initiative’s website.

The second was a public meeting organised by the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC) Victoria Regional Group on ‘Citizens’ Assemblies & Democratic Renewal’, which explored how this approach could navigate contested policy questions and rebuild public trust.

In my view, a system designed largely in the 18th and 19th centuries and brought to maturity in the 20th century is no longer fit for purpose in the 21st century. Nobody back then anticipated the ways in which our present political system and associated media system would create fragmentation, polarisation and alienation.

If every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets, as the Institute for Healthcare Improvement puts it, then clearly we need to change the system.  What does a system look like that delivers cohesion, collaboration and engagement?

I spent much of the 1980s and ‘90s working to create healthier communities across Canada and around the world. One of the lessons I learned can be applied to democracy: a healthy community (or, in this case, democracy) is built one home at a time, one street at a time, one block at a time and one neighbourhood at a time. So we need to start there. How do we engage people in conversations locally about their immediate concerns and how do we link that to local governance?

Implicit in this approach is the principle of subsidiarity, which begins with an assumption that every decision should be made at a block or neighbourhood level (e.g. removing fences from backyards), then decides what cannot be decided there (e.g. a regional transportation system, although some aspects might still be decided at a neighbourhood level, such as the best location for a bike rental station).

Following the municipal elections, I suggest we need to start a process of conversations in neighbourhoods throughout the region about what a participatory, deliberative democracy looks like at that local level, and how to get there.

© 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

Carney’s ecocidal agenda offers short-term gain for long-term pain

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Focusing on energy, trade, critical minerals, transport and data projects has already brought us to the brink of the ecological precipice.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

22 September 2026

698 words

Everyone is applauding Mark Carney for standing up for Canada in the face of Donald Trump’s assault on us. And of course we need to do that. But Carney’s strategy – doubling down on “a series of nation-building projects in energy, in trade, critical minerals, transport, data, and beyond”, as he noted in an April 2026 address – is simply an acceleration of ‘business-as-usual’, a model of resource extraction and industrial development firmly rooted in 19th and 20th century thinking about the economy and nature.

However, it is ‘business-as-usual’ over the past century that has brought us to the brink of the ecological precipice. The latest Planetary Health Check report, just out this week, confirms we have already crossed planetary boundaries for seven of nine vital natural systems and the trends for all seven are headed in the wrong direction.

So the last thing we need is an approach that says we can keep growing our economy, our use of resources, our creation of pollution and wastes and our impacts on the Earth’s natural systems within the finite system that is our planet.

That is an approach that led Kenneth Boulding, a former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as far back as 1973, to remark to the US Senate that “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”. Well, our Prime Minister is an economist.

So it is disturbing to see the consistent pattern of environmental ‘ignore-ance’ in the Carney government’s agenda. The Throne Speech 15 months ago, titled “Building Canada Strong: A bold, ambitious plan for our future”, made no reference at all to sustainable development. It mentioned the environment only once, in a throw-away line about “upholding Canada’s world-leading environmental standards” – which the government has since been systematically undermining.

We have seen the government roll back action on climate change by getting rid of the consumer carbon tax and the EV sales mandate, while at the same time supporting increased tar sands and LNG extraction and promising public funding (i.e. subsidies) for new pipelines. Carney has said he wants Canada to be an energy superpower in both conventional and alternative energy, but as Dr. Courtney Howard, Chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, remarked in her opening plenary talk at the Victoria Forum last month, it’s not enough to be an energy superpower, we should be a GOOD energy superpower, and doubling down on fossil fuels is the wrong approach.

Meanwhile the government is proposing to relax other environmental safeguards in the interest of major projects of national importance. Noting “the Building Canada Strong Act amends five federal laws, including the Impact Assessment Act, Species at Risk Act, and Fisheries Act”, Lisa Gue, national policy manager at the David Suzuki Foundation, said this past week: “Ottawa’s move to streamline regulations is code for steamrolling nature protections.”

So yet again I point to the deep truth underlying the 2014 statement from the World Wide Fund for Nature statement – a deep truth Carney and his supporters either do not, cannot or will not understand: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work any other way round.” So sadly, but also disastrously, Carney’s real legacy will not be a stronger Canada but a dangerously weakened Canadian and global ecological system. Fundamentally, the government’s approach is ecocidal.

In 2021 a panel of legal experts from around the world defined ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”. Who can doubt that the wanton and deliberate act of expanding fossil fuel use, or any of the other policies that contribute to further transgression of planetary boundaries, is ecocidal.

The Carney government needs to re-think its entire approach to building a Canada fit for the 21st century. We need a Canada that – in the interests of current young people and future generations – pivots to put the planet ahead of economic growth, that commits to living within planetary boundaries and to equitably sharing our already immense wealth.

© 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

The Victoria Forum: Seeking virtuous solutions

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

·      Published as “Trust, justice and well-being key themes at Victoria Forum”

“Trust is eroding, injustice persists and the world is under mounting strain from economic disruption, climate change and their impacts on health.”

Dr. Trevor Hancock

1 September 2026

700 words

Last week I discussed the wicked problems of the polycrisis and the need to work together to find virtuous solutions rooted in the public good, where virtuous means “behaving in a very good and moral way” (Oxford Dictionaries). How then should our society behave morally with respect to the inter-connected ecological, social, political, economic and ultimately ethical challenges we face? 

This was the underlying question behind this year’s Victoria Forum. The main themes were trust, justice and wellbeing because “trust is eroding, injustice persists and the world is under mounting strain from economic disruption, climate change and their impacts on health.”

In considering this underlying question it is worth looking back at an article in the Times Colonist last year by Saul Klein, former Dean of the Business School at UVic and Executive Director of the Victoria Forum, and Arti Freeman, President and CEO of Definity Foundation. They wrote:

“For a long time, we believed that our systems just needed fixing, that they were broken or outdated. But we’ve come to realize something more unsettling.

These systems are not broken. Their negative outcomes are not bugs. They are features of the way they were designed. And they are producing exactly what they were incentivized to produce — environmental degradation, exclusion, concentration of wealth, and structural inequality.”

So how do we create instead a societal system that incentivizes environmental restoration and regeneration, inclusiveness, a fair sharing of wealth, greater social and political equity and other key aspects of a society committed to a sustainable, just and healthy future? That was a theme addressed by Senator Rosa Galvez in a ‘white paper’ she is soon to release calling for ‘a new North Star’ to guide Canadian society, based on long-term wellbeing for all within planetary limits.

There is a close relationship between these ideas and traditional Indigenous knowledge and values, which was the focus of the opening plenary session – appropriately held at the Songhees Wellness Centre – on Truth and Reconciliation in Canada and globally.  Indeed, Indigenous knowledge and values – from respect for Mother Earth to thinking ahead for seven generations, and much else – was a constant theme throughout the Forum.

The concept of ‘goodness’ kept cropping up. In his plenary talk, Dr. James Orbinski, a leader of Doctors Without Borders and now Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, urged us to “make the good choice, the choice of life in all its beauty”, adding that we should plant seeds for the good future, for the global public good.

Dr. Courtney Howard, Chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, commented that Canada should not just be an energy superpower but a GOOD energy superpower, while Bessma Momani, Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo added that we must work for and create the public good.

In her remarks in a plenary on creating the conditions for future economies, Arti Freeman suggested the common thread is to centre people and planet and question the values that drive our choices. This means creating what is variously called a wellbeing, social or purpose-driven economy.

Unsurprisingly, in the face of deepening polarization and declining trust in institutions, including government, one plenary and a number of workshops addressed the question of whether our democratic infrastructure is still fit for the twenty-first century and how to deepen democracy by building “more resilient, participatory, and adaptive democratic systems”, including how best to use social media and AI.

Although the Forum was focused on large Canadian and global challenges, there was also a strong focus on local solutions, including local engagement and participation and ‘community wealth building’ that addresses the improvement not just of the economy but of local social and environmental conditions, all of which contribute to the wellbeing of people.

All of these themes, and more, were taken up in the 49 parallel sessions spread over the two days, covering topics from justice for Indigenous and other people to the social purpose economy to democratic renewal. In the end, I was left with a sense of hope. Yes, we face wicked problems, but at all levels from the global to the local people are seeking, finding and implementing virtuous solutions.

© 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

Amalgamate what? For what purpose?

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock
  • Published as “Why amalgamate only two Greater Victoria municipalities?”

It makes absolutely no sense to discuss the amalgamation of the two largest municipalities into one super-sized municipality while leaving the rest of the capital region untouched.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

17 July 2026

708 words

I am troubled by the growing expression of support in these pages for the amalgamation of Saanich and Victoria. My concern is rooted in a couple of very simple points: This is the wrong amalgamation, and anyway, what is the problem being addressed, and how will amalgamation improve our lives?

We are a single Region of some 460,000 people, but with 13 municipalities, some of which are quite small. The report of the Citizens’ Assembly noted the two municipalities “function as a shared civic space, and its governance should reflect that.” Time and again throughout the report, much the same idea is presented – that impacts extend beyond single municipal boundaries. And time and again, they concluded a coordinated response through a unified municipality would be more effective.

But a combined Saanich/Victoria would still be bordering Oak Bay, Esquimalt, View Royal, Highlands and Central Saanich; aren’t they a shared civic space whose governance should reflect that? Moreover, while concluding “fragmented governance hinders effectiveness and accountability” and recommending amalgamation, they fail to recognise that this is equally true of the Greater Victoria Region (GVR) as a whole.

Nor do they explain why reducing the number of municipalities by one, leaving a fragmented region of 12 municipalities, one of them being half the population, is a solution. To me, it makes absolutely no sense to discuss the amalgamation of the two largest municipalities into one super-sized municipality while leaving the rest of the GVR untouched. Any rational discussion of amalgamation must look at the Region as a whole, and not just two municipalities.

The correct question here should be ‘what is the best way to govern this Region in the 21st century?’ The answer to that question needs to take into account the challenges of the 21st century, which include our ecologically unsustainable way of life, the extensive social injustices across the region, the challenges to democracy arising from social media and AI, and the rights of First Nations in this region, among other major concerns. I suggest the Assembly’s response should have been – ‘It would make more sense to amalgamate the GVR for that purpose, not just amalgamate the two largest municipalities’

Now I am not arguing here for a single regional municipality, although I would argue for amalgamation into several local municipalities, and that some functions should operate at the Regional level. But in my February 1st column “How would we reinvent local government from scratch?” I suggested we apply the principle of subsidiarity – an assumption that all decisions are local (how local, we might ask – street, block, neighbourhood?) and then ask which decisions does it not make sense to make at that level, but at higher levels?

More importantly, what is the purpose of amalgamation? How will my life as a citizen of Saanich be improved? In my February 1st column I also suggested we should start by imagining the entire system of local government disappeared overnight and we had to re-invent it from scratch; what would we want to create if we wanted a more sustainable, just and healthy community?

Well, it’s not at all clear in the arguments for amalgamation; there is no reference in the Citizens’ Assembly report to a vision of what we are trying to achieve, while the word ‘wellbeing’ appears only once, in a minority member report, and only about financial wellbeing.

In my 31st August 2025 column (“Let’s have a conversation about the future we want for this region”), I suggested 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 a comprehensive governance review should be done under the auspices of the provincial government, not just by a group from just two municipalities. 

As a citizen of Saanich, I will be voting against this ill-thought-out proposal to amalgamate these two municipalities, and I hope you will join me in voting it down. I also hope you will join me in calling on the province to conduct a comprehensive governance review of the Greater Victoria Region, one more suited to our regional nature and to the multiple challenges of the 21st century.

© 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 is Mark Carney undermining our environment?

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

​ Dr. Trevor Hancock

22 June 2026

700 words

I have noted several times recently in these columns that Mark Carney’s Mandate letter to his Cabinet a year ago does not identify the environment as one of the government’s seven priorities; indeed, the word ‘environment’ is not even mentioned. Now we can begin to see the consequences of this very deliberate omission.

Let’s start with climate change, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has recognised for some years as “the single biggest health threat facing humanity.” More recently, in May of this year, the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health, convened by the  European Regional Director for the WHO, called climate change “a catastrophic threat to human health, security and social stability” and called on the WHO “to formally declare climate change as a public health emergency of international concern.”

That puts climate change in the same threat category as Covid, Ebola and other infectious disease outbreaks that WHO has declared a public health emergency. In fact, I would argue that it is a greater threat than any of these; as Carney himself said back in 2019, in his role as the UN special envoy for climate action, climate change is “the world’s greatest existential threat.”

So you would think he would act on that belief. But what has Carney actually done? A CBC News item on June 16th listed the following: “Eliminating the consumer carbon tax. Reversing the implementation of the oil and gas emissions cap.  Scrapping the electric vehicle sales mandate. Doubling down on fossil fuel subsidies for LNG and enhanced oil recovery. Charting plans to turn Canada into one of the largest suppliers of LNG in the world. Backing the construction of a potential bitumen pipeline to the West Coast.”

Small wonder that in November 2025 Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific project that tracks government climate action, “downgraded Canada’s overall rating to ‘Highly Insufficient’, primarily due to weakened policy ambition, slow implementation, and a widening gap between current emissions levels and Canada’s 2030 target” – and that was seven months ago!

Then in February the Canadian Climate Institute reported that Canada “is not on track to meet any of its climate goals, including its 2035 target and net zero emissions by 2050”. You can almost hear Steven Guilbeault, the former Environment and Climate Change Minister who quit Carney’s Cabinet, in his recent interview on CBC Radio’s The Current  (June 17th), wondering ‘Who is this man, and what have they done with Mark Carney?’

If it were only climate change, that would be enough to condemn Carney as a hypocrite. But it gets worse. The government just rushed through changes to Canada’s pesticide laws in an omnibus budget Bill that was only reviewed by the Finance Committees of the Commons and the Senate, not by Parliament’s health or environment Committees.

In a June 18th statement, a large number of major environmental and health organisations condemned the move because these “amendments grant cabinet broad authority to overrule the Health Minister and permit the use of any pesticide found to have unacceptable environmental risks.” As the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment noted, these amendments mean “Canada’s pesticide law will be based on financial considerations rather than health and the environment”, adding: “Science doesn’t disappear when it’s inconvenient; evidence of harm must outweigh short-term economic considerations.”

Then there are the Carney government’s moves to weaken key environmental standards under the Species at Risk Act and Impact Assessment Act. A June 3rd article in The Conversation by three leaders of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution raises concerns that “the reforms proposed in ‘Getting Major Projects Built’” – a recently released federal government discussion paper – “could threaten natural environments, species-at-risk and human health for generations.”

So back to the question in my headline: Why is Mark Carney undermining our environment? I don’t know, but it seems to me he is acting just as you would expect if you elect a mainstream economist and central banker as Prime Minister. When push comes to shove, the economy matters and the environment loses. Yet as I noted in a recent column, when the environment loses, we all lose. That is a lesson Mark Carney seems not to have learned.

© 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

It’s not just the ecosystem, our economy is socially unfit too

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

A recent intergovernmental report found that in 2023, public and private expenditures of US$7.3 trillion had direct negative impacts on nature

Dr. Trevor Hancock

2 March 2026

699 words

Last week I discussed a couple of recent global-level reports that identify serious problems with our current economic system. In particular, the UN Environment Programme, in its 2026 report “Global Environmental Outlook 7”, found that human-created climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and desertification, and pollution and waste are undermining human wellbeing and “already costing trillions of dollars each year.”

The report recommended investing in the transformation of our societies and economies, because doing so will avoid or reduce these costs and will have huge economic benefits. Another report, this one in early February from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – the biodiversity equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – focuses on the relationship between business and biodiversity.

Prepared by a panel of public and private sector experts from 35 countries, the report found that in 2023, public and private expenditures of US$7.3 trillion, 2/3 of them from the private sector, had direct negative impacts on nature. These expenditures included “environmentally harmful public subsidies and private investment in high-impact sectors.”

Troublingly, that means governments are spending around US$2.4 trillion every year on environmentally harmful subsidies. Meanwhile, less than one-tenth of that amount from public and private sectors combined was “directed toward activities that contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.” Looks to me like the definition of insanity.

But it’s not just about the way our current economic and societal systems harms the planet. Suddenly it seems to be dawning on people – at least, some people – that our economy is socially unfit too.

Writing in Time Magazine on January 27th, Professor Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, stated our economic system “is fundamentally unfit for purpose”. It “only ever serve[s] a tiny minority”, he wrote, adding “it will always do so at the expense of the planet and the vast majority of people who live on it.”

The authors of the 2026 World Inequality Report (WIR) write: “Inequality has long been a defining feature of the global economy, but by 2025, it has reached levels that demand urgent attention.” Indeed, frankly, the level of inequality has reached obscene levels. This is highlighted by a finding in the report that “fewer than 60,000 multi-millionaires, control today three times more wealth than half of humanity combined” – that is, more than the poorest 4 billion people!

More broadly the report notes, those 4 billion people – half the world’s population – have only 8 percent of the world’s income and only 2 percent of its wealth. The authors of the WIR make the point that “Reducing inequality is not only about fairness but also essential for the resilience of economies, the stability of democracies, and the viability of our planet.”

So in what conceivable way is this level of inequality fair, just and appropriate? Why aren’t those 60,000 people rushing to share their wealth – and if they won’t, why aren’t we taxing it and redistributing it? How many millions or billions does anyone actually need anyway? As in previous reports the authors make the vital point that “These divides are not inevitable. They are the outcome of political and institutional choices.”

In a forthcoming report to the UN Human Rights Council, Professor de Schutter will be presenting an action agenda to reduce extreme poverty that outlines some of the choices we need to take. His proposals fall under five pillars, with adaptive governance and participatory decision-making underpinning them all.

The first pillar is focused on “how economic systems can be reimagined to prioritise sustainability and wellbeing over consumerism and GDP growth.” It includes ideas about progressive taxation, subsidy realignment, tax enforcement and embedding social purpose in corporate activity. And there is much, much more.

The fact we are making bad political and institutional choices is not only true for inequality and poverty but for the public and private sector policies that lead us to spend vast sums of money on causing environmental harm and piddling amounts on protection and restoration. It’s time we changed the political choices we are making if we want to ensure the wellbeing of people and the planet for this and future generations.

© 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

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

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