Once upon a
time, in two far away lands, several young men worked and paid their taxes. Life was good.
Until one day, along came municipal amalgamation for one and structural adjustment
for the others….
Despite my
rather mobile life, I continue to consider Elora as home. A little place in southern Ontario,
Canada. In a community of townships and
villages, now collectively called Centre Wellington. Of course, I haven’t actually lived in Elora
for some time. Not since 1994, give or
take a few local migrations and an absence or two. We first lived there in 1967. Due to a downturn in our family finances, we
moved a few kilometres away and lived a brief time in neighbouring Fergus. Things turned a bit for the worse, so we then
moved to Nichol Township, oddly, just adjacent and even closer to Elora. My brother’s family and my sister’s still
live there. My mother passed away a
while ago.
During that time
I mostly worked and lived on a dairy goat farm in Pilkington, a neighbouring
township. I also worked on beef, pig,
and horse farms. A bit of construction. It wasn’t all work. Who hadn’t danced or had a few beers in
Belwood or Arthur? What else but a few
too many beers on Friday night? And there was a university, just 20 kilometres
away in Guelph. Somehow, over 15 years,
I squeeked out a couple of degrees.
I can proudly
say that without Centre Wellington I would not be where I am today. Working, living, raising a family in Ottawa,
the nation’s capitol. And doing it on
well enough on two incomes, short term contracts, no pension, no expectations
that the kids will be able to pay their way through university, and a nice
hefty quarter million dollar mortgage to boot.
I am fifty. Economically,
somewhere about half the value of my parents when were my age, say in the 1970’s.
But I digress
and have not told you about Benjamin or Sebastien or Simon. Back in Benin, West Africa. Check it out on a map. Little place just to the west of Nigeria. I met the fellows there when I was on a two
year contract with a World Bank program in 1995.
Yip, there I was, me and my team of three, providing
micro-credit loans to women, building small scale infrastructure like corn
storage buildings, reconstructing dirt roads, and financing mini agriculture
and food processing projects. The
goal? Strengthening local economy and
democratic institutions. It was fun,
building buildings, driving around in four wheel trucks, working with Voodoo
sorcerers, watching the moon set over Lac Ahémé. It was also a bit surreal. At the same time that Benjamin and Simon and
Sebastien and I ran around financing individuals or small, independent and
isolated groups or no more than ten people, rooting around in backyards, and
spending 80% of our time writing reports, the World Bank was also imposing
economic policies on Benin that would greatly undermine its ability to govern
itself. The World Bank called this
structural adjustment.
Back then in the
1990’s (and today), the World Bank, along with the Canadian and other
governments, supported this idea called structural adjustment. This meant that the Benin government would
adopt economic policies that promote trade and production, or what is popularly
known as the <free market>. More
realistically, structural adjustment meant that Benin would pay back its
debtors (BIG banks). Such free market integration with the world economy would,
it was said, create greater efficiencies in government administration and accelerate
economic development. In practice, what that
meant was that, there in tiny Benin (population @ 5 million), privatisation would
reign supreme: of the sea-port, airport, petroleum supplies, new big roads to
the major cotton producing zones (which once upon a time grew corn <food>),
and cutbacks in all areas of social services.
The little guys, joe schmoe and sally soo, your local neighbourhood
peasant farmers, now competed against the big guys like Monsanto and Pioneer.
The logic behind
structural adjustment claimed a link between greater economic efficiency,
centralization of decision making, and general well being of the population.
Certainly, very visible wealth was rapidly being accumulated at the economic
and administrative centre of Benin - Cotonou.
Yet, since the imposition of structural adjustment (1989), average life
expectancy and other health standards dropped.
By 1997, over two thousand men were laid off from the port at the
beginning of the first year of structural adjustment. University graduates had taken to driving
motorcycle taxis and selling cassettes in the streets. In Bopa, where I lived, four hours from the
economic centre of Cotonou, cotton was harvested and sold at a loss that year,
prices for corn the staple food had sky rocketed, and gasoline was no longer
available at the only (government) station - the next was thirty kilometres
away on mud roads.
I like this
line:
<< These
results did not lead to a better distribution of the fruits of growth and the programmes
had negative social impacts. >>
(African
Development Bank Group. Benin. Structural
Adjustment Programmes I, II, III. 19 November 2003.)
That
was all so many years ago.
Today, well,
with a zillion West African youngsters waiting to find a place in the global
economy… they can choose between an Arab Spring (yip!) or something different
and nobody knows what.
None of this is
to say that the process of structural adjustment was not efficient at some
level. There have been, after all, a
remarkable increase in brand new Lexus LX and Lincoln Navigator and
whatever-you-name-it in the really cool car markets. Check ‘em out!
Now, back in the
early 1990’s, back there in hometown Elora, Ontario, little old Canada, I was
somewhat surprised to find myself caught up in some of the early winds of something
slightly different: municipal amalgamation.
The news was that amalgamation was going to save us all a whole bunch of
money. Centralize decision making. Centralize the pocket books. Bingo… the joe schmoe and sally soo were going
to be better off. Less tax. More efficient services.
Well… more like
populist conservatism. Local decision-making
turned to regional decision-making turned to money concentrated in fewer decision-makers. A swampy mess of bureaucrats between the
decision-making and the decision-makers… and you and me. So now you need a degree to figure out how to
make a presentation to your elected municipal council. You got five minutes to do it! PowerPoint!
Goals! Objectives! Action Points!
And the time off
work. And the money for the photocopies.
And the credit card to pay for the new fangled parking meter.
Wow! Thinking back to then! Boy… think of it… I made $10 / hour digging holes
in the ground in 1980. Gas for my 1969
Ford half ton pickup was $0.17 a litre. Today, thirty years later, I pay $10 / hour to
have holes dug in the ground. They (and
I) pay $1.28 a litre for gas.
I think the baby
bucksters from Benjamin, Simon, and Sebastien’s lot already have this one
figured out.
It is their Arab Spring.
And my welcome to Occupy.
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