Today’s understanding of productivity refers to the number of ‘widgets’ a person can produce in a period of time. That hardly touches the more general meaning which finds Canada sadly lacking. Have conditions improved for families as the years have progressed? Is life easier now than it was 50 years ago? Many have reason to doubt.

The first consideration is our quality of life. Once a family lived on the salary earned by the ‘bread winner’. Currently prosperity appears based on at least two salaries per family. Those successfully employed know about the rich and the poor and the huge gap between them. The food bank appears necessary for others in most communities. I was shocked some years ago in an Alliston meeting where a police officer talked about the 50 or so people living on the street, sleeping in store fronts or under bridges. In Alliston? Poverty is prevalent throughout society, even here. The recent recession is particularly apparent in our materialistic society.

Increased productivity is a common policy goal of politicians yet government and industry are busy cutting the means of productivity, employment. The major component of this is quality of life, improving the important elements in our lives, air, water, land and energy.

I have written before of the work of Elinor Ostrom, an American economist and Nobel prize winner, who feels that the more effective way to make the necessary changes in society is to encourage the grassroots level instead of the apparent prominent role of government. Local institutions trump government privatization and regulation and the narrow profit oriented view of industry.

How has the present structure performed in this regard? Air quality in our urban centres, and I suspect nation wide, is responsible for an ever increasing incidence of respiratory illness which is taxing our health system and contributing to about 1500 premature deaths annually in the City of Toronto alone. Air is considered of universal ownership hence seen as an unlimited dumping ground for waste products of various industrial processes. That also includes the exhaust of millions of cars and trucks as well as the effluent from our electricity generating coal plants. Lost time due to illness hardly enhances productivity.

Water is one of mankind’s most essential commodities. Rivers and lakes are considered fair game for dumping industrial and community wastes. Poor water quality and over-fishing, have also had a dilatory effect both on our holiday time and the tourist industry. This again reflects on our health care system.

An even greater impact has been the loss of food production due to over fishing and destruction of fish habitat in our coastal waters. Fish is a major component of people’s diet. Our east coast cod fisheries and reduction of salmon fishing in Pacific waters no longer contribute adequately to the well being of 6.8 billion people world wide.

Rising ocean levels related to global warming are of real concern potentially causing inundation of living space for several million people in low elevation cities.

This is only one of several consequences of our misuse of the energy system, a major concern related to emissions in the atmosphere which will affect our ability to feed the many more millions of people we expect will add to population on earth. Starvation due to desertification of farm lands may be a hazardous aspect of climate change causing a significant drain on our level of productivity.

Probably the worst failure relative to a future society is based on our misuse of land. In Canada the underutilization of food producing agricultural lands is endangering our productivity especially as we continue to waste growing space. In the north, allocation of most of our forest land to forest and mining industries has hampered the nation’s ability to increase productivity which could help support an ever increasing global population.

Canada is a vast and under populated land. If Canadian productivity is a real concern of government, there is much more to consider than the physical act of increasing the number of ‘widgets’ per person.

The basic aspects of life for people employed in their production will need a great deal more consideration in creating increased future prosperity.