The Canada Well-being Measurement Act

A brief introduction from Joe Jordan MP
explaining why Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does not measure well-being and how the proposed Act can do the job.

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When pollution makes people sick, the cost of their medical care is added to the GDP.

When stolen property is replaced, security equipment purchased and people tried in courts and put in jail, the GDP goes up.

When the Insurance Industry has to repair or replace billions of dollars worth of property because of increasingly violent weather events, the GDP goes up.

These things are added into the GDP where they are mistaken for progress. In each case, the expenses are incurred because we have failed to prevent problems. These expenses are a sign of distress, not increased well-being.

We cannot assume that a growing GDP indicates that we are doing well. We have to look more closely at what money is used for. We have to distinguish expenditures that truly benefit society from those that signal trouble.

And while crime, pollution, sickness and natural disasters all make the economy grow, the GDP ignores the value of volunteer and unpaid work, of leisure time, and of our natural resources as capital assets.

Every business accounts for the sale of assets from their inventory. Yet we ignore the destruction and consumption of our natural resource assets and even count the loss as gain. When we take lumber out of a forest or fish from the sea we only count the gain from selling lumber and fish, we don't record that we have also reduced the stock of trees or fish or any impacts such reductions might cause.

There is an explanation for this omission. From prehistoric times until just a half century ago, the Earth appeared to be an infinite source of resources and absorber of waste; exhausting its bounty was unimaginable. These expectations are no longer valid. There are far more people using more powerful technology than ever before. As the 21st Century dawns, we have less fish in our oceans, fewer healthy forests, less arable land, fewer species, more greenhouse gas emissions, and more pollution, than we inherited from our parents. We ignore responsibility at our peril.

The Canada Well-Being Measurement Act aims to establish a measuring system that distinguishes activities which benefit people and ecosystems from activities which result in and from the degradation of our circumstances. It would reflect quality of life and maintain natural resource accounts.

Excellent work is being done in Canada and abroad to develop the necessary measuring systems. This work needs to be recognized, encouraged and established in our core measure of well-being.

The assumption that all growth is good is misleading and risky. Measuring the size of a baby can tell us a lot about how well the baby is doing, but such a measure is of little use in assessing the well-being of an adult. The measures of well-being proposed by this Act can give decision makers at all levels, from individual citizens to members of this House, a greater sensitivity to the impacts of our actions and help us meet the responsibilities of a mature civilization. These measures would provide a far more accurate and comprehensive measure of progress than we currently posses. They can help us guide policies to ensure the well-being of our children and future generations of Canadians.