On March 27th, Joe Jordan, the MP championing the "Canada Well-Being Measurement Act" had an opportunity to speak in the House of Commons. He used the opportunity to explain, on the public record, why we need to improve our measure of well-being.

His comments relating to the Measurement Act, are presented below.

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Joe Jordan MP, House of Commons,
March 27, 2000

". . .At present public policy is pretty much based on the assumption that expanding economic activity or growth is the only road to well-being. This may have been accurate at one time but things have changed.

If we measure the rate of a baby's growth it will tell us a lot about how well that baby is doing but we cannot take that measure and apply it to an adult and get useful information. We saw exchanges just now about numbers, about money, about GDP. Is anyone talking about whether Canadians are happy? I think the GDP as an indicator of well-being falls well short of what I think Canadians expect their governments to adopt.

It makes no distinction between money spent on education and money spent on cleaning up after automobile accidents. While GDP mixes good expenses with bad, it takes no account of the unpaid work in homes and by volunteers in our communities. If we did not have that, our well-being would be significantly affected.

GDP fails to recognize any changes in the availability of natural resources. My background is one of business. I have never hugged a tree in my life but I may start. If I could draw a business analogy, we run the country off the income statement. When I say "we" I mean governments at all levels. We do not have a balance sheet. We are assuming that we can use resources and count the economic activity that it generates. In no way are we reconciling these accounts. In no way are we keeping books for future generations. We have bought into the notion that growth is good and that the GDP is a measure of our well-being. I really think we need to take another look at it.

Making decisions primarily on the information provided by the gross domestic product is like driving a bus and just staring at the speedometer. The GDP speedometer has its place but it does not explain some matters of consequence. The Atlantic cod is a classic example. The fisheries contribution to GDP was rising steadily, right up to the day the stocks disappeared. Another instrument on the dashboard, something that gave us some indication of the health of the stocks, could have provided information which would have stimulated action to steer clear of the disaster that followed.

The dashboard of any modern society should be equipped with a broad range of instruments to indicate changes in natural resource stocks, pollution levels, biodiversity, the durability of goods, employment satisfaction, the quality of education and health care, leisure time, unpaid work, crime and other factors of consequence. The political reality is that while for years politicians have driven the bus looking only at the speedometer, the people are looking out the windows. They are getting more and more concerned.

What we count and what we measure signifies what we value. When all we count is money, talk about the environment and social cohesion does not produce action. When we legitimize other factors by measuring and reporting on them in our core measure of progress they become visible. This visibility enables anyone to see how policies and actions affect the measures.

Increased awareness of causes and effects will naturally incline decision makers to consider how their decisions might affect the measures, and management processes will evolve to seek well-being in a broader context. Once we understand the possibilities that improved measures offer, we will never again accept a system that relies on a narrow economic perspective. It is not unlike the ISO process that businesses have gone through. It is simply accountability and transparency that the country has never seen before.

In conclusion, long after we have spent our tax cut on the public policy implications of developing and reporting on a set of sustainable indicators, we will be paying dividends for not only Canadians today but for every generation that follows us. . . .

. . . We can engage Canadians. Canadians can have a measure to find out if their well-being is increasing or decreasing in things like literacy, mortality and mobility rates. Statistics Canada already keeps track of many of these things. The first step is to look historically at the environmental movement. I say this as an outsider. It has constantly butt heads with economic factors. It must be very frustrating to be an environmentalist because money does not talk. It swears and they keep losing, losing and losing.

We have to step back and engage Canadians. Let us start reporting on the state of the environment in Canada. If we can engage Canadians then governments can be dragged along, kicking and screaming. They will follow. That is why I underscore the significance of the indicators announcement. It is a long term strategy but it will go a long way to changing our approach so that we align economics with the best interest of society and the environment.

I will give the member an example. Germany has a program called lifetime products stewardship. If one builds a washing machine, sells it and it breaks, one has to take it back. It does not go to a landfill site. Let us look at what has happened over time. If we take a look at the workings of a washing machine, a very large percentage of the parts is being recycled. The bracket that holds the motor is the same bracket that holds the compressor in a refrigerator or the picture tube in a television set.

For people watching at home, they should turn their sets around and look at how many different screws are in their televisions. That is built-in obsolescence. That all ends up in landfill sites. As a result of the law in Germany they have better products. They are cheaper to make. They last longer. They are cheaper to repair. At the end of the day the environment wins, the economy wins and society wins because consumers are paying less for goods.

We have gone far enough with the notion that the economy and the environment are at loggerheads. We need to shift the sands and take a different approach. It starts with Canadians being informed about problems and priorities. A set of indicators, not unlike what the auditor general reports on finances every year, will engage Canadians. They will demand that their politicians start making decisions that are in the best interest of not only the economy but society and the environment as well. "