Canada Well-Being Measurement Act
(CWBMA)

Key Points

The CWBMA can open our 'eyes and ears' to the challenges of our times.

Operating principle:

What we count and what we measure shows what we value. When we count only monetary transactions (GDP), environmental quality and social cohesion receive too little attention. When we legitimize other factors by measuring and reporting on them in our core measure of progress, they become visible. This visibility, in turn, enables us to see how policies and actions affect the measures, and encourages decision-makers to pay attention to them.

Key phrases from the Act:

The Canada Well-Being Measurement Act, calls for the "development and periodic publication of a set of indicators of the economic, social and environmental well-being of people, communities and ecosystems in Canada." To do this the House of Commons Standing Committee that deals with issues of sustainability will "receive input from the public through submissions and public hearings" to determine "the broad societal values on which the set of indicators should be based."

Why do we raise the children?

The Canada Well-Being Measurement Act could change the way in which we assess progress and lead us out of the complex of problems that threaten our future.

Main considerations:

• To make effective decisions it is necessary to consider social and environmental factors as well as economic ones.
  
  
• What should our tax money and the legitimacy we give government be used to accomplish or preserve?
  
  
• The Act requires that the indicators chosen to measure well-being be based on values identified by the people in Canada.
  
  
• The Act is a part of the 7th Generation Initiative. We will provide a "Discussion Kit" on request to help engage any group in a discussion about what they value and how to measure it.
  
  
• The feedback from these discussions will be collected to help determine what should be measured and reported.
  
  
• The measures established by the Act will provide information on social and environmental factors to inform decision making. They will compliment present economic indicators.
  
  
• The same measures will reveal the social and environmental impacts of policies and actions.
  
  
• Every Member of Parliament should know that Canadians want more accurate measures of well-being. We are looking for help reaching MPs in your riding and perhaps others.
  
  
• All party support is being sought to make this a nonpartisan initiative with the purpose of serving all Canadians.

An improved measuring system could:

• avoid the problem Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has lumping all expenditures together. It would distinguish between money spent on problems we could have avoided and money spent on things of positive value.
  
  
• serve as a balance sheet, indicating the depletion of resources that takes place when products are made from those resources.
  
  
• acknowledge and account for unpaid work such as raising children, elder care and voluntary community activities.
  
  
• provide resource accounts and pollution inventories to keep track of our ecological health.
  
  
• monitor other factors such as the durability of goods, employment satisfaction, income distribution, crime, the quality of education and health care, stress, leisure time and any thing else thought to be of consequence to our long-term well-being.

The following analogies help picture the function of the proposed measures of well-being:

These are expanded on at: http://www.SustainWellBeing.net/7GI/howdo.shtml

Measuring the growth of a baby tells us a lot about how well the baby is doing, but the same measure is of little use in assessing the well-being of an adult.

It's time we had a measuring system suitable for a mature society.

People are effective at recognizing problems that appear around them. By forming groups and sharing information they can often find good solutions. If we consider citizens' groups as sense organs, eyes and ears as it were, the purpose of the CWBMA is to connect these senses to the capacity that larger institutions have for making decisions and taking action.

Making decisions primarily on the information provided by GDP is like driving a bus using only the speedometer. With eyes fixed on the one meter, we have managed a near steady acceleration, but we have caused serious damage to the environment and the integrity of communities. We are in need of additional instruments on the dashboard. Instruments which measure natural resource stocks, pollution levels, biodiversity, the durability of goods, employment satisfaction, income distribution, the quality of education and health care, family stability, stress, leisure time, unpaid work, crime and other factors of consequence. With more instruments, a rear view mirror to assess how we are doing and a clear windshield through which to keep looking out for new obstacles, we may yet steer our way to a sustainable future.


Much more on the Measuring Well-Being program at: http://www.SustainWellBeing.net/well-being.shtml

Questions and comments are welcome.

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Last Update: August 21, 2008
Filename: http://www.SustainWellBeing.net/7GI/media/keypoints.shtml