Downward spiral not inevitable

If things are going badly for a municipality - if jobs are scarce, If social assistance costs are rising, plants are closing and the tax base is eroding - what is council likely to do? Why, increase its efforts to keep old industries and attract new ones, of course. And what can that translate into? Well, it can mean opening land to development, even if it means destroying prime agricultural areas, eliminating green corridors and creating urban sprawl. It can also mean being kind to polluting industries - such as a nuclear power plant in Pickering, or an incinerator for toxic wastes in Alberta, or a dangerous recycler of plastics in Hamilton. It can mean Kirkland Lake turning its old mines into garbage dumps, so Torontonians won't have to cut down on their garbage and corporations won't have to reduce their packaging. It can mean small communities in Northern Ontario supporting the Hanover of about one-third of Ontario's land to logging companies under provincial leases that will never end; coastal communities supporting fish-farming practices that infect wild fish with diseases; a federal government that won't go beyond a snail's pace in combating global warming for fear of offending communities that depend on oil companies for their welfare, The idea of sustainability is meant to stop this kind of madness, because the madness snowballs. As economic decisions degrade the environment, social conditions deteriorate. There is more sickness. There is more absenteeism. More stress. More upset from natural disasters and changing weather patterns. More families at risk. The worse the social conditions, the greater is the economic impact: Health costs escalate, as do costs of the social safety net and pollution prevention. Natural disasters wreak economic havoc. Governments are impelled to raise taxes to fulfil their obligations. Companies face higher costs and less certainty. And so there is a slow spiral downward. In scenarios such as this, praise be for Malcolm Shookner and the social planning councils of Ontario municipalities. Shookner is executive director of the Ontario Social Development Council and the driving force behind development of a quality of life index for the province. The provincial index, in turn, has served as a model for municipal social planning councils to create their own indexes. The indexes are tools for action, he says, because they can focus response. They will be an early warning system that identifies the impact of major changes that are under way - the funding cuts by senior governments, the downloading of responsibilities, the restructuring of municipalities, the corporate downsizing, the merger mania. Each quality of life index is a single number, calculated from 12 indicators based on social, health, economic and environment statistics. Whether the number goes up or down indicates whether the quality of life is improving or declining. And each of the 12 indicator statistics tells why. The indexes will be published every six months, so trends can be identified and remedial action taken quickly. The provincial index was first published last fall. Now, social planning councils in Toronto and 11 other municipalities are planning to publish indexes this year. "We want to raise public awareness," Shookner says, "to stimulate discussion. We want to give people a tool that they can use to hold governments accountable. So that they can be more like citizens, instead of consumers and taxpayers, which seems to be the only way they're referred to now. We want people to be able to counteract the dominance of the global marketplace," and to regain control of society from the bottom up. Those are lofty aims, and a heavy load for simple indexes to carry. But let the complacent beware. Never underestimate an informed electorate.

NEXT WEEK: What the indexes say

Cameron Smith is an author and environmentalist living in Lansdowne, Ont.