Season 1, Episode 7: Choose Your Own Crisis (Part 2)

with Janet Pennington, Kristy Jackson, Mark Dorin, and Melanie Hoffman

Welcome to “The Gravity Well,” where you break down complex ideas into manageable insights. Your mission is to seek wisdom from elders, individuals, and communities who care for our natural resources. In this episode, you hear about the importance of community, the role of leadership, and the need for grassroots activism in addressing social, environmental, and economic crises. Key topics include the failure of current leadership to engage with the public, the necessity of returning to the rule of law, and the potential of models like Donut Economics to guide us towards a sustainable future. Join us as we explore how to foster humility, accountability, and community care in our efforts to create positive change.

Recap and Welcome to Janet, Kristy and Melanie (and later, Mark)

Alex:

Welcome to The Gravity Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle in our work and at play, we seek wisdom and elder well. We seek the wisdom of elders, excuse me, individuals and communities that share their knowledge and care for our water, air, land, life and resource needs. Caring for our homeland is our guide.

Jenny:

Thank you, Alex. Welcome Melanie. Welcome, Janet. This is a really exciting day for me to have. As I’ve told Melanie, when we first met back in March of last year, really felt at home when I met Melanie and was introduced to the Alberta Talks and AEN team. Janet is someone that I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer with a few, oh geez, at least a handful of times now. And always grateful to hear your insights and see your support in social media and in that space of trying to, as Melanie highlighted, address the concerns that our government is not sharing with the public and potentially some barriers as well. That is what we want to do, make sure that we are touching on the real world, things that are happening, excuse me, right here in Alberta where we live.

But I’m going to back up the bus a little bit and give you two, a little bit of insights as to where we’ve gone over the last five weeks. And then I’ll let Alex do the same, and then we’ll go ahead and do our round table of questions with you, and allow you an opportunity to introduce yourselves Properly as well. Just quickly, I’ve attached a file at the top of this meeting, and that is sort of the running tally of what we’re learning as we go. In our first week, we discussed why we are doing the gravity well, that we want to rebuild community and bring people together in crisis and do that in little buckets at a time. We understand that we have heavy issues that people are facing, and we want to make sure that we have fit-in “bite-sized pieces that anyone can manage” as the goal.

That’s our goal. And then we talked about our agreement. We spoke with our positive intelligence coaches. I meet weekly with some coaches. Thursday morning, which is nice leading into these conversations to be kind of grounded in that. They helped us come to we need a community agreement. We ask that this is a space for respectful listening and exchange of ideas in the best interest of the public and our planet. And that’s of everyone involved. Anyone in the chat or on the stage, the tools of this room, there is an opportunity, if you hold down your phone, you can do some emojis. It helps the conversation move along if somebody, perhaps we can’t hear each other, whatever, something, if something’s running too long, you can do a little gif and offer a funny way of just helping us come back together.

We think this is a call to action. That’s one thing. Melanie’s asked some amazing questions as we’ve gone along through this process, rooting us in what are we trying to do. For us, the big thing that we see this room being is a space to help people take responsibility for themselves. We’re not here to hold responsibility for the issue. Let me give an example. We had a conversation recently with a friend, Brad Chapin. He spoke to us about behavioral health and safety, and I had a close friend afterwards mention that she didn’t learn anything. There was nothing offered at that time. She didn’t get the answer. She was after I said to her, well, as a matter of fact, we’re going to read Brad’s book and we’re going to do it in Angie’s room and walk through what we learn.

I said to her, you’re going to have to be okay with this being a learning process for me as well. It’s this understanding that we can’t know all of the answers to things. And what I liked about Colin Smith’s comments in our meeting with him is that anybody who’s telling you that they know all the answers is probably not understanding the problem to the degree that it is, myself included, right? I learn every day a little bit more. Anyway, that’s a bit of stage. We did our community agreement. I’m going to try and be quicker with these other ones. I talked about Brad a little bit. We talked about our fears. That was the reason why we met with Brad because we appreciate that this is an understanding that being empathetic requires us to get past our fears and try to listen to people.

We talked about that. I’ll leave those notes with you and the audience. And then we met with Regan Boychuk to talk about how we source information. He helped us understand that we need to recognize media as a centralization process that works in the best interest of corporations and special interests. It does not work in the best interests of humans. We need to look at it objectively, and we need to be looking for data that substantiates what we read and that it is under the understanding of good faith. It’s meant to help serve us. And then as I said, we met with Colin and spoke about the laws of the land. We’re going to explore that conversation some more today, which I’m excited about. And really from Colin, we discussed that this opportunity to build a shared identity and have some fair and fast outcomes, we need to, I’ve heard people say, oh, Jenny, things take time.

Well, we unfortunately aren’t dictating the time here. I think this is trying to make sure that we appreciate the pace is not necessarily being dictated by us and our leaders for that matter, and emergency preparedness. This one was really special for me. Last week we spoke with my husband and a gentleman from Northwest Territories. Thank you Mike Westwick for joining us. What an incredible, I’m going to let Alex speak more about that when he does his, but the big thing for me is having a common system. Having the system right sized, and expanding a system is not a good strategy. It’s good to sort of plan for the worst. That’s one thing that Chris is good at. And then finally, the communicating. Communicating not only within your organization but for anybody that could be touched outside of your organization. Anyway, I’m going to stop there. I’m going to let Alex do the same, and then we’ll get to you two. Thank you so much for your patience.

Alex:

Yeah, wow. That was a pretty precise summary, Jenny. I won’t try and give my translation of the same thing. Yeah, there’s a lot to take in each interview and the level of trust and respect that all of our guests have given us so that they could be open and answer some of the questions that we had and ask their questions. It’s humbling, and I think it’s an amazing thing that we’re setting out to try and do. And I also want to thank you all for being able to contribute in the ways that you will choose to over time. One of the things that I’ve learned through the first five episodes is that there has been a common misunderstanding that each episode is supposed to arrive at a certain conclusion when it just arrives at better questions. And sometimes people have said, oh man, how’d you learn that you’re smart?

Or whatever. I’m only smart enough to know that I don’t know anything and that I have a lot of questions about the world. I want to better understand it so that I can help do my part to shape it locally in my family, my community and beyond. I’m leaning on experts in their respective fields to contribute and maybe give their 2 cents on these questions that I have. And some of them may be difficult, and anyone at any time if they’ve signed NDAs or they don’t want to answer or anything like that, they can feel free to say, I’m not allowed to talk about that, or I won’t talk about that, or whatever. A polite refusal is something that we welcome here at The Gravity Well, and I think it’s crucially important if we’re going to try and have conversations that can lead to better outcomes in our communities and abroad. That’s about it. And with that, I’m just going to give a quick preamble and I’ll do it in my fancy radio voice. We will briefly discuss the topic we are trying to approach with a few key questions. We will then open the floor for discussion. We request that everyone keep their responses limited to three minutes to allow others to share. We will close the meeting with takeaways, positive, negative, and interesting. We thank you for your participation. Now, let’s get started by asking one general question,

What Is the Crisis We Face?

Jenny:

What is the crisis we’re trying to define? I’m going to model that for you guys. And like I said, when I’m done sort of highlighting why we’re talking today, I’d love you to offer your version of, I said say it in different words, but lead with an introduction of yourself. I’ll start, as I said, today we’re talking about “What is the crisis we’re trying to face?” Oh, Kristy has joined us. I will see if I can get you up on stage. Kristy, in the bottom right corner. If I can’t do it soon enough, if you raise your hand, I can invite you up on stage. Thank you, Kristy. Perfect timing. We are just about to kickstart this conversation. We just did a little bit of a reflection of what we’ve been talking about. I’m so excited to simultaneously meet you and speak with you on this topic today.

I’m going to go ahead and lead us off. And like I was just saying to Melanie and Janet, when I’m done, feel free to introduce yourselves. We’ll just go around the table starting with Melanie, then Janet, then you, and we’ll let you introduce yourself and then explain your version. And one tip for you, Kristi, where you were saying that if you hold down your photo, you can get some emojis and an opportunity to add a gif. There is a way to communicate as well while muted. Okay? Why are we here? Before we can solve problems or question the problems that we’re trying to solve maybe is better stated, is to understand, well, what is the problem? This conversation is precisely that. I had the opportunity, just so you know, Kristy, I sent it to Melanie and Janet, but I had the opportunity to sit down with Ruben Nelson on Monday.

It was just sort of a last-minute thing. I had a first crack at this conversation. I’m going to take it, keep in mind, this is “try number two”, so hopefully I do better than I did in the first round. I see the crisis as a social, environmental, and economic crisis. When I think of “social”, just to expand on that concept we have an inequity problem. When I ran in the election last year, my reason for running was because I was working in industry and I was looking at the problem and realizing it was bigger than an energy transition. And then I subsequently was pushed out the door. I was written up and told if I wasn’t in line with the organization that I wasn’t welcome. I took that as notice, and I pled constructive dismissal and left. And then I read a book called The Sum of Us by Heather McGee, and she spoke about this inequity problem and how her work was to design policies for governments that would help inform good decisions for the leaders.

She noticed that every time she’d put forward a policy that was an inequity to serve equity, it wouldn’t be passed. And it was because we have this hump, this problem of our leaders are in this 1% problem. That’s one of the conversations we had with Reagan was the fact that we are in a 99%, 1% problem. That’s sort of one way to describe the social inequity problem we have and that we have to overcome. For us to stay within the limits of the earth and serve the earth and restore the earth because it is sick right now, unhealthy, and requires us to get over this inequity problem in what we’re doing. Okay? That’s the social component, the ecological component. I won’t go into it because we did episode four. That was the definition of the Nine Planetary Boundaries using the Stockholm Resiliency Centre’s Guide.

Something I was made familiar with in 2014 when I worked at a company called Imaginea Energy. That was my first introduction to it. And then the last thing is economics. We have this model that is an ever-growth model that the planet cannot sustain, and it’s the wrong measure of success. For example, GDP increases with pollutive processes. We need to decouple from GDP as being one of the measures of success of the country. I’m going to stop there, and Melanie, I’m going to pass it to you. Thank you so much for being here. I’m so excited for this.

Melanie:

Thanks so much. I am so excited to be part of this conversation. Jenny and Alex, thanks so much for creating this space bringing these ideas forward and setting a stage that just feels welcoming and good to be able to discuss this. I always struggle to define myself in a brief way, and I loved hearing from Severn Suzuki Collis recently that she is an organizer for intergenerational justice. I think that’s what I strive to be. I used to be a chemistry professor. Teaching planetary boundaries brought me in contact with the seriousness of the climate crisis and the recognition that the climate crisis is not a technological issue. It is a deeper social issue, and it’s interrelated with all of these other crises. Now, yes, I am an organizer, a community organizer. I volunteer with the Climate Reality Project. I work for the Alberta Environmental Network. I am a mother, a community builder, and a workaholic also, by the way, in recovery. Very exciting.

And for me, over the years that I’ve been doing this organizing and this learning, I have arrived now at the place of, I guess for the last two years really, my framing has been that of a crisis of relationship. And my colleague Marie Trombley at the Alberta Council of Environmental Education brought that to my attention. We were doing a lot of work around connection with nature decolonization work. I think really for me, this is a crisis of relationship that shows itself at all these different levels. It is a crisis rooted in arrogance, a lack of humility, and supremacy thinking. And it’s deeply tied to colonization, to colonialism. I’m not a scholar in this field, I’m still trying to figure out how are all these things interconnected in the same or different, but extraction and that human nature binary that sets the human apart from nature and seeks to pretend that we are above and we are not in “good” relationship. And that translates down to we are not in a good relationship with ourselves internally. We have lost the ability to grow up and be in good relationships with ourselves with one another and not fall into different variations of supremacy thinking. For me, that’s the root of the crisis. And I’ll pass to Janet if that is how this goes, or back to Jenny.

Jenny:

Well, you know what, Janet, I should do, just to make sure we respect everybody’s input, I’m going to just reflect a little bit and Alex and I might take turns just quickly. I’m just going to offer Melanie. Wow. Yes. Thank you so much for bringing in the colonial aspect. That is a hundred per cent one of the things I was thinking about when we talk about who in the next section. I won’t expand yet but thank you. The colonial component is so key to this, to understand that we all are seeking to depart from this system that hasn’t served us. Thank you so much for bringing that into the discussion. Go ahead, Janet.

Janet:

Thank you very much for this opportunity to address you all. I feel very privileged to be part of this space and welcomed in this community. I am fairly new to grassroots environmental activism and campaigning. I am excited to have, again, been welcomed with volunteering with Alberta talks and meeting you, Melanie, and having your mentorship and then having the luxury to work as a canvasser, having conversations with members of our community and with the Alberta Environmental Network. I have always been an individual who prioritizes the environment, and I grew up in nature with a dad who is a prairie farmer. We could describe him, as turned geologist, turned business owner service company, and oil and gas, my mom too, or I come from a long line of prairie farmers. With that love for the land and realization at an early age that everything is connected, my desire to study science and work in some kind of environmental capacity just grew and grew and it was nurtured.

My farm or the family farm in Alberta is around Penhold. I studied at Old’s College. I thought I was going to work in reclamation and clean up abandoned wells. I then worked for a petrology lab. I’ve also worked in mining for Manel Cole as a junior. Environmentalist when I was in university, did go down to the University of Lethbridge, studied environmental science, and then landed working in remote sensing Ag Canada and recognized, “Hey, I love agriculture.” I walked fields back when Alberta pool was still Alberta pool and down in southern Alberta for many growers, diverse crops recognized there was a thing called feedlot alley. I’d never seen a manure spreader up around our farm or in Saskatchewan. I was pretty revolted by that side of commercial agriculture. And then I worked as a crop protection specialist recommending safe, sustainable, I chuckle integrated pest management for growers with most of the big chemical companies that you see in commercial agriculture. Today. I have a crop protection pesticide applicator license, and I am probably responsible for killing more insects and ecosystems than I would like to admit. I have that level of shame, and I see that…

Jenny:

I feel you, sister.

Janet:

Thank you for recognizing that we come at this work through different lenses as we grow. And for me, I look at the environment and our crisis as if we live in a terrarium. I listen to the book on Audible, The Tipping Point. I’m listening to more and more perspectives that I’m really happy to see discussed in this forum. I want to do work for recovery from our addiction to, as it’s been pointed out, I think we’re very selfish. I think that individually we cannot tackle these crises that are multiplying as we get closer to elections and globally, I feel that I do wear a bit of a tinfoil hat. I think the deck is very much stacked against us, but I’m not willing to quit because I think the importance of preserving ecological health, that we cannot disconnect our health, the community’s health from the ecosystem you look at a forest and how it’s growing is impacted by the species, the interconnectivity that’s right down into the mycorrhiza in the soil. And I feel that as we become disconnected spiritually from people to people, we are losing the power of what the human race could be. As I shake and cry, thank you very much for the opportunity today.

Alex:

Okay, there were some amazing things said there. I was shedding a few tears, maybe I’ll just open up a little bit about my crisis in the past two years. It was an amazing turn of events. I had seen what was going to happen after Covid early on and decided to sell my condo downtown and buy a house with my wife because I could see that the market was just going to just collapse. I had a vision that way, but I had moved from a downtown center life, urban life, densification, all that type of stuff, and then going out to the edge of the city and being able to hear the wind blow through the trees and the silence was deafening. Then I got covid, and then I got covid again, and my leg stopped working. I had suffered full-body muscle atrophy, but I didn’t have a GP.

All I had was a doctor, God bless her, Dr. Caron at the Walk-in clinic. And I learned firsthand just how much work, how much active involvement, and how much support has to go into just providing one guy with a general practitioner and the medical care that he needs. And it took me nine months to learn how to walk again. My heart goes out to the people who didn’t have the family support, didn’t have the community support to get that kind of help, the help that I got. It fundamentally changed my perspective on things and the sociological and spiritual implications of what those lockdowns did to all of us. The government overreach, the abuse of power, the isolation, the lack of resources, all of those things culminated I think in a general populous depression. By the time I met Jenny, I had learned how to walk again.

I had gained 50 pounds of muscle, and I was finally ready to start doing something. And that’s part of the reason why I wanted to do The Gravity Well alongside her because I think the social-psychological ramifications that are a direct result of what’s happened in the past four years, economically, culturally, politically, and environmentally, need to be looked at. And frankly, it’s a terrifying prospect to look at it in the face. However, that being said, I found great solace in agriculture and planting seeds and spreading seeds, sharing seeds so that other people can grow plants or food or both. I ordered a package recently of indigenous seeds, Alberta indigenous seeds. That’s kind of part of the initiative that I’m starting just locally in my neighbourhood, sharing seeds, growing food, contributing to the water table, and helping to bring back the spirit of life that I think was directly attacked over the past four years. I’ll wrap it up now. Thanks.

Jenny:

Thank you, Alex. Yeah. Kristy, just to remind you, what we’re hoping that you can bring here at this point is to please just introduce yourself and then as we say, offer your version of the crisis that we face. Thank you so much.

Kristy:

Okay, thank you. Yeah. My name’s Kristy. I work for the federal government, and I work in agriculture. But I feel like it’s not addressing the climate crisis. Outside of work, I guess I’m hoping to have some impact, but I do see it basically as a crisis of division and distraction of the masses and a real lack of accountability that’s allowed. Humanity’s gotten to this point through science and all of the technological innovations, and yet we’re willing and able to just completely forget the fact that science is very clearly telling us now that CO2 in the atmosphere is at a tipping point. We are the last hope to change what’s going to happen, and what’s coming down the pipeline. We have the chance now, and sure, everything we do after this maybe can help lessen the impact, but really we’re at the last possible moment, and I just think we need to come together and rally around something.

Kristy:

And to me, that something is recognizing that scientific fact. And also on the other hand, recognizing that so many people in this world don’t have even the basics and don’t get to live with dignity or sufficiency. A new model that we could use and that Melanie’s well aware that I’m promoting this last while is doughnut economics. The author of the book in 2017, she’s an economist. Kate Raworth presents the doughnut as a model, a visual essentially that we can rally around. I think she gives a lot of specifics, different government policies that fit within the doughnut or don’t fit within the doughnut. The idea of the doughnut is two circles, the outer circle is the planetary boundaries that exist. And CO2 is the prime one I think we need to get under control, but there are other things. And then the inner circle is that everybody should have enough.

Kristy:

And if we use our economic system, and design it in a way that’s central to everything we do, then we could get somewhere. I’d like to see the movement over the next year if humanity could come together around this. I think of Occupy, that was the last time we came together about anything. It was identifying 99 versus 1%, but at the time they said, where are the solutions? You don’t have any solutions. I think an economist has designed this as a real solution that we could come together behind. And it’s a great visual, there’s potential on social media to make this a thing, but it’s hard. People have the things they’re working on. I just think we could agree on this higher-level doughnut idea, and then we could all go back to working on our passion projects that largely within these circles, fit within those two circles. That’s my idea. I’ll put it back to you, Jenny.

Who Are the Key Players in This Crisis?

Jenny:

You bet. Thank you, Kristy. Yeah, I love it, thank you. I forgot Melanie had mentioned that of course, you are working on the doughnut model economics, and I’m a big fan of Kate Raworth and what she and others like Marianna Mazzucato and some of the others, not surprisingly. These female economists have emerged in this. We’re going to get, Kristy, as we wrap up this conversation, if you can offer some of the how’s around the doughnut model, what’s great. Thank you for your comments about how you see the crisis. I forgot to take a note when you were speaking, I apologize for that. Okay, the next part is who are the key players? I heard both Janet and well, actually, all three of you offer some of the key players around this are our leaders.

Jenny:

Unfortunately, we are in this position where we have leaders who are not listening to scientists. As Kristy just offered, we are not honouring the scientific evidence that is telling us that we are in the Apollo 13 moment here. That’s one thing I can offer you, Kristy. In our conversations with Alex and me, I would say we’re in the Apollo 13 moment. We have to put all of our resources on the table. And Alex said, well, Apollo 13 was successful because of Apollo 11. That’s why we see this exercise as an Apollo 11 opportunity. Like you said, Kristy, let’s just put a model out there. We can pick it apart, finalize it, and get it to a place where we can all see common ground in it. But let’s at least know where we’re aiming together. Go ahead. It’s

Alex:

The Apollo 11 is the NASA’s reverse engineering principle. It’s planning for the worst, going to the worst-case scenario for every possible threat to life that exists from Earth to the moon and back. They tried to develop predictive models, to account for every variable, and they successfully did so, they got people back from the moon too and back.

Jenny:

Awesome. Okay. Just modelling a bit before I hand it off to you guys. Around the who. We talked about politicians being key players in this. We have industries, primarily the oil and gas industry. As Janet mentioned, we thought we’d be working on reclamation. To me, that is one of the key things that is missing from the plans in our leadership is this is not just an emissions problem. We should be restoring life and restoring the earth as we go. Those are some of the key players. We have regulators that are not either given their keys or their whistles, excuse me, or they’re not exercising them. And some of the other key things is the land, as we talked about. Well, that’s a big player that is often missed in the conversation as Melanie talked about. And then I’ll pass it off to you, Mel is indigenous. I intend to have indigenous wisdom in this room. I’m working very hard at trying to achieve that, and I’m excited to have Ryan Heavy Head in this room next week to discuss our needs. Mel, go ahead to your turn.

Melanie:

Thank you. Great to hear from everyone about the crisis. And as I work with our leaders, I mean, there’s a breakdown there in how our society understands leadership because the metrics of success are defined very narrowly. The CEOs of the companies that I know some of the folks in this room have worked for are doing their jobs very well. It is not their job to take care of the earth, to take care of humans. We have not built a system. We are not requiring that of them. Stakeholders are not requiring that. Workers are not requiring that. And of course, there are forces at play according to what I’ve learned that are ensuring that that is the case. But at the end of the day, it does feel to me like the problem is people like me, people that I see in my neighbourhood, people who could direct their resources and their attention in the direction of participating in shaping culture and society actively and responsibly, but who have not had the supports or the opportunities or the curiosity or what is it?

Melanie:

I don’t know. Because I guess, yeah, now my mind is going back to the school system and the way that I was taught about these things, but it was always outside of myself. It was never actually involving me in being an agent. At some point, it kind of comes back for me to this piece of we need to grow up because of course, people who are living, who are struggling to pay rent every month, who are experiencing racism every day, they’re not responsible to do this. But yeah, I guess I’m just coming off of reading white women. It’s just very present to me that it’s like how many people are so privileged that they don’t have to be involved? And these are the people that I guess I’m trying to figure out how to get them involved because our leaders keep saying, but that’s not what the people want, and they’re not wrong.

Alex:

I find it kind of interesting that our leaders speak on behalf of people, but they never actually speak with the people. This is one of the biggest problems with our leaders. They speak on our behalf, but they never speak to us. They say, oh, it’s not my style. Or they hold a formal press conference and then they just say what’s on the paper and then they leave. It feels disingenuous.

Jenny:

There’s a term for it.

Alex:

What’s the term?

Jenny:

Presumed consent. Our leaders presume that we consent to their decisions,

Alex:

But they never check with us first. I think that’s a real problem. To develop those relationships with our leaders so that they understand the plight of the people, I think that’s probably a important step that may be being overlooked in the general discourse.

Jenny:

Yeah. Thanks, Alex. I think the key that I heard there is this, and it’s one of the things about not only who, but when are people being engaged with. To your point, Mel, it is. I was at the Palestinian protest last Sunday, and I had a wonderful conversation with the woman there, we both said how disappointed we are and the lack of people who have the privilege of feeling safe and walking down the street to support people who aren’t there. It’s heartbreaking. It is because it is this challenge of we have to get past our privilege to be able to have empathy with the people who need our support, need our humility. Janet, if you’re back, I’ll go to you. Otherwise, I’ll skip and go to Kristy for now.

Janet:

Thank you. And I did unfortunately miss…

Jenny:

Okay, we’re just talking now about the “who”. Who’s important? When we talk about the problem, who are the key players? And I offered, we’ve got government, we’ve got regulators, we’ve got industries, we’ve got the land involved. Melanie offered that we have this lack of engagement, a lack of active participation in democracy from key people that hold the privilege in this, and that the way leadership is defined is not broad enough to represent what we need in terms of leadership.

Janet:

Yeah, I used to always have great faith in leadership, formal leadership in government. Then that went out the window with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. I was young enough to recognize that muzzling scientists and hiding the knowledge that the government had related to climate change specifically was abhorrent. Fisheries were collapsing. We were seeing the early signs that our economics were harming the environment. And then, I used to write letters when I was in junior high and high school, and back then I would get replies. I no longer get replies that are specific to the issues that I identify with my representatives. And again, I’m feeling isolated from what I was excited about with NDP leadership campaign. I’m now feeling very left behind and I have a lot of privilege. I also had hoped that with reconciliation, truth and reconciliation, we would have the truth and we would work through the calls to action.

I’m new to learning more about how we can do that, and I am excited when you talk about bringing in those voices. Jenny, thank you for doing that. I also grew up against the Tsuut'ina Reserve, and they’ve been my neighbours, my playmates, my friends, the kids that grew up going to the public schools and then in Lethbridge had the privilege of studying with, I’m forgetting the professor’s name, but with a lot of people from the blood reserve that were going to the university and studying First Nations and an introduction there. I’ve got a lot of work I feel to be an ally, and I think that it does come to the grassroots organization because when I talk to people, I find a lot of people that feel the same way, that are feeling that our voices aren’t heard. And I do think that yes, we need to recognize that economics don’t work for the future. The economic model that we’re operating within is driving us off the edge. And again, there I’m ignorant and I’m looking to understand because that’s how I deal with uncertainty. I like to have a fairly good understanding of the pressures and where we’re at. I feel like I’m always saying, oh, I need to learn. I am a jack of all trades, but trying to every day do something that will influence positive change, positive political and environmental change.

Jenny:

Amazing. Janet. Yeah, like I said, I just feel privileged to be working with you. I think that’s one of the reasons why grassroots is used, right or wrong. It’s a reason why it’s happening because as Mel said, we’re not getting the in the chat, sorry. She expanded on having town halls that were zero things or spoken about climate. I went to speak to my MLA and he didn’t even have a pen and paper out. He didn’t have his computer open. And I said, what’s the point of this meeting? And he said “This is your meeting.” And I thought nothing would come of this from you. And it got to the point where he got physically right against me and asked me to leave, told me I wasn’t welcome back in his office. This is how democracy is failing the people who have the knowledge and the willingness to come forward. Yeah. I’m just going to mark up here to join us if he’s able to. Sorry, I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong here. Oh, perfect. Welcome to the round here, Mark. Melanie, Janet, and Kristy, Mark is my ally in the Polluter Pay Federation. Mark, I’ll let you introduce yourself, but if you want to offer a comment right now, you’re welcome to. And if not, we can get you in on the next round, whatever you’d like.

Mark:

My name’s Mark Dorin. I have a background mostly in oil and gas, but I also grew up on a cattle ranch, that’s Oreo as my picture there. He’s a little calf that lost his mother last year, and we had a very illegal oil well on our family property and invented a lot of gas. My mother almost died from asphyxiation from natural gas in her garden, and she contracted Parkinson’s disease. I started, this is in an urban area, it’s just amazing. The whole town of Bury didn’t get blown sky high with these illegal oil and gas operations. And I was working overseas at the time. Had I been home and gone to this site, it would’ve gotten a shutdown much sooner. But this sort of prompted me to start working with other landowners, particularly urban landowners. And I realized that the problems were much more widespread than I ever thought.

Mark:

And I think our crisis see in a democracy, based on the rule of law, we have most law and our country in particular in Alberta, in particularly with all the stuff you’re talking about, regulation, oil and gas, climate change, et cetera, it all revolves around administrative law, which is unbelievably understood. I believe that the crisis is a deviation from the rule of law. I believe that one of the main solutions is a return to the root of law and that we have to start understanding administrative law principles. And lately, there’s been some real key players in the country that have just thumbed their nose at administrative law. Danielle Smith, one of them, Jordan Peterson, getting reprimanded by his professional organization is another example. He just simply doesn’t understand administrative law. There are several others, but so that’s what I try to focus on. And I think in Alberta, the key thing, whether it be just emissions or land reclamation, the economic problems that are associated with that, they center around Alberta Energy Regulator is the problem.

We need to reform that organization. And I’ve just been approached by someone who’s going to be running, they say they’re going to run for leadership of the NDP and one of their main platforms is reform of the Alberta energy regulator. Keep that a bit under your hats. They haven’t announced yet, and I’m not going to say who it is until they do announce, but that’s interesting to me. Anyway, that’s just a little bit about who I am and what I see as the crisis and also the solution that if we have a return to the rule of law, we can solve a lot of these problems. I agree. Thank you.

Alex:

A hundred per cent. My wife, Andrea and I, works in healthcare and we were both talking about just how, and I’ve seen it reflected across the board, the administrative bloat just makes it impossible for anything to get done. You know what I mean? And if we were just to go back to first principles and best practices, we could make sure that things get done in a timely fashion instead of just sending it to another committee for review over and over and over again until everybody’s just bled dry. A simplification of these systems is crucial, and we need to fight for that together.

Takeaways

Jenny:

Simplification is a key piece that I love. I’m looking at the clock and I know Melanie, for one, that you have said that you have a tight schedule. I want to honour everybody’s time. I am going to offer that we, I’m just going to kick some of the last questions and let everybody have some closing words, closing thoughts, unless give me a thumbs up if you can go over the hour and you want to expand longer. That’s also a possibility for me. But we’ve talked about why. We’ve talked about who, we’ve talked about some other pieces in here, but where are we going? What are our goals? I liked that Kristy brought forward the concept of the doughnut model. That is something we’re going to have a conversation in this room about Kristy, is what does the model look like?

What, and I’m excited actually through this, got connected with Mark, I think his name is. I’m joining you guys this Saturday, I think unless I’m mistaken about your connection with him regardless to talk about some models out there as well. There’s a lot of people coming together. I loved that Janet said, the more we talk about with people, the more we realize that this grassroots stuff is just so key. Start with the people that are engaged, and as people come in, that’s what the purpose of this room is, is to hopefully bring people to you, to the groups that are working on things as they come into their understanding, what are the alternatives we’re talking about? I love Mark’s point about the rule of law. We have entire industries operating above the rule of law, and that is primarily why we are where we are. Wherever we are headed needs to be a fair and fast resolution, and that can happen through a good rule of law. Those are my key takeaways. And then how, like I said, we’re going to have five more of these conversations throughout this year. We’re going to get into all of those things. But if you guys want to offer some how’s in this, to me, it’s grassroots and working together. That’s my how right now. I’ll let you, Alex, lead off the closing thoughts and then we’ll go around.

Alex:

Well, I’ll try and keep it short and sweet. A lack of acknowledgement in the multiple layers of crisis that we face, whether it’s economic, environmental, socio, or psychological, needs to be emphasized in open discussion. Additionally, the bureaucratic bloat that’s preventing anyone from getting anything done in this sort of closed-door policy is making its strongest effort to maintain status quo and censor expert opinion, local input, a reconnection with Canadian people. I think it’s a real problem. I’m not exactly sure that I know how to tackle it, but I know that all of us having these types of discussions is a good start and we can all do things in our own right and share our experience and our expertise with each other so that maybe we can adapt some of those principles and best practices in our own lives and maybe get the ball rolling. I’m looking forward to rediscussing these things over the next year in future episodes and trying to flush out some possible solutions with whoever’s willing to dedicate a little bit of time. Whatever they can provide. It would be amazing. And I think there is an opportunity here with all of us and others who we haven’t met yet, even to make a difference. With that, I’m just going to leave it all and say thank you to you all for trusting in us and participating in this conversation. We’ll talk soon.

Jenny:

Your turn, please Mel.

Melanie:

Thank you. I’m just trying to find the name of the elder who I know. I learned some wonderful things from Saskatoon at the Climate Reality event there last month. The recording is online, it doesn’t seem to be in this notebook. I should know his name. In any case, what he spoke of that resonated for me that I wanted to share here is that he sort of spoke of this idea that he rejects that elders have wisdom, but that he sees it, that elders have humility. As Alex spoke to himself earlier, if I’m remembering this correctly, the more we know, the more we are humbled in the face of what we don’t know. That spirit of humility for me, I feel like I see connections between everything that has been shared, and I very much resonate with Kristy’s framing of all of this fits within doughnut economics, independent of what you’re working on, because the sustainable development goals are that inner ring.

What we’re talking about in terms of rule of law, community care is represented somewhere in the sustainable development goals and then the outer ring of achieving whatever we can still achieve with regards to coming back within a non, we don’t know if it’s possible, right? But the biodiversity loss piece and the climate piece as the core boundaries. I see all of that coming together again in where we’re losing or we have lost community. We have lost accountability. We are so disconnected and so mobile that if you piss people off somewhere, you just go somewhere else and no one knows and no one holds you accountable. Providing strong attachment, kind, accountability, restorative justice with generosity and humility, I mean, it’s something I’m trying to learn within myself to be able to treat myself in that way and then to be able to show up in that way in the community. To me, that’s really at the foundation of the health. Beautiful

Jenny:

Beautiful stuff, Mel, thank you so much. I’m grateful to be working with you, honestly. Okay, Janet, you’re up, please.

Janet:

Thanks again. I’m learning so much and I will continue to. I’m going to speak to the how that I commit to, and I’m going to use some of the language that I’ve been introduced to through Alberta talks and the deep canvassing education that I’m putting myself through. I will work through the cone of curiosity. I will continue to ask questions and persist in finding answers. I will support voices that are doing the same. I’ve always, I’ve supported journalism. I will continue to do that with my subscription to Canada’s National Observer, the Narwhal, and the Walrus, and put my dollars where I see journalism upholding that pillar of democracy. And then to, I think we have that opportunity with the leadership race here that we’re seeing in Alberta. If we continue to ask and have these questions, I think we will maybe even see platforms change based on persuasion and public pressure. That’s what my commitment is. I will continue to do this, and I’m excited to be part of this initiative. Thank you.

Jenny:

Such a pleasure. Kristy, your turn, please. Maybe we’ve lost her in cell service again. Bottom right, if it is on mute. And Mark, oh, go ahead, Kristy.

Kristy:

Well, just to say in closing remarks that I think the power of a hopeful vision, a hopeful solution that people if we could catch their attention long enough, I do think and hope that it would be enough to get people to come together. There’s that and the other part of the doughnut, I think the obvious thing is that this means that we need to get some of the wealth from the wealthiest society. We never seem to talk much about the resource side of the equation. I feel like this is the very next thing that would be the talking point after we talk about the doughnut, is that, of course, why are the billionaires getting away 40 billion? Anyway, all of that. Thank you.

Jenny:

Absolutely. Yeah, the polluter must pay. This is a good lead-in to Mark with your closing remarks. Please, Mark.

Mark:

Thanks, Jenny. Well, I think that the NDP leadership race is perhaps a once-in-a-century opportunity to address what I see as one of the central crises in Alberta, which is how we get our energy regulator to properly regulate the industry fairly and balance the rights of the industry with the rights of the public, which we’re not doing in this province. And I think that won’t matter as much who wins as what topics get brought to the conversation. I think it’s a once-in-a-century opportunity and we can’t miss it, at least from the things that I work on. I’m going to be talking to Jenny and others to try to rally some major support for some movement in a new direction to, in particular, return to the rule of law on energy matters in Alberta.

Jenny:

Absolutely. Mark, it’s now or never, as I think it was Kristy that said, we don’t have another chance. This is our goal, and this is why. To me, this was so important that we have this conversation this year. I know it hasn’t been perfect. We’ve had hiccups and we will have hiccups, but it’s too important and we don’t have the luxury of waiting. Thank you so much for all of you, your participation. This has been an incredibly expansive conversation and I look forward to more with you. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day.

Alex:

Thanks, everyone. Bye.