When artists depict the future, we should take the time to listen. What if they’re warning us of something that could be avoided?

“Brawndo! It’s got what plants crave!”

This slogan for the popular sports drink ‘Brawndo’ is the mantra of citizens in Mike Judge’s 2006 film ‘Idiocracy.’ It’s information everyone has memorized, word for word, ready to trump anyone who would dare to question their precious ‘Thirst Mutilator!’ And because they believe so absolutely in the claim, they can’t understand why their plants won’t grow when they stop watering them altogether, instead feeding them only Brawndo – since, of course, it’s got what plants crave.

The film depicts a society so degraded in educational norms, and so smitten by emboldened advertisement, that its members passively accept the most powerful and obvious ideas thrust upon them. The words are so loud and the font is so bold; how could it be a lie?

Education was replaced by advertisement. No one needed the slightest botanical leanings, since everyone knew that Brawndo was all that plants need. The ad had taught them this; the ad had made it clear.

What does it matter to us? We needn’t worry; it’s all comedy or science fiction. It’s just a joke.

Yet every now and then, black comedy becomes reality.

In a recent piece, DeSmog Canada documented a new role the oil and gas industry will play in the development of primary and secondary school curriculum: “The province of Alberta has recently released a development plan for public schools that enlists Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada in the creation of future Kindergarten to grade three curriculum. Oil giant Cenovus will partner in developing curriculum for grades four to 12."

Big oil in the classroom. You can already imagine the slogan: “Oil! It’s got what societies need!” Are children learning to think, or are they being sold a product?

And while the place of industry in the classroom is clearly contested, there is a more fundamental issue at play here: Big Oil or not, why are we entrusting the development of childhood educational curriculum to non-experts?

Speaking on the issue, NDP Education Critic Deron Bilous argues that, in drafting the curriculum, the ministry of education should “[…] remove any partners that are not experts in childhood education. Somehow, I don’t think that oil and gas companies have the necessary qualifications.” Further, Bilous goes on to ask, why it is that “parents and teachers are being pushed aside to make room for oil and gas companies? I certainly can’t even begin to rationalize these decisions, or why the minister would undermine the value of our education system.”

The answer seems to be found in that old abysmal gap between policy-makers and practitioners. Why is anyone without educational expertise drafting educational policy?

The question of how to educate is profoundly complex, and an area of study in its own right. Not just anyone can teach, and even fewer can teach the teachers. When inexpert executives are given policy-making powers, they aren’t just inconsequentially out of their element; they are making consequential decisions without the qualifications to do so. Lions lead by donkeys.

The actual question of who decides upon curriculum is nothing new: even the role and qualifications of teachers in this process is a contested matter. And who is to say that the curriculum handed down to those teachers is the best material for the students in the class?

Educational experts, in many cases current and former teachers, inform schoolroom policy throughout the country – a cursory search of provincial education ministries’ websites reveals this.

But the influence of these experts may fade if they are forced to compete with corporations for a seat at the table. What is the voice of a teacher next to the dollar-strength and political influence of an oil corporation?

And where, in this scenario, are students to learn the value of critical thinking? Of challenging what has come before to make room for something better?

In Ontario the “government is putting a new policy into force this fall that will focus on career planning for students from kindergarten to Grade 12” in an effort to keep students on a straight path to the workplace.  

In describing the problem, Kelly Pedro for the London Free Press reports that young students aren’t getting enough career guidance at an early age, leading to uncertainty when entering university.

She writes, “With less amount of time to think about career options or ask questions, some students have taken an extra year of high school, entered university when college would have been a better path, or changed majors as their world opens up.”

Let that sink in. That they ‘changed majors as their world opens up,’ is described as the problem.

Clearly the overarching role of education is not to inspire, to open minds, or to pursue learning; it is to funnel children into the productivity machine, even at the expense of intelligence.

This becomes particularly troubling when the entire educational process is turned into a corporate endeavour.

Corporations exercising influence on curriculum could very easily make self-serving use of such practices. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine why they’d be there otherwise. They could very well funnel children into their own factories.

Education becomes advertisement: come work for us!

Are we to imagine a future in which children are placed on a pathway to the oil patch from Kindergarten on? Or is that future already upon us?

The child’s trajectory will be said to reflect his or her ‘personal interests,’ but can that future be considered free if there was no discernable alternative?

The possibility for change is ruled out from the start; career planning for students will see to that. But the oil industry’s booming voice at the drafting table does not turn their claims into the truth; students should be free to follow their interests beyond a predetermined work-path. 

Changing majors when your world opens up is the same thing as using your critical powers. It is realizing that people change, and interests change, and that the world changes, and there are far more expansive realms of knowledge beyond a single marketable skill.

We do have one thing going for us: we’ve been warned. We have the comedy and the science fiction; we know what to expect. It’s in artist’s renderings of the possible future that we see what very well could happen to the world around us. It’s our choice to listen to the warnings.

And there’s one more thing we have on our side: every open mind so highly sought after, because in the final analysis, it is the children themselves who have to buy what the curriculum is selling.

Image Credit: Bill Erickson via Flickr

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Joe Oliver, Canada’s new federal Minister of Finance, made quite a name for himself during his tenure as Minister of Natural Resources. In his former position Oliver proved himself a fierce and outspoken defender of the oilsands as the economic engine of Canada (even if he did tend to fudge the facts). But is it just the oilsands he wants to protect from the criticisms of the public? Or is there more to his fondness for corporations in general, even at the expense of public health and the national interest?

With Oliver moving to the helm of the country’s finances, perhaps it’s time to take a look back over his notable career.

Oliver, it should be pointed out, is no slouch. He obtained both his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Civil Law from McGill, one of Canada’s most prestigious universities. After making the Quebec Bar, he graduated with an MBA from Harvard’s Graduate School of Business. Before he was elected to Parliament, he enjoyed a high-flying career in the corporate sector of which he seems so fond. First a career in the investment banking industry, starting with Merrill Lynch. Then on to the executive directorship of the Ontario Securities Commission before becoming president and CEO of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada.

According to his bio on Prime Minister Harper’s very own website, he also played prominent roles as chair of the advisory committee of the International Council of Securities Associations and as chair of the Consultative Committee of the International Association of Securities Commissions. A graduate of the Directors Education Program at the Rotman School of Management, he was also a member of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Business Valuators, and he sat on the board of the Canadian Securities Institute Research Foundation.

Somewhere along the way (Harvard? Rotman? Harper?) he learned the virtues of spin, because he has proven more than willing to muddy the truth in his mission to convince Canadians, Americans and Europeans that the oilsands are a clean, responsible and sustainable source of energy. His use of little black lies and greenwash is encyclopedic. Here are a few of his best:

• In an open letter in the Globe and Mail and the Wall Street Journal, Oliver attacked Canadians who oppose oilsands expansion and advocate for investment in cleaner sources of energy, calling them “radicals…with radical ideological agenda[s]” who “use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada's national economic interest.”
• In a Chicago press conference that was part of a formal junket to promote the beleaguered Keystone XL pipeline, Oliver claimed the oilsands are a “greener” source of energy without mentioning, of course, what the dirtier ones were.
• Oliver told a major newspaper (Montreal’s La Presse) that, “Scientists have recently told us that our fears (on climate change) are exaggerated,” even as the International Energy Agency had just released a report that stated two-thirds of the existing known fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground to achieve the global commitment (Canada included) to prevent average global warming of more than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels (of which Oliver apparently had no idea). (It turned out that the “scientists” to which Oliver referred was a single climate change denying columnist named Lawrence Solomon). In response twelve of Canada's climate scientists and energy experts wrote an open letter to Oliver, expressing their concern that the minister was not taking climate change seriously.
• Recently Oliver told a New York audience Canada was emerging as a "21st century energy superpower," despite having no climate legislation and no renewable energy strategy. 

As I pointed out in a previous post, it’s abundantly clear that where the oilsands are concerned, Oliver and other Canadian politicians continue to ignore the ethical and practical guidelines (the Competition Bureau’s Environmental Claims: A Guide for Industry and Advertisers) the federal government has set out for businesses, advertisers and "any person who promotes a product/service or business interest who is likely to benefit from the product's environmental claims," so as to avoid using “misleading or deceptive claims relating to an implied or expressed environmental benefit.”

Is Oliver’s selective use (and misuse) of the facts restricted to the oilsands? Turns out, he has had a history of soliciting for numerous corporate interests along the way.

Asbestos, Canada's cancer export

While the rest of the world worked to ban the use of chrysotile (or “white”) asbestos because it is a carcinogen that also causes lung disease, Oliver (along with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Environment Minister Peter Kent) continued to claim that (like climate change) it wasn’t as bad as it appeared.

“Mr. Speaker, as I said, all the recent scientific reviews show that chrysotile can be used in a safe and controlled manner,” he argued in Parliament on June 21, 2011.

That same year, Canada surprised the world at the meeting of the Rotterdam Convention in Geneva when it single-handedly prevented chrysotile asbestos fibers to be added to the Rotterdam Convention’s list of hazardous substances. This would have mandated that exporters of asbestos use proper labelling, include directions on safe handling, and inform purchasers of any known restrictions or bans. It wouldn’t ban its production, but signatory nations would be able to ban the importation of chemicals listed in the treaty, and exporting countries are obliged make sure that producers within their jurisdiction comply.

Montreal toxicologist Daniel Green, who has been tracking asbestos use in Quebec for years, told Al Jazeera he disagreed wholeheartedly with Oliver’s public statements. Green says the asbestos industry has killed people in Canada and all over the world.

"If there was a place where one could answer the question: can asbestos be used safely, it's here in Quebec…. Asbestos has killed and is still killing Quebeckers. It should not leave the ground and kill people in other countries."

The Australian Upper House passed a motion to pressure the Canadian government to end policies supporting asbestos exports, and growing global pressure eventually forced Canada to stop supporting its last asbestos mine, in 2012. The Harper government did not block the listing of chrysotile asbestos at the 2013 meeting of the Rotterdam Convention. But the message is clear (and sordid): “If you can make money from exporting a hazardous substance, then oppose safety requirements, as they might damage profits,” wrote Kathleen Ruff, co-coordinator of the Rotterdam Convention Alliance, in the Toronto Star recently. Sounds eerily similar to a bitumen-inspired logic, doesn’t it?

Salmon farming

What about salmon farms? Where there’s a profit, there’s a way. Since the federal government passed omnibus budget bill C-38 in the summer of 2012, which gutted several pieces of environmental legislation in Canada, aquaculture projects in Canada are no longer assessed for environmental impacts by the federal government. And in Nova Scotia at least, they won't undergo a provincial environmental assessment either.

“I'm absolutely gobsmacked,” said Marike Finlay. “I really cannot believe this is happening in Canada.”

Finlay, it turns out, is president of Association for the Preservation of the Eastern Shore (APES), a group that actively opposes two new salmon farming operations in Nova Scotia’s Spry Harbour and Shoal Bay, bringing the number of ocean-based salmon feedlot sites that have been proposed or approved in Nova Scotia to six. What's astounding to Finlay is that unlike the industrial salmon feedlots that have gone before them, neither Shoal Bay nor Spry Harbour will undergo an environmental assessment, despite the fact federal environmental impact assessments were prepared for both sites.

“We spent huge amounts of time, energy, and expertise making our reply,” says Finlay. “We had marine biologists, wildlife specialists, specialists in tides and currents, local fishermen's knowledge. And we replied to each environmental assessment for each of those sites.”

But Joe Oliver, the defender of all things corporate, defended the federal policy changes. “We did eliminate the review of some projects which were inconsequential,” Oliver told CBC Radio's “The House.” “And that's been used as sort of an instance of reduced environmental protection. In fact, we've been focussing on the projects that can have an environmental impact, and not whether a rink should be set up in a national park.”

Open net pen fish farms are anything but inconsequential. Citizens and non-governmental scientists on both coasts have been expressing concerns over the environmental impacts of open net pens, calling for moratoriums on further licensing of farms and consumer boycotts of farmed fish. Issues are wide ranging and include destruction of ocean habitat underneath pens, use of chemicals and pesticides that kill other marine life, proliferation of viruses (infectious salmon anaemia) and parasites (sea lice) that can infect wild fish populations, and escapes of farmed fish that compete with, and even contaminate, wild populations.

It’s become patently clear that Joe Oliver is the consummate salesman, a slick huckster who would happily sell anything to anyone, as long as the transaction lined his pockets, enhanced his political power, or paved the way for corporations to ignore their social and environmental responsibilities by externalizing the environmental costs of doing business, however harmful it will ultimately be.

The move to finance

Former finance minister Jim Flaherty faced severe criticism for several changes to Canadian legislation introduced through budget bills, most notoriously the 425-page omnibus budget bill C-38 which saw sweeping changes to environmental assessment procedures, weakening of environmental laws and devastating funding cuts to science and research stations across the country. In total 74 pieces of legislation were abolished in the bill which was quickly followed with another 443-page omnibus budget bill C-45 that significantly reduced the number of waterways protected in the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

Oliver’s new position as finance minister could signal the continued use of parliamentary budget bills for such purposes – to the benefit of industry and detriment of the environment.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.