Keith McNeill
Editor, The Times:
Recently, I came across some photos I took of a giant dreamcatcher event held in front of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa during a Citizens Climate Lobby-Canada conference in 2022.
Indigenous artist Will Morin led the event with assistance from his friend Greg Brown. CCL-Canada’s national manager, Cathy Orlando, arranged the venue, and MPs from all political parties, CCLers and others participated.
Participants first stood in a circle holding a rope. Morin, Brown, and other helpers, such as teenage climate activist Sophia Mathur, wove other ropes within the circle to create a giant dreamcatcher. It sounds simple, but I found that, as the dreamcatcher took shape, it was a profoundly moving illustration of the interconnectedness of all things.
As I understood him, during the event, Will Morin said that we need to return to Indigenous knowledge to heal what is damaging the Earth.
My interpretation of this is that we need to return to equal sharing, which was and is a nearly universal practice among hunter-gatherers everywhere – and we are all descended from hunter-gatherers. When a group of hunters returned to the camp with a kill, someone (usually not one of the hunters) would divide up the meat so that everyone present got an equal share. It was a simple but elegant form of mutual aid, life insurance, and environmental protection because it minimized the waste of resources.
When Champlain first came to what is now Canada, he reported that the Montagnais, who lived a pure hunter-gatherer existence, occasionally starved to death. He tried to persuade them to take up agriculture. The Montagnais refused, saying, as I recall, that they had only “pity and contempt” for those who farmed.
Why did they feel that way? I suspect that at least part of it was because they knew that agriculture would mean the mechanism of equal sharing would break down.
Citizens Climate Lobby’s main focus is carbon fee-and-dividend, which means charging a fee on fossil fuels, similar to a carbon tax, and then distributing the proceeds to everyone as equal dividends, similar to a universal basic income – and equal sharing.
Senior government officials have told members of CCL-Canada that we played an important role in bringing about Canada’s carbon tax with rebate program. Unfortunately, the government only partially adopted carbon fee-and-dividend, and some members feel that the problems the carbon tax program now faces are a result.
Canada’s carbon tax is not universal, meaning it is a patchwork quilt across the country. Only retail fossil fuels are taxed, while big industry has its own complicated and inefficient program, making the rebates smaller for everyone. Most importantly, until recently, the government hid the rebates so that most Canadians who got them did not know they were receiving them.
CCL-Canada’s 2024 national conference will be held in Ottawa from June 1 to 4. Will Morin will be there again and plans to build an even bigger dreamcatcher. I sincerely hope that, while we are doing that, we can also fix the shortcomings in Canada’s carbon tax with rebates program so that it benefits all Canadians and can lead to the global carbon fee-and-dividend that we need to control climate change.
Keith McNeill
Clearwater, B.C.