36 VOLUME 109 NUMBER 3 2016/17

memorial presentsthe 45th in a series developed from public engagement initiatives sponsored by the leslie harris centre of regional policy and development.

big questions & new directionsby bojan fÜrst

Finding half an hour in Dr Barbara

Neis’s schedule these days is not easy.

We sat down in a small boardroom in

the Bruneau Innovation Centre and

before we even started the interview

she said: “Half an hour?! Do you know

how busy I am right now?”

When we talked, what was keeping her busier than usual was a series of events she was

organizing as a part of her Royal Society of Canada Atlantic chapter duties. Over three evenings and a full day workshop participants wrestled with a big question: what might a sustainable post oil-dependent Newfoundland and Labrador look like, and what kinds of skills, expertise, infrastructure, and institutions do we need to get there?

where did the big question series of events come from?It started with the eruption of controversy over the austerity budget. I have a long-standing problem with approaches to future resilience of the province that simply focus on more of the same, only less. When there isn’t a vision. It was simply cut, cut, cut, but the question is “Where are we going?” “How do we get there?” “And how can we get out of this current situation so that we do in fact have a stronger, healthier, more resilient population, province, environment, cultural world?”

those kinds of long-term issues have always been part of your work, especially the community-University research for recovery Alliance (cUrrA). With CURRA the focus was on fisheries and fisheries-dependent communities and, since the moratorium, the emphasis was on downsizing, downsizing, downsizing, but that hasn’t solved the problems in the industry and it hasn’t solved the problems for coastal Newfoundland and Labrador. It was obvious that without the fish there needed to be alternatives. A downsized fishing industry with control over that industry more and more concentrated in the hands of a few people just didn’t work. We might end up with a profitable fishery in the long term, but the fishery would not be accessible to most people and the wealth from that fishery may well end up leaving the province.

Your current project on the Move is kind of a follow up to cUrrA. with the cod moratorium we saw a lot of people working outside of the province. The On the Move Partnership is examining extended commutes to work whether within the regions, within the province, into other provinces, or globally. We are trying to understand what some of the drivers are and what some of the consequences are for employers, workers, their families and home, and source communities. That project really came out of the CURRA project because we were working in fishing communities on the west coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and it became increasingly obvious that a lot of the men in particular are not there for at least a good portion of

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the year. Nobody really knew where they were in any aggregate sense. We did not know what they were earning, what the costs were both in terms of human costs and financial costs. We didn’t know how that could fit or would it fit into this strategy of building resilient coastal communities.

the background paper you compiled with the help of your colleagues across Memorial University is fascinating. it addresses about a dozen broad themes from arts and culture, to oil and gas, to renewables. it is very much looking toward the future as a starting point for the discussion, right?At the moment we have pieces on various themes and we stacked them together into a very loose document. But first of all, how are we imagining a post oil-dependent sustainable Newfoundland and Labrador? What is that thing that we are imagining? What does it look like when we put all these pieces together and what do we think needs to happen there? Part of the intent here is to get on the table the issues that don’t often get on the table so that it’s not just about dollars and cents, not just about energy, it’s not just about innovation. What we are talking about is not just economic sustainability, but also social, cultural and ecological–we cannot avoid the climate change reality. We are a part of the problem and we have not done much to be a part of the solution. What we have done, which is Muskrat Falls, is a disaster–I think many people would agree. But we are [also] focusing on physical kinds of energy, energy that is in the ground, energy that is in the water and all the huge complex infrastructure that we need to extract it. We are not focusing anywhere near enough on the creative energy of our own people. We should really be starting there if we are to start driving this province in a more sustainable direction.

what were some striking highlights for you? Let’s start with food security. We live on an island. Let’s think about that. Or in Labrador, rural, remote and northern [is seen] as a handicap, but maybe it’s time to think about it as an asset. What are the strengths with that kind of structure? We have limited environment, limited resources; could we be playing a leading role if we draw on isolation and our vulnerability, and our constraints as a source of innovation and creativity? I think we could be leaders on environmental issues.

And I think we have [had] some important successes. The rebuilding of cod, for example. Media is another thing. I worked with community radio, I’ve seen the potential of community radio and how important for people it is to see their lives and issues reflected in what they are listening to on the radio or seeing in the media–and that just doesn’t happen. And where is the place of university in all this? We are a major institution in this province and we draw on the resources of this province and what can we do? Everybody talks about the demographic problem. We have an aging population, not that many young people and I keep thinking: “Given that, can we do a better job?” And then there is a whole inclusion section that to me is fundamentally important. The province has lots of people that have all kinds of disabilities and, quite frankly, as we age, we will all be to some degree disabled. We tend to think about elderly people as a liability, we think of people with disabilities as a liability. I think disability is so integrated in our communities, in particular in rural communities. It is a big part of people’s lives because there people with disabilities are not institutionalized–community is doing all that work and I think there is strong commitment and understanding of the need for inclusion.

You spoke about governance structures that often prove to be a barrier to more innovative approaches in just about any field. I agree. We still operate on a patronage, pork barrel politics model. Personally, I am not at all convinced that in a population of 500,000 people partisan politics makes a lot of sense. Most cities don’t operate on the basis of partisan politics. We end up flip-flopping; there is not much difference from one government to the next and other points of view are completely marginalized. We need a meaningful regional government–there is no question–otherwise rural areas are essentially only of interest to politicians during the elections times. And I know the provincial government is talking about doing something about regional government. It’s a fundamental piece of democracy in this province that’s been missing since the beginning.

does the oil and gas industry still have a place in the post-petroleum age?First of all we have invested so heavily in the oil and gas, including at the university. We trained all these people, we know how to build an oil and gas platform

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and apparently we know how to do it safely, if we can judge by what we’ve heard from Hebron recently. You know there is a lot of expertise, a lot of tradespeople in the province have the experience and a lot of them are going to be unemployed and some of them already are. That’s a big issue. Andy Fisher [Associate Dean of Engineering who wrote the section on oil and gas in the background paper] says we are going to have oil and gas development, but can it be greener? It probably could be greener. My problem with that proposition is that it takes political awareness, political will and political leadership if we are going to create a green economy, but there is so much inertia in moving in that direction. Some of it is astonishing to me. It will never cease to amaze me that in a world where climate change is such a huge issue–that the first and strongest response by the Canadian state has been to look at opening oil and gas opportunities in the Arctic, which are themselves caused by climate change. At some level it’s seriously bizarre and of course as a university and a province we’ve been trying to reposition ourselves as potential leaders in oil and gas development in the north as it opens up. There are a lot of very big question marks about that. There is a lot of things that came with the oil boom including the household debt, increasing cost of housing, big houses–in some ways we moved in the opposite direction of the green design at the time when everybody is saying globally we need to go towards the green design. There are legacies from this. I think we are all struggling with these contradictions. We have become to some degree a petro state. I don’t think there is any question about that. The oil and gas companies are looking at renewable energy, but the point is they go there because they are pushed there. There are economic pressures there and we are at some sort of a tipping point, but the question is where are we as society in Newfoundland and Labrador in relation to that tipping point?

in that future, what kind of a relationship do you see between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal newfoundlanders and Labradorians? Again the inclusion has to include developing productive, constructive relationships with Aboriginal peoples recognizing their unique rights and sovereignty. How do we work this out? That is an absolutely crucial piece. We can’t as a people sit back and rely

on Aboriginal people to put the brakes on resource extraction, resource development, and in a sense carry the burden of ill health and other consequences of those developments. That is an old, long-standing colonial mentality and we are too comfortable with it. It’s been great to watch the mobilization around Muskrat Falls that I think probably comes from general discontent about Muskrat Falls as much as from solidarity with Aboriginal people. I personally think that Labrador needs its own section in any background policy paper. We need voices and language to write that chapter.

You outlined many issues that you and your colleagues are wrestling with. what gives you hope? what’s next?The next step is to read across those themes, to flesh out the missing pieces and to say “okay what is the bigger picture here?” What does this mean? You can’t talk about health without talking about food. You can’t talk about oil and gas without talking about fisheries. You can’t talk about any of them without talking about democracy, media and so on. The next step is to read across these pieces, synthesize them, and think if we are going to achieve this piece what are we going to do with this piece over there? The question then is, what do you do with something like this so that it becomes a part of all of those conversations going on out there? There is a lot of grassroots democracy in this province this year. I think there has been a real mobilization that cuts across the party lines and that in itself is really important. The question is where is it going to go.

Barbara Neis is a research professor in the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, a co-director of the SafetyNet Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Research at Memorial University, and the project director of the On The Move: Employment-Related Geographical Mobility in the Canadian Context research partnership. She is a co-investigator, theme co-lead and member of the Research Management Committee of the Marine Environment Observation, Prediction and Response Network of Centres of Excellence, and a co-chair of the Newfoundland node of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy. She is a former Trudeau Scholar and a member of Royal Society of Canada. So yes, Neis is a very busy woman.

Bojan Fürst is the Manager of Knowledge Mobilization with the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development at MUN

There are legacies from the oil boom. We are all struggling with these.