All posts by James W. Breckenridge

Hmmm

Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?

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It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

This bizarre picture is the outcome of a recent series of calculations that take some of the bedrock theories and discoveries of modern cosmology to the limit. Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however. And so in the last couple of years there has been a growing stream of debate and dueling papers, replete with references to such esoteric subjects as reincarnation, multiple universes and even the death of spacetime, as cosmologists try to square the predictions of their cherished theories with their convictions that we and the universe are real. The basic problem is that across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us.

Alan Guth, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who agrees this overabundance is absurd, pointed out that some calculations result in an infinite number of free-floating brains for every normal brain, making it “infinitely unlikely for us to be normal brains.” Welcome to what physicists call the Boltzmann brain problem, named after the 19th-century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who suggested the mechanism by which such fluctuations could happen in a gas or in the universe. Cosmologists also refer to them as “freaky observers,” in contrast to regular or “ordered” observers of the cosmos like ourselves. Cosmologists are desperate to eliminate these freaks from their theories, but so far they can’t even agree on how or even on whether they are making any progress.

If you are inclined to skepticism this debate might seem like further evidence that cosmologists, who gave us dark matter, dark energy and speak with apparent aplomb about gazillions of parallel universes, have finally lost their minds. But the cosmologists say the brain problem serves as a valuable reality check as they contemplate the far, far future and zillions of bubble universes popping off from one another in an ever-increasing rush through eternity. What, for example is a “typical” observer in such a setup? If some atoms in another universe stick together briefly to look, talk and think exactly like you, is it really you?

“It is part of a much bigger set of questions about how to think about probabilities in an infinite universe in which everything that can occur, does occur, infinitely many times,” said Leonard Susskind of Stanford, a co-author of a paper in 2002 that helped set off the debate. Or as Andrei Linde, another Stanford theorist given to colorful language, loosely characterized the possibility of a replica of your own brain forming out in space sometime, “How do you compute the probability to be reincarnated to the probability of being born?”

The Boltzmann brain problem arises from a string of logical conclusions that all spring from another deep and old question, namely why time seems to go in only one direction. Why can’t you unscramble an egg? The fundamental laws governing the atoms bouncing off one another in the egg look the same whether time goes forward or backward. In this universe, at least, the future and the past are different and you can’t remember who is going to win the Super Bowl next week.

“When you break an egg and scramble it you are doing cosmology,” said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology.

Boltzmann ascribed this so-called arrow of time to the tendency of any collection of particles to spread out into the most random and useless configuration, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (sometimes paraphrased as “things get worse”), which says that entropy, which is a measure of disorder or wasted energy, can never decrease in a closed system like the universe.

If the universe was running down and entropy was increasing now, that was because the universe must have been highly ordered in the past.

In Boltzmann’s time the universe was presumed to have been around forever, in which case it would long ago have stabilized at a lukewarm temperature and died a “heat death.” It would already have maximum entropy, and so with no way to become more disorderly there would be no arrow of time. No life would be possible but that would be all right because life would be excruciatingly boring. Boltzmann said that entropy was all about odds, however, and if we waited long enough the random bumping of atoms would occasionally produce the cosmic equivalent of an egg unscrambling. A rare fluctuation would decrease the entropy in some place and start the arrow of time pointing and history flowing again. That is not what happened. Astronomers now know the universe has not lasted forever. It was born in the Big Bang, which somehow set the arrow of time, 14 billion years ago. The linchpin of the Big Bang is thought to be an explosive moment known as inflation, during which space became suffused with energy that had an antigravitational effect and ballooned violently outward, ironing the kinks and irregularities out of what is now the observable universe and endowing primordial chaos with order.

Inflation is a veritable cosmological fertility principle. Fluctuations in the field driving inflation also would have seeded the universe with the lumps that eventually grew to be galaxies, stars and people. According to the more extended version, called eternal inflation, an endless array of bubble or “pocket” universes are branching off from one another at a dizzying and exponentially increasing rate. They could have different properties and perhaps even different laws of physics, so the story goes

A different, but perhaps related, form of antigravity, glibly dubbed dark energy, seems to be running the universe now, and that is the culprit responsible for the Boltzmann brains.

The expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating, making galaxies fly away from one another faster and faster. If the leading dark-energy suspect, a universal repulsion Einstein called the cosmological constant, is true, this runaway process will last forever, and distant galaxies will eventually be moving apart so quickly that they cannot communicate with one another. Being in such a space would be like being surrounded by a black hole.

Rather than simply going to black like “The Sopranos” conclusion, however, the cosmic horizon would glow, emitting a feeble spray of elementary particles and radiation, with a temperature of a fraction of a billionth of a degree, courtesy of quantum uncertainty. That radiation bath will be subject to random fluctuations just like Boltzmann’s eternal universe, however, and every once in a very long, long time, one of those fluctuations would be big enough to recreate the Big Bang. In the fullness of time this process could lead to the endless series of recurring universes. Our present universe could be part of that chain.

In such a recurrent setup, however, Dr. Susskind of Stanford, Lisa Dyson, now of the University of California, Berkeley, and Matthew Kleban, now at New York University, pointed out in 2002 that Boltzmann’s idea might work too well, filling the megaverse with more Boltzmann brains than universes or real people.

In the same way the odds of a real word showing up when you shake a box of Scrabble letters are greater than a whole sentence or paragraph forming, these “regular” universes would be vastly outnumbered by weird ones, including flawed variations on our own all the way down to naked brains, a result foreshadowed by Martin Rees, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge, in his 1997 book, “Before the Beginning.”

The conclusions of Dr. Dyson and her colleagues were quickly challenged by Andreas Albrecht and Lorenzo Sorbo of the University of California, Davis, who used an alternate approach. They found that the Big Bang was actually more likely than Boltzmann’s brain.

“In the end, inflation saves us from Boltzmann’s brain,” Dr. Albrecht said, while admitting that the calculations were contentious. Indeed, the “invasion of Boltzmann brains,” as Dr. Linde once referred to it, was just beginning.

In an interview Dr. Linde described these brains as a form of reincarnation. Over the course of eternity, he said, anything is possible. After some Big Bang in the far future, he said, “it’s possible that you yourself will re-emerge. Eventually you will appear with your table and your computer.”

But it’s more likely, he went on, that you will be reincarnated as an isolated brain, without the baggage of stars and galaxies. In terms of probability, he said, “It’s cheaper.”

You might wonder what’s wrong with a few brains — or even a preponderance of them — floating around in space. For one thing, as observers these brains would see a freaky chaotic universe, unlike our own, which seems to persist in its promise and disappointment.

Another is that one of the central orthodoxies of cosmology is that humans don’t occupy a special place in the cosmos, that we and our experiences are typical of cosmic beings. If the odds of us being real instead of Boltzmann brains are one in a million, say, waking up every day would be like walking out on the street and finding everyone in the city standing on their heads. You would expect there to be some reason why you were the only one left right side up.

Some cosmologists, James Hartle and Mark Srednicki, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, have questioned that assumption. “For example,” Dr. Hartle wrote in an e-mail message, “on Earth humans are not typical animals; insects are far more numerous. No one is surprised by this.

In an e-mail response to Dr. Hartle’s view, Don Page of the University of Alberta, who has been a prominent voice in the Boltzmann debate, argued that what counted cosmologically was not sheer numbers, but consciousness, which we have in abundance over the insects. “I would say that we have no strong evidence against the working hypothesis that we are typical and that our observations are typical,” he explained, “which is very fruitful in science for helping us believe that our observations are not just flukes but do tell us something about the universe.”

Dr. Dyson and her colleagues suggested that the solution to the Boltzmann paradox was in denying the presumption that the universe would accelerate eternally. In other words, they said, that the cosmological constant was perhaps not really constant. If the cosmological constant eventually faded away, the universe would revert to normal expansion and what was left would eventually fade to black. With no more acceleration there would be no horizon with its snap, crackle and pop, and thus no material for fluctuations and Boltzmann brains.

String theory calculations have suggested that dark energy is indeed metastable and will decay, Dr. Susskind pointed out. “The success of ordinary cosmology,” Dr. Susskind said, “speaks against the idea that the universe was created in a random fluctuation.”

But nobody knows whether dark energy — if it dies — will die soon enough to save the universe from a surplus of Boltzmann brains. In 2006, Dr. Page calculated that the dark energy would have to decay in about 20 billion years in order to prevent it from being overrun by Boltzmann brains.

The decay, if and when it comes, would rejigger the laws of physics and so would be fatal and total, spreading at almost the speed of light and destroying all matter without warning. There would be no time for pain, Dr. Page wrote: “And no grieving survivors will be left behind. So in this way it would be the most humanely possible execution.” But the object of his work, he said, was not to predict the end of the universe but to draw attention to the fact that the Boltzmann brain problem remains.

People have their own favorite measures of probability in the multiverse, said Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley. “So Boltzmann brains are just one example of how measures can predict nonsense; anytime your measure predicts that something we see has extremely small probability, you can throw it out,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Another contentious issue is whether the cosmologists in their calculations could consider only the observable universe, which is all we can ever see or be influenced by, or whether they should take into account the vast and ever-growing assemblage of other bubbles forever out of our view predicted by eternal inflation. In the latter case, as Alex Vilenkin of Tufts University pointed out, “The numbers of regular and freak observers are both infinite.” Which kind predominate depends on how you do the counting, he said..

In eternal inflation, the number of new bubbles being hatched at any given moment is always growing, Dr. Linde said, explaining one such counting scheme he likes. So the evolution of people in new bubbles far outstrips the creation of Boltzmann brains in old ones. The main way life emerges, he said, is not by reincarnation but by the creation of new parts of the universe. “So maybe we don’t need to care too much” about the Boltzmann brains,” he said.

“If you are reincarnated, why do you care about where you are reincarnated?” he asked. “It sounds crazy because here we are touching issues we are not supposed to be touching in ordinary science. Can we be reincarnated?”

“People are not prepared for this discussion,” Dr. Linde said

Correction: January 21, 2008

An article in Science Times on Tuesday about paradoxes that cosmologists face in trying to explain the origin of the universe misspelled the surname of a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who commented on the limitations of probability measures. He is Raphael Bousso, not Buosso.

Municipal, Provincial

Transit Forum

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I was at the transit forum Wednesday evening, January 23rd.

The audience was solidly in favour of a light rail system out to Chilliwack along the old valley transit lines. The only problem, a rather large problem, is that this is not the philosophy of the provincial government which would rather increase the traffic struggling into Vancouver. Hopefully the provincial government, particularly Transport Minister Kevin Falcon, will open their ears to listen to common sense.

And no, making that statement is not a result of using mind altering substances. With changing economic circumstances reality can only be denied for so long. Maybe I should have said – hopefully before it is to late ….

The bad news is that it was made clear that the province requires “partnerships” if municipalities wish provincial funds for projects. What that mean is that cities must be willing to invest/spend their own money on any project they seek provincial funds on.

This “put your money where your mouth is” policy is not unreasonable, even though it unfortunately bodes ill for Abbotsford in getting provincial funding. I say bodes ill because with the financial debt burden city hall has assumed with Plan A, there is not likely going to be any funds available to “partner” with the provincial government.

Leaving infrastructure unbuilt and provincial funds not coming to Abbotsford thus rendering the “legacy” of Plan A all the missed opportunities for provincial funds and needed infrastructure unbuilt.

I do have one suggestion for a novel approach by Abbotsford city hall to transit planning vis-à-vis the ever lengthening commute to work in Vancouver – attract business and good, well-paying jobs to Abbotsford. I know this is a major policy and behaviour change – to encourage rather than discouraging and not raising barriers to businesses bringing jobs to Abbotsford.

Who knows, such a rational response may even penetrate the provincial government and encourage them to think and plan about commuting and traffic flow rather than blindly slapping down more highways and byways.

Municipal

Transparet? Whole Story? Fiscal Responsibility? WHERE?

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One could only wish that councillor Bruce Beck would practise what he preaches about “…owe it to our taxpayers to tell the whole story, not just the parts that support their own agendas” in his response to the letter from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation citing Abbotsford for “arena envy” and the fact Abbotsford taxpayers are on the hook for the entire cost of the structure.

Let us review a few of the thins Mr. Beck left out of “… the whole story, not just the parts that support their (that is to say Mr. Beck’s) own agendas”.

Mr. Beck chooses to ignore the fact that there were no monies from the provincial government because Mr. Beck and others failed to secure provincial funding before rushing into Plan A. Flagrantly ignoring the fact that during the debate over Plan A, those questioning the management of the entire Plan A process pointed out the need to obtain provincial funds before finalizing plans and financing. Securing provincial funds before or during the process is exactly what Premier Campbell told them should have been done when he said NO provincial funding.

Of course Mr. Beck also chooses to ignore the fact that despite selling taxpayers on a maximum cost of $85 million, costs are well over $100 million and climbing. Which is not surprising considering that he now acknowledges that council was aware of other “incidental” costs such as the close to $10 million dollar cost for land.

In light of these and other facts we had best get Mr. Beck to define what exactly he means by “… tell the whole story…”, since what took place during the Plan A debate and continues to take place vis-à-vis Plan A, certainly does not meet my definition of telling the whole story?

We definitely have to have him define what he means when he states that “…Our approach was more transparent”. I fail to see how you can call a process transparent when taxpayers are required to file and pursue Freedom of Information request to obtain information about Plan A in order to determine facts such as the city spent $140,000 advertising Plan A while telling taxpayers they only spent $40,000 – a small error of only 250%.

Failing to secure provincial grants, failing to disclose incidental costs such as the millions for property, total costs that have escalated past the price “sold’ to taxpayers of $85 million (to $108 million and climbing). This is “enhanced fiscally responsibility”?

While on the topic of fiscally responsibility is it just me who considers it pure smug self-exaltation for Mr. Beck, at this point in time, to be patting himself on the back about “Abbotsford’s model, calls for the facility’s operations to be completely self-funding and profitable within three years of start up.” This without a major tenant or a single performance booked for the arena?

The costs Mr. Beck cites for Chilliwack are actual costs of operation. Not some pipe dream. Public facilities run operating deficits which is why they are public facilities, built by the public for the benefit of the public. If you could make money by building say … a 7,000 seat arena in Abbotsford, would not some entrepreneur do so and make those profits for themselves?

The most disturbing aspect Mr. Beck’s response, especially in light of his statement about “owe it to our taxpayers to tell the whole story, not just the parts that support their own agendas” is that he has chosen to ignore or failed to address the main point of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation letter. Other than dismissively saying they called infrastructure “unsexy” and fatuously speaking about how much the funds the city has to spend.

I say disturbing because his reply suggests that Mr. Beck, as one of those responsible for making important infrastructure decisions and choices, lacks an understanding of what is involved in those decisions.

Mr. Beck, it is not a question of how much you have to spend on infrastructure, even if you are spending $4 million, but of how much you need to be spending on infrastructure. If you need to be investing $10 million a year in infrastructure in order to attract business and high paying jobs or meet the needs of unmanaged residential growth, spending $4 million only gets you into a bigger infrastructure deficit – that at some point you have to make up.

The taxpayers federation’s point was that because they can be completed within a councils term of office and that there is a much “sexier” photo-op with a fancy new arena as opposed to a sewage lagoon, politicians let ego or even “arena envy” cause them to opt for arenas over the “unsexy” infrastructure needs of their cities and taxpayers.

The result of this behaviour is to saddle their cities with a debt load that prevents those cities from being able to build needed infrastructure or infrastructure upgrades – except by imposing heavy tax increases on the taxpayers.

In the case of Abbotsford having assumed $85 million in debt for Plan A, where are the funds going to come from to finance the $100+ million (unsexy) infrastructure needs Abbotsford faces over the next several years? From the mythical profits of the arena or more promises of provincial or federal grants that do not materialize?

Letters refered to:

January 26, 2008 Bruce Beck letter – Abbotsford News

Editor, The News:

I am responding to the letter from the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation (CTF) in your Jan. 19 edition.

The CTF writes of Chilliwack’s arena: “Private investment and expertise not only saved ratepayers from debt and property tax increases, it ensured the future viability of the facility.”

That’s simply not true.

The majority of Prospera Place’s funding was taxpayer debt. The debt doesn’t show on the books of the City of Chilliwack, because it’s in the developer’s name. However, Chilliwack taxpayers are contractually obligated to make 100 per cent of all debt repayments. They’re also stuck with an interest rate higher than what was available through municipal financing (and a rate much higher than Abbotsford was able to lock in for 25 years).

When it comes to private sector expertise, Chilliwack and Abbotsford both chose ‘for profit companies’ to design, build and operate their facilities.

Chilliwack chose a company who, at the time, had absolutely no experience in building or operating a sports complex.

Abbotsford chose PCL, one of Canada’s largest construction companies to build ours. We hired Global Spectrum, one of North America’s largest operators of sports facilities to operate it.

As for viability, the CTF would do well to review the ongoing operational subsidies Chilliwack taxpayers are forced to make. Three years ago, the annual cost to Chilliwack taxpayers on top of debt servicing was roughly $400,000/year. Today that cost has reportedly risen to above $600,000 per year – that’s a 50 per cent increase in three years.

Abbotsford’s model, calls for the facility’s operations to be completely self-funding and profitable within three years of start up.

Abbotsford could have built the E&S Centre without a tax increase. Over $4 million/year that had been used for servicing other debts was free to fund that project. Instead, Abbotsford chose to seek voter approval (with not one but two ballots) to borrow $85 million, so that $4 million could go towards infrastructure like water, sewer and roads. Things the CTF called “unsexy.”

Contrary what the CTF implied, last year’s 16 per cent tax increase was not solely linked to the E&S Centre. It covered the two other Plan A projects, additional police, firefighters, additional customer service staffing and a host of other new programs for one of the fastest growing cities in all of Canada.

Chilliwack residents are fortunate to have a first-class facility run by a truly outstanding management team. But contrary to the CTF, they got that facility with significant new debt, higher taxes and built-in operational subsidies from local taxpayers.

Abbotsford extensively reviewed Chilliwack’s model. Our approach was more transparent, gave us more private sector expertise, lower debt costs and enhanced fiscally responsibility.

If the CTF and others are going to criticize Abbotsford, they owe it to our taxpayers to tell the whole story, not just the parts that support their own agendas.

Coun. Bruce Beck, Chair

Plan A Steering Committee

January 19, 2008 Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation letter – Abbotsford News

Editor, The News:

It is fairly easy to see why many B.C. municipalities have a so-called “infrastructure deficit.” Infrastructure, like wastewater treatment plants, are unsexy projects that usually can’t be completed in one municipal election cycle. Recreational facilities, on the other hand, are highly visible and appear, at least on the surface, to bring great benefits to the community. But do they?

When a municipality such as Kamloops spends almost $40 million to build a sports facility to attract tournaments from all over Canada – if not North America – it is engaging in a very risky strategy. Kamloops could be left with its own Fast Ferry fiasco.

Why? Because the “if we built it they will come” strategy doesn’t always work. It can saddle local ratepayers with huge bills that can only be paid by higher taxes in the future. Not only may this strategy leave local ratepayers with a legacy of debt, Kamloops now doesn’t have the money to build the wastewater treatment plant it needs.

Kamloops’ $106 million municipal debt, about $1,325 per person, means more municipal tax dollars are being used to pay debt interest every year. The amount of interest Kamloops pays on its debt increased from $8.8 million in 2005 to $11.6 million in 2006 and may go to $15 million in 2007. So instead of building core infrastructure, city politicians are collecting tax dollars to pay bondholders.

Kamloops isn’t the only municipality in danger of a Fast Ferry fiasco. About half of Kelowna’s property tax increase is to build its $44 million Aquatic Centre. Vancouver, meanwhile, set aside $20 million for an Olympic legacy fund and is using $2 million of that to host dignitaries. Now, this probably won’t result in a big new building, but it does give new meaning to the term “legacy.”

Yes, sports facilities can be great community assets. But too often, politics trumps economics and ratepayers end up paying a lot more than what they bargained for. One way to bring these facilities to a community without creating a huge burden on ratepayers is with a public private partnership, or P3.

A P3 is a contract between a government and a private sector company to provide public infrastructure. A good example of how a P3 saved local ratepayers millions of dollars is in the new arena in Chilliwack. Chilliwack built a 5,500 seat arena for $25 million, and used only $6 million in public funds. The private sector invested the rest. The private partner, the Chilliwack Chiefs Development Corp., owned the town’s Tier 2 B.C. Hockey League franchise and was involved with the WHL franchise ownership group. The WHL is a league in Western Canada, Washington and Oregon where junior players with professional aspirations play. Private investment and expertise not only saved ratepayers from debt and property tax increases, it ensured the future viability of the facility – Chilliwack now has a WHL franchise.

Let’s compare the arena in Chilliwack with the arena in Abbotsford, a neighboring municipality. Abbotsford, in a fit of “arena envy” decided to build a 7,000 seat arena for $55 million. Like Kamloops, Abbotsford is doing this entirely with public funds. Abbotsford’s property taxes, unsurprisingly, went up by 16 per cent last year.

P3s are not a magic bullet but they do provide a way to build infrastructure without saddling ratepayers with higher debt and property taxes. Governments’ shift away from their core mandate has created an infrastructure deficit in B.C. Private sector money and expertise can help both remedy that deficit without increasing taxes and make these projects a financial success.

Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation

Consider

Saying Thank You.

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We all to often forget how important it is to say thank you to others, forgetting how good it feels to us when someone expresses thanks for something we have done.

I did not realize, did not appreciate at the time, the gift my mother and father gave me when they made me sit down during the Christmas holidays and write thank you notes for gifts received. At the kitchen table it was “Please pass …” and “Thank you.” In public it was “What do you say? Please or Thank You.”

It left me with a set of manners that is an integral part of my nature. I was reminded of this today by feedback on how pleased a note of thanks had made the people who had given me a much needed and treasured helping hand.

I am not good at asking for help and sometimes struggle to find the right words to say “Thank you” appropriately. But give me a pen or keyboard and I produce a thank you note grounded in those Christmas holiday (wasting) notes of my youth.

So I was glad that taking a little time to express my thoughts and feelings about how much I valued the help and friendship I received pleased those who I wrote the note for.

Ii also got me to thinking about what would happen if we all took the time to ask “Please…” and say “Thank you”. I would certainly disperse a great deal more civility into our society. Which begs the question of what would flow from this civility? Courtesy, consideration, concern, caring, compassion, contemplation, consequence?

We are always going on about how bad society is getting, all the problems in the country and world and… and… and …

What if part of the solution is as simple as an increased level of civility? I see no reason not to experiment with this propitious proposition – join me?

Please and Thank You.

Federal, Homeless

Tragically …

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… the irony of earmarking $105 million to help children in Africa and Asia, is lost on Mr. Harper and his fellow Ideologues in the Conservative party.

A government that vigorously refuses funding to provide the support and programs Canadian children need to get them off to a good and healthy start to their lives and schooling.

This refusal to do our best for ALL Canadian children results in a privileged class of children gaining a decided and unfair advantage from the start of their lives over their less wealthy peers. Adding to the growing imbalance and unfairness of Canadian society.

To add insult to the injury Mr. Harper is doing to these most vulnerable young Canadian citizens, he also vowed to double aid to Africa by 2008-09. This promise of increased aid to Africa comes on the heels of the UN report censuring Canada for the number of citizens living in “3rd world living conditions”.

When a government chooses to pursue fiscal and economic policies that promote the transfer of wealth to a privileged class favoured by government policies, the government has a moral responsibility to ensure that those Canadians forsaken by government policy do not find themselves living in “3rd world conditions”.

Given the federal government’s pursuit of policies that result in the creation of an ever faster growing class of Canadians unable to afford basic shelter, the federal government must either change policies or formulate ways to ensure the availability of affordable housing for all Canadians, not just those privileged to be economically enriched by government policies.

Affordable housing is a necessity, not just for the fairness and balance of Canadian society, but for the continued growth and health of the Canadian economy. Similarly programs that promote the wellness, health and education of all Canadian children promote the Canadian economy. Both are part of the infrastructure needed for Canada to compete and prosper globally.

In an increasingly integrated world, Canada simply cannot afford the ideological blindness of our current government policies. Indeed, Canada cannot afford the competitive disadvantages contained in the policies espoused by any current national party.

Federal political parties and politicians must formulate policy based on what is needed for the long-term health and growth of the Canadian economy not on ideology. Otherwise Canadians must look elsewhere for the leadership needed to thrive in a fast changing world.

Or we may well find ourselves looking for foreign aid, as more and more Canadians find themselves living in what we think of as “3rd world conditions”. The conditions far too many Canadians, and a shaming number of Canadian children, currently live in.