Tuesday, May 5, 2020
To Mayor + Council :
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste
From: Frank Murphy
Subject: A post COVID-19 Nanaimo
Date: April 29, 2020
To: Mayor&Council@nanaimo.ca
Hello everyone. You find yourselves living in interesting times.
It occurs to me the task that has befallen you is not unlike the task that has befallen Health Minister Dix and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Henry and their teams, the challenge to go into full crisis management mode, employing triage thinking, before the crisis arrives. And like them, there may in your lifetimes never again be a task and a challenge more important, more consequential.
Mr. Dix and Dr. Henry’s public health teams are successfully taking now the kinds of difficult decisions to avert the unimaginable COVID-19 horrors sweeping across Italy, Spain and France and now the United States. While hoping along with the rest of us that a worse-case scenario does not occur, they have put in place emergency action plans to avert it.
The crisis you face is not the epidemic itself but its consequences.
In 2008 a single economic sector failed, US residential real estate, causing waves of bankruptcies in the interconnected networks of companies dependant on it. Homeowners walked away from their “under water” homes, owing lenders more than the value of their properties. The subsequent defaults on personal and business mortgages and loans, the gutting of the value of pension funds; by all accounts we came within hours of the collapse of the international financial system.
Today, the only consistent analysis I’m seeing across a broad reading of what might happen this time, as potentially a number of sectors fail, is that no one knows what might happen.
The size of the federal government's economic stimulus alone is unprecedented. Economics columnist David Parkinson wrote in the Globe and Mail, "Policy makers have never thrown so much stimulus at the economy so quickly. And it’s all aimed at an economic shock that, by its nature, could whipsaw faster and on a grander scale than anything we’ve seen before. The central bank could be playing soft-toss with nitroglycerin.”
Alarmist? Not at all: realistic.
This crisis, as crises always do, exposes fragilities. There is the opportunity to emerge from this crisis less vulnerable socially, economically, and environmentally.
A food-security economic ecosystem and a re-localized economy are among the areas we should be taking action on now. Investing in a more self-sufficient and resilient local economy. Investing in walkable neighbourhoods. Creating places people love.
It’s often said “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste."
— Frank
Subject: A post COVID-19 Nanaimo
Date: April 29, 2020
To: Mayor&Council@nanaimo.ca
Hello everyone. You find yourselves living in interesting times.
— Frank
Monday, April 20, 2020
Email to Mayor Krog calling for the immediate establishment of an arms-length independent Special Commission
on a Post-COVID Nanaimo
From: Frank MurphySubject: Post-COVID NanaimoDate: April 16, 2020To: leonard.krog@nanaimo.caCc: sheryl.armstrong@nanaimo.ca, don.bonner@nanaimo.ca, tyler.brown@nanaimo.ca, ben.geselbracht@nanaimo.ca, erin.hemmens@nanaimo.ca, zeni.maartman@nanaimo.ca, ian.thorpe@nanaimo.ca, jim.turley@nanaimo.ca
Hi Leonard, I hope you are well and safe from this awful pandemic.
You couldn’t have imagined of course that something like this would happen while you were at the helm of our city council. We’ll be in this uncharted territory for some time.
An op-ed in the Globe and Mail caught my eye a few days ago. It was written by Carleton University associate professor and author (Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History) Andrew Cohen. It explored ways in which Canada at the federal level might best emerge from this crisis. It called for the establishment of "a blue-ribbon commission on the economy and social welfare to plan for post COVID19 reconstruction and renewal.”
"We need to find answers, as Franklin Roosevelt did in the Great Depression. His New Deal famously established the National Recovery Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps… National commissions are not new to us... Mackenzie King’s establishment of the Committee on Reconstruction in 1941, which was led by Cyril James, principal of McGill University. While the government fought the war, the committee planned the peace. It did excellent work.Commissions have shaped Canada’s thinking on identity (bilingualism and biculturalism) in the 1960s and on economic renewal in the 1980s. The Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, led by the gifted Donald Macdonald, brought us free trade, among other policies.”Here in Nanaimo let's establish an independent Special Commission on a Post-COVID Nanaimo.
Consistent with all the successful commissions mentioned above is that they have been extra-governmental. They have operated at arms-length from government, guided by terms-of-reference and by anticipated deliverables laid out by government. The independence of and the careful selection of the leader of these commissions are clearly two central reasons that they have been able to deliver practical and insightful transitional policy recommendations.
Let’s base the Special Commission on a Post-COVID Nanaimo on these principles. Leaders of previous commissions have often come from the judiciary. There’s no better example than the leadership brought to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by Justice Murray Sinclair. Here in Nanaimo, proven city-builders like former VIU VP Dave Witty who brings proven leadership and the key ability to holistically engage across all the municipal disciplines comes to mind. Similarly, Victoria architect Franc D’Ambrosio, another proven city-builder and lead on the award-winning 2008 Downtown Urban Design Plan and Guidelines initiative.
Meanwhile, stay safe and well,— Frank
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
This is my neighbourhood. It’s also
Census Tract No. 9380015.00. Here’s
some things I’ve learned about it.
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