Polling suggests young people favour the Greens, Liberals and New Democrats: parties that have demonstrated some commitment 鈥� however limited 鈥� to urban issues in this campaign. A politically engaged youth is thus important for the civic and social health of our urban regions. But as comedian Rick Mercer has quipped, 鈥渁s far as any political parties are concerned,鈥� young people 鈥渕ight as well be dead.鈥�

As any political scientist will tell you, in a pluralist liberal democracy, those who make the most noise 鈥� by voting, organizing, lobbying 鈥� are more likely to have their issues addressed by government. Pluralism implies many groups of relatively equal power jockeying for position and influence in political life.

We live, however, in a country of great social and economic inequality where money and power, two things youth lack, go a long way to securing an audience with the governing classes. Young people have power in numbers, but organizing and exercising that power around common interests is never easy. Through advocacy groups and party politics, seniors have flexed their political muscle this election, pushing the parties to address their immediate concerns, from home care to public pensions; youth have yet to flex theirs.

Urban youth have their own issues: environmental sustainability and the livability of cities are major concerns. The young are more frequent users of public transit and would benefit from a federal role in building the green transportation infrastructure our country so desperately needs. Funding for the arts and athletics are also a priority of urban youth, who recognize their value in facilitating creative expression and promoting social cohesion in the highly diverse landscapes of Canadian cities.

Then there are the myriad social problems facing many of today鈥檚 urban youth, problems the political parties have failed to highlight this campaign. For instance, in Toronto 40 per cent of black students do not graduate from high school. Drug-addicted youth in Vancouver鈥檚 downtown east side struggle to secure housing and access to services. Racialized youth face discrimination and outright racism in urban labour markets and in their contact with police and the criminal justice system. The young are disproportionately represented in the ranks of our cities鈥� precariously employed; those workers struggling to make ends meet working temporary, part-time or multiple jobs with low wages and few benefits. And there are the extremely high rates of poverty and incarceration of young aboriginal people in cities such as Winnipeg and Regina.

As in any federal system, politicians will squabble over whose jurisdiction these issues fall under. It鈥檚 time to move beyond these squabbles and recognize that urban youth, and our cities in general, would benefit from a strong federal urban presence and the development of a federally-led urban strategy. Stephen Harper explicitly opposes such a notion; he鈥檚 committed to a model of governance in which the feds do not 鈥渋nterfere鈥� in the business of the provinces and municipalities.

But a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach from the feds is not desirable either. Municipal governments are best placed to evaluate the needs of local populations, including youth. Cities have been important drivers in the design and innovation of Canadian social services and social programs. Any federal urban strategy with a youth component should recognize this and respect the diversity of Canadian cities. For instance, a program to address street gangs (with gang-exit and gang-intervention initiatives) in a city such as Regina in which aboriginal youth are disproportionately involved in gang life will necessarily take a different form than programs in Montreal or Toronto.

In any progressive era of Canadian politics, the federal government has exercised its federal spending power to alter Canada鈥檚 approach to issues that were essentially within provincial jurisdiction. In the fields of education, welfare and health care, the feds have influenced provincial and municipal policies and program standards.

Beyond providing necessary funding to cash-strapped cities, a federal urban youth strategy could establish principles that govern access to programs and services without becoming excessively involved in their design and delivery. Pairing universal programs with targeted investments based on the social citizenship, social rights and democratic participation and engagement of young people is vital to building such a strategy.

But an urban youth strategy is not likely to emerge unless it is fought for and demanded by young people themselves. In urban centres across our country, many youth are active in civic life, but often in ways that don鈥檛 conform to the politics-as-usual of parties and elections. Other youth speak the language of distress and despair, with gunshots or requests for spare change on our city streets. Whatever the manifestation of their voice, politicians ignore urban youth at our cities鈥� peril.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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鈥淥n the surface, (the plan) may have given municipalities too much flexibility and enabled some of them to deviate less from the traditional path than the plan sought to and they needed to,鈥� said Winfield. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e got some strong responses in places like Markham. Toronto itself has stepped up. But in other places the response is somewhat weaker,鈥� he said, after poring over the Star鈥檚 numbers. 鈥淢ississauga is quite striking. You clearly have leaders thinking in a more ambitious and creative way, and you have others who are basically wedded to the sprawl model and trying to respond to the province within that framework.鈥�

Brampton, Winfield points out, pre-empted the growth plan by designating the entire area inside its city limits for urban expansion 鈥� including vast stretches of farmland 鈥� so it wouldn鈥檛 have to justify allowing new growth outside what鈥檚 termed the 鈥渦rban boundary.鈥�

Winfield said the province still needs to do a deeper analysis that looks at what鈥檚 happening across the GTA: not just the densities being planned, but also the population allocations and the kind of communities being planned.

He says it鈥檚 time to assess the impact of the province鈥檚 massive interventions in regional planning, including creating the Greenbelt 鈥� which made a huge swath a no-go zone for developers 鈥� and Places to Grow, which oversees what鈥檚 left.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin

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Much of what informs environmental thinking springs from a view that equates nature with sexually straight and queer with unnatural. The editors of a new book , turn those notions upside down.

Co-editors Bruce Erickson (PhD 09鈥�) and 91亚色 environmental studies Professor Catriona Sandilands, Canada Research Chair in Sustainability & Culture, wanted to challenge the current thinking about what is considered sexually 鈥渘ormal鈥� in nature and how nature is used to create normative sexualities. To do so, they gathered a group of mainly senior scholars who鈥檇 done work close to the intersection of sexuality studies and environmental studies in research areas such as queer geography, eco-feminism, environmental justice and gender and sexuality studies.

The result is a book that looks at three broad topics 鈥� 鈥淎gainst Nature? Queer Sex, Queer Animality鈥�, 鈥淕reen, Pink, and Public: Queering Environmental Politics鈥� and 鈥淒esiring Nature? Queer Attachments鈥� 鈥� with contributors from literary studies, landscape ecology, geography, science studies, history, philosophy, sociology and women鈥檚 studies, including leading researchers from the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.

Erickson, who studied with Sandilands and is now a post-doctoral fellow in environmental history at Nipissing University, says part of the reason for Queer Ecologies was to explore the connection between environmentalism and discourses of homosexuality. 鈥淭he birth of modern environmentalism and the birth of modern understandings of homosexuality and queerness came about at the same time through very similar actors and so we wanted to think about that a little bit more and see how those connections are actually a lot more deeply ingrained than simply being a kind of accidental event,鈥� says Erickson.

Queer Ecologies asks contemporary environmental thinkers and activists to consider how their practices and assumptions about nature are located in homophobic and heterosexist perspectives, and to ask the queer communities to engage in more ecological discourse and action, says Mortimer-Sandilands. 鈥淚t鈥檚 important to make nature and environmental issues part of a more robust queer platform. It鈥檚 not just about achieving equality in an ecologically disastrous world. It鈥檚 also about thinking about the interrelationship between sexual聽resistances and environmental justice, for example.鈥�

Left: Catriona Sandilands and Bruce Erickson

There are several historical connections between sexual and environmental politics, says Sandilands, author of .

鈥淔irst, species, race and population were all hotly contested concepts in the late-19th and early-20th centuries; these debates influenced emerging understandings of both ecology and sexuality, which also influenced each other. Second, large-scale industrialization and urbanization both created new spaces in which new sexual cultures could thrive, and also contributed to larger social anxieties about hygiene, degeneracy and what was considered an 'effeminization' of white national virility. Out of these processes arose both modern understandings of sexuality and gender and modern institutions of nature conservation, most notably national parks.鈥�

With these historical connections, it is important to understand that the modern environmental movement has sexual origins, and also that sexual politics have embedded understandings of nature and environment, she says. 鈥淚n addition, political resistances to dominant sex/nature categories also have a history: from Radclyffe Hall鈥檚 literary defence of gender inversion to Oscar Wilde鈥檚 refusal of 鈥榥atural authenticity鈥� to the Radical Faeries to the Lesbian National Parks & Services. It's a fascinating history.鈥�

As a result, Queer Ecologies includes essays on both the 鈥渉istorical links between sex and nature and on more contemporary issues, such as the current popular fascination with the sexuality of animals, conflicts about public sex in designated nature areas, heterosexual panic in anti-toxics activism, population and development politics, and resistances by the queer communities to all of the above in art, literature and politics,鈥� says Sandilands.

Erickson鈥檚 essay takes issue with the iconic nature of the canoe. 鈥淢y starting point for the essay is Pierre Berton鈥檚 comment that a Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe. I try to trace back this national feeling through these very normative ideas of heterosexuality and how the assumption by those that take up Berton鈥檚 statement as being such an interesting and witty way of understanding Canada reify a kind of heterosexist image of the nation.鈥� He also looks at the politics of colonialism that have allowed the canoe to become a symbol of the nation.

Sandilands turns her gaze to two authors, Jan Zita Grover and Derek Jarman, and聽how they responded politically and with dignity to the massive losses brought about by AIDS, and how they offer a model for thinking intelligently about the daily losses that are part of the environmental crisis. Too often environmental loss becomes tourism. Everyone runs out to see the natural wonder before it鈥檚 gone.

鈥淏ut that approach is part of the problem, ethically and politically, we can't just 鈥榤ove on鈥� to other natures, and some of the approaches to loss and memory explored in the massive artistic and literary response to AIDS are very instructive to help us think about the consequences of what we are losing environmentally,鈥� she says.

The book came about through a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada grant Sandilands received related to her work as Canada Research Chair, which included funds for a聽workshop which inaugurated the Queer Ecologies project.

Sandilands' next book, This Is For You: Walks with Jane Rule (UBC Press), is forthcoming.

Queer Ecologies was published last week; a launch will take place in the fall.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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