Media Clipping – February 13, 2001, The P.E.I. Guardian

Less stress Island way of life considered model for Canada

Increased stress and loss of leisure time are among the prices to be paid for material gain, says director of non-profit research group.

By Jim Day

Dr. Ron Coleman believes that the many Canadians who are working themselves into burn-out cases in order to pay for their flashy cars and expensive homes could learn a lesson or two from easygoing Islanders.

Coleman is a director of GPI Atlantic, a non-profit research group that is constructing an index of well-being and sustainable development for Nova Scotia. He was brought to Charlottetown by the Cooper Institute on Wednesday to give a presentation on the true measures of poverty, progress and prosperity.

He said that much more than material wealth needs to be factored into the equation when establishing a true, good standard-of-living benchmark.

"The reality is that in our day and age, we're in a very materialist society," said Coleman.

"So we tend to define if we can expand our house or put an SUV (sports utility vehicle) in the driveway, we think we're better off."

But such goods come with a price that extends far beyond the dollars that must be forked out to purchase these material niceties of life. In addition to the stress associated with working long hours in order to earn the big bucks is the forfeit of leisure time - a loss of relaxation and a reduction of good interaction with the family.

Coleman said the average family income in Canada is similar now to what it was in 1989, but real wages have not been going up.

What has been happening is that people are working longer hours, especially highly educated people. Also, close to 70 per cent of families have dual earners.

"So people are more and more time-stressed," said Coleman.

"Statistics Canada has done two time-stress surveys - one in 1992 and one in 1998 - and they showed that time-stress levels are going up. Canadians are more stressed out."

Prince Edward Island, on the other hand, may have relatively low wages but Islanders have the second lowest level of stress in the country (next only to Newfoundland) as measured in population health surveys, said Coleman.

P.E.I. also records the second highest rate of mental health and pyschological wellbeing (again only bettered by Newfoundland).

Coleman said Islanders factor much more into quality of life; than, the dollar figure on their paycheques.

"Well, I think Islanders should be very proud of their lifestyle and they should fight tooth and nail to protect it because in this world everything is moving in the opposite direction," he said.

"It's moving away from more relaxed, more community-oriented life where community still matters, like it does on P.E.I. The national trend is towards greater mobility, break up of communities, more materialism, more speed, more stress. So it's very good that Islanders have that pride in their lifestyle. They should never let anyone tell them that it's better somewhere else."

He urged Islanders, as well as other Atlantic Canadians, not to buy into the popular societal view of the day that more is better.

"Our material standard of living is not as high as the rest of the country but we have tremendous wealth and good life and good sense of community and relative security and safety when we walk out into the streets," he said.

He said some European countries serve as a good model for quality time management.

In, Holland, for instance, the Dutch lowered their unemployment rate from 12.2 per cent to 2.7 per cent by making part-time work good work, thus reducing work hours and making more jobs available.

Coleman said the average worker in Holland puts 1,370 hours per year on the job. In Canada, it averages out to 1,760 hours per year.

"So the Dutch, on average work 400 hours less per year than the average Canadian, he said.

"So they have a lot more free time - the equivalent 10 weeks more free time."

Another area in which Coleman believes more is wrongly viewed as better is the overzealous tapping of our natural resources.

"Everything we have for our survival is based natural resources," he said.

"But currently, the way we measure things is the more trees we cut down and the more quickly we cut them down, the faster the economy will grow. The more quickly we sell off our fish, the faster the economy will grow. So it can look as though things getting wealthier but our natural world may be getting poorer.

"So, if we really think what poverty means, our children are inheriting a poorer natural world than we did when we were their age.

"The forests aren't in good shape, there's less in the oceans, the soils have been eroded and depleted due to the kinds of intensive farming methods. There's less species on the planet than there were, so it's less of a rich world."

Copyright 2001, The Guardian
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