Above: This is the third instalment in The West Block’s series The Big Idea, in which we look beyond the daily political skirmishes to launch a broader, engaging discussion of our potential as a nation and a people.
He’s seen Canada unlike many others; entertaining crowds of dozens or thousands, in cities big and small, from coast to coast to coast.
For decades, Jim Cuddy and his Blue Rodeo bandmates have powered down highways and roadways in fuel-guzzling tour buses to reach their fans, and play from towering stages packed with scorching spotlights, energy-draining speakers and powerful projection screens.
So it might seem odd to hear environmental protection is at the top his mind, but Cuddy’s big idea is to see it enshrined in the Canadian Constitution. The idea is one he built on interactions and conversations with his friend, environmentalist David Suzuki.
The irony isn’t lost on him. He knows his and other bands are massive users of energy, and he is well aware of the fact that when they play places like Fort McMurray, Alta. their profit is on account of locals working in the oilsands.
As a member of a touring band, Cuddy is afforded the chance to see the natural environments in which his fans live. But they also travel through more a more grim side of Canada’s landscape, though Cuddy knows he, too, makes money off the oilsands.
WATCH: Blue Rodeo front man Jim Cuddy says he’s not blind to the fact that touring in Fort McMurray is profitable because of the money locals make from the oil sands.
Enshrining environmental protection in the Constitution would mean, he said, that no actions would be taken in Canada without having to first ask what that action would do to the air, water, forests, and international environmental commitments.
But the first big step in this plan is to change the language around oil extraction, to cool down the heated words on both ends of the discussion’s spectrum.
“I think the huge basis of this is to get people in the room together that represent industry, and that represent environmental concerns, and find a common language,” Cuddy said. “Currently, there’s too much hyperbole from both sides … We’ll never get anywhere.”
The musician recently walked right into the middle of that heated domain when asked to weigh in on the fighting words another Canadian icon, Neil Young, threw at the oilsands earlier this year.
Young described the Alberta oilsands as the “greediest, most destructive and disrespectful demonstration of something run amok that you can ever see.” He also said the federal government is motivated by nothing but money and misleading Canadians about the extraction of oil from the area.
That hadn’t been his first assail. Last September, Young came under fire when he compared Fort McMurray to Hiroshima, the Japanese city that was ravaged after the atomic bomb strike in 1945.
Cuddy eventually came out in support of Young, but it wasn’t exactly simple. It began with one interview.
WATCH: Blue Rodeo front man Jim Cuddy says he was painted into a corner when asked for his opinion on Neil Young’s comments on Fort McMurray.
“Now first of all, let me make a distinction. Fort Mac is not the oilsands. They are about 50 miles apart. Fort Mac is a town. That’s where everybody lives,” Cuddy said.
So, the reporter asked Cuddy whether Young exaggerated the conditions in Fort McMurray.
“I said I’d just went for a run through the trees and, you know, my eyes are not burning. It’s different here. It’s not the oilsands.”
So the story came out with Cuddy alleging Young had exaggerated the conditions.
“Then they asked about Neil and I said, ‘Well, I think in his own extreme way, he started a dialogue we have to have.'”
That was taken to say “Cuddy calls Young extreme,” he recalled.
“I though, OK, this is a different world than I live in. This is not the music world. There are no nuances in this world. So you’re either for us or against us. So I’m like, OK, I’m for Neil.”
That position angered the people of Fort McMurray, Cuddy said. It was a reaction that upset him greatly, deepening the sense he was stuck in the middle, having sympathy for both sides.
The key, he said, is in forging an alliance between people who make their money from oil resources and people who want to save the environment.
WATCH: Blue Rodeo front man Jim Cuddy going to support a tour advocating entrenching environmental protection in the Constitution.
To do his part in helping to build that bridge, Cuddy will be providing what he describes as “musical help” for an upcoming cross-country tour that will be asking Canadians from all walks of life: what do you want your town to look like in 30 years?
“I don’t think people should necessarily listen to musicians,” he said. “I don’t think celebrity holds any sway. I think that I just speak as a citizen, but a citizen to whom people listen for some reason.”
Capitalizing on that power, Cuddy said he hopes to help spur a dialogue across the country, and especially in Alberta.
As for how hopeful he is, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
“You have to have some wild, exotic dream to forge ahead,” he said. But while doing charity work in Alberta, people who make their money in oil have told Cuddy he can do something because his pay comes from other means.
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