A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Excuse me, doc - any advice for the uncertain? What are we to take from the fact that a majority of adult Canadians don’t want to be immunized against the H1N1 flu? I know how they feel. I’m still on the fence myself about whether to get the shot. Being immunized definitely appears to be the logical, civic-minded choice, but there’s this part of me that’s just really hesitant about getting a flu shot. And 51 per cent of the Canadians apparently feel the same way. Asked in an on-line poll this month about whether they’d be getting vaccinated against H1N1, more than half said no. That’s up significantly from July, when only 38 per cent were saying no. That fact must be a great disappointment to the public-health officials working hard on the H1N1 front. People were alarmed as all get-out when the new strain of influenza first took hold in Mexico, and the task back then looked like it was going to be about keeping a worried public calm until a vaccine could be developed. Instead we’ve ...

It's community involvement that sets Project Connect apart For the past two years, I’ve had the honour of organizing the Project Connect service fair for the street community, put on by the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness. This year, we saw at least 700 people through the door for the event at Our Place drop-in last Wednesday. They came for help: a new birth certificate, care for their broken and battered feet, a haircut, vet care, a backpack full of useful stuff They also came for food, eating a whopping 2,100 hamburgers and 1,000 hot dogs by day’s end. I don’t know whether to be delighted or heartsick that the number of people at the event was up by more than 200 this year, or that we served twice as many burgers and dogs. Sure, it’s great to draw a crowd, but I dream of the day when an event for people living in profound poverty fails to attract anybody. If you’ve done any event-planning, you’ll know it’s a crazy-making activity with a million details to attend t...

Pointless prostitution laws help no one but hurt many Sex work is back in the headlines again, and will be for quite some time with a constitutional challenge to Canada’s prostitution laws finally underway this week. I wish miracles for the three brave sex workers who launched the challenge. That’s what they’ll need to survive the savaging they’re in for at the hands of those who staunchly oppose anything that might make it easier or safer to be a sex worker. The case in front of the Ontario Superior Court is challenging three sections of the Criminal Code: the “common bawdyhouse” laws that make anything to do with operating a brothel illegal; procuring or living off the avails of prostitution; and communicating for the purposes of prostitution. In deciding the case, Justice Susan Himel will be gauging whether our prostitution laws are proportionate to their purpose, or if they have the effect of forcing sex workers into unsafe situations where they can be preyed on by deviants and ser...

Fight back - these cuts will do lasting harm I’ve kept a rough list of the B.C. programs and services being lost as a result of government cuts this fall. Maybe there’s still nothing on the list that affects you and your family, but the odds are getting slimmer all the time. A remarkably broad swath of British Columbians will be affected by the funding cuts being carried out by the provincial government and its five health authorities right now. The cuts are coming fast and furious in all directions, with neither a plan nor an understanding at any level of what it’s all going to mean when the dust settles. Without a word of public discussion, vital social programs and supports that British Columbians have counted on for years are vanishing. Our province will end up wearing the scars of these cuts for decades to come. We need to shake ourselves out of our respective silos and make it stop. Whatever your political stripe, I’m sure we can all agree that we’re against bad decision-making. ...