A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Big Society, or small government? *I'm gone after this for a couple of weeks - back blogging March 12   Britain’s “Big Society” initiative has been showing up as a story line in Canadian media in recent weeks. Not surprising, really. Our federal and provincial governments are promoting the same principles that British Prime Minister David Cameron is putting forward in his Big Society vision.   He calls it a Big Society and we call it social entrepreneurship, but the goals are the same: More social enterprise; more collective responsibility for societal ills; more use of the tools of capitalism to fund social care. Canada is suddenly awash in task forces, strategies and policy debate related to social innovation, including a new high-profile advisory committee in B.C. I like much of what’s being talked about. I’m all for innovation, and for a better way of funding community services if it gets us out of the uncertain, short-term, destructive and inefficient process we’ve got...

Andre Picard is easily the best health reporter in Canada in my opinion, not only because he writes great stuff and takes the serious measure of issues, but because he gives a public platform to important issues that we need to know about. Today's column in the Globe and Mail is a good example of that - he's highlighting a study that pokes big holes in the prescription drug industry's assertion that the reason drugs are so expensive is because the industry is spending vast sums on creating them.

OK, I don't usually go in for the flavour-of-the-day studies that have us scrambling this way and that trying to follow whatever new wisdom has popped up to help us guide our lives into better health. But I'm a long-time devotee of regular exercise, and t his latest study on lab mice underlines that exercise really does seem to be the magic bullet. While it would be hard to test the same theories using weight-training (although I'm enjoying the image of mice doing tiny little bench presses and squats, I can tell you from my own life that weights are definitely part of the magic-bullet equation as well. And never mind that every now and then you end up with a bit of an injury from too much enthusiastic gym time (like at this very moment, in my case). Weight-training helps restore the muscle we start losing in our 30s as part of the aging process. For every pound of muscle on your body, you're burning at least 10 times the calories just maintaining it as a pound of fa...

Good read from my partner Paul Willcocks , who dug up some enlightening information by taking a look at the B.C. Progress Board reports assessing the record of Gordon Campbell's Liberals in the last few years. Campbell's government created the Progress Board to measure performance, so you have to give him credit for that - up until that point, it was pretty much impossible to gauge how effective a government had been. But as the reports reveal, the Liberals haven't quite been the saviours of the economy that they position themselves as. 

A grim but fascinating reminder from Salon magazine about our seemingly overpowering need to blame the victim when a woman is sexually assaulted - in this case, CBS reporter Lara Logan. 

Our countries talk a good game about treasuring the war veterans who serve on behalf of all of us. But as with anything, what really counts is what we DO once the heart-warming media images of returning vets fade from view and the soldier returns to "normal" life. And as this study out of the U.S. shows , the love doesn't appear to last long south of the border, where military veterans are more likely than any other group to end up homeless.

Stigma blinds us The dictionary defines stigma as “a distinguishing mark of social disgrace.”   Once upon a time, it was the common term for the permanent mark burned into the skin of criminals and slaves. We like to think of ourselves as too civilized for such things nowadays. But in fact, the practice continues for all kinds of people singled out for scorn and judgment.   That we even sort people that way is probably the most interesting aspect of this thing we call stigma. Scorn and judgment are not attitudes a “nice” society generally wants to cultivate in its citizens, and for the most part I think we’re fairly kind to each other. We’re respectful of each other’s differences. But not always. Some categories of people still end up singled out for social disgrace, their lives marked as surely by stigma as if we’d burned it into them.   This is Anti-Stigma Week in Greater Victoria, and I love the theme: “Nice People Take Drugs.” People with addictions experience treme...

I guess it's no surprise that the Conservative-heavy Senate is bound to crush the bill that would create human-rights protection for transgender and transsexual people, as this story notes. For reasons that I've never been clear on, we're supposed to presume that Conservatives - at least the kind we have in Canada right now - are the type of people who just don't like transgender people. But really, why would anyone be in favour of allowing discrimination of transgender people? I mean, it's not like providing them with human-rights protection is going to encourage more people to become transgendered, or send a bad message to Canadian children. It ought to be unacceptable for anyone to face discrimination solely because of who they are. Let's hope the Senate just gets out of the way on this one and lets it happen. 

Helpful piece in the Globe and Mail this morning for people like me, struggling to understand what all this fuss about a metered Internet means to them. Count me among the large number of Canadians who, up until all of this became big news, never even knew I had a limited plan. (The "explainer" link at the bottom of the story is also very useful.) It's been barely a month since I figured out how to stream Netflix onto my TV and I'm totally enthralled, having been completely frustrated and furious over the consistently lousy programming that my pricey cable subscription gets me. So I'm deeply interested in this story line. The issue looks like it's about Internet providers' right to charge heavy users more, but it's actually about Canada's non-competitive environment. Unlimited internet plans are standard in the U.S.  Man, this country has some strange ideas around where we'll draw the line on competition. We eat foreign-grown food, work fo...

Depending on who you talk to, psychiatric care in the region for people with chronic and debilitating mental illness is either in frightening disarray or just experiencing a few bumps on the way to a better day. A number of the doctors who preside over hospital psychiatric care in the region say the cuts of the last two years have had a disastrous impact on people with serious mental illness. Two of the doctors have already resigned in protest from the health authority’s Department of Psychiatry, and more have threatened to.  Last month, department members in the South Island passed a motion of no confidence in Dr. Robert Miller, medical director of mental health services for the Vancouver Island Health Authority. But a spokesman for the health authority says the vote against Miller was “completely inappropriate,” and that the issue is really about a small number of psychiatrists resistant to change. The health authority has complete confidence in Miller, says Dr. Bob Bu...

This is the kind of reporting I think is really valuable - Robert Matas takes a press release from the B.C. government and digs into what it really means, putting in the context for readers so that they can better understand the significance (or lack thereof) of the announcement on more childcare subsidies.

Unbelievable story about the culling of sled dogs in Pemberton.   People are going to go crazy over this one, all over the world. And what a nasty taint to give the B.C. Olympics - the image of all these happy huskies touring Olympic visitors around for their little sled rides, then killed at the end of the season because nobody could be bothered to figure out a better solution. Nice try with the "we tried to get these dogs adopted" bit, but did you hear a word about this up until now? Had the company come out with a press release saying 100 dogs were going to die unless people stepped forward to adopt them, there'd have been homes found. If we can send hundreds of rabbits to rescue projects in the U.S., surely we could have found placements for retiring sled dogs. H ere's a link to the blogosphere heating up over this one.  A measure of just how big this story is going to be: I did a Google search on "sled dogs killed" and quickly pulled up search page af...