A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Say it ain't so, smiling Jack! Are you really t he least civil MP in Parliament?  That's what the researchers concluded after analyzing the questions and answers of MPs who rose to say something in the House of Commons at least 50 times in the last session. The higher the score, the more "civil" the tone of the parliamentarian; Jack Layton scored a 39, the lowest score of the bunch. I'm no fan of the highly uncivil heckling and name-calling that goes on in Parliament, and no defender of Jack Layton. But it seems to me these times call for a little incivility when questioning government, so I won't hold his low score against him. Then again, maybe I'm biased. I notice that the database where all Post Media newspaper stories are archived now includes a measurement of how many stories pulled up in a particular search are positive, negative or neutral. Search on my columns for the past year and you'll see that the Tone Gods have deemed that my negative ...

Why waste time and money to say nothing? The new premier clearly enjoys the chance to knock off some of the no-brainer stuff that riles British Columbians. I thought fondly of Christy Clark myself on the long weekend, when my family converged for a picnic at Rathtrevor Provincial Park and didn’t have to pay to park. If she’s making quick fixes behind the scenes, too, I’ve got one for the list. How about a look at the way the province communicates with media? It’s been a dispiriting experience these past 15 years to watch governments close the lid on communications.   You’ll catch me at parties on this one, holding forth to some unfortunate party-goer about being from a generation of journalists who actually remember interviewing deputy ministers. And nowadays? We exchange emails with "government communications and public engagement" staff (formerly the Public Affairs Bureau), who work very hard to answer our questions without actually saying anything. You can still get inter...

What are we to conclude about this development - everyone on the government side of the Pickton inquiry gets their legal funds covered, but there's no help for sex workers, aboriginals or residents of the Downtown Eastside. Does that not strike you as just a little obvious? Public funds can't be treated like a bottomless pit, of course. And yes, you don't want to think too long about the massive sums that will have gone to lawyers by the time the various aspects of the Pickton case have run their course. Imagine what those millions could have done to change the lives of the women who were Pickton's victims - and could still do for the women who continue to be out there on the street night after night, risking their lives with every "date." But really, to stack the deck quite so blatantly is just plain offensive. If there's no more money for lawyers so that sex workers can be heard as part of the inquest, then funds need to be pried out of the hands of s...

New University of Victoria research shows that exercise can improve the brain function of people with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder . Good on the Saanich News for putting this story out there - the official statistic is that FASD affects about one per cent of the babies born in any given year in Canada, but an anonymous screening of newborns at a Toronto hospital a while back put that figure at three per cent. It's a miserable brain injury at its worst, as it affects the child's ability to measure risk and learn from experience long into adulthood. Those most affected by FASD do poorly in school, run into trouble with authority figures, are at higher risk of homelessness and addiction, and risk their own life and limbs on a regular basis due to poor decision-making. We saw a lot of people with FASD - some diagnosed, many we just suspected - during my time at PEERS among the most multi-barriered women working the outdoor stroll. So it's a happy day to hear of a simple e...

I'm feeling very divided about a new  B.C. government initiative that makes all criminal records searchable , on-line, for free. The media person inside me is pretty damn excited about it, because it means I can plug in the name of anyone I'm writing about just to see if they might have a criminal record - and hey, that's kind of cool when you're in the business of scrounging up information on people. It also makes it a heck of a lot easier for people who have to do criminal-record checks on volunteers, as it ends that slow business of having to go to the police station and wait (not to mention pay money in some cases). But the social-advocate side of me is thinking whoa, this is wild. Can't you see every employer in the city wanting to run every staff member's name to see if they have a criminal record? Is that good? The initiative appears to have emerged with virtually no media attention - I found out only because a friend in the social-services sector sen...

A response for Jay, who posted a comment on my piece last week about the Prince George specialized foster home owned  by Jordy Hoover, where an 11-year-old boy was Tasered by police last month. Jay says somebody tried to get the Prince George media interested in this story last year but the newspaper said they couldn't write about MCFD unless an issue came up in the legislature. Jay was wondering whether this was true when it comes to what the media can or can't do. While it certainly is easier for media to write about things once they become matters of public record, it's a load of hooey for anyone to suggest that media can't get into MCFD issues until they're raised in the legislature. Yes, there are publication rules around identifying a child who is in foster care, so media can't name a child. But there's nothing stopping the media from looking into the way MCFD contracts, how much it pays people for those contracts, how it selects its contractors, et...

Insite can't be allowed to close Writing a column means finding some quiet time to let yourself think. Which is how a morning walk this week in brilliant sunshine turned into a long and dark reflection on my readiness for civil disobedience if Ottawa tries to shut down Vancouver’s supervised injection site. A few of my activist acquaintances have pointed out that I’m not much for actually showing up at a protest, even when it’s an issue I feel strongly about. I suspect they take that as an indicator that I’m a bit of an armchair quarterback (even though the truth is that I just think writing is the more effective protest tool for me). Still, ever since I heard a retired medical health officer vow years ago at a Vancouver harm-reduction forum to chain himself to the door of Insite if that’s what it took to prevent its closure, I knew I felt the same way. Count me in for a blockade if it comes to that. I have great faith in our court system to get past the unthinking politics of th...

I'm not a regular Margaret Wente reader (she's such a contrarian), but I caught her column in the Globe today and it led me to this great piece in the Guardian by George Monbiot. It's a eyes-wide-open look at the difficulty of getting past the heartfelt intents and declarations of the environmental movement and actually doing something. 

It's unbelievable and deeply embarrassing that our own federal government is trying to shut Insite down , based solely on an ideological viewpoint. The safe-injection site is a health service, and a very effective one. The case will be heard by the federal court on Thursday - here's hoping they've got more savvy and an open mind than our political leadership. 

Update Oct. 18, 2011: More details from police on the tasering of an 11-year-old boy with severe developmental disability All the world’s an onion. Peel back a layer on any issue and a dozen more await, each more intriguing than the one before. An example: The Tasering of an 11-year-old boy in Prince George last month. I went digging around for information this week on that troubling incident, only to end up puzzling over how a company with a history of running bars and liquor stores ends up in the group-home business. The lowdown on this particular case will ultimately come from B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Her office is reviewing the incident and other issues at B.C. group homes for children in care, and we’ll all know more when her analysis and two separate police reviews are complete. But even a cursory look at the Prince George situation raises questions about how B.C. contracts services for its most at-risk children. ...

An excerpt from Hansard, from the May 3 session of the BC legislature. Social Development Minister Harry Bloy, a brand-new cabinet minister, has obviously learned the lesson well of just repeating the same key message over and over, even when it makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the information that the Opposition members are bringing forward.  Really, the public should not let Community Living B.C. and the government get away with this fairy tale about how nobody with a developmental disability has been forced out of their group home against their will - it simply isn't true. And yes, there have been cuts, regardless of what Bloy says - when you add in new people who qualify for service without increasing funding, the others who have been receiving services up to that point have to take a cut for that to happen. It's basic math.  SERVICES FOR DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED PERSONS N. Simons: Last week in this House the minister responsible for Community Living B.C. ...

Lots of strong feelings for people like me on a day like today. Can't say I'm even remotely happy to see a Tory majority. And yet, even though I'm certainly not a strong NDPer, there's something heartening about seeing Canadians kicking up some trouble at the ballot box. Voter turnout actually improved ever so slightly this time out. But our strange political system still leaves much to be desired - work out the numbers (61 per cent of eligible voters, 39 per cent of which voted Tory) and it turns out that less than 24 per cent of eligible voters actually chose Harper. So that just leaves three-quarters of us who either didn't want him or couldn't be bothered to vote. Here's a piece from the Montreal Gazette on voter turnout this election.