A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Good column this morning from TC writer Paul Willcocks , who notes the correlation with income levels in the HST vote. It really is unsettling to see what has happened in B.C. - having grown up on the Island, I too share a memory of young people of my generation having much more of a chance of finding a decent-paying job, buying a house and having a "good" life. I got married for the first time when I was 17, a fact that might signal a life on welfare in this day and age. Happily, my husband had a great job at the Campbell River mill. We had two cars, a cabin that we owned on the beach (!) in Royston, and within a couple of years had moved up to a new house in a nearby subdivision. My two oldest kids have managed to buy into the housing market in the Comox Valley, but they're 37 and 34, so of a previous generation themselves. And it has certainly stretched them to be homeowners regardless. My youngest child, in her mid-20s and living in Victoria, doesn't stand a ch...

This study from the Canadian Centre for Police Alternatives puts some figures to a trend that many of us have already figured out - the tax burden has shifted significantly in B.C. in the last 10 years in ways that leave high earners paying less and the poorest paying more. Not too surprising that voters defeated the HST given that reality. When taxes decrease for people with higher incomes, it also has a disproportionate effect on the tax base. A one or two per cent tax reduction on an income of, say, $300,000 is significantly more of a loss than can ever be made up through a corresponding one or two per cent increase for the province's lowest earners. What does it mean for the rest of us? Less money for government-funded services, the risk of rising social disorder, government spending at the most expensive end of the scale due to the savings of today morphing into the ballooning costs of tomorrow. With reduced investment in preventive services and strategies due to sinking t...

A different take on the issue of human trafficking - which, as this professor points out, is a phrase that tends to bring out emotional prose, gigantic numbers and no real evidence that it really is the major problem everyone says it is. I'd hate to be considered pro-trafficking, because that would be just plain weird, but I do think it's one of those issues we use to justify throwing money into initiatives that sound good until you realize they're not actually helping anyone other than the people paid to do them. Yes, there are vulnerable people out there trapped in horrible situations. But maybe we should be figuring out how to help them instead of chasing ghosts. 

I know everyone's posting this wonderful letter from the late Jack Layton , but what the heck - I want it on my blog, too. It's just a lovely sentiment to keep close. Bye, Jack. 

Be careful what you wish for around gaming grants When the New Democrats first turned aggressive about gambling in the mid-1990s, they knew they had to tread lightly. The public was nervous, as were B.C. charities. With their long history of running bingos, special-event casinos, poker nights and raffles to fund community services, they were worried about government’s plans to turn gambling into a new provincial revenue stream. The charities put up quite a fight in the late 1990s. But despite those valiant efforts, it’s pretty obvious in 2011 who has won this battle. When a group of the charities formed the B.C. Association of Charitable Gambling and signed a memorandum of understanding with the province in 1999, charities were guaranteed a third of the pot for distribution as grants to non-profits doing good community work. That lasted about as long as it took for the government of the day and every government since then to forget that there ever was such an arrangement. Twelve year...

Not too surprised to see the Farewell Foundation lost its first attempt to get Canada's assisted-suicide laws struck down. The group clearly has passion for the issue, but the judge made it clear they'll need more than that if they want to proceed - they'll need someone with a terminal illness willing to be their modern-day Sue Rodriguez. Keep an eye on Joe Arvay's case coming up in November, though. That second assisted-suicide case is much more similar to the Rodriguez one, involving  a B.C. woman dying of ALS trying to do the same thing Rodriguez tried in 1993 - to die with dignity when the time comes. 

Thank you, thank you, Warren Buffet, our go-to guy when we need sane comment from the super-rich.  It hadn't escaped my attention that sacrifice and belt-tightening are words governments direct only at the lower income classes. Sure, the rich will be able to afford bigger compounds and better weapons when it all goes sideways for good, but I can't believe they're any happier than the rest of us at where things are going. 

It's rough out there, but don't turn away I made my way through the grim headlines flooding in from all sources this week, feeling anxious at the sheer abundance of bad news. The unanswered questions leaped out in every direction - no shortage of column fodder. But could I really bear to know more about any of it? It’s a big question. There are days when it would be so appealing to just shut the door on trying to understand anything about anything. Why the Air France pilots didn’t hear the “stall” alarm. What it means that the U.S. is falling apart. Why London is beset by violent riots. Why people are starving to death, struggling, hurting each other. There are cheerier things to think about, so why wouldn’t we? But then I get to thinking about what would happen if we genuinely quit concerning ourselves with the problems of our world. A lot of people seem to find that an appealing option. I just read about a mega-wealthy U.S. woman noted for the staggering amounts of fans s...

Here's a strongly worded comment piece from the Guardian on the London riots. It will really be quite a tragedy if government genuinely can't see the role that spending cuts and social policy played on creating the perfect climate for these riots. Are they so married to their dogma that they'd rather see the riots as a random outburst of criminality among their young citizens - which truly would be a frightening development - instead of the highly predictable, preventable outcome of poverty, disenfranchisement and the absence of hope that it actually was? Now that's sad. 

Could willpower be the missing link in why some succeed and others don't? Check out this intriguing read on the subject.  And wouldn't you know it - it's all about those preschool years, and how your genetics combines with your upbringing. But all is not lost if that period of your life wasn't so great, as they've done an experiment briefly detailed here that shows that a couple weeks of brushing your teeth with the wrong hand can kick-start a little willpower. My partner's singing "Lady Willpower" now due to reading over my shoulder. Alas, that song's just about Gary Puckett and the Union Gap's seeming obsession with songs about trying to guilt young women into making out with him/them. 

The long wait for an easier death “No consensus can be found in favour of the decriminalization of assisted suicide. To the extent that there is a consensus, it is that human life must be respected.” With those words, Supreme Court Justice John Sopinka ended any hope Sue Rodriguez had of using her own death to change Canadian laws around assisted suicide. She got the word on Sept. 29, 1993, and less than five months later ended her life the old-fashioned way - illegally, helped along by a doctor who has never been publicly identified. And for the most part, that has been that. A few criminal cases alleging assisted suicide pop up in the media from time to time, but little has changed. Imagine what the courageous Rodriguez might have to say if she’d lived long enough to see that we’d still be paralyzed over assisted suicide 18 years later. But suddenly the issue is back in the news, with two different proponents now preparing to push challenges through Canada’s court system. Lawyer Jo...

No disrespect intended to Times Colonist reporter Katie DeRosa, but what exactly has B.C.'s human-trafficking office been doing with its $500,000 annual budget, anyway? What got me the most about this agency back in the days when I was at PEERS (and am again, so maybe that's why I'm so het up) was that it was ostensibly fighting the great scourge of human trafficking in B.C. even while the far greater risk was to the garden-variety outdoor sex workers on B.C.'s strolls and working invisibly in a thousand different venues around the province. We spent $2.25 million on this office in the last four years, apparently to help 100 people. It kills me to think how that money could have been used for real needs rather than for chasing ghosts. You'd think that with all the sex workers I'd met over the years in B.C., I might have met one who'd been trafficked at some point in her life. Nope. Hey, maybe it's just coincidence. Or maybe it just seemed easier to f...

The latest survey from AskMen seems to prove the old adage about how the more things change, the more they stay the same. But really, who would actually expect basic behaviours and attitudes around sex and relationships to have changed that much? Yes, I suppose it's a little disappointing to see that the men who would consider having office affairs would do so only if the woman was in a lower work position than they were, but were you to ask the same question of women, I suspect they'd mostly be aiming up. Is that better?