My secret crush: Vince Ready

Cartoon in the Ubyssey by Indiana Joel

     Earlier this week, somebody with a sense of humour and an obvious knowledge of B.C. labour history swapped a photo of  mediator Vince Ready for the saintly image of God in the Wikipedia entry on God. Vince Ready - our homegrown Holy One.
    Once bickering parties in a labour dispute learn that Ready has been called in to help them reach a settlement, you can practically hear the collective sigh of relief as everyone starts thinking about getting back to work. I'm sure Ready has all kinds of skills as a mediator, but at this point, after so many high-profile settlements between employers and employees otherwise predisposed to fight each other to the death, just the mere uttering of his name seems to signal that labour peace is coming soon.
    His latest loaves-and-fishes act involved the B.C. teachers' strike. But any long-time B.C. journalist such as myself knows that's just the most recent in a long string of successes. I suspect that part of his secret is that he never gets involved until both sides are wrung out and quietly wishing someone would just come along and help them save face, but he must have some extraordinary people skills as well.
      I've had a crush on the guy for more than 20 years. My one and only face-to-face encounter with Ready was in the lobby of the Harbour Towers Hotel, where he was mediating between the provincial government and whatever big union was furious with them at that time. I introduced myself to him as a reporter for the Times Colonist. He smiled that charming smile of his and said yes, he'd followed my work for years, and it was a pleasure to finally meet me.
     Even in the moment I didn't believe that he had any idea of who I was. But what did it matter? Vince Ready cared enough to flatter me with a fake story about how he'd been noticing my byline, and I swooned like a school girl. If he uses that same charm during mediation, I can see why everyone caves.
     After that, I became an avid observer of any labour dispute that Ready was called into, and how they always seemed to rapidly end in a settlement. I even tried to convince him to let me follow a mediation of his for the newspaper, a request that I now admit might have had something to do with me also finding him very good-looking. Back in those days and perhaps still, he presented as a blue-collar guy in a good suit, a look that I hadn't known I was partial to until swooned by him that day at Harbour Towers.
    At any rate, he said no, and I've never laid eyes on him again. But Vince, I think of you whenever a labour dispute turns protracted - which, in B.C., means you're never far from my thoughts. Thinking back on that distant day at the hotel when I (briefly) considered whether I should make a play for you,  I couldn't have imagined there would come a day when I would say this, but thanks for getting my grandkids back to school. 

Grab the chance to change B.C. politics

These are glorious days for British Columbians who enjoy politics. I’m not one of them, but I admit to being just a little excited to see some life coming back to the B.C. political scene.

Politics are a lousy way to solve the real problems of the world. But they do get citizens engaged in passionate conversations. Politics ultimately push us to define what we really care about.

I certainly don’t care about Christy Clark donning a Canucks jersey or Adrian Dix tending to be tetchy and serious. So I’ll be glad when we pass through this initial phase of politicking as B.C.’s new party leaders jostle for position.

 But it would be great to see some sparks flying over issues again. We haven’t seen enough of that in the last 10 years, under a government that was much too certain that it knew all the answers. Our new political leaders have a major opportunity to be out there with a fresh agenda.

And the rest of us have the opportunity to be discerning customers, if you will. Unless Quesnel MLA Bob Simpson lives the dream and bursts onto the scene with a party of independents - and Bob, I’m still with you on that one - our next premier will be either Clark or Dix. Let’s make them work for it.

Clark and Dix are proof that ideology is a poor gauge of competency, having both been active participants in previous bad governments. All political parties seem capable of self-serving, delusional and sneaky behaviour.

On the flip side, any party has the potential for great vision and accomplishment. Nothing about the New Democrat ideology rules out economic prosperity. Nothing about the B.C. Liberal platform rules out smart social policy.

So rather than waste time belabouring the usual left/right comparisons, how about Dix and Clark just skip the trite stuff and get down to the work of figuring out what B.C. needs most?

Dix obviously envisages a crankier style of Opposition than we’ve seen in recent years. But harassing Clark about her lack of substance is hardly the place to start. He needs to be out there right now with carefully considered plans if he’s serious about winning our hearts and minds.

We citizens owe it to ourselves to call the party leaders on the stupid stuff that gets passed off as political engagement.  We should be relentless in pushing for more substantive discussion about the things that matter to us.

This is a critical time in B.C. Everything has been thrown for a loop on the political front in recent months, and the major parties appear to be working much harder than usual to connect with us.

There’s new blood at the top, and renewed promises on all sides to be more accountable to the people of B.C. It’s been a long time since a political leader made that promise.

So it’d be crazy to let this moment end up as just more hot air from the election machine as to who loves business, unions, families or poor people more. This is the time for British Columbians to be writing the letters and asking for the meetings, and working our own spheres of influence as a reminder to the leaders that every one of us can flex political muscle when we need to.

Surely we’ve had enough of the knee-jerk cliches of Liberals as right-wing business boosters and the NDP as tax-happy union lovers. As we know after decades of up-and-down political fortunes in B.C., we need a little bit of all of it to make a happy, healthy province. Nobody’s got a lock on the One True Way.

Yes, the unions developed an unhealthy sense of entitlement under the New Democrats. But privatization under the Liberals ceded B.C. services to big multinationals at a significant price to jobs, wages and service quality.

And yes, the NDP did show disregard for the business community and the economy. But the Liberals cut social programs well past the point of smart governance. Neither can claim the moral high ground, that’s for sure.

I’d like to hear more assurances from Dix and Clark that they’ll get back to treating the province’s 85 MLAs like the community resources they are. How nutty is it for political leaders to intimidate and silence the very people who keep them in touch with the real issues facing B.C. communities?

Get real and go deep, candidates. Enough time wasted in the shallow end. 

There's something strangely fascinating about the Falun Gong stories coming out of Vancouver these days. I'm sure it's damn annoying for everyone coming to the Chinese consulate to have to deal with Falun Gong protesters every day, but it's unsettling to think that the City of Vancouver is prepared to side with China on this long-standing human-rights issue and ban the protesters. Here's what the Vancouver Sun's Pete McMartin has to say.
The issue has many similarities to the abortion debate: two polarized groups, both very certain that they are in the right, fighting for control over the piece of sidewalk out in front of some building that represents the issue (abortion clinics in one case, the Chinese consulate in another).
But B.C. manoeuvered very carefully on that issue. The "bubble zone" law prevents protesters from setting up within 50 metres of the entry of an abortion clinic.  The reason the law was able to sustain a free-speech challenge was because the courts ruled that a woman's right to medical treatment trumps freedom of speech.
How do you make that defence in the Falun Gong case? As irritating as it must be for the Chinese consulate to have to deal with protesters outside every day, I have to think it pales beside the right of the peace-loving followers of a religion to protest the killings, assaults and harassment that plague their peers in China.

Any more lean years for non-profits a potential disaster

The lesson that lingers the most for me from my three years of heading up a non-profit is how very hard you have to work just to keep the doors open.
Whatever else may be happening on a given day, the one constant for anyone running a non-profit is the endless hustle for money. Barely a moment went by in my time at PEERS Victoria when I wasn’t working at least a dozen different angles to make sure we’d have enough money to keep going.
And that was in the good times. In bad times - well, I guess we’ll see. Nationally, expectations are that as many as a fifth of Canada’s 60,000 non-profits will close as a result of the economic downturn. Small non-profits walk a razor edge when it comes to survival, so that number sounds frighteningly accurate to me.
Non-profits rely almost exclusively on governments, investment-rich foundations and generous citizens for their funding. None of those groups have much interest in spending at the moment.
That’s a scary development for a sector that generally lives by the seat of its pants even in boom years. It’s an equally scary development for what it will mean for the tens of thousands of British Columbians who rely on the myriad services and programs run by non-profits. B.C. agencies are awaiting Tuesday’s provincial budget with particular trepidation, as the province provides the bulk of their funding.
“How do you do the work you do if you don’t have any profit?” a UVic student once asked me after I’d told her PEERS was a “non-profit.” The label is fairly baffling, I agree, and “not-for-profit” no better.
What’s possibly worse for the sector is that both terms call to mind a kind of begging state, a place where there’s never any money to be had . That’s certainly how it is for a lot of small non-profits, but you know what they say about how a label can hold you down.
Essentially, the sector does the work of government - most importantly, the human-service work essential to a civil society. The private sector doesn’t set up shop unless it can turn a profit, so a typical western democracy like Canada turns to non-profits to do all the other work that would otherwise go undone.
That’s the reason why it’s PEERS and not a private business providing outreach on the local prostitution stroll. It’s the reason why poor people in the downtown are fed and cared for by non-profits, and why the work of holding families together is mostly done by neighbourhood houses and other small agencies.
The people who need those services don’t have the money to pay for them, which means the work is all cost and no revenue. That’s the kind of service that’s either going to be provided by the non-profit sector or not at all.
British Columbians count on a very long list of non-profit-run services to be there when they’re needed. Sexual-assault counselling; programs for children with disabilities; job training and placement; legal advice; support for troubled teenagers; seniors’ care; on and on - were it not for all the work done by B.C. non-profits, this province would be a much sicker, sadder and less productive place.
But it’s one thing to be thankful for the work of non-profits, and quite another to fund them with any kind of consistency. Unstable funding that rarely keeps up with cost-of-living increases has been the norm even under governments professing interest in looking after vulnerable citizens, but has become much more of a problem in the past decade as governments moved to reject responsibility for the social health of citizens.
In B.C., those shifting ideologies placed the non-profit sector firmly on the outside looking in during the economic boom. Having gone hungry for several years now, many are in poor shape to withstand whatever might be coming now that the economy has collapsed.
Obviously, we need to be worried in B.C. about lost construction jobs and dried-up industrial contracts, because that’s where the recession has shown its face first. But there’s big trouble on the horizon that will rock the non-profit sector as well, at a time when it’s weak from years of underfunding and facing even greater demand for services due to the crashing economy.
Perhaps it’s the nature of the work - not nearly as visible as a broken arm or a cancerous lung, not nearly so easily measured as a graduation certificate or an overcrowded classroom. But it will be our grand mistake if we underestimate the importance of keeping our non-profits in fighting shape for the hard work that lies ahead.

Watch the spin on your way to the facts

I wrote in last week’s column about doing my part for the next few months to take the measure of the B.C. government, in the interest of helping us all be better informed come the May election.
It’s only just sinking in this week what a complicated task that’s going to be. I’m neck-deep in fascinating statistics already, but no doubt you’re familiar with that Benjamin Disraeli warning about “lies, damn lies and statistics.” I love stats for their simplicity, but they spin like a dream and are rarely as black and white as they first appear.
What is good government, anyway? It strikes me that I’ll have to settle that point in my head if I’m to have any success with this exercise. The answer that comes quickest to my mind is that good government acts at all times in the best interests of British Columbians overall.
A big job. But would you want any less? No government in the world gets things right all the time, of course, but that’s not to say we don’t want them to try. I want a government that understands its job is to run every aspect of the province well, on behalf of everyone who lives here.
What that means at the individual level varies wildly, which is the point. British Columbians come from all walks of life, and differ substantially about what they want from their government. It’s up to government to take all of that into account, and to run the province in a way that everyone recognizes as fair and wise even when it isn’t exactly how they’d do it.
What that looks like in terms of actual government performance - well, that’s a tricky thing. In a tangled global economy, in a province weighted down by a deliberately distant federal government and frequent ineptitude at the municipal level, how DO you gauge provincial performance when so many other factors are at play?
To the Liberals’ great credit, they did come up with the concept of annual service plans for measuring government performance when first elected in 2001. The plans establish specific goals for every ministry, and each year report on progress toward those goals.
But are the goals in the service plans the right ones? Ah, that’s a whole other question. Some seem to merely measure the measurements, while others are vague enough to be interpreted any number of ways. (For instance, does reaching a goal of reducing the welfare caseload to a certain percentage of the B.C. population mean more people have been helped to find jobs, or simply cut off assistance?)
Still, the plans - on the government Web site at http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/Annual_Reports/2007_2008/default.htm- are packed with information. Some of it is puzzling and some is downright useless, but it all helps when it comes to putting the pieces together on government performance.
Equally important are sources of information from outside government, based on the assumption that government plays down or buries things that cast it in a bad light. But it’s five months before an election, and the government isn’t the only one with an agenda. Reader, beware.
An example: I was digging around in homelessness statistics and came across a 2007 report from the New Democrats establishing the number of homeless British Columbians at almost 11,000. I’m sure the NDP didn’t just make the figure up, but can the numbers be trusted absolutely when they come from such a political source? (I guess the real test will be whether they act on those findings if elected.)
If you’re reading a report from the Fraser Institute, keep in mind that it’s probably leans a little too right. If it’s from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, it’s likely too left. If it’s from a business group, social issues will have been ignored; meanwhile, reports from social-justice groups ignore the business case. The remedy for that is to read ‘em all.
I’d love to see a flood of letters to the editor and opinion pieces over the next five months on the subject of good governance. What does that term mean to you? What do you know from your own experiences these past eight years in B.C. that might be useful to the rest of us in gauging the current government’s performance?
For once I want to go into an election feeling absolutely clear about my choices. Hope you’ll join me.

Now's the time for scrutiny of BC government

We’re heading into a big year for B.C. Faltering economy, provincial election looming, massively expensive sporting event on the horizon - if ever there was a time for us citizens to take the measure of our government, this is it.
The election will be upon us in five months. In the run-up to it, B.C. politicians’ eyes will be on us for a change. We get such a chance no more than two or three times a decade - a brief window of opportunity for the public to capture the attention of politicians at a time when they’re highly motivated to listen.
Most of the politicians I know are good people wanting to do the right thing. But good intention isn’t the same thing as effective governance, something that the citizenry needs to be much more mindful of when choosing its politicians.
Are B.C.’s Liberals running an effective government? Before you head to the polls in May for the provincial election, make a New Year’s resolution to determine the answer to that.
Whatever you care about most - the environment, social problems, health care, taxes, school support - make it a priority to seek out information that will tell you whether the Liberals have been effective (The government’s own comprehensive Web site at www.gov.bc.ca is a great place to start.)
I’m a political agnostic, so will make no recommendations as to who to vote for when the time comes. My own vote remains undecided, except for saying “Yes” to electoral reform in the referendum happening at the same time as the election. I’ve seen no evidence in my years observing B.C.’s political scene that any party has all the answers.
Accountability is the watch word in my mind. Close to home, I note that newly elected Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin is promising in a Globe and Mail interview that there will be a resolution to homelessness in the downtown within six months. The Globe lists Fortin on a prestigious list of “Ten to Watch” in 2009, which I assume means he’s going to be working miracles this year.
It’s a wonderful bit of politicking, but the test is whether he means it. We’ll know soon enough by Fortin’s actions whether he’s the visionary leader we’ve been waiting for in the city, or if it’s all just more empty words leading nowhere. What’s important in the case at hand and anytime a politician makes promises is to hold them to what they said.
That they’re being held accountable at all times by the public ought to be a constant reality of any politician’s tenure, of course, not just at election time. We can’t be waiting three more years to hold the new Victoria council accountable for what it achieves around homelessness.
But it’s in the months before an election that politicians listen most intently. The 2009 provincial election is particularly important , not only because of the financial uncertainties B.C. is heading into over the next few years but also because a major electoral-reform referendum is being conducted at the same time with the potential to dramatically change the face of politics in B.C.
So it’s the public’s time in the sun now - to think about what matters and get some answers from government about its priorities and past performance. If we don’t like what we hear, government has five months to adjust course or risk losing our votes. Nice and direct.
What’s essential to the process, however, is public engagement. Go looking for the evidence that tells you whether government is doing its job. Keep score. Demand better. Extract commitments from those vying to be your MLA, and let them know you’ll be holding them accountable.
Read any reports you can find. Search the Mansard records on the government Web site. Follow the money. Read media coverage, but never rely on it exclusively.
Whoever you choose to vote for, do what you can to establish the person’s performance record. Accountability is vital, but what’s even more important is to know before we elect somebody that they’re up to the challenge.
It’s more difficult to establish a candidate’s performance record if he or she isn’t in government right now or has never run for office before, but you can still learn a lot these days from a Google search and visiting a few good blog sites.
For my part, I’ll spend the next few months trying to take the measure of the government’s performance for my column. But the wisdom will come from all of us. Effective government starts with electing effective people, and we’ve got five precious months ahead of us to figure that out.