A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

When the telemarketers call, let it ring In the recent furor over telemarketing and the use of the new do-not-call list for nefarious purposes, I’ve yet to see mention of the most obvious solution to the problem: Quit buying from random strangers who call you up uninvited. There’s nothing wrong with doing business over the phone. It’s handy to be able to use the phone to bank, order products, report your stolen credit card, start and stop subscriptions, or any number of other useful services that have become part of the consumer landscape. But an out-of-the-blue sales pitch from a stranger who bought a list somewhere with your home phone number on it - well, that’s a whole other thing. I hate being rude to people, but I’ll hang up on a telemarketer without hesitation. A particular pox on the companies who think I’m stupid enough to stay on the line for their taped sales pitch. If they’re motivated to keep calling, though, that has to mean that at least some of the people they’re call...

Progress Board /08 report highlights B.C.'s chronic challenges Left to my own devices, I’d have a heck of a time trying to take the measure of B.C.’s economic performance. I get that it’s a really important thing to pay attention to, but my brain just doesn’t go there easily. So I’m grateful for the yearly analysis done by the B.C. Progress Board, a non-profit entity set up eight years ago by the Liberals specifically to track key performance measures in the province. The annual report certainly doesn’t give you everything you need to know to gauge whether things are improving in B.C. But the economic and social measures it gathers at least provide a partial picture of how B.C. is performing, both over time and compared to other provinces and countries. The 18 business leaders and academics who form the Progress Board piece together things like hourly wage rates, exports, tax levels, productivity, and long-term employment, then work in social/health indicators like air quality, la...

Goodbye, Stan - you'll be missed Twenty-eight years ago, on one of the worst nights of my life, Stan Hagen was there for me. I’ve never forgotten his random act of kindness that April evening at the Nanaimo White Spot, and only wish I’d told him that before he died this week. We ran into each other fairly regularly over the years, and the first thought in my head every time was of the night at the White Spot. I always wanted to tell him that there was a special place in my heart for him, because he was so kind to me at a time when I was utterly devastated. But wouldn’t you know it, I never did. We were different people in those days. I was a young piano teacher in Courtenay, in what turned out to be the dying days of my first marriage. He owned a cement plant in town and was raising a happy, clamorous young family of five with his wife Judy. I knew Stan and Judy because I taught piano to two of their children. We weren’t close pals by any means, but we exchanged pleasantries at t...

Change of heart on BC welfare may be too little, too late When Gordon Campbell’s Liberals were first elected in 2001, almost a quarter million British Columbians were living on welfare. Those numbers have fallen by almost 100,000 since then. Good news or bad? That’s a profound question. The tremendous drop in B.C. welfare rates over the past 14 years is either a marvel of social strategy or a major reason why we’ve ended up with so many people living on our streets. So it’s not the kind of thing you want to get wrong. The government’s own vision for its welfare programs establishes what we’re shooting for in the province: “Government is committed to helping those most in need and helping people who are able to work achieve sustainable employment.” Are we achieving that vision? First, a brief welfare primer for B.C. newcomers. Welfare rates hit an historic high in 1995, with 367,387 British Columbians on assistance - 10 per cent of the population. An embarrassed New Democrat government ...

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 d...

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 ans...

We've shopped 'til we dropped - then shopped some more I’m not certain when it was that shopping became a question of patriotic duty, but I’m guessing it was when U.S. President George Bush made it an imperative in the days after 9/11. “Get on board,” he urged a devastated American public struggling to come to grips with the bombing of the World Trade Centre. “Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” Fast-forward seven years and the bombs are more metaphorical, this time tearing apart the world’s financial markets instead of New York City’s twin towers. But shopping is still the “cure,” apparently, as evidenced by our own federal government’s recent fit of pique with the country’s big banks over whether they’re doing enough to provide Canadians with easy credit. I get the theory of it - that everything depends on everything ...

It's good news week Even a doomsayer like me has to let up once in a while, and the Christmas season generally feels like the time to do it. Maybe it’s all those songs about peace and goodwill. At any rate, I’ve dug up some nuggets of good news to share with you this festive season. I admit, my initial instinct was to add a “but” to every one of them, because it seems that every upside has a downside in these problematic times. But for the sake of a holly, jolly column, I’m going to try to keep my gloomy inner voice in check for a change and tell you about what’s working. The B.C. government is awakening to the problems of homelessness. Four of the six news releases on the Ministry of Housing and Social Development Web site this week detail actions being taken to house or shelter people living on B.C. streets. Better still, work is underway on 19 old hotels in the Vancouver area to turn them into better housing for the impoverished people who already live there, plus add new units...

Sheer madness and massive waste of money to release BC prisoners to homelessness What I’d planned for today’s column was a look at what happens when somebody without housing is released from a provincial jail in B.C. I’d run into an interesting fellow named Reg in my downtown travels, who’d wanted to talk about the practise of releasing prisoners straight onto the streets after they’ve served their time at the jail on Wilkinson Road. He told me it had happened to him more times than he could count. But sometimes a column ends up becoming the story of what happened on the way to the story, and this is one of those. First, a few statistics to give you a sense of the issue at hand. B.C. has nine jails, which at any given point in time are housing close to 2,800 prisoners serving sentences of less than two years. The average stay is 55 days, so that means as many as 18,500 people moving in and out of B.C. jails in any given year, at a cost of almost $160 million. That’s just the cost to lo...

Stigma one of the worst 'symptoms' of HIV It’s a rainy Tuesday, and the group of women who put on this year’s Viral Monologues are debriefing over bowls of moose-meat stew about their performance the previous weekend. There were some challenging moments. One of the six performers backed out at the last minute, unable to bear the thought of putting her HIV status out there for all the world to see. That left an empty chair on stage. But the group decided to leave the chair there anyway, as a reminder of the stigma that still lingers when it comes to HIV. The effect was powerful. The Viral Monologues models itself after Eve Ensler’s popular Vagina Monologues. The “viral” version of the play was launched in 2002 by the Voice Collective, the AIDS Vancouver Island women’s group who is meeting on this day to dissect its sixth and most recent production. The “monologue” premise a la Ensler is simple enough: Women sit on stage and tell personal stories from their lives - from the poin...