A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

The problem is doing nothing about the problem May 31, 2008 I have no particular stake in what Richard LeBlanc is trying to accomplish on Woodwynn Farm, other than a broad interest in anything that aims to tackle the problems on our streets. I don’t know how big a dent his project will make on the most obvious challenges facing the downtown. But word last week that a citizens’ group had formed to try to buy the farm before he does was still some of the most discouraging news I’d heard in a while. That people would rally to raise more than $6 million just to stop a guy from trying to do a good thing - well, that’s just such a sad statement of where we’re at in this region. What’s to be done in a community where the biggest problem is an inability to address the problem? At least we’re no longer debating whether we have social problems. We’ve even reached some consensus on the work that needs to be done: housing (and more housing), outreach, better mental health care, accessible and inte...

Welfare outreach puts workers where the homeless are May 23, 2008 Wendy Sinke remembers wishing the cameras were there one rainy afternoon a few months into her new job. She was on a downtown sidewalk, balancing an umbrella over her homeless client’s scooter so he and her laptop wouldn’t get wet while he filled out the income-assistance forms she’d brought him. Sinke figures a photo would have been worth a thousand words at that moment as a symbol of changing times. An outreach worker with the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance (MEIA), Sinke is part of a new government strategy that ends years of trying to get everyone off income assistance, and instead aims to get a few more on it. The program was launched on the Island last fall after highly successful pilots on the streets of a few small B.C. towns two years ago. Sinke works with Victoria’s new multi-disciplinary outreach team, which grew out of the 2007 Mayor’s Task Force report on homelessness. Her role on the team is ...

Do you know where your laws are? May 16, 2008 By the end of May, hundreds of new and amended laws will take effect in B.C., almost none of which have been given any public scrutiny. In a scant three months, the provincial government has hustled 18 bills into law. At least another six are expected to be passed by the time the legislature recesses for the summer at the end of this month. The bills affect hundreds of regulations from dozens of acts. The proposed Wills, Estates and Succession Act, for instance, has 276 regulations. The Public Health Act has 161. The Miscellaneous Amendments Act incorporates changes to 29 other acts. Unless you’ve got considerably more time than me for a self-directed, regulation-by-regulation comparison of the changes, you and I remain equally in the dark as to what they are, the impact they’ll have or the rationale behind them. Many are little more than housekeeping, of course, and others are welcome news. It’s great to hear of new laws protecting milita...

Homeless needle exchange hits road for better or worse May 9, 2008 We’re about to become the first major city in Canada to pull the plug on its needle exchange, without a clue what will happen as a result. As of the end of May, the region’s largest needle exchange will close its doors on Cormorant Street and begin a mobile service. The business of exchanging as many as 2,000 needles a day will be done on the street from that point on. What’s the rationale? There isn’t one. It’s just what happens when the chips are left to fall where they may. The needle exchange is going mobile not because it’s an effective strategy on any front, but simply because no place can be found for it. Greater Victoria has had a needle exchange for almost 20 years, operated by AIDS Vancouver Island. You’d never know it from the hand-wringing and hysteria that has accompanied any mention of the exchange this past year or two, but once upon a time the exchange had neighbours who actually wrote letters supporting...

We shine at solving non-problems May 2, 2008 Our water bottles are safe once more, thanks to a federal response so speedy and decisive that you could almost believe a new day was dawning in Canada. In less than a year, bisphenol A went from a chemical that few Canadians had heard of to one of the most talked about and roundly condemned toxins in the country. Were it not for my ongoing frustration at our penchant to rally around obscure concerns, I’d take last month’s BPA ban as a heartening sign that our federal government can still rally to a cause if it needs to. Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure the world will be a better place without bisphenol A. It’s OK with me that we’ve banned the stuff. But in terms of tackling the issues that really ail us in this country and around the world, a ban on BPA gets us exactly nowhere. North American scientists have actually known about the more unsettling aspects of the man-made chemical for more than 70 years. The media didn’t have much to say on th...