A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

I guess we're accepting that old saying about the rich getting richer as a fact of life, because they definitely are getting richer. In Canada and around the world, the divide between those with money and those of lesser circumstance continues to grow - as this CBC story points out, the average income of the top 10 per cent of wealthy Canadians is now 10 times that of the bottom 10 per cent, up from 8:1 just a few years ago. The trend is consistent throughout OECD countries - the gap is now 14:1 in the U.S. You need only go to a developing country to see where this trend leads: To dramatic increases in visible poverty; an even more fragile economy; higher costs for fewer public services; and a significant rise in security issues for the wealthy. Even the rich lose out when the income gap gets too big, in other words. And yet we continue to bring in government policies (and governments) that worsen this trend, even while our morning newspapers bring us the news of all that i...

Science is an uncertain science. That’s been brought home once more this past week with all the consternation over mammography. “The Screening Mammography Program Saves Lives,” says the headline on the B.C. Cancer Agency’s on-line writeup about mammography, a type of x-ray of the breast that up until days ago was routinely promoted to Canadian women 40 and up as an annual must-have. But the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care has rocked the boat big-time with new recommendations that reduce the use of mammography.  The task force has toned down Canada’s 10-year-old guidelines around when to get mammograms. The revised guidelines suggest routine mammograms only for women ages 50 to 74 and even then no more than once every two or three years. No big deal in the grand scheme of things. One less medical appointment to schedule. But it’s disturbing when something that has been sold to us as an absolutely essential health measure suddenly reveals a dark side. The...

You know, it's really striking how often political parties that shape themselves as being about "small government" in fact spend their time in office growing the business out of all proportions. Here's the latest news on that front involving the Tories. Keep in mind that all this growth happened at a time when Stephen Harper's government was slashing public services. That's the thing that grates the most - that even while we're losing long-standing public programs due to "belt-tightening," our governments are growing larger, taking ever-bigger salaries, and even paying out bonuses to the senior managers who are most effective at cutting our services. In ancient times, they would have called this kind of governance a kleptocracy - "rule by thieves." Whatever you want to call it, it's crazy-making. But hey, we keep electing them.

Now here's an idea whose time has come - free parking at hospitals.  Maybe now that the Canadian Medical Association Journal is saying it, it will have an impact. How crazy is it to stress people out just that little bit more  when they're going through an illness or something worse than by charging them to park? And once we're offering it free, how about offering more of it, too? Can't believe they built that new parkade  at Royal Jubilee hospital at a capacity that was well below what's actually needed.

Having to make way for Santa seems an ignominious end for the Occupy movement, but that’s how things tend to go in countries that aren’t yet angry enough to get genuinely uncivil. Still, the public reaction to the Occupy protests over the last eight weeks has been surprisingly sympathetic. I take that as a hopeful sign that this movement will have legs. People tolerated the protest camps for much longer than they usually do when tents appear in public spaces. I think a lot of them quietly related to the issues the movement has raised. It’s pretty impressive that in just two short months, a mixed bag of disaffected citizens around the world took a small protest in New York City’s financial district and turned it into a global movement. Whether it can last long enough to affect change, I guess we’ll see. But the Occupy protests got a lot more positive attention than most “occupations” get - an indicator that people have a certain sympathy for the cause. The movement star...