A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

This Ottawa Citizen story on the Harper government's increasing control over the federal bureaucracy applies equally in B.C. Our ruling political parties don't even make a pretence at keeping the workings of government at arm's length anymore - it's all just one big spin machine as far as they're concerned. It's a frightening development. The bureaucracy has traditionally kept a steady hand on the wheel of government while the various political parties went about their crazy antics. As pointed out by the author of this report criticizing the centralizing of power in the Prime Minister's Office, corruption is not just a risk but a proven result when political parties treat government like their private resource. 

Are there some parents so awful that they deserve to never see their child again? Probably. But we've got a process for that in Canada, and it doesn't include kidnapping your own child against court orders. I have great sympathy for everyone connected to the saga of the 20-year-old Victoria woman who has just learned that much of what she thought to be true about her life was a lie. She does not even have the name she thought she had; she hasn't heard her real name since she was taken from Toronto by her mother after a 1993 custody fight. The courts will sort out the truth of this crime. There's little served by people like me speculating about the mother, Patricia O'Byrne, who has been accused of taking her little girl, or trying to second-guess an Ontario court decision from 18 years ago. But whatever the details turn out to be, it must be said that a grave injustice has been done to this young woman. What must it feel like, to find out at 20 that the found...

Gee, I've always had a soft spot for Facebook as a way to connect, but now that I see the list of the top status updates in the past year, I'm not so sure if me and my kind are really much of a presence on the social-media site. Happily, I'm not completely out as a Facebook trendsetter - I did have a status update involving the death of Amy Winehouse. Other than that, the top-10 list isn't really resonating with me. As for the listing of the top 10 most-visited fictional character sites, I'm glad to see Bob Esponja made the grade. I might have even visited that site if I'd known it existed. I first saw the Sponge Bob cartoon many years ago while holidaying in Mexico, where he's known as Bob Esponja, and I've never been able to shake my habit of referring to him as Bob the Sponge. My grandkids mock me mercilessly for this. Maybe now they'll think I'm cutting-edge.

My partner and I are heading off to Honduras next month (you heard it here first!) to spend a year or possibly longer on a Cuso International volunteer placement. It's all very exciting, but also a little terrifying what with the abundance of grim statistics and media headlines about Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. But I read this Huffington Post piece   this morning with gratitude and relief. It finally adds some humanity to the country and reminds me of the importance of not listening solely to the naysayers. We leave for the Honduran capital,  Tegucigalpa , in mid-January, and will make our way shortly after that to Copan Ruinas , a small northern town where I'll spend the next year doing communications work for a Honduran agency that partners with Cuso, the Comision de Accion Social Menonita. I'll be posting regularly to my blog during our travels, and am really looking forward to this experience - not to mention solidifying my...

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...