Disgrace can't erase Fonyo's accomplishments

Poor Steve Fonyo. Something about that guy just breaks my heart.
Few things are more painful to watch than a long and very public fall from grace. Fonyo’s fall has been more painful than most, because he really was just an ordinary teen trying to do something positive when he set out to run across the country in 1984.
He accomplished something quite miraculous. Not only did he run all the way from St. John’s, Nfld. to Victoria - 7,294 kilometres in all - but he raised $13 million for the Canadian Cancer Society along the way. And it all took place just five years after Fonyo lost his leg to cancer at age 12.
Canadians loved Fonyo, at least for a little while. But he soon began to try our affections, starting with a drunk-driving conviction in 1987 and then a seemingly endless series of criminal convictions over the next 22 years for things like shoplifting, driving without a licence, and fraud.
The latest humiliation came this week, when Fonyo was stripped of his 1985 Order of Canada. He’s one of just four people to be removed from the Order in its 42-year history. For his sins, he now shares a place in Canadian history with NHL players’ agent Alan Eagleson, aboriginal leader David Ahenakew, and lawyer Sher Singh, all deemed to have brought the Order into disrepute through bad behaviour or criminal activities.
Timing is everything, and it’s unfortunate that in the period when Fonyo was preparing for his run, Canadians needed more than just a plucky one-legged teen running across the country for cancer. We needed a hero.
Terry Fox’s tragic story had captured the nation just three years earlier. We wanted Fonyo to be everything that Fox had seemed destined for.
Who could meet such a tall order? Certainly not Fonyo, who was just a kid when he suddenly found himself elevated to hero status following his 14-month run. He achieved what Fox had not been able to do (Fox died a year into his run), but couldn’t possibly live up to the myth.
Even the $13 million Fonyo raised with his cross-Canada Journey For Lives pales in comparison with the $24 million that Fox raised without ever completing his run, let alone the hundreds of millions raised in Fox’s memory since his death.
Fonyo enjoyed a few heady months caught up in the whirl of fame - riding in red Ferraris with George Harrison; meeting the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope John Paul; receiving the Order of Canada at the tender age of 18. But real life is no fairy tale, and Fonyo’s brief time in the limelight was over soon enough.
He tried to kick-start things again in 1987 with another fundraising run, this time across the United Kingdom. But the disastrous run raised just $115,000 and left Fonyo deep in debt.
His first conviction for drunk driving came later that same year, right around the time his car was seized due to unpaid bills. He was 20 years old and $36,000 in debt.
His ongoing problems with drugs and alcohol have been well-documented by the Canadian media. In fact, every bump in the road that Fonyo has encountered in the last two decades has been well-documented, to the point that it’s now the drunk and disorderly side of Fonyo that springs most easily to mind whenever his name comes up. The hero is no more.
What can you wish for a man like Fonyo?
We liked him well enough when he was a kid with a disability and a simple and compelling dream. But the full-grown man - warts and all - has been much harder to warm up to. His years of criminal behaviour have doubtlessly hurt many people, and he has put countless lives at risk by repeatedly driving drunk and without a licence.
Still, he did something amazing once upon a time. He’s a small-town B.C. boy who raised a staggering amount of money for cancer, and is still the only one-legged runner in history to run across Canada. I hope he still hangs onto the memory of that proud achievement in the midst of his latest disgrace.
Fonyo was reportedly devastated when he found out he was to be removed from the Order of Canada. A former boss at a Surrey auto-repair shop told the Vancouver Sun this week that it just seems wrong to do that to Fonyo.
“They gave him the Order of Canada based on his accomplishments, and they’re still there. It’s not like he didn’t do it, or lied about it,” says Satnam Singh Sidhu. “He finished his marathon and was an inspiration to a lot of people.”

Why do we need to believe the worst about the sex industry?

A new study out of Simon Fraser University concludes that people who buy sex are no more prone to violence than anyone else.
Fewer than two per cent of the 1,000 respondents who took part in SFU sociologist Chris Atchison’s study reported ever having hit, hurt, raped or robbed the person who they’d bought sex from.
Granted, that’s just them saying so. But Atchison noted in a Vancouver Sun story this week about his research that there was little reason for the respondents to lie, given that the survey was anonymous.
That his findings are provocative is an understatement.
"It's an outrageous study and it really works towards normalizing sexual assault," said Aurea Flynn of the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, which is the go-to organization in B.C. when media are looking for a quote from someone vehemently opposed to prostitution.
"I'm really angry about the emphasis on the compassion for johns that the study provides,” added Flynn, “and I'm very concerned about its impact on the continued normalization of prostitution in Canada because I believe prostitution is violence against women."
It’s odd, really. Atchison’s findings ought to be considered good news in a society that puts so much emphasis on reducing violence for all British Columbians. Shouldn’t we be happy that most of the thousands of British Columbians who buy sex on a regular basis aren’t violent toward sex workers?
Ah, but this is about the sex industry. We don’t want to hear anything “nice” about it. We don’t want anybody telling us that most of the customers of the sex industry are largely average, non-violent guys - the kind of men we work with, live with and even love. We don’t want to hear that most adult sex workers in Canada might actually be choosing to work in the business.
When it comes to prostitution, we only like it violent, coercive and miserable. I guess we pretty much have to cling to that belief, because otherwise we just might question the ineffective, discriminatory and ultimately harmful laws that govern how the sex industry operates in our country.
We prefer a single story line when it comes to public conversations about the sex trade - one in which all the people who buy sex are exploitive predators, and all the people who sell it are victims needing to be saved (or at the very least prosecuted in the event they refuse “rescue”).
But what if we’ve got that wrong?
Without question, there are some loathsome and horrendous things that go on in the global sex industry. No civil society should tolerate the truly awful parts of the sex industry. We need strong laws - and much more effective enforcement of them - to protect against the exploitation of vulnerable people and prevent child abuse, human trafficking and sex tourism.
We also need plenty of community supports to help people wanting out of the sex trade. It’s not a job that anybody should have to feel they’re doing against their will, including for economic reasons.
But at the same time, it’s profoundly hypocritical for a country with so many eager customers of the sex trade to pretend that the entire industry is monstrous. It doesn’t seem implausible to me that 98 per cent of the people who took part in Atchison’s survey really are just looking for a sexual encounter, not the opportunity to hurt anybody.
I’ve had the opportunity to get to know a number of adult escorts over the past couple of years, and they’ve given me a whole new perspective on who their customers are. I’ve been stunned to discover just how many customers there are, and their many complex reasons for paying for sex.
So to judge them all as vicious creeps just doesn’t work for me anymore. We may like to tell ourselves that they’re all Robert Pickton types looking for any excuse to make some crushed and exploited woman’s life a little more miserable, but it just isn’t true.
I do think the people who buy sex need to get a spine, however, and start doing more to change the laws to ensure fair, safe workplaces for adult sex workers. The customers of the massive sex industry hold all kinds of authority positions, in our region and around the world. How about they start using some of that influence to create real change for adult workers, starting with decriminalization?
For another view of the industry, come on down to the screening of The Brothel Project Jan. 31 at the Victoria Film Festival. The documentary by April Butler-Parry follows me and UVic researcher and outreach worker Lauren Casey in our 2008 attempt to open a co-op brothel in Victoria.

Major rent increases coming for people in B.C. residential care

It isn’t often that a landlord can quietly order up a 30 per cent rent increase for more than 2,000 people without anybody making a public fuss about it.
But maybe that’s what happens when your tenants are elderly, frail seniors living in B.C.’s long-term care facilities. As of Jan. 31, “rents” will go up for most of the 26,000 people living in government-subsidized residential-care facilities, in some cases jumping as much as $672 a month.
That barely a word of it has made it into the major B.C. media says one of two things: Either the people in residential care think it’s a fair deal and aren’t complaining; or the reality hasn’t sunk in yet. I guess we’ll know soon enough which one it is.
The rent increase is far beyond what any private landlord could dream of imposing on an existing tenant. The allowable rent increase for B.C. landlords in 2009 was 3.7 per cent.
Alas, residential-care facilities aren’t governed by the same act as home rentals. The provincial Health Services Ministry says people in subsidized long-term care should pay a larger share of their room and board costs, and contends a rate increase of this magnitude is needed to address the problem.
Unlike the “free” care we receive when we go to an acute-care hospital, seniors’ care in B.C.is a little more complex. Tax dollars fund the medical component of long-term care, but seniors are required to contribute toward the room and board component of their stays. That “co-payment” is currently too low in most cases, contends government.
Right now, the amount a senior has to pay is based on an 11-step grid ranging from $940 to $2,260 a month, depending on income. As of Jan. 31, everyone in residential care will instead pay 80 per cent of their annual income to a maximum of $2,932 a month. Most will also be allowed to keep $275 a month.
It’s not all bad news. Low-income seniors will see a small drop in their monthly rents under the new system. All told, a quarter of the people currently in residential care will see their “rents” either stay the same or decrease a little.
As for the other 75 per cent - well, they’ll be paying more. The co-payment for people in the highest income bracket is going up by $672 a month (effective immediately for those just heading into care, and phased in over this year and the next for those currently in care). Of course, that’s arguably still a bargain compared to the private sector, where room-and-board rates can easily top $5,000 a month in an assisted-living facility.
The increases in the public rates will likely hit hardest for couples in which one spouse is in residential care and the other is still in their own home. They can launch individual “hardship” appeals through the Vancouver Island Health Authority, but that’s a lot to ask of an aging couple at one of the most stressful points in their lives.
One local man whose father is in residential care cautions not to expect an easy solution to such appeals. His mother tried the hardship route under the current system after her husband went into full-time care, but ended up having to legally separate from him to be certain she could retain enough income to live on.
Anticipate some problems as well with the $275 a month that people are allowed to retain for personal expenses. (Most people, anyway: those on income assistance will keep just $95/month).
True, that amount is higher in B.C. than in any other province. But that’s not to say it’s sufficient to cover everybody’s costs. All expenses have to come out of that $275: prescription drugs that aren’t covered under the government plan, over-the-counter drugs, mobility aids, grooming and care products, clothing, haircuts, dental care, phone, and so on.
The government says it will review the rate every three years. But that’s a pointless promise in a system where the average stay is a year and a half. Few of those in long-term care right now will be around to get any satisfaction out of the 2013 rate review.
All in, people in residential care will be paying an additional $54 million a year under the new rates. The government says the money will be reinvested into things like more client care, more staff, more rehab. Read the fine print, though, and it’s no sure thing. Health authorities will actually decide how to spend the money, at sites with “the greatest needs.”
Should we be alarmed by all this? Too soon to say. But the changes affect thousands of vulnerable British Columbians, and that’s a warning sign in itself to proceed with caution. Heads up, people.

Bridge too fast scares up thousands of resisters

OK, I get Victoria councillor Lynn Hunter’s concern about deciding things by referendum. Direct democracy can be an unpredictable and potentially harmful form of governance, as the state of California can attest.
But when it comes to the Johnson Street bridge, I understand completely why more than 9,000 Victoria citizens have signed petitions demanding that city council’s decision to replace the bridge be put to referendum.
For one thing, the idea of replacing the bridge came out of nowhere nine months ago. City council (with the exception of Geoff Young) was such an enthusiastic booster from the start that no one with a wrong word to say about the project was given any chance to air their concerns.
And it was council who created the “alternate approval process” that brought us to this point. Usually the city lets its citizens participate in the decision-making process, but this time council took the position that the answer was “yes” unless they heard otherwise by Jan. 4 from at least 10 per cent of eligible city voters. So those with concerns about the need for a $63 million rebuild of the bridge set out to collect enough signatures to make that happen.
That they succeeded isn’t a blow to representative democracy, as Hunter portrayed it at the Dec. 10 council meeting (See the B Channel video). It’s just the only option people had to try to slow the train down.
The rap against governance by referendum is that poorer decisions will result because the public simply isn’t as informed and knowledgeable about issues compared to their elected representatives. Applied here, that theory presumes Victoria council spent considerable time weighing the options before deciding that replacing the 85-year-old Johnson Street bridge was better than repairing it.
But how many days do you think went by between the first-ever mention in the Times Colonist of the need to replace the bridge, and city council’s vote of approval? Twenty-one. Knock out the weekends and that leaves just 15 working days for council to have reflected on the massive project.
Seeing as they get together only a couple times a week and are wrestling with dozens of other issues at those meetings as well, I’d be surprised if councillors spent more than a few hours all told mulling the bridge issue.
A year ago when the current council was newly elected, not one of them was talking about replacing the bridge. It was a non-issue. Back in 1999, the city spent just over $1 million getting the bridge repaired and resurfaced, and at that time told the public that the refit meant “several more decades of life” for the bridge.
So how did we suddenly end up on a fast track to bridge replacement? How did it become “the number-one infrastructure policy” for the city, as Mayor Dean Fortin described it? I can’t shake the feeling that if the federal government hadn’t been throwing money around last year for capital projects, we still wouldn’t be talking about the Johnson Street bridge.
There’s nothing wrong with the city trying to get its hands on some federal funding, of course. It landed $21 million in the end, half of what it was hoping for but still a nice chunk of change.
But Victoria’s citizens still face being on the hook for two-thirds of the costly rebuild of a bridge that many people don’t believe needs to be replaced . And it’s clear from the results of the counter-petition this week that several thousand of them felt strongly enough about that to put their name to the call for a referendum.
Congratulations to Ross Crockford, Mat Wright and Yule Heibel, the three Victorians who built a solid grassroots campaign out of a conversation that started around a summer barbecue among people puzzling over why the city was suddenly hell-bent on rebuilding the bridge. More than 100 volunteers signed on to help collect signatures. (Here's their site.)
They weren’t looking to make trouble. They weren’t trying to throw a wrench into representative democracy. They just wanted more answers than city hall was willing to give them.
I talked to Crockford, a journalist, this week. The story of how he ended up a spokesman for the bridge revolt is charmingly happenstance, and would likely hearten Hunter as a fine example of democracy in action if she could just break free of the group-think at the council table these days.
People want a referendum on the bridge because they aren’t convinced city council is acting in their best interests. With no chance for public input and a warp-speed approval process, who can blame them?

Singing the praises of making music

The teeny little house on Woods Avenue in Courtenay is still there. I have a flash of a memory of learning my first Christmas carols at the piano in that house, where my teacher Kay Wilson lived. I was 10.
Kay and my determined mother gave me one of the greatest gifts of my life starting that day - the longing to make music. I’m reminded of such things this year more than most, what with music being such a major part of my life again in all kinds of unexpected ways.
If I could recommend one thing to add to your busy 2010 schedule, it’s this: Make music. Help your children make music. Having the ability and opportunity to create music has been a wondrous thing for me, and I wish it for everyone for the joy it brings.
Learning the piano was years of hard slogging, I admit. I’d love to tell you that I laid my hands on the keyboard for the first time and the rest was glorious history; the truth is that I’ve always had to practise long and hard. I was ready to quit when I was a tempestuous 14-year-old, but to my great fortune Kay and my mother ganged up on me and wouldn’t allow it.
Effort notwithstanding, the journey has been amazing. When I make music, all is right with the world - for an hour at least, or maybe even a whole lingering afternoon if I’ve got the time for it. How many things can you say that about?
Learning music has also turned out to be a fine primer for life. It taught me that the way to get better at something is to practise, and that most problems can be sorted out if you just take things slow. I learned the discipline of doing something every day even when I didn’t feel like it, and that the magic would find its way to me even on bad days if I just kept playing.
Music is all about that magic, of course.
I remember how it felt to be able to play Away in a Manger for the first time, my hands performing miracles before my very eyes. I still feel that same rush for every new piece of music I learn. And nowadays my musical discoveries might just as easily involve something other than the piano, because the other great gift music gives you is the ability to go in different directions.
A long-time classical pianist, I never would have expected to be jamming tunes from the 1930s and ‘40s with my daughter at our now-regular gigs at local retirement facilities. But I am.
I wouldn’t have expected to be playing French musettes on the accordion, either. But I’m doing that, too, and got my busker’s licence this past summer solely for the pleasure of playing the accordion outdoors. And I’m three happy years into my first real “band” experience, playing taiko drums with Victoria’s Uminari ensemble.
I fear the modern time, where it’s possible to walk through a home and not see a single instrument. Or where music in the schools is viewed as “discretionary,” and its absence denies children their moment of discovery. Music and art truly are the universal languages, and no child should miss out on such a profound way to experience the emotion and beauty of the world.
The very good thing about music is that it’s there for whoever wants it. Nerve-wracking recitals and conservatory exams gave me a healthy sense of my own limitations - another excellent life lesson - and I knew early on that I had neither the natural brilliance nor practise habits to become the next Glenn Gould. But hey, I can still make some pretty good music.
That said, the lesson I’ve learned lately is that sometimes you need to let go of your limitations and just jump into the deep end anyway. Set your mind and best practise habits on achieving something that looks out of reach, and there’s no saying where it might lead you. Thank you to my youngest daughter Rachelle for breaking me out of 40 years of certainty that I couldn’t sing harmony.
You don’t have to be rich to bring music into your life, either. If lessons are out of the question, scrounge up a used instrument or two and see what happens. Open your mouth and sing. Tap that place inside you that’s going to light up like the proverbial Christmas tree when it gets the chance to make music.
Happy New Year, everyone. May the beat go on.

Shut off the phone, pack up the 'Berry, and be here now

It’s my birthday today, and I don’t want an iPhone.
I don’t want an iPod Touch either, or anything that looks or acts like a Blackberry. I’ve even got mixed feelings about having a cell phone, especially now that I won’t be able to use it in the car anyway.
I can’t bear the ads for “world at your fingertips” devices, in which people are depicted having unbelievable amounts of fun interacting with their phones. Have you seen the one where the young guy is sitting in a coffee shop “getting caught up with” half a dozen friends, none of whom are actually there?
It’s the new norm, to be present without actually being there. You think you’re sharing a meal with someone, but then their cell phone rings and you’re forgotten. You go to a meeting and count 20 people in attendance, but then realize that half are covert Blackberry users who aren’t paying a lick of attention.
I’m not a devout practitioner of Eastern mysticism by any means, but whatever happened to “be here now?”
Author Ram Dass coined that particular phrase in his 1971 pop-culture classic about spiritual enlightenment, Remember Be Here Now. But the concept at the core of the book - mindfulness - has been a teaching of ancient Asian religions for many centuries.
More and more these days, we live at the opposite end of mindfulness. Technology has given us the ability to fracture our attentions instantaneously in a dozen or more directions. And we seem only too happy to go along, with little thought to what is lost along the way.
This is not to rail against technological advances, which have broadened our ability to communicate across any barrier. I love technology.
But we’re on this Earth for such a short time. I puzzle over why we choose to spend so much of it in a haze of texting, sexting, tweeting, updating, emailing and cyber-chatting, even while the moment we’re actually existing in slips by unnoticed.
I’m 53 today. If I live to age 82 - the average lifespan of a British Columbian woman - I have just 29 Christmases left after this one. I have but 348 summer weekends left to enjoy.
Time passes at a breathless pace at this age. It can only go faster now that I’ve reached the age where 24 hours is worth half of what it was back when I was 25.
(Do the math and it turns out that each day at age 53 is equivalent to .2 per cent of the days you have left to live presuming an average lifespan, compared to .1 per cent at age 25. Yikes.)
I’m glad to be alive at a time when it’s possible to share music, photos, videos and thought processes at lightning speed with the whole wide world. It’s downright awe-inspiring to ponder the creativity and imagination of the people coming up with all this stuff, and the impact it has had on our culture.
But the precious days that make up a life are made up of precious minutes, and you can fritter away far too many of them on cyber-communications with people you didn’t really want to communicate with in the first place. Meanwhile, life unfolds around you and you’re half-aware at best - present in body but definitely not in mind.
I wouldn’t suggest that a life lived in a state of distraction could bring harm to people, of course. But I do know that I don’t want my own life to pass that way. The older I get, the more certain I become that every day is a gift and every experience worthy - and best savoured when body, heart and mind are all in the same room.
We have such a difficult time living in the now. Our lunch hours are spent with a Blackberry beside us on the table, its constant beeps and buzzes disrupting conversation and restaurant ambience even when we do our best to ignore it. We sit in coffee shops alone but never lonely, our headsets cranked up and our laptops open.
Do we remember who sat next to us? What we ate? Whether the barista looked like she could use a friend? How many potentially interesting moments came and went without us even looking up? How many experiences did we miss out on? Day after precious day slips by, with only the number of messages and phone calls received that day to distinguish one from the other.
Life’s short. Don’t waste a minute of it. Be here now.

Cop secretly driving protest bus is serious cause for alarm

The funny thing is, I always thought B.C.’s Olympics Resistance Network was just being paranoid with its talk about police trying to infiltrate the ranks of Olympics protesters.
Guess I was wrong. As Victoria Police Chief Jamie Graham has now confirmed for all of us, police are so deep into the ORN that they’re even driving the buses that protesters travel on.
I’m not sure what alarms me more about this new information: That police have the right to do that kind of thing to people who have committed no crime, or that the way it came to public attention was through Graham blurting it out at a public dinner a couple weeks ago.
You’ve probably heard the story by now: Giving a keynote at the Vancouver International Security Conference at the end of November in Vancouver, Graham joked about how Vancouver Olympics protesters unknowingly travelled to Victoria for the launch of the torch relay in a bus driven by police.
“You knew that the protesters weren’t that organized when on the ferry on the way over, they rented a bus - they all came over in a bus - and there was a cop driving,” Graham said, to appreciative chuckles from the audience. (Hear the audio clip on reporter Bob Mackin’s blog at http://blog.canoe.ca/van2010?disp=bio.)
I’m grateful for the heads-up, because it’s always better to know what’s really going on than to continue thinking that creepy police-state kinds of things just don’t happen in Canada.
But Graham also destroyed the cover of the officer who was driving the bus with that glib comment, and I’m sure that must be unsettling in a whole other way to all the undercover police officers out there on other assignments, not to mention whichever police force put the time into planting that officer in the ORN.
My first thought was that some Vancouver bus company must have informed police, because I couldn’t figure out how a police officer could have ended up driving their bus. But apparently the protesters in fact hired a bus privately, using a driver who was a friend of one of the ORN protesters.
So that means police had thoroughly infiltrated the group, just like they do in the movies. But in this case the “bad guys” were just regular British Columbians setting out for a garden-variety protest.
Who is ORN, anyway? Judging by the group’s Web site, they’re a focal point for all sorts of people with a bone to pick about BC hosting the 2010 Olympics.
ORN’s primary purpose is to protest that the Olympics are being staged on “stolen land.” The group’s roots go back to the 2007 Intercontinental Indigenous People’s Gathering in Sonora, Mexico, when 1,500 indigenous delegates signed a statement boycotting the 2010 Olympics because they were being held “on the sacred and stolen territory of Turtle Island - Vancouver, Canada.”
But ORN has also drawn in people whose passions are around things like capitalism, poverty, labour standards, migrant justice, homelessness, the environment - the usual stuff. They’ve even got a few civil libertarians.
Whatever your feelings about the group’s disruption of the Olympic torch relay in October, the fact is that people do have the right to be against such things in this great land of ours. They have the right to pick up a sign and protest, or to rent a bus to get to that protest with no fear that an undercover police officer might be behind the wheel.
Police obviously have a very difficult job to do at the best of times, let alone when a global party as big as the Olympics is shaping up. But we are giving up something very, very important when we allow our governments free license to plant police officers anywhere that state resistance might spring up. History has been a powerful teacher on that front.
You have to admire local activist Bruce Dean’s response to all of this. Having had his photographic equipment seized by police in 2007 on the grounds that he might have compromised the safety of an undercover officer with his photos, he’s now filed a complaint of misconduct against Chief Graham for doing the same thing to the officer driving the ORN bus.
In the Times Colonist story this week, Dean notes that if the mere “remote possibility” of his having taken a photo of an undercover officer was enough to suspend his freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, then Graham has to be held accountable for the damage his comments may have caused.
And our government must be held accountable for directing police to spy on British Columbians whose only crime is to disagree with the party line. How frightening.

Telling details in letter to impoverished victims of identity theft

Picture what would happen if 1,400 middle-class British Columbians suddenly discovered that a provincial government employee with a criminal record for fraud had all their personal information stashed at his home.
We’re talking all the good stuff: social insurance numbers; birth dates; phone numbers and addresses; personal account numbers. Worse still, he’d had it for seven months by the time anyone who’d been affected even knew it had happened.
The halls of the legislature would be ringing for weeks with the howls of outrage and indignation. The government would be turning itself inside out to make things right for the victims.
Unfortunately, the actual story involves 1,400 welfare recipients. And the way the tale has played out in real life is so strikingly different than how things would have gone had the crime involved British Columbians with political clout, that there’s no hiding the government’s disregard for people on income assistance.
There’s a small but telling detail in the greeting line of the letter that government sent to those 1,400 people last month to inform them of the privacy breach.
How might you expect to be greeted by your government in a letter like that? “Dear Ms. Paterson”? Maybe “Dear Jody Paterson” if honorifics were too much hassle?
Nope. The actual letters opened thus: “Dear PATERSON, JODY LEE.” The impoverished recipients were then informed that they would need phone access, computers and ID to sort out their problems, and given a few Web sites and toll-free numbers to get them started.
It speaks volumes that the government couldn’t even bother to cut and paste a respectful greeting line into 1,400 letters to people being told they’d been screwed over.
The tone isn’t helped by the little note at the top of each letter telling recipients they may have accidentally received somebody else’s letter in the mail earlier due to a “clerical error.” Their privacy was breached twice, in other words: once by the theft of the information, and a second time when a botched mailing resulted in letters with people’s names and income-assistance file numbers being sent to someone other than them.
The letter - from the Ministry of Housing and Social Development - makes it clear that people are on their own to sort out problems arising from the theft. “Take the necessary precautions to protect yourself,” the letter urges before briskly listing the many things that will need attending to if people hope to make that happen. Good luck, little camper.
The recipients also found out in the letter that their health records have been flagged due to the breach, so they’ll have to show ID the next time they need medical care. A utility bill with people’s name and address on it will suffice, the ministry said this week, but added that it’s ultimately up to health-care providers to decide if that’s sufficient proof.
Is the ministry so out of touch with the circumstances of the people who walk through its doors every day that it doesn’t know that phones and computers are rare commodities for people scraping by on income assistance? Or that many of them will have no ID whatsoever? (One bit of good news: The ministry will waive the once-a-year-only proviso for replacing lost or stolen ID for these 1,400 people.)
Does the government get that some of the victims will have developmental disabilities, literacy issues or mental conditions that will make it impossible for them to understand those letters? Or that people move around a lot when they live in abject poverty and may not have even received their letters, let alone have a bill with a current address?
The privacy breach won’t go unexamined, mind you. The government has launched no less than four reviews into how this could have happened, including one by B.C. Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis. One day soon at what will doubtlessly be great expense, we will know much more about how the breach came about.
But come on, guys, free up a few thousand bucks for some community organization to help the 1,400 victims sort their stuff out - the people who are the actual victims of this crime. “I think a lot of this does fall to government to take on,” notes Loukidelis.
People have been frightened by the letter, says Katie Tanigawa of the Together Against Poverty Society, an advocacy organization that has fielded a number of calls from worried recipients.
“All the ministry has given people are phone numbers and Web sites to contact,” says Tanigawa. “But at the end of the day, it’s inaccessible information. And it makes life just that much more difficult for people who are already living in very stressful situations.”

Look left, look right - you still end up with child poverty

If we devoted even a fraction of the time to ending poverty that we spend on debating whose statistics are right, we’d have been a nation of thriving citizens from coast to coast a long time ago.
Instead, we divide into ideological camps and bicker over the differences between “relative” and “absolute” poverty, and that’s as far as things ever go. It’s a good explanation for why we’re 20 years into a national commitment to end child poverty in Canada with no real end in sight.
The latest figures, released this week in First Call’s annual report card on child poverty in B.C., use relative poverty as the gauge.
That measurement, also known as the low-income cutoff (LICO), is based on what an “average” Canadian needs to spend for food, clothing and shelter and presumes relative poverty among those who have to spend significantly more. LICO is the favoured standard for those who want government to do more to support Canadians at the low end of the economic scale.
Those who like their governments lean and their taxes low tend to prefer measurements of absolute poverty, which use a much narrower definition of poverty. Such stats capture the people who aren’t just relatively poor, but in truly dire economic circumstance.
Those estimates generally come from a group like the Fraser Institute, a think tank that conservative politicians love. The organization has found a kindred spirit in Ontario economics professor Chris Sarlo, who for the last several years has issued his own annual poverty report on behalf of the institute.
As you can imagine, there’s a big difference between the two styles of measurement. Who to believe? Unfortunately, that question ends up dominating the debate whenever the conversation turns to the number of impoverished Canadians. But run the numbers and it turns out that B.C.’s child poverty rate is on the rise no matter whose version you buy into.
For argument’s sake, let’s use the most conservative measure of poverty to gauge whether B.C. really does have a child-poverty issue.
The First Call report, using LICO, found B.C. had the highest child-poverty rate in Canada for the sixth year in a row, at 18.8 per cent. Sarlo would be more likely to estimate the rate at around five or six per cent. We can all fight later over who we think is more right, but for now let’s just look at child poverty in the province using Sarlo’s method.
Sarlo contends that the correct income measurement for absolute poverty in Canada is $10,520 for an individual. For a household of four, it’s $23,307.
Are there B.C. children growing up in families that earn that little? Absolutely. The 35,000 or so children whose families are on income assistance quickly come to mind.
A four-person family with both parents on income assistance lives on $17,088 a year even after the family bonus is factored in. That’s 27 per cent less than the amount that even the most conservative voices out there consider to be poverty.
The number of children living in welfare-dependent families grew by more than 20 per cent in B.C. in the last year. That figure is higher than it has been since 2004, meaning B.C. has seen an increase in child poverty these past five years no matter which way you measure it.
In fact, one in 10 Canadian families has annual household incomes under $25,000. More than 100,000 single-parent families get by on less than $20,000 a year. A single parent with two children working for $12 an hour, 35 hours a week, essentially meets Sarlo’s definition of absolute poverty.
So now we know: However you analyse it, hundreds of thousands of Canadians - and tens of thousands of B.C. children - are living in poverty. What say we put ideological differences aside once and for all and get to work doing something about that?
The Fraser Institute and others of similar leanings rightly note that Canada’s overall poverty rate has dropped considerably over the past three decades. But in my opinion that will most definitely change if those from the school of lean and mean don’t soon get a grip on what they’re doing to Canada.
Poverty rates have fallen over time because Canada introduced all kinds of social supports to make that happen. Both our provincial and federal governments are busy dismantling that support structure right now. We’ll be back to the poverty rates of old in no time.
We’re a wealthy country with a rich history of doing the right thing. There’s no excuse for poverty in Canada.

Project Connect 2009 stats

Here's an interesting document I did up for the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness as part of my work co-ordinating the Project Connect service fair last month at Our Place for the local street community. Sorry for the weird formatting in the "comments" part, but that's what Excel tables do when you paste them in Blogger, I guess.


Analysis of surveys done at Project Connect 2009
Nov. 18, 2009

The following is a summary of surveys done with participants at Project Connect 2009, held Oct. 14 at Our Place Drop-In Centre.
This is the second year of PC and the second year of doing surveys, so there is some ability to compare the data from year to year (the actual survey had to be shortened from last year due to it taking too long, so some questions asked last year were gone from this year’s survey). We managed to survey about a third of the 700+ people who attended Project Connect, and completed considerably more surveys than last year: 238 this year, up from 164 in 2008.
Survey results obviously can’t be assumed to be representative of the overall population of people living homeless or at risk in the downtown, as there are several limitations in the way we gathered the information. The volunteers at Project Connect essentially selected who they approached about doing a survey, and that person then had to be willing to complete one. Also, the surveys were done only that one day and in a single location, so anyone who wasn’t at the event wasn’t captured.
Still, they offer an interesting snapshot of the people living homeless and at risk in our community right now, as measured by who would be inclined to attend a service fair at the region’s main street drop-in.
One of the things the data reveals is an aging population that is slightly less likely than last year to be fully homeless, yet spends so much on rent that the people have ended up dependent on places like Our Place to provide them with daily meals. Some 58 per cent of respondents are currently housed, but access to affordable housing was nonetheless a top priority for the vast majority of those surveyed.
I’ve attached the Excel spreadsheet so those who are interested can look at the data themselves, but here are a few key findings:

Men are overrepresented among the homeless, but women are catching up
• Of the 100 people who reported being homeless right now, 29 per cent are female and 71 per cent are male. That’s a slight change from last year’s figures of 26 per cent female and 74 per cent male


The population is aging
• Of the 42 per cent who are currently homeless, 66.4 per cent are over age 40. Approx 10 per cent are 25 or younger.
• The age range of those who are currently homeless is from 17 to 76, but almost 40 per cent are over age 40 (47.5 per cent of women are in that age group, 65 per cent of men).
• This year, 35.5 per cent of respondents reported being over age 55, compared to 20 per cent last year.
• Young people make up just 10 per cent of the total respondents, but are experiencing disproportionately high rates of homelessness - 76 per cent of those ages 25 or younger reported being currently homeless.
• 35 per cent of those who are homeless are staying at shelters at the moment; 10 per cent of those who are homeless said they were sleeping on the streets, in parks, or in the bush

People were more likely to be housed
• 67.5 per cent of women participants and 55 per cent men said they’re currently housed. That’s up from around 50 per cent at the 2008 PC.
• Three-quarters of participants receive some level of income-assistance support from the province, with 58.4 per cent receiving both support and shelter. Those figures are very similar to last year, with a slight increase in 2009 of people receiving both support and shelter (77 per cent of those on income assistance, up from 75 per cent in 2008).
Mental illness and addiction remain major problems
• Almost half of the women surveyed (47.5 per cent) have been diagnosed with mental illness, as have 39.4 per cent of men. That’s about the same as 2008 figures.
• More than half of the men surveyed (50.6 per cent) said they have a problem with drugs or alcohol. Women were considerably less likely to have drug/alcohol problems - just 16.25 per cent said they had problems. This is a significant change from 2008, when almost half of the women surveyed reported drug/alcohol problems.
• 100 per cent of women who reported having a mental-health diagnosis also had problems with drugs/alcohol, as did 74 per cent of men with a mental-health diagnosis

People were more likely to be victims of crime
• Almost one in two people reported having been victims of crime. That’s up from 2008, when one in three reported being victims of crime.
• Men were more likely than women to have been victimized: 55 per cent of men, compared to 40 per cent of women. Of those who are currently homeless, 100 per cent reported being victims of crime
• The majority of the crimes were committed by other people living on the street or at shelters. More than a quarter of those who’d had a crime committed against them reported that the police had victimized them.
People are most likely to have a City of Victoria address
• Whether homeless or housed, most people surveyed lived in City of Victoria, 84 per cent. However, most communities in the region (with the exception of Highlands, Metchosin, and North and Central Saanich) were mentioned at least once as somebody’s home address.
Downtown services are heavily used and appreciated
• Asked what services they used, the vast majority of respondents listed Our Place, the food banks at Mustard Seed and St. John the Divine, the shelter system and the 9-10 Club (a breakfast program run out of St. Andrew’s Anglican). But many other services were mentioned, including St. Vincent de Paul, Salvation Army, REES services and casual labour pool, the needle exchange, ACT, VICOT, the Rainbow Kitchen, VIHA Alcohol and Drug services, and mental health programs.






Comments
What those surveyed wanted to tell the coalition:

• The cycle hard to get out of; more services for youth to help that cycle. Stable shelter.
Services for youth (Victoria is child prostitution capital of Canada) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• Police shouldn't put people in shelters • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• need longer term projects that teach people how to live sustainably • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• no trespass tickets, more beds, help with crim record/hire • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• housing's expensive • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• getting a house is difficult with pets • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• experience firsthand for one month like it is right now • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• build more homes • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• stop police brutality agst homeless • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• listen to people in recovery and what they need/don't need.
There is considerable prejudice in med system agst amphetamine addicts • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• homelessness is mentally damaging for most people • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• listen to the people who've been on street instead of creating prejudice for those labelled drug addicts • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• it sucks - we need more low-income housing and help for single people • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• being homeless sucks • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• youth out of rain shelter is not safe; less prejudiced landlords who are willing to rent to people • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• don't cater to homeless people; look after those trying to help selves • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• keep family in mind • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more outreach, better attitudes • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more support, fewer brick walls • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• H1N1 - try and help people on street; open up church for people on street • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more Connect days • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• not much to complain about, always food • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• Shelter for people who are not addicted • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• Much need out here - getting worse every year • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• hard to pay rent, no $ for food • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• 24/7 shelter&drop-in • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• lots of diff reasons why people homeless. Open services 7 days • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• welfare rates need to go up • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• cause of homelessness isn't homelessness - it's cultural, societal, individual • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• it's n a choice - it's really hard to get out of, doesn't take long to get in • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• not fun for anybody! It's hard trying to make ends meet • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• red tape, rules changed, barriers if you in good shape • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• no address for my resume; how about a postal box for people to use for their resumes.
Appreciate your efforts • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• things are improving but more contributions needed • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• resources help those who abuse system and not those who are honest and in need.
Can't use shelter because of dog • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• expensive to live on credit; hard to access ACT team $200 subsidy • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• services great but need clothing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• abolish needle exchange - it has led to more use of drugs • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• park people and cops kick you awake, even if you're out of sight • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• tough adjustment from 10-yr prison term • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• need more housing for the poor • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• police abusive • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• waiting for disability • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• people who care should live on streets for 1 wk for experience • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• wants to change life, needs home • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more drop-in in evening; FBs need to make hampers for homeless people • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• smooth access to service; not fucked over • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• need affordable rents, outreach programs; difficult to rent without credit • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• when crisis grants come as food vouchers, other necessary things are inaccessible.
Inflexible and depersonalized bureaucracy • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• activities for poor people - kayak, rock climb, hike • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we're an urban ghetto • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• Mk it more like Amsterdam • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• thanks for the help; things are pretty much in balance • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• affordable housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we're no throwaway people - lots of talent, compassion among the homeless community • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• Sunday service, more for mentally ill • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we're not all "schmucks" • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• affordable housing needed • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• I'm fine • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• important to teach people about maintaining good health • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• create living wage • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more connect days • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• not going to get better without more help. Such a stigma to homelessness • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• not enough affordable housing with the three-strike rule.
There are people who don't have drug/alc problems who also need help • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• i would like to be working • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we need more jobs, more homes. Open OP on weekends. We need low income housing! • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• homeless safety; more people at night to check up (vancouver angels) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• doing OK • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more affordable housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• too many people on the street - they're not so hungry but they're very cold • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• thanks! • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• open more shelters, more afford housing, extended hours OP • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• build housing instead of more shelter beds • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• visit Dignity Village in Portland, tent city in Olympia, for examples of how a
community can provide real assistance to people who want to live independent lives • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• people who work with bc housing need to be more respectful • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we don't want to be here • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• not enough done for those with disability; we all have diff needs • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more subsidized housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• people don't know anything about homelessness • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• wake up, please • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• being on income assistance can hinder you in getting housing because of stigma, discrimination • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• tho I'm not homeless, my disability cheque all goes to rent. Been on bc housing list for 6 yrs! • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• #1 commit should be to people living on street • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• got apt but no food. Need help addiction • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• don't judge - we are all only one paycheque from the street • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• put more money into homelessness rather than olympics • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• extra funding for OP to keep open 7 days/wk; more housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• the feeling of exclusion can crush you • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• press government to open up closed bldgs. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• too much violence, not enough shelters. Too many condos.
More B&Es and theft in stores when government decreases support • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more sufficient income • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• need more help, someone to listen • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• that what we receive is not sufficient to live on; will need to find PT work to make it.
Also, provide vegetarian meals • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• everybody needs a hand • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we need more jobs, more homes. Open OP on wknds • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• there shouldn't be homelessness when we have resources • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more money - $375 for shelter is not enough. We shouldn't be needing food banks • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• need more women's shelters; daughter was on street for 4 yrs and had lot
of negative experiences that could have been avoided had there been a women's shelter • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• please get heads out of your ass, esp police • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more shelters needed, help with forms • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• rental assistance not available; on bc housing waitlist for 5 years • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• affordable housing is critical • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more support for people with alcohol problems; more people to listen • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• I'm lucky - i have my own place. Others need housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• there is stereotyping around appearance and clothing; if you homeless, you have less value.
Bandaid solutions look good but don't address core problem • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• need more housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• a lot being done but access slow and frustrating • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• too expensive rent and utilities, visitors not allowed • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• panhandle in order to make up shortfall of income. Increase in local street pop due to prep for Olympics.
Not enough affordable housing, not enough being done to keep people off the streets • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• better access to counselling and psych help • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• need more room for single affodable accom. Welfare system failed me. OP very helpful • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• are there homeless people in coalition to get a firsthand experienced opinion?
Why are they stopping 4 single people from residing together? Why not using boarded-up housing? • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• live on street for week and see what it's like - a week is forever if on street • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more counselling and self-help groups, opportunity to talk • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• it's cold, need a place to live • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• don't give us money, give us housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more connect days • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• how people treat homeless and mental health people - it's sad.
Fed up with all the needles. Support for special-needs people • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• it will cost a lot more in the long run if you don't support us now • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• Without OP would go hungry - lost 10 pounds in 5 months because can't afford food.
Need affordable housing, Nx • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• raise min wage to $12/hr; more low-cost housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we should buy traveller's inn • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• lack of affordable housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• street link shelter very good • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• law needs to change so landlords can't require credit checks • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• 1-1 talk • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• advertise this event more • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• provide nutritious food, adequate places for women, immed temp shelter • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• too many apartments are empty. Not enough support for rental places. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• talk to us • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• ask us what we need - listen to us • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• wake up! We are not units • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• get more input from the homeless • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• walk a mile in my shoes • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• free enterprise means no one wins unless someone loses - we don't really have a democracy • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• 7 wks waiting for EI to kick in - would be on street if not paid 2 month rent in advance • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• 4-hr day job not worth it • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• no co-ord • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• need safe housing, nicer staff • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• shelters not the answer - we need homes • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• a lot more BC Housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• hard to find public washrooms; more affordable housing for 55+ • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• need more low-cost accommodation • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• see homeless as individuals; more respect for our needs; more holistic.
One week for homeless is great, but need to continue engage and involve us • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• change attitude, we not criminals, affordable housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we need access to coalition to tell them our needs and our ideas • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• it's awful • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• victoria great place, services tremendous, people treated with dignity, community generally mellow and safe • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we need more than one solution - we are individuals. We are in an emergency • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• homes! • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• fair treatment for everyone • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• housing not enough low-cost; too many condos; OP needs to be open 24/7; get service clubs involved • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• think about the working poor - min wage doesn't cut it • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• services for seniors with disabilities; would like support from community living • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• it costs $60,000 to keep a guy in jail • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• nurse/doc on site at coolaid and OP • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• needs to be some damn affordable housing. More dental services, better income assistance.
Look at Dignity Village in Portland • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• a place to call home • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• be more approachable, provide info when asked • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• homelessness is 24/7 - need something to do • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• put money toward fixing old buildings to make shelters and housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• why coalition set up behind security guard? Disconnected from real people • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• bias toward people who homeless by those in health care system • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• housing! • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• social services - $3-5 a day for food! • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• cheaper, less restrictive hsing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• concerned about young women on street, esp ones not on drugs. Seeing mothers with kids • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• more and better housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• less talk, more action • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• Asked Jody to attend ACE committee • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• rents too high; not always safe for women • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• interview clothes, better food • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• vic is greatest place in canada for homeless people - feels like "home" • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• we welcome opportunity to speak on our own behalf. That doesn't happen very often. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• less survey, more action. Open OP 7 days week • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •








Services that participants want but can’t find:

• help finding housing, more dog friendly spaces, legal help for youth
• welfare accessibility
• income assistance
• job
• job
• housing help
• housing
• ID, credit, child support for 2 yr old
• a roof over my head!
• help with house search
• need more money
• free schooling for people with serious brain disorders; awareness of how to support amphetamine addicts; support groups for women who have lost their children
• legal help
• non-prejudiced doctor. Someone who will help regardless of my condition. Need more support with crystal meth
• more shelters
• supported housing
• More for pets on cold days
• tax service
• More programs for lifeskills
• welfare
• immed detox, more shelter, housing
• employment
• job finding service
• dental, ID
• nutritious food, more
• hard to get cognitive behaviour therapy
• places to grow food, nut trees esp
• need laundry and proper storage facilities
• housing
• help with getting job - new to vic
• need more laundry facilities/ drop-in on weekends
• home that allows pets, affordable
• i have celiac disease and need a meal program
• housing
• men's transition house
• help with ID, clothing in plus size
• clothing
• adopt an addict' or sponsorship like that in AA
• adequate housing
• alarm for morning; temporary housing; help from welfare for rent deposit for Traveller's Inn
• free reading/education, job (GT not helpful)
• medical, more money for rent/food
• has love in her life
• welfare would not give rent deposit for Traveller's
• services i don't know I need
• unite homeless to protest Olympics on stolen native land
• existing services don't help working poor due to schedule conflicts (e.g. Night work and shelter access); concerned with some staff suitability to be in service position
• housing, banned from sobering centre, no help if meth
• job counselling,
• regular doc, psychiatry
• safe shelters
• my kid back and my own place!
• housing, physio, guys' clothing, shoes
• Cheap rent
• dental, ID
• legal help
• housing is slow; waiting a year
• bus pass
• place to stay clean
• housing
• money
• dental- need partial plate and can't get it funded
• more support for detox
• ID replacement, clothes
• training and work
• clean available housing; ability to make money without affecting my IA
• full disability; someone to talk to
• better home
• housing bus pass/ticket
• housing - very hard to find a cheap place to live
• elevator, supplements, attention for med needs
• bus tickets, extended hrs at OP, phone, 24hr crisis service
• dental work
• housing, literacy support
• forced to have roommates because of rent cost; wait list for bc housing 2 years, go every month
• bus tkts
• housing, help for disabled
• bc housing waitlist for families
• counselling, sleeping bags/tents
• 24-hr drop-in centre
• subsidized housing
• none
• help with loneliness
• more Connect days
• housing
• more money to live on; motel is expensive
• a home
• help with ID
• doc, housing, food
• access to acupuncture
• toilets, low-cost housing
• foot care, better food bank system, better telephone system for people who can't afford it, cable too
• food needs be more sufficient
• lockers
• more access to mental health system
• help with housing expenses
• dentist, eye doctor, hearing aids
• rent supplements, nice food
• Counselling; supportive and compassionate shelter staff
• health care, help with vaccinations
• FB - more food for singles; drug and alcohol centre, NOT jail
• work
• subsidized housing
• handicapped with cerebral palsy; would like to earn a living
• housing that allows pets
• companionship
• housing
• homecare
• my own place
• access to housing - services inadequate
• took 1 yr to find family doc. Need glasses
• access to phone; laundry; place for her dog
• most services geared to those with multiple probs - nothing for those who aren't addicted
• housing
• more health services - have memory deficit due to heroin OD
• safe housing
• Housing! Hard to sleep in shelters with things going on - exhausting
• cheap affordable housing
• food bank rations inadequate, shelters not safe, medication expenses should be covered
• clothes for larger women
• shuffled around in housing until you don't know which end is up
• replacement of ID, sleeping bags, tents
• housing, injection site
• find temporary job, problem due to criminal record
• housing
• help finding housing; optical help (legally blind)
• medical pot
• medical marijuana
• subsidized housing
• a home, love
• medical marijuana
• a partner and companion
• larger clothes
• gay help
• job
• housing
• need place for homeless working person
• system not able to deal with the volume of people needing help
• income tax
• subsidized housing
• services on weekends, holidays, 24/7
• more rehab, more shelters, more family counselling
• doc
• transportation an issue
• fill forms
• resume help; hotel manager at rental unit
• finding a doc to get referral to eye specialist
• money
• counselling
• bipolar support
• meditation centre
• nothing on weekends
• help with writing letters, etc. have problems putting words together but can use computer
• office for CPP, more quiet to meditate
• need apartment, better access to US consul (he's american), more dental work, housing for pets
• part-time work
• assistance to find affordable housing when you don't fit current criteria for help
• $ for SA dinners, housing
• need vitamins, brace for separated shoulder, legal services
• money
• more help with lifeskills, addiction, etc
• want change to OP rules around people coming to room, smoking/drinking
• food costs
• vision
• a place to live, money
• exercise to get out
• permanent home
• I get $60/mo - that's not enough to get by
• a good lawyer

Federal government fumbles again. And again. And again...

Never mind the federal inquiry into B.C.’s vanishing sockeye salmon that will soon be underway. How about an inquiry into the federal government itself?
I’m sure the feds must be good at something. But they’re routinely quite hopeless, in ways that would almost be funny if it weren’t for the harm being done to Canadians and the country.
How have they hurt us? Let me count the ways:
H1N1 - If this had really been “the big one,” we’d have been as hooped as a New Orleans hurricane victim waiting for rescue after Katrina. As luck would have it, we’ve been allowed to test our national pandemic strategy with a virus that wasn’t as terrifying as expected, but picture the shape we’d be in right now had the new flu strain remained as lethal as it was in its early days in Mexico.
Canada has a 550-page pandemic preparedness plan, developed by the Public Health Agency four years ago after a botched national response to the SARS crisis. But the Canadian Medical Association Journal sounded the alarm in September that the plan was neither workable nor in keeping with best medical practices when it came to H1N1.
For starters, the plan around H1N1 was to have Canada’s single flu vaccine supplier produce three different flu vaccines at the same time, even though the Quebec plant has just one production line. No deep thinking required to see the problem that was bound to create.
The plant was already busy producing seasonal flu vaccine by the time the H1N1 vaccine was developed this fall. So that delayed production of the H1N1 vaccine - to the point that two waves of the flu had already swept through most Canadian communities by the time vaccinations were underway.
Then the plant had to switch course again when the government ordered 1.8 million doses of “non-adjuvenated” H1N1 vaccine for pregnant women, having grown nervous of the shark oil derivatives added to the vaccine. That delayed production of the regular H1N1 vaccine a second time.
Nor did the plan take into account human behaviour in times of crisis. The honour system breaks down quickly when people believe their lives are under threat, and who can blame them for thinking that after seven months of hysterical and confusing media coverage? There’s always a way to jump the queue if you work the angles, which is why junior hockey teams and wealthy Toronto hospital donors have ended up vaccinated while high-risk populations are still lining up.
Why did we choose a single vaccine supplier? The Chretien Liberals signed that exclusive deal back in 2001 with Quebec’s Shire BioChem, bought by GlaxoKlineSmith in 2005. Coincidentally, Shire BioChem gave a $56,000 donation to the Liberal Party that year.
The gun registry - This sad tale started in 1995 with the passing of a new Firearms Act. The plan required all gun owners to register their weapons and was sold to Canadians on the basis of it costing taxpayers just $2 million a year. Fourteen lost years and some $2 billion later, parliament voted this week to scrap the registry for all guns other than handguns.
The data on seven million registered “long guns” collected over the years will be thrown away. More than $21 million in registration fees has already been returned to Canadian long-gun owners, with more to come. Your tax dollars at work.
Employment Insurance - Remember when Canadians who were unemployed could actually get benefits to help them through a dry spell?
Back in 1990, 80 per cent of unemployed Canadians qualified for such benefits. These days, only 38 per cent do. That’s because the federal government has spent well over a decade tightening up policies, to the point that most out-of-work Canadians no longer qualify.
The denial of benefits has resulted in significant annual surpluses accruing to the federal government for more than 14 years now, even while the number of Canadians receiving benefits has plummeted by more than 56 per cent.
Fisheries - The latest concern is a Fraser River sockeye salmon return this fall that was 93 per cent smaller than what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans had forecast. The federal government has now launched an inquiry, which is what we do in Canada when we want to douse the flames on a hot issue.
But that’s just the latest addition to a long list of alarming examples of fisheries mismanagement in B.C. Federal government policies have decimated fish stocks, sandbagged monitoring and enhancement, and wiped out a thriving community-based industry in order to give the resource away to a handful of wealthy men. It’s unforgiveable.
I could go on. The sponsorship scandal. The e-health scandal. The isotope fiasco. The fumbling bird flu response. The deeply flawed immigration system.
George Bernard Shaw once described democracy as “a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” Frightening to think what that says about us.

If you want to fight back, make it effective

I find myself thinking about protest a lot these days, mostly because of the ill-considered social cuts going on in B.C. right now.
It’s really the only form of democratic action we have in between elections, and a proven tool. When the public “blowback” is intense enough, as Housing Minister Rich Coleman might say, governments tend to change their minds.
But last week’s Olympic torch dustup reminds us that there’s protest, and then there’s effective protest. Those of us who want real change had best keep that in mind.
I mean no disrespect to those who protested the torch relay last Friday. The majority were there for all the right reasons. I certainly share their pain over a $6 billion party being thrown next February even while growing numbers of vulnerable British Columbians lose the programs and services that help them cope.
Still, little is gained when the only thing your protest accomplishes is to frustrate and sadden the people who didn’t get to carry the torch because you blocked the route. The media stories over whether it was protesters or undercover police who threw marbles under the police horses’ hooves didn’t help. Protest is a powerful tool, but less so when it alienates potential supporters.
The environmental movement has had remarkable success with protest. The Clayoquot protests of the early 1990s stand as great case studies of effective action for anyone wondering how it’s done.
The point of conflict at that time was a provincial plan to log the old-growth forests of Clayoquot Sound, on the Island’s west coast. We’d been logging coastal forests flat in B.C. for decades by that point, but a new environmental consciousness had started us questioning the prevailing wisdom that every B.C. tree was there for us to log.
The line in the sand turned out to be Clayoquot Sound. One summer day in 1993, almost 800 average British Columbians turned up on a logging road in the middle of nowhere, and stood down the logging trucks.
They got arrested by the dozens and went to jail - regular people, looking earnest in their Goretex jackets and Tilley hats as police led them away. Average folks, including grandmas and office-worker types, went to jail for the love of a forest that a lot of them probably hadn’t even heard of a year or two earlier.
And wouldn’t you know it, B.C. forest policy started to change. It wasn’t all love and flowers from that point on or anything like that, but the Clayoquot protests did indeed change the course of B.C. history.
So I flash back to Clayoquot whenever I need a reminder about how you go about getting the government’s complete attention.
First - and this is a big one - the Clayoquot protest had timing. British Columbians didn’t have much of an interest in environmental issues until the late 1980s, but we’d come a long way by the time Clayoquot was an issue. We knew enough to have an informed opinion on the subject, and to resist government’s usual attempts to pat us on the head while doing whatever it felt like doing.
Lesson No. 1, then: Make sure there’s sufficient public awareness out there of what you’re protesting about. Government responds only when they sense a major groundswell of opposition to their plans. If your issue isn’t yet well-known enough to elicit that groundswell (parents of autistic children losing services, take note), then doing something about that is your first task.
The Clayoquot protest also had a charismatic leader in Tseporah Berman and other home-grown environmentalists, and celebrity support from the likes of the late Robert Kennedy Jr. It had smooth-talking, well-informed spokespeople to disseminate its messages, but also slightly crazy protesters on the front line doing dangerous things like chaining themselves to logging trucks - guaranteed to draw the news crews.
It also had economic power, which perhaps more than anything explains why social protest has not been able to get off the ground in B.C. despite more than 10 years of ruinous policy. When the logging trucks didn’t roll, somebody somewhere didn’t get paid. That made all the difference to getting government’s attention.
We who toil for causes where the economic impact isn’t as instantly apparent need to figure that one out. History tells us that economic disruption matters much more than “heart” in changing the course of social policy. Protest works when it hits government and the private sector in the pocketbook.
As for last week’s Olympic torch protest, it will be a brief blip in history that most people will remember as a dispute over marbles. Whatever your issue might be, learn from Clayoquot and do it right.

Excuse me, doc - any advice for the uncertain?

What are we to take from the fact that a majority of adult Canadians don’t want to be immunized against the H1N1 flu?
I know how they feel. I’m still on the fence myself about whether to get the shot. Being immunized definitely appears to be the logical, civic-minded choice, but there’s this part of me that’s just really hesitant about getting a flu shot.
And 51 per cent of the Canadians apparently feel the same way.
Asked in an on-line poll this month about whether they’d be getting vaccinated against H1N1, more than half said no. That’s up significantly from July, when only 38 per cent were saying no.
That fact must be a great disappointment to the public-health officials working hard on the H1N1 front. People were alarmed as all get-out when the new strain of influenza first took hold in Mexico, and the task back then looked like it was going to be about keeping a worried public calm until a vaccine could be developed.
Instead we’ve ended up here, with immunization now available but fewer Canadians actually wanting it. That’s a fascinating turn of events.
What it speaks to more than anything is that the public no longer knows who to trust about such things. That’s especially true when it comes to flu shots.
We were terrified of H1N1 when it first started wreaking havoc in Mexico. I followed each new development with great interest as the virus took hold in the spring, and had long conversations with my own adult children in hopes of getting them thinking about vaccination.
But then H1N1 arrived in our own home towns. And in most cases it looked a lot like any other seasonal flu, except with more people getting it.
Public health experts continued to emphasize that H1N1 had the potential to be a much more serious type of flu. People do die from it - 87 so far in Canada. But it seems that the more H1N1 has taken hold in Canada, the more our scepticism has grown about getting immunized.
Canadians are sceptical of flu shots to begin with - less than a third of us get the seasonal shot.
The peculiar thing is that we’re generally pretty happy to get immunized. I got seven immunizations for a trip to Ghana a decade ago, and didn’t second-guess any of them. Most Canadians are quite willing to be immunized against major illnesses and to get their children immunized as well, so it’s not like vaccination is a foreign concept.
Ah, but the flu shot - for some reason, that’s a whole different thing. North Americans overall just haven’t taken to the flu shot, despite years of admonitions from public health officials about the importance of doing so.
Is it because you need a shot every year? Or because you’ve had the flu many times and it hasn’t killed you yet? Is it about the horror stories of vaccinations gone wrong that emerge just often enough to confirm your reluctance, or maybe a secret suspicion that it’s good for your immune system to have to fight off illness on its own once in a while?
I admit to a little of all of those in my own feelings about getting a flu shot. And I know it’s all about having an emotional reaction to the issue rather than a logical one. I hate being sick with the flu and I’m asthmatic to boot, so there’s no sensible reason for me to resist inoculation.
In the case of H1N1, experiences in my own family this past month should have also pushed me toward immunization if logic had anything to do with it. My brother’s wife is still recovering in hospital after a terrible bout of H1N1 that left her incapacitated and on a ventilator in the intensive care unit for almost a week.
But there’s something that I just can’t get my head around when it comes to flu shots. I wish I understood my resistance better, because I like to think I make good choices when it comes to my health. Public health officials might want to try to understand the resistance of people like me as well, because their messages clearly aren’t having the desired effect if the majority of Canadians are saying no to a flu shot.
Please take my musings on this subject as nothing more than that. I offer no advice on whether to get an H1N1 shot. I’m just saying that rightly or wrongly, many of us need more convincing.

It's community involvement that sets Project Connect apart

For the past two years, I’ve had the honour of organizing the Project Connect service fair for the street community, put on by the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness.
This year, we saw at least 700 people through the door for the event at Our Place drop-in last Wednesday. They came for help: a new birth certificate, care for their broken and battered feet, a haircut, vet care, a backpack full of useful stuff They also came for food, eating a whopping 2,100 hamburgers and 1,000 hot dogs by day’s end.
I don’t know whether to be delighted or heartsick that the number of people at the event was up by more than 200 this year, or that we served twice as many burgers and dogs. Sure, it’s great to draw a crowd, but I dream of the day when an event for people living in profound poverty fails to attract anybody.
If you’ve done any event-planning, you’ll know it’s a crazy-making activity with a million details to attend to. But when it all comes together, it’s a whole lot of fun, especially when the event is Project Connect. What sets it apart is that it really is a community-wide effort - one that depends on hundreds of people in our region stepping up to make a difference.
Consider, for instance, what it took to be able to hand out 700 backpacks last week.
First, it took the efforts of leadership students at seven local secondary schools to help us hustle up some of those packs - 250 all told. But we needed many more than that, and couldn’t have done it without a generous cash donation from a local businessman and a sweet deal on back-to-school packs offered to us by Wal-Mart and Real Canadian Superstore.
Then we needed things to put in those packs. We wanted to put a dozen or so items in each pack: a new pair of socks, gloves, toque, scarf, deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, and other essentials. But that meant collecting almost 9,000 individual items.
For that, we turned to the community. And people really came through.
The Church of the Nazarene bought us 500 pair of men’s gloves. Lambrick Park Church’s “The Place” congregation rustled up 400 toques and 200 scarves. St. Philip’s Anglican Church bought 400 emergency blankets. UM Marketing donated 200 deodorants, 800 razors, and 600 packages of tampons. Save On Foods, Safeway, Thrifty Foods, Lifestyle Market and Costco loaded us up with food.
Workplace donation drives at Telus, Queen Alexandra Society, Victoria Foundation, the Ministry of Housing and Social Development, Royal Bank Oak Bay and Shaw Cable brought us box after box of the kinds of things we needed. So did you - for four days straight in late September and again in early October, members of the public poured into Our Place with armloads of donations for Project Connect.
That all of the above happened was largely due to the efforts of five amazing volunteers I’d gathered around me to help organize the event. My deepest thanks to Gloria Hoeppner, Ruth Simkin, Deb Nilsen, Jill Martin-Bates and Willie Waddell - women who I’ve come to count on whenever the occasion calls for a crack team of volunteers.
The packs wouldn’t have been packed without them. Some 10,000 donated items would have gone unsorted. These women’s vehicles, husbands, living rooms, charge cards, friends and neighbours were all conscripted to the cause, as were mine. But hey, we got things done.
As for Our Place, which hosted Project Connect this year - well, I can’t say enough good things about those guys. Everybody on staff was unfailingly helpful and patient with us. I don’t know where we would have stored our overflowing bounty of pack items, let alone physically done the packing, were it not for Our Place making room for us every step of the way.
What was particularly nice was that anytime someone from our group arrived at the drop-in with the latest load of big heavy things needing to be carried in, at least four or five of the men who come to Our Place would immediately step forward with offers to help. Is there another place in the city where you can count on such gentlemanly behaviour?
And this long list was just what it took to get the packs together. Multiply the effort tenfold for all the volunteers who turned out that day, all the service providers who were there, all the work Gord Fry and the Capital Lions Club put in to help us feed such a big crowd, all the media support for getting the word out.
It was a remarkable community achievement. Thank you.

Pointless prostitution laws help no one but hurt many

Sex work is back in the headlines again, and will be for quite some time with a constitutional challenge to Canada’s prostitution laws finally underway this week.
I wish miracles for the three brave sex workers who launched the challenge. That’s what they’ll need to survive the savaging they’re in for at the hands of those who staunchly oppose anything that might make it easier or safer to be a sex worker.
The case in front of the Ontario Superior Court is challenging three sections of the Criminal Code: the “common bawdyhouse” laws that make anything to do with operating a brothel illegal; procuring or living off the avails of prostitution; and communicating for the purposes of prostitution.
In deciding the case, Justice Susan Himel will be gauging whether our prostitution laws are proportionate to their purpose, or if they have the effect of forcing sex workers into unsafe situations where they can be preyed on by deviants and serial killers.
So let’s ponder those two issues for a moment.
Sex work is legal in Canada, yet everything required for a sale to take place is illegal - location, marketing, even the earnings. That renders the work just legal enough for men to be able to acquire paid sex anytime they like in any city, and just illegal enough to continue the pretence that Canadian society is hard at work trying to eradicate prostitution. What exactly IS the purpose of laws like that?
As for whether the impact of the laws is proportionate to their purpose, I can’t wait to hear the arguments on that point. How many vulnerable women have died across Canada just in the last decade because our laws forced them to work out of sight in the rough parts of town, getting into cars with strangers? How could a gruesome impact like that possibly be proportionate in a civilized society?
What gets me the most about the laws around prostitution is the grand hypocrisy of it all.
We wrung our hands and wept for all the missing women when Robert Pickton’s exploits were the news of the day. We went to their vigils. But we didn’t do one thing that made life safer for the women working our streets.
We tell ourselves that only deviants and weirdos buy sex, and only victimized, desperate people sell it. But Canadians of every stripe are frequenting the places where sex is sold, and leading secret lives as part-time sex workers. Were a scarlet letter ever to appear on all the chests of people who have ever bought and sold sex, I think you’d be amazed to see who was in the club.
The sale of sex is a rip-roaring business in every Canadian community. Every moment spent denying that is another nail in the coffin of women working in isolation and danger on the nation’s outdoor strolls. Outdoor work is the mere tip of the iceberg in terms of the scope of the industry, but it’s certainly the place where the most negative impacts of our poorly considered laws are felt.
I understand the powerful emotions that drive the abolitionist movement. I know that some people have had tragic experiences in the sex trade. It’s definitely a job for adults only, and even then it’s not something that most people are cut out for.
But it’s still a job. Occasional monsters and victims notwithstanding, the buyers are for the most part ordinary people. The sellers are by and large happy for the money. Meanwhile, those who aren’t happy in the work take no solace from the law, because it can only punish them further.
I read an opinion piece the other day from an abolitionist exhorting Canadians to resist anything that might normalize prostitution as a legitimate career choice. That tired old argument is trotted out anytime someone dares to mutter about decriminalizing the industry: “Oh, horrors, your child could end up working as a prostitute!”
Read the research. Prostitution doesn’t increase when it’s decriminalized, because it’s already so well-entrenched in every community that there’s no increase in demand just because it’s now legal. All the men who buy sex are already buying it.
Nor is the growth of sex tourism much of a concern in Canada. Sex workers here are no more likely than any other Canadian to work for the pathetic, exploitive wages that sex workers earn in countries like Thailand.
And even if all that weren’t so, surely we don’t want to support laws that maintain an ugly and dangerous work environment just so our own daughters won’t be tempted into that line of work.
Every woman who works in the industry is somebody’s daughter. We owe it to all of them to fix this mess we’ve made.