I guess it's no surprise that the Conservative-heavy Senate is bound to crush the bill that would create human-rights protection for transgender and transsexual people, as this story notes. For reasons that I've never been clear on, we're supposed to presume that Conservatives - at least the kind we have in Canada right now - are the type of people who just don't like transgender people.
But really, why would anyone be in favour of allowing discrimination of transgender people? I mean, it's not like providing them with human-rights protection is going to encourage more people to become transgendered, or send a bad message to Canadian children.
It ought to be unacceptable for anyone to face discrimination solely because of who they are. Let's hope the Senate just gets out of the way on this one and lets it happen. 

Helpful piece in the Globe and Mail this morning for people like me, struggling to understand what all this fuss about a metered Internet means to them. Count me among the large number of Canadians who, up until all of this became big news, never even knew I had a limited plan. (The "explainer" link at the bottom of the story is also very useful.)
It's been barely a month since I figured out how to stream Netflix onto my TV and I'm totally enthralled, having been completely frustrated and furious over the consistently lousy programming that my pricey cable subscription gets me. So I'm deeply interested in this story line.
The issue looks like it's about Internet providers' right to charge heavy users more, but it's actually about Canada's non-competitive environment. Unlimited internet plans are standard in the U.S.
 Man, this country has some strange ideas around where we'll draw the line on competition. We eat foreign-grown food, work for foreign-owned companies, dress in foreign-made clothes, drive foreign-made vehicles - but damn it, when it comes to our internet and airlines, we're proudly protectionist. And never mind that such industry-driven positions work against Canadians. 

Mental health left to scramble for crumbs

Depending on who you talk to, psychiatric care in the region for people with chronic and debilitating mental illness is either in frightening disarray or just experiencing a few bumps on the way to a better day.

A number of the doctors who preside over hospital psychiatric care in the region say the cuts of the last two years have had a disastrous impact on people with serious mental illness.

Two of the doctors have already resigned in protest from the health authority’s Department of Psychiatry, and more have threatened to.  Last month, department members in the South Island passed a motion of no confidence in Dr. Robert Miller, medical director of mental health services for the Vancouver Island Health Authority.

But a spokesman for the health authority says the vote against Miller was “completely inappropriate,” and that the issue is really about a small number of psychiatrists resistant to change. The health authority has complete confidence in Miller, says Dr. Bob Burns, VIHA’s executive medical director for population and community health.

VIHA has kept a careful eye on the 200 to 300 people (the opposing sides differ on the numbers, too) left without case managers due to service cuts in the South Island, says Burns.

The gamble was whether people would fall back on emergency services once they lost the case managers who used to co-ordinate their care. That hasn’t happened, he says. “I can only presume they have other supports in the community.” 

The psychiatrists who passed the no-confidence motion beg to differ. “Mental health management continues to bury its head in the sand and ignore a very large group of chronically mentally ill patients. They and their families rarely speak out,” Dr. Andre Masters wrote in a Times Colonist opinion piece last summer.

Who to believe? Ultimately, the fight is over quality of care for two very different groups of people with mental illness. I’d argue that it’s crazy to pit one against the other.

One group lives in the madness and isolation of the streets, bouncing in and out of homelessness and addiction. The other has housing and more outward stability, but still faces all the challenges of a life lived with chronic and severe mental illness.

The smart and humane strategy would be to ensure both groups get the kind of care they need. Just like chronic physical illness, severe mental illness tends to get better if treated and worse if ignored. The best bang for the taxpayer’s buck is effective, consistent care based on people’s needs.

But it just doesn’t work that way in times of scarce resources and government frugality - particularly when the issue is mental health.

It has been the poor cousin of Canada’s health-care system since the beginning. Services for mental health and addiction continue to be the first place governments look for savings, and the last to attract new money.

So when provincial money started flooding into homelessness initiatives a couple years ago - and hallelujah for that - I guess we should have all known that some other part of the system was going to have to pay for it.

And that’s what has happened. The money that used to pay for case managers for people with chronic mental illness now funds four Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams on the Island working with street-entrenched people in Greater Victoria and Nanaimo. 

Burns says the ACT model has tremendous potential for reducing hospital-based psychiatric care. VIHA acted on that presumption by closing 10 beds in the Eric Martin psychiatric hospital and eliminating six case managers to help cover the costs of the outreach teams.

Patient care hasn’t suffered, says Burns. The current dispute with psychiatrists boils down to “a small group stuck in the way we’ve always done things.”

Maybe. The multi-disciplinary outreach teams certainly have been a wonderful addition to street-level resources. They’re making a real difference in the lives of some of the most vulnerable, ill people on our Island.

But did those additional services have to come at the cost of another group of extremely ill people who also need the support?

VIHA has apparently concluded it was overserving that population, given that the group’s use of emergency services didn’t immediately increase after they lost their case managers.

I fear we’ve merely unravelled another thread in a historically skimpy safety net. Time will tell, but in the meantime two poorly served populations are left to fight over scraps.

This is the kind of reporting I think is really valuable - Robert Matas takes a press release from the B.C. government and digs into what it really means, putting in the context for readers so that they can better understand the significance (or lack thereof) of the announcement on more childcare subsidies.

Unbelievable story about the culling of sled dogs in Pemberton.  People are going to go crazy over this one, all over the world. And what a nasty taint to give the B.C. Olympics - the image of all these happy huskies touring Olympic visitors around for their little sled rides, then killed at the end of the season because nobody could be bothered to figure out a better solution.
Nice try with the "we tried to get these dogs adopted" bit, but did you hear a word about this up until now? Had the company come out with a press release saying 100 dogs were going to die unless people stepped forward to adopt them, there'd have been homes found. If we can send hundreds of rabbits to rescue projects in the U.S., surely we could have found placements for retiring sled dogs.
Here's a link to the blogosphere heating up over this one. A measure of just how big this story is going to be: I did a Google search on "sled dogs killed" and quickly pulled up search page after search page of news coverage, blog comment and tweets on the Pemberton dog massacre.
Just in case you're thinking this is some kind of anomaly in the dog-sled-tourism business, a 2005 story out of Denver, Colorado notes a similar shocking slaughter south of the border.

This piece points out some fairly staggering dollar figures for health-care fraud in the U.S. I went looking for made-in Canada stats but can't seem to find any, but I did come across this site that has some news about the kinds of things we get up to on this front in our country.

We don't want police as arbiters of public information

Without question, the murder-suicide in Cadboro Bay last week was a “family tragedy,” in the words of Saanich police.

But it was also a crime, and a very serious one at that.  And yet the police department has refused to release the usual details that are made public after a murder. In the case of Erich and Kathy Mueller, police are even refusing to say who was victim and who was murderer.

I feel for the Mueller family. But then again, I feel for all the families who have to endure a crime, not to mention the media coverage that follows. It must be quite a terrible experience when it’s your child, your parents, your life, being blasted all over that day’s news, and at a time of immense grief.

Unfortunately, that’s how it is in a free country. Someone caught committing a crime, no matter how small, could end up in the news if the media take an interest. If you kill someone, your crime is absolutely going to get coverage.

That’s exactly how it should be in my mind. Police departments are overstepping their bounds when they make arbitrary decisions over how much information to release to the media.

It’s rare for police to withhold basic details, mind you, and from what I can tell happens only when the crime has been committed by an older person from a good background. But that fact just underlines that police are making these kinds of decisions for all the wrong reasons.

If the Mueller murder-suicide had happened in a downtown hotel known for its impoverished, addicted clientele, would police still be withholding the most basic details of the crime - like who killed who? Or if the couple had been, say, Somali immigrants two years in the country? Or a young aboriginal couple?

Of course, it could be that in all of those situations, police would have made exactly the same decisions around what information to release. Maybe factors like economic status, age, family likeability and race don’t play a role in such decisions, and never mind how it looks from the outside.

But at a minimum, police should tell us why they won’t release more details in the Mueller case. Nobody wants to make life any more miserable for the family, but the principle underlying this issue is too important to ignore.

We all recognize police aren’t able to make certain details public immediately after a crime  - in the interest of solving it, notifying next-of-kin and securing public safety.

But that’s not this is about. This is about special status conferred to some families based on the personal feelings of police.

Do we really want police deciding on our behalf which crimes we’ll be told about? Which details we’ll learn? Do we want to leave it to police to pick and choose which families will be shielded from adverse publicity - and conversely, which ones won’t be?

This latest tragedy isn’t an isolated case. I remember a heated exchange over the Times Colonist boardroom table with two Victoria police officers. It was 1994 and I was city editor, and police were very, very angry with us for publishing the names of a local dentist and his wife found dead in their Rockland Avenue home.

The dentist had killed his wife with a hammer and then hanged himself. But police were categorizing it as a “family tragedy” rather than a crime, and had refused to release the couple’s names. They were furious that the paper had gone ahead and reported who they were anyway.

More commonly, police categorize elderly drivers from good backgrounds as “different” for media purposes in cases where the driver ends up killing or injuring people. Their names are virtually never released to the public.

Why? Are we saying that it’s less of a crime to injure someone when you’re old and demented than it is when you’re young and stupid?

I roll my eyes with the best of them at the excesses of the media. But we should all be grateful that somebody’s out there pushing on the public’s behalf. Knowing the details can be painful, but it’s a heck of a lot better than leaving it to police and government to decide what the public has a right to know.

Equal treatment at the hands of the law is a well-entrenched social more in Canada, and a constitutional right. Surely that includes equality and transparency around how police report out on crimes.

I've been contemplating information sources lately, seeing as we live in an age where the amount of information grows exponentially with each passing day even while the quality and reliability grows increasingly unpredictable.
That got me thinking this morning about how much I appreciate the Globe and Mail, which really does put a lot of effort into keeping the hysteria out of its voice and presenting useful, accurate information for its readers. Today's piece on the plight of women with mental illness in our prison system is an excellent example (check out the "infographic" for some startling statistics).
For the past year I've been doing some work for Demand Media, a tough little freelance gig out of the U.S. that pays almost no money and requires writers to really dig deep to get rock-solid sources for the most obscure topics you could imagine. While I avoid calculating my actual hourly pay for that work - it'd just bum me out - I have found that it has really sharpened my skills at finding reliable on-line sources for information.
They're going to have start teaching that at school pretty soon, as the traditional media models break down and new ones continue to emerge. My advice: Find a few sources you trust and screen out the rest of the noise, because knowing you're getting accurate, unspun information every time is a very valuable thing. 

Check out this ad campaign launched this week in Halifax. The community agency that launched the campaign is Stepping Stone, which has been working  with past and current sex workers in Halifax for 20 years. It's the agency's first-ever public awareness campaign, and off to a great start with some help from Extreme Group, a Canadian ad agency that created a funny, edgy and right-on series of print ads making the point that sex workers are people, too.
Here's the news story about the campaign. What a great way to target the stigma that surrounds sex work. 

Bad design in the Globe's piece Saturday on mental illness and the federal prison system made it a challenging read. Here's an on-line version of Kirk Makin's piece, reprinted on the Social Policy in Ontario site (better than the Globe link for a blogger's purpose, as the link won't disappear in a week like it will on the Globe site). 

Sobering stats in here -  at least 35 per cent of inmates in federal jails have mental illnesses requiring treatment. Like homelessness, the increasing criminalization of mental illness is more unmistakeable proof of Canada's failure to deal competently with treatment and care for people with mental illness. 

Say what, Ms. Premier?

Here's Christy Clark on...what, exactly? I do quite a bit of work with the non-profit sector and am familiar with the initiatives she mentions here, but I still couldn't make heads or tails out of what the Liberal leadership candidate was actually saying in this news release.

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

January 20, 2011

Clark Wants Non-Profit and Public Partnerships

VANCOUVER ­ BC Liberal leadership candidate Christy Clark wants to look at strengthening the role of non-profit organizations and volunteers in delivering services to British Columbians.

³The work that non-profits, charities and volunteer groups do every day in British Columbia is inspiring and helps to form the bedrock of our communities,² says Clark. ³These groups are creative in the way they deliver services, they react to the needs of their residents with an alacrity that government can¹t match and provide tremendous value for money. Let¹s recognize the work that is being done and see if there is not a way to fashion a greater role through NPPPs, non-profit and public partnerships.²

Clark says the provincial government, through its Non-Profit Initiative and lead organization Vancouver Foundation, has laid the groundwork for the expansion of the work being done by non-profit groups in British Columbia.

³The reality is government does not need to be the sole provider of all services in British Columbia,² she says. ³Programs offered in the community and by the community can be a tremendous resource and we should look at improving the great work all ready being done.

Government can provide funding and expertise to help these groups. If elected premier, I want to hold a special summit with non-profits, charities and government to see if we can construct a made-in BC model for public and non-profit partnerships. ²

The expansion of non-profits, under Clark¹s vision, would follow four

principles:

·         Transparent selection: organizations would clearly know how funding will be allocated and the criteria for selection

·         Encourage: motivate groups and people to get involved

·         Resources: Provide predictable funding and provide knowledge transfer from the B.C. Public Service to non-profits

·         Measurability: Reward excellence and identify weaknesses in public and non-profit delivery of services.

³This campaign is about putting families first and strong communities, with vibrant non-profit groups that contribute so much, are a key part of that,² says Clark. ³It¹s time we look at taking the work that has been done and raising it to the next level. Let¹s engage non-profits, let¹s engage British Columbians and find a way to build a non-profit and public partnership that strengthens communities.²

Earlier this month, Clark committed to holding a review of the current governance and funding formula for gaming grants to ensure charities and community groups have a stable and sustainable source of funding.

Are we seeing more of these kinds of incidents, or are we just more likely to hear about them in this age of cellphone cameras and reporters packing video cameras? Unsettling stuff, not only because of the completely unnecessary boot to the face given this guy but the many questions around how he ended up tagged by police for being a domestic abuser when the women in his life have no idea where that came from.
Whatever else is going on for police in B.C., I think they're developing a serious PR problem with all this stuff. Most police are good people risking their lives to keep us safe from harm - we all get that, I'm sure. But there's definitely more than one rotten apple spoiling things for the larger group, and I hope chiefs all over the province are doing some sober thinking about the suitability of some of the people they're hiring for the work.
In the meantime, keep your cameras on hand. 


  

Americans dying for their right to guns

Update as of June 12, 2016 - the day after the worst mass killing yet in the U.S., at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Based on the number of mass killings noted in this story and the ones that have happened in the intervening years since I wrote this, there have now been 126 mass killings in the U.S. in the last 50 years. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve written on the gun issue. I categorize it with issues like abortion, religion, war and Capital Regional District sewage. Most people's minds are made up, so columns don't have much point.

But this latest mass killing in Arizona can’t go without comment. It’s just too blatant a reminder of what can happen when a country loses a grip on gun control.

I know the U.S. is intense about its citizens’ right to bear arms, even when it means leaving the door wide open for deranged, violent people to lose their minds in a most damaging way.

 But surely the citizens themselves must be growing horrified by the truly awful crimes happening in their public spaces. Sometimes even dearly held beliefs need to go by the wayside.

Mass killings like the one in Tucson, Arizona this week are still extremely rare events, of course.

But they’re no longer once-a-generation aberrations like they once were. A 2007 story on the MSNBC Web site reports 100 mass killers in the U.S. since 1966 - the year sniper Charles Whitman climbed a University of Texas tower and started shooting people. Add in at least another dozen in the last three years.

Loose gun laws - laws that most recently allowed a wild-eyed, dangerous young man in the grip of delusion to buy a gun on impulse - have much to do with that.

That’s not to suggest the gun laws are to blame for Jared Loughner’s killing spree. I’m sure any number of wrong turns led to the disastrous decision young Loughner made on Saturday. His being able to buy a handgun in a state that sells them as easily as a pack of smokes was just one of many factors.

But if it weren’t for the Glock in his hand, Loughner couldn’t have done the same damage in such a short period of time. You simply can’t consider the phenomenon of mass public slayings without talking about gun control.

I completely agree with that old saw about how guns don’t kill people, people do. But until we’ve perfected the human being, gun control is all we’ve got.

Fortunately, we live just north of a country that stands as a stark example of what happens when you let that go. Canada has a habit of doggedly following the U.S. into all kinds of trouble on many fronts, but at least on this issue we have taken our own path. May we never stray.

Bearing arms is a constitutional right in the U.S. I don’t think they’re going to give that up. It says a lot that President Barack Obama hasn’t uttered a word about gun control in the days since the Tucson shooting.

But even in a country that views gun ownership as a treasured right, does that require that guns be available to virtually anyone, in every corner store?

One of the popular arguments against limiting sales is that guns are readily available on the black market anyway.

OK, that’s a point. Certainly those in the business of packing guns for illegal activities - gangs, for instance, or professional hit men - would barely register any impact as a result of gun control. Wherever the guns are, they’ll find them.

But it’s not gangs and hit men who are the problem when it comes to the gunning down of random citizens in Safeway parking lots. Nor is it black-market guns.

No, the lone-gunman scenario that has become such a standard story line in the U.S. virtually always involves a deranged, delusional man using a weapon he bought legally. Legal guns are the problem.

The deluge of media coverage on the Tucson killings has brought forward several good points.

It’s true that political rhetoric in the U.S. has reached a fever pitch, in ways that can sound like a call to war to minds that are already fractured and inflamed. It’s also true that expelling an unhinged student from college and leaving him to stew in his own hatred was, in hindsight, an unfortunate development. It’s true that better security at the event might have made the difference.  

But Loughner still couldn’t have killed six people with ease and efficiency were it not for the gun in his hand. I hope ordinary Americans wake up to that truth soon.

U.S. gun laws aren’t responsible for producing a mentally unstable young man full of hate. But they did make it possible for him to become a mass murderer.

   

If you're in Vancouver tomorrow, you might want to drop in on a public meet-and-greet featuring the six B.C. Liberals vying for the provincial leadership of the party. Here are the details, plus some other opportunities for hanging out with the leadership candidates. Tickets for tomorrow's forum are $10.
NDP leadership campaign feels like it's still waiting for somebody to light a fire under it. Anyone? Soon?

The ups and (major) downs of governance by whimsy

The provincial government made the very interesting choice over the Christmas season to buy a former air-force base near Prince George that’s been turned into an addiction treatment centre for men.

On the one hand, it’s great news. B.C. has never had anything quite like this centre before. Men can stay for up to a year in a village-style setting at the Baldy Hughes Therapeutic Community, with government footing the bill if people qualify for income assistance. That’s terrific.

On the other, it’s a striking reminder of how political and uneven the decision-making has become in B.C. Wonderful to have a new addiction resource available for British Columbians, but just a little unsettling when it happens in the same year that other addiction services are being cut across the province.

Welcome to life in a province with no social policy. Funding comes and goes based on whim and political influence, as far as I can tell. Even while the Baldy Hughes facility was launching for men with severe addictions, an effective and well-used provincial treatment centre for youth in Terrace was closing due to funding cuts. 

Political connections certainly seem to help when it comes to who’s up and who’s down. Baldy Hughes was started in late 2007 by former Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt. He’s no longer involved, but I have to think that being founded by a high-profile Liberal is a plus when looking for money.

But the source of funding is also a critical piece. A budget crisis among B.C.’s health authorities caused the cuts to addiction services last year. The $3 million to buy and operate Baldy Hughes is mostly coming from B.C. Housing and the Social Development Ministry.

Good news for Baldy Hughes. Less good for whatever provincial housing/welfare priorities got tossed as a result of money being routed to addiction services instead.

As for sustainability, nobody in the non-profit sector can count on that. Funding priorities can change in an instant when a province is making social policy up on the fly. That’s the real harm of political decision-making in a policy vacuum, particularly in a downturn: Anything can happen, and it rarely has anything to do with whether a service is effective and well-used.

Baldy Hughes executive director Marshall Smith says the therapeutic community has already had significant success. He’ll be releasing the data bearing that out later this month after a University of B.C. evaluation wraps up.

Seventy men are now staying at the centre, and soon there will be 90. Success is measured by ongoing sobriety, improved health and “positive citizenship,” says Smith.

“Are you employed? Are you housed? Have you stopped committing offences? Those are all measures of positive citizenship, which is unique to a therapeutic-community approach,” says Smith. “That’s a necessary thing if someone’s going to maintain their success.”

Smith has some expertise on that front. A former political aide to Ted Nebbeling, he was on the streets himself for more than three years, 2004-07, after a drug addiction took over his life. He sobered up and signed on with Mayencourt to develop the centre.

Unfortunately, the centre could turn out to be an amazing success and that still wouldn’t assure its funding. Many, many fine programs and services have folded in B.C. over the years - not because anyone was unhappy with their work, but simply because funders lost interest or found a new flavour. 

Baldy Hughes is getting $277,000 annually from B.C. Housing for operating expenses and another $610 a month from the Social Development Ministry for each resident on income assistance, up to $676,000 a year. (Those who don’t qualify for assistance pay $3,000 a month.)

It’s a pretty unusual funding envelope for addiction services. And it’s a risky one as well, because the largesse usually lasts only until somebody in the ministry decides down the line it’s time to get back to “core services.”

Addiction services should be funded just like any other kind of essential care. They’re too important to be managed in this random, poorly considered fashion.

Don’t get me wrong - I like what they’re trying to do at Baldy Hughes. The continuum of addiction services is desperately thin in B.C., and I like the idea of an abstinence-based village in the wilderness that keeps people away from their troubles long enough to forge new ways to cope.

But we’re talking about people’s lives here. We need a broad and consistent vision that holds steady long after the winds of political popularity blow over.

Things are going to get better...aren't they?

I'm on the final day of a three-day juice fast and it's raining, raining, raining, so maybe that explains why everything in the newspapers this morning just seemed like a complete bummer.
Starving bear cubs, cheap honey imports from China destroying the honey industry, sick stories of (alleged) pedophiles rigging weird broom-handle contraptions to torment young boys, the usual array of murders, assaults, fires and mixed fatalities. And the relentless drone of B.C. leadership candidates trying to get out their messages, none of which has so far given me any hope for a bright new future (Christy Clark, please stop with the tiresome talk-radio persona).
Fortunately, I did find one heartening thing to read this morning, a column in the Times Colonist by the Ottawa Citizen's Dan Gardner. I like him when he rants but I like him even better when he just lays out the cold, hard facts, as he does in this piece about our misplaced hysteria about Muslims.

Oh, news from the world can be very weird sometimes, like this story out of Kansas of nursing students posting a picture on Facebook of them posing with a human placenta.
Not a great idea, as it turns out, although I can't for the life of me understand the comments in the story that one of these young women may now be blacklisted from nursing as a result. I guess it shows poor judgment to want to get your photo taken with a placenta and share it with the world, but it doesn't seem like the kind of act that automatically rules you out of nursing.
My mom, an old nurse herself, told me that when she was a student nurse, one of the almighty-god kinds of doctors they had running the show at that time actually threw a patient's uterus at my mother after she'd had the misfortune of handing the guy the wrong instrument during a hysterectomy.
Now THAT's an act that deserves a little censure, on all kinds of fronts.

 May your new year be meaningful!

New years are interesting things. They’re basically just the rather arbitrary start to another 365 days, but I do like the sense of hope that always seems to accompany them.

If nothing else, a new year is an invitation to reflect on the old one. Unless you’re one of those rare creatures living the dream, that usually leads to some deep thinking about what needs changing in your life and in your world.  I suspect that’s what gives the new year that air of hopefulness.

Fat people resolve to get thin. Harried parents resolve to spend more time with their neglected kids. Struggling businesses resolve to have the year that changes everything. The resolutions of a new year are whatever you want them to be, but they’re virtually always about doing better.

That’s not to say that our resolutions end up happening. We all know the high failure rates of new-year resolutions. But even just thinking about the things that need to change is better than not thinking at all, and for that we ought to be grateful.

I spent three years working with women in crisis at PEERS Victoria. In the early months, I was tripping all over myself trying to understand the kinds of things that were going on in their lives and how to help them.

Fortunately, a local psychologist suggested I do some reading around the stages of change. And it all fell into place.

In that instance, I used the stages model to help me understand why people continued to use drugs harmfully even when they were completely destroying their lives doing it. But I’ve used the stages of change to think about all kinds of puzzling behaviours since then, because it’s really clarifying.

In the language of that model, the new year is essentially the preparation stage - stage three in the five-stage process. It’s the stage where you’ve recognized your problem and that something has to change, and now you’re determined to act.

Not surprisingly, the preparation stage was a profoundly hopeful period in the lives of the street-entrenched sex workers who tended to come through the doors at PEERS in my time there.

They’d gone through much adversity getting to that point, and knew that much personal work still lay ahead if they were to succeed.  But at that very moment, there was nothing but hope.

The new year has that same feeling. For at least a few days once a year, we collectively focus on problems that we’ve been thinking about for a while, and what we’re prepared to do about them. We recognize our own role in making change happen.

I like to think that people in high places experience something similar at the start of a new year. Sure, they probably swear off bad carbs and vow to do more exercise just like the rest of us; Stephen Harper definitely trimmed down over the past year. But I hope they spare a thought or two for the bigger picture.

We need our politicians, policy-makers and business leaders making resolutions. We need health-system CEOs preparing for change. We need provincial leadership candidates who can articulate more meaningful transformation for B.C. than the trivial bits and pieces put forward so far.

And it’s not just up to them. Imagine if everybody made at least one resolution for the larger world this coming year, something that they then made happen.

World peace and an end to global hunger would be really nice in 2011, but a better world is actually built one small good deed at a time. What will yours be?

For those with more traditional resolutions around weight loss and fitness, I hope you find the discipline this year to make them happen.

It’s been 28 years now since I first made exercise a permanent feature of my daily life. I’m deeply grateful for the health, strength, agility and peace of mind it continues to bring me, and for the 25 pounds I managed to lose this past year by eating better (and less).
‘Tis the season of the poet at the Times Colonist. I recommend a piece that I virtually memorized during my time at  PEERS, “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters,  by the late American singer and songwriter Portia Nelson.

Some say the poem perfectly describes the five stages of change. A toast, then, to new beginnings.

A government news release three days before Christmas is always cause for greater scrutiny, because those guys know full well the media are off their game (as are readers and viewers) in the runup to the holiday. So when you see a Dec. 22 release about the province buying former Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt's therapeutic village in Prince George, it's just one of those things that make you go, "Hmm."
Not that it's necessarily a bad thing that the province is taking over the addiction treatment centre. I haven't looked into this at all, so I'm definitely not trying to say there's something wrong about the deal. But I'd suggest it's worth a deeper look just to get a better understanding of how this has come to pass, and what it means to other addiction services if money that used to go to them ends up diverted to cover costs at the Baldy Hughes Therapeutic Community. 
Interesting that it's BC Housing ponying up for the project. They've also been tapped for the $20 million in capital costs to build the Pacific Family Autism Centre in Vancouver, a project put together by Vancouver power-couple Sergio and Wendy Cocchia. About $900,000 of that is being provided to the project proponents in advance so a consultant could be hired and a series of focus groups done around the province this past fall.
Again, that's not to say having a fine new autism centre for excellence is a bad thing. But is this new money, or coming out of existing services? If the private sector doesn't come up with the $34 million in funds that the autism-centre proponents are hoping for, will taxpayers soon be on the hook again for yet another private/public dream that didn't work out as planned? And at what cost to existing services?
I'm all for government funding important community services, of course. But not at the cost of other effective, efficient community services, which the province has been putting the squeeze on for a decade now. Just seems to me we need to have a conversation in B.C. about some of this, because it all feels a bit like social-service-by-political-connection at the moment.

Here's hoping B.C.'s ombudsman agrees to the request of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association to look into the resignation of the province's new chief coroner, Diane Rothon.
Solicitor General Rich Coleman has already proven on a number of occasions that he has no problem with sticking with the official government line no matter what, even when it's obviously a bald-faced lie. He's certainly in top form over the coroner issue, contending that the provincial government has never interfered with the work of the coroner's service - and never mind that every single coroner from 1988 onward has said otherwise.
There is simply no reason that coroners' reports should be handed to the politicized Public Affairs Bureau for vetting before going public, other than as a courtesy for PAB to prepare the government for whatever media questions may arise from a particular report.
 If government is truly supportive of an independent coroner's service, like Coleman says, then it should have no qualms with a direct release to the public. In the meantime, listener beware, especially when it's Rich Coleman doing the talking.

My mom the nurse could regale us all with horror stories about the staph outbreaks in hospitals across Canada in the 1950s, many of which were devastating to moms and their newborns. Now it's Strep A. The scary thing about infections that you get in hospital is that they seem to take hold and never let go these days, unlike the staph outbreak of days gone by. Mom tells me that getting a grip on infections back in the 1950s was all about fanatical hand-washing and rigorous cleaning procedures - but is that still possible in these times when even the docs complain about how rarely other docs wash their hands in between patients?

I’ve been a fan of his heartfelt memorials to his dogs in the “Pets Remembered” section for years, which I guess is why Mal Connors’ writing seemed so familiar to me when I came upon his full-page ad in the Times Colonist last week.

I saw his signature at the end of the 1,600-word letter he paid to run in the Dec. 5 paper, and thought, of course! It’s the Rainbow Bridge man. Thank you, Mal, for the opportunity to learn a little more about you after all these years.

As I now know, the Rainbow Bridge man (that’s how he closes the memorials to his dogs, “See you at Rainbow Bridge”) is the owner of Island Carpet Service, Mal Connors. He’s 73 years old, married to Lizzie, father of four, and retiring after 43 years of doing business in the region.

His ad was essentially a long and deeply personal letter to his customers and friends, every bit as heartfelt as his pet memorials.

“As my tour comes to an end in the work force I would emotionally like to pass onto you all, young and to folks like myself of developed years, these words. I have them in my home gym, office and kitchen: Be unlimited. Be Fearless. Be on top of your game. Be personable,” he writes in the ad.

The letter took him a month to write, he told me, and cost him $4,800 to run in the paper. “You can spend money on different things. I spend it on that,” says Mal, who also doesn’t flinch at the cost of the big memorials he runs for his dogs.

Mal listed his contact number at the bottom of the ad. His phone has been ringing steady ever since the ad came out, including a fellow from the Northwest Territories who called late at night to tell Mal his words had “real resonance” for him.

“People are telling me it’s an amazing letter - such an inspiration, simple and honest,” says a grateful but slightly puzzled Mal. “I just want to say thank you to them for even dialling my number. I’m just so humbled by the phone calls, and they don’t stop coming.”

Even if you’ve never read a Mal memorial, you’d know he loves his dogs by that ad. He writes about the seven dogs, several cats and pet crow that have passed through the family home, and urges readers to “be caring, gentle and show respect to your dogs and other valued pets and give them your daily love. Please, never forget them. “

He’s an interesting man, judging by his ad. But who’d expect any less from a man who mourns his passing pets so generously? Anyone who has known love for an animal knows there’s great grief in saying goodbye, which is why I’ve always appreciated that Mal puts his out there.

Mal has outlived nine dogs in his lifetime.  His current dog is Starlit, a white German shepherd from the Cariboo.

But the family’s lab, Dave, died in September, and Mal is thinking about checking the SPCA for another dog or two. “I’ve got a quarter to a half-acre to farm here,” he says. “There’s room.”

He laminates the memorials to past dogs and hangs them in the kitchen. He has most of their ashes, too.

There are costs to doing it the way Mal likes to do it, but again, he doesn’t flinch at those. He pays the pet crematorium to give his beloved pets a sendoff in a “clean oven,” and patiently waits the two hours that it takes to collect the ashes and bring them home.

“Dogs aren’t for everybody, but they kept me on top of my game,” says Mal. “Cleaning their water bowls, taking them out to Beaver and Elk lakes, all their different personalities. Dogs are a big part of my life.”

I asked him about the Rainbow Bridge reference. He says it’s from a poem. I looked for it on-line, but the links were mostly other heartbroken pet owners saying goodbye to their own dear pets. Wikipedia says the author is unknown, but a kind reader who saw my piece in the TC this morning has now sent me the link. 

“My pets are all waiting for me at Rainbow Bridge, and we’ll cross it together into Heaven,” explains Mal. “I’m not a religious guy, but that’s what I believe.”

Well, Mal, I hope your time at the bridge doesn’t come anytime soon. But you’re in for one heck of a happy reunion when the day comes.

Until then, carry on. The world needs more people with heart.

Good piece by Paul Willcocks in this morning's TC, and I'm not just saying that because he's my partner. (As he'd be the first to tell you.) Excellent stats about what's really happening in B.C. around unemployment. The fact that the government press release was so deliberate in avoiding the truth of these figures serves as a reminder that nothing coming out of the highly politicized Public Affairs Bureau should be taken at face value.

I don’t think of myself as an anarchist. But I admit to feeling quite buoyed by the implosion of B.C.’s two major political parties.

We’ve lived through some tempestuous political times here in B.C. It seems we routinely elect governments that we soon grow to despise. Definitely not the best way to run a province, and I do think we need to work on that.

But there’s a whole other part of the blame that lies with our political parties, which have definitely been ramping up the weirdness in the last 15 years or so. I hope this latest chaos shakes them to their roots, and wakes the rest of us up to the fact that there really are better ways to do this.

I’ve been surprised by the media reaction to the resignation of Carole James this week, much of which has portrayed the 13 dissident New Democrat MLAs as the bad guys. I certainly agree with the standard view of her as a lovely, caring woman, but that’s got little to do with whether she’s a good leader.

I had the pleasure this fall of attending a workshop put on by Ian Chisholm, a local leadership coach who always gets me reflecting on what a leader looks like. He calls it a “gift word” - a title that others give to you because you’ve earned it in their eyes.

That’s a long way from the way we use the term at the political level. Most of us in B.C. are living under the rule of “leaders” we don’t even know, let alone hold in high esteem.

In my dream world, we’d be a province governed by collectively minded independents, probably something along the lines of the citizens’ assembly pulled together by the province in 2004 to investigate electoral reform for B.C. Good people coming together for the betterment of all.

Instead, what we’ve got are two political clubs picking party leaders with no regard to what the rest of us think, who by default become our premiers if we vote that party in. No wonder so many British Columbians grow disillusioned with government leaders so quickly - it’s never us who chooses them.

That the Liberal and New Democrat parties are both muttering at the moment about the need to invoke more party discipline speaks volumes about the flaws in the leadership process. Would a real leader ever be afraid to hear what their team members had to say, or to appreciate and act on other opinions? We’re just in for more of the same if the only lesson the parties have learned from recent events is to clamp down harder.

The leaders in my life earned that designation by acting with integrity and vision, in ways that left me and anyone else they encountered feeling valued and connected. None of them were afraid to hear out their critics and act on what they learned.

So is it a surprise that many of us in B.C. feel we just don’t get the leadership we deserve? Even our political parties now seem to share that angst.

Gordon Campbell has been asking for it for ages. Rule like a king and the serfs are bound to rise up sooner or later.

Carole James losing her lustre is more recent, but things blew up quickly once dissent took hold and the yellow-scarf incident was clearly the kiss of death. I think she’s to be congratulated for recognizing that when 40 per cent of your team is openly against you, it’s time to go.

Who would we pick for leaders in B.C. if it were up to us? I don’t see why it’s such an impossible dream to get out from under the party system and get more of that happening.

Yes, B.C.’s first and only referendum on electoral reform failed in 2005, despite the great work done by the citizens’ assembly. But the chance can come again if we just keep pushing. It needs to.

At any rate, this new rebel spirit among MLAs is hopeful in the interim. If we must have parties, let’s at least have ones that encourage independent thinking, genuine representation and true leadership.  

Say what you will about the old Social Credit party, I remember it fondly for its individualism compared to the authoritarian and controlling parties of today. May the winds of change blow them apart.

More evidence of the high price we're paying for tolerating a growing gap between rich and poor in our country. I can't help but feel we've been tricked - all that talk about freeing up wealth so it could trickle on down, and the result turns out to be a concentration of wealth among the richest Canadians and diminishing tax dollars being spent on services for average Canadians.

Seems like our governments always have massive amounts of money to waste on the projects they get enthusiastic about, like the $3.6 million the feds spent NOT redesigning cigarette packages in an effort to scare off young smokers.
This kind of news is what gets me most when governments are going on about the need for restraint in  difficult times. I'm sure you've noticed that reduced spending is only ever a pressing issue when it involves programs and services that the average Canadian would benefit from.

A reader asked for the link to the source of information in my last column, where I mentioned the government's response to a question about what constitutes lobbying. The information is on the BC Bid site - here's the link to the Request For Information on BC Bid.
You'll need to click on Addendum 8 once there to see the original PDF - scroll down to the question-and-answer part. If you don't care about formatting, here's the relevant text from that addendum:


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:
1. The draft ELMS RFP includes the following clauses regarding communications:
Page 5, Clause b
(b) USE OF REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
Any portion of this document, or any information supplied by the Province in relation to this Request for Information may not be used or disclosed, for any purpose other than to prepare a response to this Request for Information, or to any subsequent Request for Proposals or other competitive bidding process related to this Request for Information. Every recipient of this Request for Information agrees to hold in confidence all information supplied by the Province in relation to this Request for Information.

26. Lobbying
Proponents must not attempt to communicate directly or indirectly with any employee, Contractor or representative of the Province, including the evaluation committee for any Catchment Area and any elected officials of the Province, or with members of the public or the media, about the project described in this RFP or otherwise in respect of the RFP, other than as expressly directed or permitted by the Province. In the event a Proponent lobbies the Province in relation to this Request for Proposals, the Proponent’s proposal may be disqualified.

a) Could an individual organization be deemed disqualified from ELMS bidding if an umbrella organization in which it is a member speaks to politicians, bureaucrats, or the media regarding the overall merits of that umbrella’s membership (eg: the umbrella doesn’t specifically mention the member organization in any way)? Under what conditions might that happen?
b) Could an individual organization be deemed disqualified from ELMS bidding if an umbrella organization in which it is a member speaks to politicians, bureaucrats, or the media regarding that specific vendor? Under what conditions might that happen?
c) Could an individual organization be deemed disqualified from ELMS bidding if a community member speaks to politicians, bureaucrats, or the media regarding that specific vendor, even if the organization in question in no way asked or wanted that community member to engage in that communication? Under what conditions might that happen?
d) BC Bid processes are predicated on being as “transparent” as possible, providing equal information to all potential vendors. To that end, can BC Bid provide information about the process it would undertake to determine whether any one organization may be deemed ineligible to bid on the ELMS procurement due to communications with politicians, bureaucrats or the media? What factors would be considered by the BC Bid in making such a determination? Can BC Bid provide more specific information to potential bidders to promote clearer understanding about communications restrictions related to ELMS BC Bid postings?


ANSWER
The intention of the “Use of Request for Information” clause in the RFI is to prevent any use of the information provided as part of the RFI by any person except to prepare a response to the RFI or to any subsequent RFP or other procurement solicitation.
The intention of the “Lobbying” clause in an RFP is to ensure fair and objective procurement processes that are free from any real or perceived external influences or pressures on potential outcomes. The clause warns against direct or indirect communication with any employee or elected official of the Province or the media about the project described in the RFP or in respect of the RFP. The clause does not prevent any person or organization from normal business activities or discussions with any person regarding subjects that are unrelated to the RFP.
The Ministry will determine, at its sole discretion, when to disqualify a Proposal for a breach of the “Lobbying” clause.

Bullying and intimidation seem to be a theme in government these days.

Our beleaguered politicians have been the ones doing most of the sharing recently, and it’s about time. Thank you, Bill Bennett, for starting what I hope will be a steady stream of politicians drawing the line at being treated like trash by the lords of the manor.

 Believe me, politicians aren’t the only ones who endure abusive behaviour.  People inside and outside of government regularly whisper in my ear these days about alarming developments on various fronts, but all are terrified to talk publicly. They’re afraid of being punished if they do.

I confess, I used to think that argument was conspiratorial hogwash. But I’ve come to see that it’s true for those who rely on provincial government funding in some way.

The current government in particular can be brutish in its punishment of those who dare to challenge its decisions, which increasingly come from on high.  Speak up and it just may be that your contract doesn’t get renewed next time around, or a policy change wipes out your whole program.

It doesn’t even matter whether that’s actually the case, as long as people believe it is. It’s been a damn effective strategy, but the bullies in high places are getting so full of themselves lately that they’re now introducing thuggish confidentiality clauses into funding contracts just to be sure.

Bill Bennett chose to withdraw the “battered-wife syndrome” comparison he made during his passionate rant about Gordon Campbell a couple weeks ago. But I think it’s apt. That’s the phrase that comes to my mind frequently when talking to people who count on money from government to keep the bills paid and the doors open.  

That’s not to trivialize the genuine domestic-abuse cycle in any way, or deride everything that government does. Much of it ticks along in competent fashion.

But in places where decisions get political, it can look a lot like the worst of marriages.

The imbalance of power. The fear and secrecy. The isolation. Bouquets and promises to make it all right just often enough to keep the abused partner on side for another day. And then it’s back to the rough stuff again.

Until Bennett let it all out, I’d begun to wonder whether anyone was going to say something. Community groups are so scared you can barely squeeze a peep out of them, despite the many changes, budget cuts and top-down Big New Ideas jeopardizing all kinds of long-standing and well-used social services throughout the province.

Judging by the silence, I’d have presumed a solid win for government on this front. But no - it’s now making silence a contractual condition even for bidding on a contract.

Its latest Big New Idea - which will significantly change the way B.C. delivers employment-training services - includes a warning to bidders that they could be disqualified if they talk about the proposal to the public, MLAs or the media, “other than as expressly permitted or directed by the Province.”

Asked by potential bidders to clarify this point, the Ministry of Social Development notes in documents on the BC Bid site that “the Ministry will determine, at its sole discretion, when to disqualify a proposal for a breach of the ‘Lobbying’ clause.”

 In other words, speak out at your peril.

That’s a pretty big hammer to hold over the heads of community agencies that will be very much affected by the massive changes proposed for employment-training services.

This is the contract that combines all eight federal and provincial employment-training programs for the first time. The plan is to reduce 400 service contracts to a mere 73, using a bidding process and a financial model so onerous for cash-strapped community agencies that it’s almost like handing the contracts to the big corporations sniffing around B.C. for more social-services work.

Doesn’t that sound like something the good citizens of B.C. might want to hear more about from the people who currently deliver the services? Don’t we all deserve a thorough understanding of revamped service contracts representing a combined federal-provincial commitment of $320 million?

“I think we’re going to lose a lot of agencies, especially specialized services,” says Norma Strachan of ASPECT Community Services, an umbrella organization representing 180 community agencies currently doing this work. Yet the government demands silence from those who best know the issues.

Coercive confidentiality clauses and governing by intimidation are strong signals that bad decisions are being made - otherwise, what’s to cover up?

Make some noise, people. Bullies thrive in silence. 

OK, so we have to wait a little longer for decriminalization of the sex industry - the Ontario Court of Appeal has ordered that sex work remain illegal in Ontario until the appeal of the three recently overturned laws is heard.
I'm just going to consider it valuable time for our communities to start sorting out how they'll handle things when the day comes that adult, consensual sex work is no longer criminal.
I think any court that takes a look at the impact of these laws in Canada can't help but conclude that they do more harm than good - in fact, they really do  no good at all, and they greatly increase the danger for sex workers to boot. A shout out to the Ontario Superior Court for striking down the laws around bawdyhouses, living off the avails and soliciting earlier this fall, because that ruling finally changes everything.
Why not get really pro-active and start the conversation now as to how sex work will be managed in our community?

It scares me to see the erosion of basic rights starting to happen in Canada. Here's an alarming story (why do so many of my posts involve me saying "here's an alarming story....?") from the Toronto Star that points out there are now more people in our jails awaiting trial than there are people serving sentences. Innocent until proven guilty, sure, but that's not to say you won't spend significant time behind bars waiting for the system to decide which one you are.

Well now, how nutty is it to base our choice of new citizens on whether they can pass a citizenship test? If you remember your own school-years suffering when you jammed your head full of information for tests then forgot it all the minute the test was over, I think you'll agree that tests are just about the most useless way to gauge someone's actual aptitude over the long term. Especially for something like citizenship.
But I always knew Ottawa was out of touch, and here's more proof.
On a happier note, delighted to see I seem to be attracting more well-informed blogger-commentators to my site, judging by the very clued-in comments I'm starting to get on some of my posts.
My partner Paul Willcocks has always had really informed people commenting on his blog and I've been envious. I'm happy to see some of these writers gravitating to mine. They add a heck of a lot to the conversation. More, please!