Tasering incident brings many more layers to light

Update Oct. 18, 2011: More details from police on the tasering of an 11-year-old boy with severe developmental disability

All the world’s an onion. Peel back a layer on any issue and a dozen more await, each more intriguing than the one before.

An example: The Tasering of an 11-year-old boy in Prince George last month. I went digging around for information this week on that troubling incident, only to end up puzzling over how a company with a history of running bars and liquor stores ends up in the group-home business.

The lowdown on this particular case will ultimately come from B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Her office is reviewing the incident and other issues at B.C. group homes for children in care, and we’ll all know more when her analysis and two separate police reviews are complete.

But even a cursory look at the Prince George situation raises questions about how B.C. contracts services for its most at-risk children.

On the surface, the April 7 incident in Prince George is about a boy stabbing a group-home staffer after the worker pursued the upset boy into a trailer on the property. The boy was then Tasered by police.

But in the early days of her investigation, Turpel-Lafond discovered another layer to the story after learning that some group homes call police when a child gives them any trouble, even if it’s just refusing to go to their room.

“The incidents are numerous, and they aren’t related to criminal activity by the child or youth,” she said, expanding the scope of her review to include investigating how often police are called to resolve group-home problems.

And there are more layers than that in the Prince George case.

The owner of the group home, Taborview Programs, is a home-grown Prince George entrepreneur, Jordy Hoover. He’s better known in the region for the many bars and liquor stores he owns.

Hoover also owns 30 greenhouses, a nursery growing three million seedlings for the forest industry, and a gravel operation. A 2009 story in the Prince George Citizen described him as having “a diversified portfolio of business in the city.”

That portfolio includes 26 beds for youth with profound behavioural problems, disabilities or other special needs. Hoover received almost $3 million from the Ministry of Children and Family Development in 2009-10 to provide those services. (That same year, he and his companies donated more than $32,000 to the B.C. Liberal Party.)

Hoover didn’t return my call, so I couldn’t ask how he got into the youth-care business. But the fact that he did underlines not only that it’s common for MCFD to contract with private companies for specialized foster care, but that the process for awarding contracts has some interesting wrinkles in it.

None of this is to presume there’s something wrong with Hoover’s group-home services.

In the business world, you don’t have to be a youth-care specialist to own a group home any more than you have to be a miner to own a mining company. JC Hoover Holdings certainly isn’t the only private company doing this work, as a browse through the public accounts confirms.

Contractors receiving more than $500,000* a year from MCFD also have to be accredited. Taborview is.

Still, it’s definitely a new day when running group homes for high-risk kids is now just part of a diverse business portfolio. Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t shake a nagging concern about what it means when the provision of child and youth services is just another business venture.

How did Jordy Hoover get into this? In theory, creating 26 beds for high-risk, high-needs youth - a big project - requires going to tender, and the successful bidder would probably need significant expertise in the field to land the contract.

But the reality is that MCFD regularly enters into short-term contracts for a particular child or youth who can’t be placed at an existing group home. (The government still calls them "specialized resources" when only one child lives there, as was apparently the case in Prince George.)

Those short-term contracts have a habit of being renewed automatically if all is going well, for years in some cases. One “emergency” contract begets another as MCFD and the contractor grow familiar with each other. Next thing you know, you’re a bar owner with $3 million in MCFD contracts and responsibility for 26 fragile lives.

And when the flash of a Taser brings it all to light, surprised British Columbians can only wonder what else we don’t know. Plenty.
*This figure was wrong in my original column, but has been corrected here.

An excerpt from Hansard, from the May 3 session of the BC legislature. Social Development Minister Harry Bloy, a brand-new cabinet minister, has obviously learned the lesson well of just repeating the same key message over and over, even when it makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the information that the Opposition members are bringing forward. 

Really, the public should not let Community Living B.C. and the government get away with this fairy tale about how nobody with a developmental disability has been forced out of their group home against their will - it simply isn't true. And yes, there have been cuts, regardless of what Bloy says - when you add in new people who qualify for service without increasing funding, the others who have been receiving services up to that point have to take a cut for that to happen. It's basic math. 

SERVICES FOR
DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED PERSONS

N. Simons: Last week in this House the minister responsible for Community Living B.C. said that no adult with a developmental disability was forced to move out of their group home. Perhaps the minister could tell that to Renata Cole of Terrace, whose daughter and three other residents of a home were required to move because of the budget pressures put on by this government to Community Living B.C.

Can the minister please explain to that family how their daughter was forced to move?

Hon. H. Bloy: To the member across the way, in my short time in this ministry I have been assured by Rick Mowles, the CEO of Community Living British Columbia, that no one has ever been moved without their prior approval, without being part of the planning process.

In my meetings with the British Columbia Association for Community Living, Faith Bodnar and some of the families associated with them talked about the great work that Community Living British Columbia does. In fact, they were recognized as the leader across Canada in the work that Community Living B.C. does.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

N. Simons: Maybe the minister's responsibility now is to look objectively at the programs his government provides instead of listening without question to everything he's been told by the people who are propping him up. These are families that are being impacted by the minister's cuts. These are families that are being told contradictions to reality. Despite what the minister said last week, we've had group home closures, forced moves. We've had program cuts, budget cuts, and now we have a minister who's in denial.

There's a person in British Columbia who waits by the door. After 20 years of going to a day program, he's no longer funded. He puts his coat on, and he waits by the door for his lift. If that's not a program cut, I don't know what is.

What is this minister going to do to get to the truth of the issue in his ministry and actually address the needs of families who have a member with a developmental disability?

Hon. H. Bloy: I want to reiterate to the member across the way that group homes are not a choice. Group homes have not been closed. Every individual has been asked if they want to move out. Not every person wants to live in a group home.

You know, this is not about the budget; this is about a plan which is best for individuals. There are lots of people that live in our communities. They work in our community, they have disabilities, they study in our community. We have athletes that are training, living in our community. These are about choice, and these choices are made by individuals without any question of being forced to move.

M. Karagianis: I just heard the minister say that government offers a plan that is best for individuals. Well, I'd like the minister to tell that to Kirsten Eikenstein. She has been caring for her daughter Corrine for the past 19 years here in greater Victoria.

Corrine has cerebral palsy, is unable to use her hands and is 100 percent dependent on all aspects of care. Now, Corrine was receiving 12 hours of care a week, but this B.C. Liberal government cut that. Now Corrine gets two hours respite a week, and when she turns 18 and finishes high school, that will be cut.

So I'd like to ask the minister: do you think it's okay for people like Corrine to be cut off of services entirely when they turn 18 years of age?

Hon. H. Bloy: I can assure the members across the way that Community Living British Columbia is reviewing, Members, and…. What's the word I'm looking for? They…. I'm sorry.

[1415]

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. H. Bloy: Community Living B.C. reviews each client that comes into the system, and clients with special needs are reviewed from about the age of 15 so that they are prepared

HSE - 20110503 PM 010/dmm/1415

I'm sorry.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. H. Bloy: Community Living B.C. reviews each client that comes into the system. Clients with special needs are reviewed from about the age of 15 so that they're prepared. They have a plan ready for that individual when they come into Community Living British Columbia.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

M. Karagianis: I'm actually quite shocked that the government thinks that zero support is a plan for any child aging out of school. But maybe the minister can defend the numbers to Janet Gann. She has been the primary caregiver for her disabled son for the past 19 years, despite her own health issues.

Janet's son has been doing a job training program in Burnaby and is part of the Special Olympics skating team. Community inclusion is very paramount to her son's mental health. Yet, once Janet's son completes high school, he will no longer receive any supports — none of the supports necessary to be part of his community.

Janet wants to know from this minister why her son should have to pay for the B.C. Liberal government funding squeeze for this ministry?

Hon. H. Bloy: Community Living British Columbia has not cut its budget. It has increased by $13 million over the last year, and it continues to work with innovative approaches to help all individuals.

You know, we had a report out last week from B.C.-CLAG. I've read that report, I'm reviewing it, and I look to further talking with my staff about that report.

S. Simpson: This minister and the B.C. Liberals are failing people with developmental disabilities in British Columbia. That's the reality, particularly for people who are living in group homes. So 33 closures, and young people moving from children and families to CLBC are finding that there is no service available for them when they get there. That's the reality we're facing.

This minister talks about the assessments that are done. Well, let's talk about that. This assessment is done by the Guide to Support Allocation. That's what CLBC uses. Let me read you one clause out of this flawed report: "Staff are to focus on current disability-related needs as outlined within the plan, rather than past or anticipated future need."

My question to the minister. Does he think it makes any sense that with a person with a developmental disability, when you do their assessment, you ignore their history, and you ignore their potential future condition? Is that his idea of an assessment?

Hon. H. Bloy: Our first priority as a government and through Community Living British Columbia remains the individuals and the families that we support. There have been no budget cuts. I want to reiterate that. There's been a $13 million increase.

Community Living British Columbia remains committed to serving our clients with innovative support and services. We want to reach out to each client that we have within the system. I'm proud of the work that Community Living staff and their 3,200 contract providers provide to these people across all of British Columbia.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

S. Simpson: Let's talk about those providers. This minister talks about the providers. Well, most of them are members of the B.C. Association for Community Living. This minister talked about Faith Bodnar, their executive director. So what has she said about the performance of this government? "We know that service redesign is not an answer to addressing the funds needed for those who are waiting for service. It is short-sighted, a poor and harmful excuse for fiscal planning, and completely unsustainable." That's what the community thinks about this government's plan.

Hon. Speaker, the plan has failed. The reality is this: 600 people a year, new people coming into the system, and no money for them.

Will the minister go to his friend, the Finance Minister, and get him to give a few of that $2½ billion of cushion to Community Living B.C. so that the developmentally disabled don't have to pay for your fiscal mismanagement?

[1420]

Hon. H. Bloy: I want to reassure, to the members opposite, that our first

HSE - 20110503 PM 011/jag/1420

Hon. H. Bloy: I want to reassure, to the members opposite, that our first priority is always the individual and their families. You know, I can tell you that Community Living B.C. has not had a cut in budget. It's had an increase of $13 million. I've met with the community living association of British Columbia in the discussions that I've had.

They're so proud of the work that CLBC does in British Columbia. They recognize them as a leader is what they told me in a meeting that I had with them and some of their family members. I look forward to meeting with them again in the future. But they were pleased with the work that we were doing. They considered Community Living British Columbia a leader in providing services for individuals with developmental disabilities.

Lots of strong feelings for people like me on a day like today. Can't say I'm even remotely happy to see a Tory majority. And yet, even though I'm certainly not a strong NDPer, there's something heartening about seeing Canadians kicking up some trouble at the ballot box.
Voter turnout actually improved ever so slightly this time out. But our strange political system still leaves much to be desired - work out the numbers (61 per cent of eligible voters, 39 per cent of which voted Tory) and it turns out that less than 24 per cent of eligible voters actually chose Harper. So that just leaves three-quarters of us who either didn't want him or couldn't be bothered to vote. Here's a piece from the Montreal Gazette on voter turnout this election. 

Why I'm not voting for Stephen Harper

Some people think you’re not supposed to get personal in your politics. They contend that what matters most in a political leader is whether he or she can run the country, not whether you like them.

Part of me agrees with that. Government has to be able to function like a business to get things done efficiently, and having leaders with a half-decent head for such things is pretty important.

But I’d argue that there are times when judging political leaders by the way you feel about them is perfectly sensible. When it happens in other areas of our lives, we call it “a gut feeling” and go with it. Why should it be any different when picking the people who will lead our country?

It’s something of a standing joke in Canada that women don’t like Prime Minister Stephen Harper. I’m one of them.

And I admit, it started out as a feeling.  But it grew to much more than that soon enough. My reasons for disliking Harper may have been visceral initially, but so many of his actions since then have confirmed my original gut call.

That’s the thing about gut reactions - there’s usually a reason for them. It might not be obvious in the moment, but give it time. Watch the video “Canadian Women’s Favourite Pick-up Line” on YouTube and you’ll see that women have all kinds of legitimate reasons for not liking Harper.

  His handlers tend to view that as an image problem. Maybe, but I’d sure hate to think it’s as easy as putting an argyle sweater on a guy and a baby in his arms.

But what do I know? Even I had a small, sweet thought for Harper when I saw the TV clip of him singing at the piano at the National Arts Centre gala in 2009.

And now he’s in line to be our prime minister again after Monday’s election. Something must be working for him.

I got into a brief back-and-forth on this issue recently with a Facebook friend.  Something close to despair has overcome me lately at the seeming inevitability of Monday’s election outcome, and in a moment of weakness I had posted a couple of anti-Harper links.

My Facebook friend took a pragmatic view of Harper: He didn’t like some of Harper’s positions either, but figured he was the candidate most ready to lead and with the most potential to do good things for Canada.

But is that true? Given the views that Harper holds and the policies his government promotes, could Canada ever end up thriving under his leadership? He represents certain kinds of Canadians very well, but there’s a significant contingent of us who he barely hides his contempt for.

Of course, I’m from B.C. I’ve long had the sense that B.C. doesn’t matter much to Ottawa and that the feeling is mutual. Beyond the occasional foray west to destroy our fisheries, we’ve learned not to expect much from the feds or to count on our votes mattering.

But then you get a prime minister like Harper and realize that it has to matter.  You go from feeling rock-solid certain and even proud about the progressive nature of Canada, to feeling embarrassed, worried and fearful about what your government might get up to next.

If Harper’s only fault was that he focused on Canada’s short-term economic performance more than he did on the well-being of its people, that would be one thing. That seems to be a standard flaw in conservative governments.

But Harper has those Reform-Alliance roots, and it shows. That segment of the conservative movement packs a lot of moral judgment into its decision-making. You end up with governments that are willing to make genuinely stupid, harmful decisions just because they think they have the moral high ground.

The argyle sweater has never been made that could convince me to like Stephen Harper after seeing his government in action - scrapping the census, wiping out women’s services, campaigning against same-sex marriage, threatening to close Vancouver’s safe-injection site.

Harper is the kind of guy who manufactures an entire fiction around youth crime just to scare uninformed voters into his corner. He prorogued Parliament, thwarting democratic process just because he could.  

So yes, things feel pretty personal between me and Harper right now. But not without reason.

    

There's some great information and Election 2011 toolkits out there on the Web sites of some of the big child/family organizations.

So if you're like me and wondering how the federal parties stack up when it comes to social and community issues, check out these sites before you head to the polls May 2.
National Alliance for Children and Youth
UNICEF Canada
First Call
Canadian Association for Community Living
Canadian Association of Social Workers

Grab the chance to change B.C. politics

These are glorious days for British Columbians who enjoy politics. I’m not one of them, but I admit to being just a little excited to see some life coming back to the B.C. political scene.

Politics are a lousy way to solve the real problems of the world. But they do get citizens engaged in passionate conversations. Politics ultimately push us to define what we really care about.

I certainly don’t care about Christy Clark donning a Canucks jersey or Adrian Dix tending to be tetchy and serious. So I’ll be glad when we pass through this initial phase of politicking as B.C.’s new party leaders jostle for position.

 But it would be great to see some sparks flying over issues again. We haven’t seen enough of that in the last 10 years, under a government that was much too certain that it knew all the answers. Our new political leaders have a major opportunity to be out there with a fresh agenda.

And the rest of us have the opportunity to be discerning customers, if you will. Unless Quesnel MLA Bob Simpson lives the dream and bursts onto the scene with a party of independents - and Bob, I’m still with you on that one - our next premier will be either Clark or Dix. Let’s make them work for it.

Clark and Dix are proof that ideology is a poor gauge of competency, having both been active participants in previous bad governments. All political parties seem capable of self-serving, delusional and sneaky behaviour.

On the flip side, any party has the potential for great vision and accomplishment. Nothing about the New Democrat ideology rules out economic prosperity. Nothing about the B.C. Liberal platform rules out smart social policy.

So rather than waste time belabouring the usual left/right comparisons, how about Dix and Clark just skip the trite stuff and get down to the work of figuring out what B.C. needs most?

Dix obviously envisages a crankier style of Opposition than we’ve seen in recent years. But harassing Clark about her lack of substance is hardly the place to start. He needs to be out there right now with carefully considered plans if he’s serious about winning our hearts and minds.

We citizens owe it to ourselves to call the party leaders on the stupid stuff that gets passed off as political engagement.  We should be relentless in pushing for more substantive discussion about the things that matter to us.

This is a critical time in B.C. Everything has been thrown for a loop on the political front in recent months, and the major parties appear to be working much harder than usual to connect with us.

There’s new blood at the top, and renewed promises on all sides to be more accountable to the people of B.C. It’s been a long time since a political leader made that promise.

So it’d be crazy to let this moment end up as just more hot air from the election machine as to who loves business, unions, families or poor people more. This is the time for British Columbians to be writing the letters and asking for the meetings, and working our own spheres of influence as a reminder to the leaders that every one of us can flex political muscle when we need to.

Surely we’ve had enough of the knee-jerk cliches of Liberals as right-wing business boosters and the NDP as tax-happy union lovers. As we know after decades of up-and-down political fortunes in B.C., we need a little bit of all of it to make a happy, healthy province. Nobody’s got a lock on the One True Way.

Yes, the unions developed an unhealthy sense of entitlement under the New Democrats. But privatization under the Liberals ceded B.C. services to big multinationals at a significant price to jobs, wages and service quality.

And yes, the NDP did show disregard for the business community and the economy. But the Liberals cut social programs well past the point of smart governance. Neither can claim the moral high ground, that’s for sure.

I’d like to hear more assurances from Dix and Clark that they’ll get back to treating the province’s 85 MLAs like the community resources they are. How nutty is it for political leaders to intimidate and silence the very people who keep them in touch with the real issues facing B.C. communities?

Get real and go deep, candidates. Enough time wasted in the shallow end. 

I was inadvertently caught up in the closure of the Malahat this weekend, seeing as my two oldest kids, their five children and my ex-husband had all popped down to Victoria from Courtenay for a "quick" visit with my ex's new grandson.
The plan was to bomb to Victoria and back to Courtenay on the same day. Alas, the 22-hour closure of the Malahat nixed that one. Plans go awry in this world, of course, but watching the ridiculous situation on the Malahat unfold through their experiences really underlined for me how poorly prepared we'd be for any real disaster.
It's never going to be good when the only major route closes down. But what was worse was the inability of those doing cleanup at the scene of the diesel-truck crash to provide any kind of workable estimate of when the highway would reopen, or to quickly provide an alternate route.
For instance, skinny little Finlayson Arm Road was an alternate route, but highway crews didn't get around to allowing passenger cars on it until well over 20 hours after the Malahat crash. The long Port Renfrew-Lake Cowichan route could have been a possibility, but we all know how rough that road is due to years of stalling on fixing it - plus reports were of a three-hour delay for those trying to travel that route.
Travelling via the Mill Bay ferry (four hour delay) or Saltspring Island could also have worked - but only if travellers could have had a decent estimate that helped them gauge whether the extra distance and expense was worth it. From the very start, the updates around when the highway would reopen were way off the mark.
Right after the crash, the estimate was that the road would reopen at 1 a.m. Sunday. Then it was 6:30 a.m. Then it was 9 a.m., then 1 p.m., then 3 p.m. It was after 4 p.m. when traffic was finally allowed through. How was it that nobody had any real idea how long it was going to take to clean up after the accident?
For my kids, it was an inconvenience and a pain in the neck.
For other travellers, though, that delay might have cost them an expensive holiday flight. A long-awaited surgery date. A missed wedding or funeral or other big one-off family event. A day at work, not to mention the expense of a hotel room (in very short supply in Victoria on Saturday night) and meals.
Some would have had no access to medication they left at home, never dreaming their quick trip in or out of Victoria was going to be a long one. Others might have even left a youngish child or a pet at home for a couple hours, only to have it turn out to be an overnight odyssey.
We've got to be able to do better.Who was in charge, anyway? If I didn't know better, I'd suspect FEMA.
As for the driver of the overturned fuel truck, he was uninjured, but reports are that he's being investigated for drunk driving. Certainly you have to wonder when a truck jackknifes in a speed zone of 60-70 km/h. 

Grizzly-bear status under review


What do you think, should we finally do something to put more protection around Canada's grizzly bears? This writer thinks so.  They're magnificent animals, and it's pretty surprising that we've put so little thought into the pressures they're under, what with urban sprawl drastically shrinking their territory and gun-toting trophy hunters coming to B.C. from all over the world to hunt grizzlies.
We tend to fall back into the usual kneejerk stuff around hunting whenever we try to talk grizzly bears - an issue that's nearly as polarizing as abortion. But it's not just about hunting, seeing as the research has found that urban sprawl is a primary pressure on grizzly populations. It's really about the collective impact of the human species on the bears, and how we might mitigate that before it's too late.
It's not too late yet, thankfully. I hope we don't plan to wait until it is.

There's something strangely fascinating about the Falun Gong stories coming out of Vancouver these days. I'm sure it's damn annoying for everyone coming to the Chinese consulate to have to deal with Falun Gong protesters every day, but it's unsettling to think that the City of Vancouver is prepared to side with China on this long-standing human-rights issue and ban the protesters. Here's what the Vancouver Sun's Pete McMartin has to say.
The issue has many similarities to the abortion debate: two polarized groups, both very certain that they are in the right, fighting for control over the piece of sidewalk out in front of some building that represents the issue (abortion clinics in one case, the Chinese consulate in another).
But B.C. manoeuvered very carefully on that issue. The "bubble zone" law prevents protesters from setting up within 50 metres of the entry of an abortion clinic.  The reason the law was able to sustain a free-speech challenge was because the courts ruled that a woman's right to medical treatment trumps freedom of speech.
How do you make that defence in the Falun Gong case? As irritating as it must be for the Chinese consulate to have to deal with protesters outside every day, I have to think it pales beside the right of the peace-loving followers of a religion to protest the killings, assaults and harassment that plague their peers in China.

I just want to respond to my "anonymous" blogger friend, who's wondering where his/her earlier comment went. I have no idea, but given the nature of what we're talking about here, I definitely don't want to look like I wiped it out or anything, so here it is again:

Why is it that when I post anonymously I'm treated as an scribing scumbag, but when some awful, nasty, ugly, vicious, ignorant, intemperate, uninformed anonymous bile is posted in a newspaper as an editorial it is treated as scripture?
Let us say - for the sake of this discussion - that you, Jody Paterson, have decided to apply for a job as an entry level position at one of the big corporations. Let us also say that you are fully qualified to do the job and the local office has approved you. The local office passes along your particulars to the corporate level for routine final approval, but corporate turns you down. Why?
 You never find out, but the truth is that corporate ran an automated background check of your online activity and found out that your views did not match theirs. Had you been writing anonymously Big Brother would not have known what you think. 

Just a couple points on that comment: First, there are many good reasons for posting anonymously, so it's not the anonymous part that I have a problem with. But when the sole reason people do it is to hide from their own vicious, ugly words, that's when it bugs me. 

As for newspapers, editorials are supposed to represent the paper's opinion, not that of the person who wrote it. In the old days, it would have been the publisher's opinion, but times have changed now that publishers are rarely the owners and editorial positions are now decided by the "editorial board," which usually consists of the publisher, the managing editor and the editorial-page editor. The person who actually does the writing is just the one who puts it all into words.  

If editorials were "signed" by the people who wrote them, they'd be more like columns rather than the opinion of the newspaper overall. That's why they don't have any name attached to them.

Slam-dunked by the anonymous posters

A note to those who post anonymously on my blog - this column isn't about you. The people who post here have been very respectful in their comments, even when they hate everything about something I've written. Thanks for that. 

Once upon a time, people who felt strongly about something I wrote would send me little notes and cards in the mail that either thanked me or put me in my place.

Then email came along, and soon that was how I got all my feedback. Now, it’s mostly through on-line comments.

The era of handwritten notes was lovely. I think I still have a file folder of the kindest ones somewhere, saved for the bleak days. But the shift to email was nice for its sense of immediacy.

On-line comments, on the other hand - well, that’s a whole other matter.

I love the concept. There’s potential for great public conversations through on-line comments. In the early days of the technology, I envisaged a wealth of opinions posted by smart, thoughtful people sharing informed and diverse experiences.

Not quite. On-line comment sections have in fact turned out to be the place where people feel free to hide their identities while saying the most awful things. It’s a rare day that I can even summon the courage to read the ugly stuff that gets posted under some of my columns.

As an opinion writer, I get that I have to be able to “take it.” I support free speech, including the right to make vicious and ignorant comments anonymously. I’ve got the skin of a rhino after many years of reader cruelties. I can handle it.

But really, a little on-line civility wouldn’t kill us. I talked to a couple of candidates in the Victoria civic election who were stunned and even a little scared by the horrible comments made about them on-line  during the campaign. Unfortunately, such experiences are now just part of being in the public eye.

Who are these intemperate commentators? What do they get out of posting nasty, uninformed statements and not even attaching their names to them?

They must recognize their comment makes them look bad, because otherwise they wouldn’t hide behind anonymity. But if they know that what they’re saying is embarrassing enough that they don’t want their names on it, why would they post it in the first place?

I love it when readers genuinely engage with me. True, I like it best when they say nice things, but I also appreciate people who disagree with me in intelligent ways and challenge me to see an issue from another perspective.  

Sometimes my detractors and I will even have a series of respectful exchanges via email, at the end of which we usually understand each other’s positions more clearly or have politely agreed to disagree. But when the comments are nothing but mindless, anonymous bile, that’s not going to happen.

Web sites like the Times Colonist at least filter out the worst of it. If you really want to see ugly, check out YouTube, where moderation of so-called “trolls” is non-existent unless the person uploading the video chooses it at the outset.

Salon television writer Matt Zoller Seitz wrote an intriguing piece on the subject in the August 2010 edition of the on-line U.S. magazine, where he argued the societal benefits of uncensored comment on media sites.

“It shows us the American id in all its snaggletoothed, pustulent glory, with a transparency that didn’t exist before the Internet,” writes Seitz. “And in its rather twisted way, that’s a public service.”

Anonymous comments remind us that racism and sexism are alive and well, contends Seitz. That literacy skills are in decline. That it’s misguided to presume that “deep down, most people are good at heart.”

Yup, that pretty much sums up the experience for me, too. Nothing slaps the Pollyanna out of a columnist quicker than a browse through the on-line comments. I guess I owe the nameless cowards thanks for that.

***

Great event coming up April 30, when Coalition Connect for Families makes its debut at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre.

 It’s a first for the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness, which has taken its highly successful Project Connect concept and turned it into a new service fair for low-income families. All kinds of items - diapers, grooming products, small toys - are needed for the hundreds of “family packs” organizers will hand out at the all-day event, which features haircuts, ID replacement, health care, a BBQ lunch and many other services and connections.

Want to donate or volunteer? Contact co-ordinator Mary Gidney at mgidney@shaw.ca for more information, including a list of items needed for the packs. Donations can be dropped off April 14-16 at Burnside-Gorge Community Association.

Good news over at Our Place, the Pandora Avenue drop-in and community centre for people living in poverty. The money for their 7 a.m. openings ran out March 31, but the non-profit has launched a direct-donation campaign and is now going to be able to keep funding it for at least another three months. Here's more on that. 
Obviously, a breakfast every morning doesn't mean you've solved homelessness, but it made a big difference on downtown streets when Our Place began opening at 7 a.m. again (once upon a time, they had some other funding that made that early start possible) and gave people someplace to go in those hours before other services have opened.
It also ended the ludicrous practice of sending police into the downtown at 6 or 7 a.m. every day to rouse the homeless from the doorways and such even though there was absolutely nowhere to go.

Man, the intensity of the on-line commentary under my column last Friday made me realize that sexual assault is still a sizzling, completely misunderstood issue out there. I think there's a solid contingent of people who seriously believe that rape is in the nature of men, and that women "ask for it" when they dress or act a certain way. Really? That's a pretty discouraging realization for me. 

Turns out April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, so here's more fuel to the fire: A piece in Salon laying out some frightening statistics around the incidence of rape on U.S. campuses. 

Women still wearing the blame for rape

A young Saanich woman was allegedly kidnapped and sexually assaulted last week. Police were in the media soon after warning women to take more care.

Yes, 40 years after “women’s liberation,” sexual assault is still our fault.

Women’s issues were a bit of a darling in the media industry when I first got into journalism in the early ‘80s as a “women’s page” reporter. So I wrote a lot about the kinds of things that were considered women’s issues at that time.

They ran the gamut, from jam-making and wedding dresses to abortion, rape and sexual harassment. There were some pretty heavy issues on the table at the time, and I’m glad to say that several are history now.

When I started out reporting, a husband in Canada couldn’t even be charged with raping his wife, because there was no such offence. Sexual harassment had barely even been conceptualized. Hospital boards were being ripped apart by the abortion issue.  All of that has changed.

But the way we talk about rape and sexual assault hasn’t changed a bit. It’s still all about victim-blaming and shame.

Don’t women know better than to walk home alone at night?  Why aren’t we catching cabs and going everywhere in big groups? Could it be that we’re dressing just a bit too skimpily? Or getting sloppy about monitoring our drinks constantly at the bar so nobody can slip drugs into them?

A friend of mine used to work as an aide in a local elementary-school classroom. He once told me the story of a little girl who was getting her pants pulled down by a group of boys every lunch hour. The principal addressed the issue by ordering the girl to quit wearing elastic-waist pants.

I love that story for how perfectly it sums up the way it has always been for girls and women around rape and sexual assault. Honey, it’s all up to you.

We like to think we’ve gotten past blaming women for their own rapes. But I don’t think we’ve ever internalized the message. Good on UVic’s Patty Pitts for stating the obvious to local media after the Saanich incident - that warning women to stay safe is not nearly as meaningful as challenging “the core beliefs that allow sexualized violence to occur.”

Want to avoid being raped? Don’t dress provocatively. Or drink too much. Or leave your drink unattended, or pick the wrong date. Don’t go around doing wild things like walking home in Saanich alone.

 It’s like rape is an unstoppable force waiting to happen to all women unless they learn to keep themselves out of danger.  

I don’t mean any of this as an insult to men. The majority are good people who are not rapists, and not the reason why women continue to be blamed for their own sexual assaults.

Nor do I mean to absolve women. They’re half the population, after all, and really do have the ability to affect major change if they’d ever just pull together to get it done.

But let’s get beyond the gender issues and just agree that it’s ridiculous to respond to any terrible crime solely by exhorting future victims to be more careful. We need to be talking about rape and sexual assault in meaningful ways, and not just piling more responsibility and shame onto the victims.

I guess we’re supposed to consider it progress that rape now figures so prominently in TV and movies. The Law and Order franchise has for many years had a “special victims” series that provides a handy reason for starting virtually every episode with a graphic rape or equally disturbing sex crime. As an issue, rape is seriously out of the closet.

Or is it? In real life, victims still go unnamed in court proceedings - understandable on one hand, deeply shaming on the other for the way it stigmatizes the person. Women still frequently keep their rapes and assaults secret, fearing the traumatic things that can happen to sexual-assault victims once they’re in the justice system.

Sexual assault is still not a subject we raise with our sons, despite having normalized it as a form of home entertainment. Nor have we come up with any more creative ways of preventing it than to send police out after each new rape to warn women everywhere to mind their skirt lengths and stay home after dark.

What a sad, slow ride to nowhere. Ladies, lock your doors.

Let's hope somebody is blushing in the United Church and at BC Housing after learning that their spokespeople are making insulting and poorly considered comments about the risks to women at some of the co-ed shelters in the Downtown Eastside.

Just recently back from two wonderful weeks in one of my favourite countries, Mexico. Various acquaintances asked me many times before I left whether I felt safe there, and I've heard the same question many times since my return.
I find that so very strange - that the same weird and tragic things that happen in all the countries of the world happen every day in Canada, too,  yet we interpret them to mean that those other countries are wildly unpredictable and dangerous places to travel compared to Canada.
OK, Ciudad de Juarez isn't on my travel itinerary for the near future, but I've never felt in danger anywhere in Mexico after 16 years of travelling to various towns and cities there, including Mexico City. It's a lovely country full of gentle, family-oriented people, and they're a heck of a lot friendlier to strangers passing through than most of the population in Greater Victoria. I've had to readjust my public smiley face now that I'm home, as I'd forgotten that here in the capital region, nobody smiles back.
A few items from today's Google News headlines just to underline my ongoing position that murder, explosions and violence routinely happen right here in Canada. Gee, what'll happen if the tourists find out? 

Families First - sloganeering or something real?

As the pundits have already noted, the new premier’s “Families First” platform is wide open to interpretation at this point.

So we’ll see where things go in the months ahead. But let’s at least take a moment to celebrate that a B.C. premier even thought families were important enough to be the focus of her leadership.

It’s a cliché that it has to be a woman premier making the point, and a shame that we don't yet know whether she could win an election on the same platform. But it’s still a good sign when the most prominent message coming out of the new premier’s office is about putting families first.

Families were never something Gordon Campbell talked about much. Search the Hansard debates and you’ll see that. I always got the feeling that they just didn’t cross his mind; he loves his own family, of course, but it never seemed to me that he saw any role for the province in building stronger families overall.

That’s a cliché in itself - what does it really mean to build strong families? Everybody’s got a different take on that. As Christy Clark has reminded us with her own “Families First” catch phrase, there are a lot of different meanings you can attach to the promise of helping families.

But hey, at least this premier actually said the words. At least she put together a new legislative committee on families that actually has some clout in cabinet, even if it’s too soon to say whether it will get used.

It doesn’t mean that hard times are over. But it’s quite an improvement over complete disregard.

We expect miracles from the Children and Family Development Ministry. The bazillionth revamp of that benighted ministry - now under a new deputy minister with a speciality in organizational change - comes with no guarantees.

But at least it’s underway, after years of bitter management issues inside the ministry and a toxic relationship at the top with B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth. MCFD simply has to be made to function better if Clark is serious about families, because its work has a massive impact on tens of thousands of British Columbian children and families every year.

The minimum wage is finally going up, also essential. Yes, it will be hard on some businesses initially. But blame that on the foolish and mean-spirited position of the Campbell government to hold the line for 10 long years as the ranks of the working poor swelled. I hope Clark also recognizes that welfare rates have to rise, and that earning exemptions are desperately needed.

Any government that aims to put families first has to recognize it has a problem when almost a third of school-age children arrive for their first day of kindergarten already behind in their learning and development.

The previous government had already committed to reducing that “vulnerability rate” to 15 per cent by 2015. But while the Campbell government talked a good game about “15 by 15,” the reality was cuts and more cuts across all services to B.C. children and families.

Cuts are inevitable sometimes, but it’s disrespectful and disastrous when every government ministry just blithely goes about its reductions with no thought to overall impact. Will a family-friendly premier finally see the wisdom in planning reductions more carefully so that fewer struggling families are left high and dry in the aftermath?

Gaming revenue has almost doubled since 2002 in B.C. But charities now get less of that money than they did in 2002, even with the $15 million boost Clark announced Thursday. A families-first agenda will hopefully return gaming to its roots as a funder of charitable works. The government will get no bigger bang from its gaming buck than by investing the $1 billion in annual net revenues into community services for B.c. families.

Affordable housing is the foundation for sound family policy.  Campbell did put more effort into homelessness late in his reign after several years of making things worse, but Clark now needs to build and expand on that momentum. Our province has more citizens living below the low-income cutoff (11.4 per cent) than anywhere else in the country, and they need real help around housing.

It goes without saying that putting families first also means paying attention to the economy, the deficit and the tax structure. They aren’t mutually exclusive goals.

We’ll know soon enough whether Christy Clark really is the kind of premier who means what she says about families. But here we are, talking about it. And that’s a start.

I've been wanting to read more about what life is like for people in northern Japan now that we're a week and a half into the post-earthquake period. I managed to find a half-decent blog that at least has some current news, but it's striking how quickly the world news has turned into stories either solely about the nuclear facilities, or country-centric stories about "what this means to us" (radiation drifting across the sea, food shipments from Japan, are our own nuclear plants safe, etc.)
We earthquake-zone dwellers should take a particular interest in the daily lives of people who are 12 days into being homeless, out in the cold, probably hungry and thirsty, possibly quite injured, and still unable to connect with family members lost in the chaos. As this story notes, things will not be normal for people for a very long time post-quake even if the actual quake and tsunami didn't affect them.  
What can we learn from this paucity of meaningful news about life post-quake? That when it's our turn, we better make the most of the early days to get the world's attention - after that, they're moving on.

A scarier world, or just more connected?


These are apocalyptic times. My youngest daughter and I were talking the other day about whether this nightmare series of international disasters is a harbinger of the end of days, or if it just feels that way now that everybody has a video camera.
She's 26, and asked me if the world felt like this -like it was coming apart at the seams -when I was her age. If it was, I wasn't aware of it.
Then again, there was no Internet pouring out a steady stream of horrifying images from around the world back then. Not many citizens had video capability, unlike today when almost anyone with a cellphone can capture catastrophes as they happen. Nor were there global platforms like YouTube, or the video appetites of 24hour TV news channels.
I'm as captivated by it as anyone, and grateful for the truths that unedited, amateur video can bring to the human conversation. Would Robert Dziekanski's death in the Vancouver airport even be public knowledge had it not been for the video footage of passerby Paul Pritchard?
But I do suspect that the sheer volume of on-the-spot video footage that now pours out after every global disaster, every terrible event, ramps up apocalypse anxiety.
My generation's apocalypse anxiety centred on the imminent threat of nuclear war. I remember listening in horror to news stories about how we were now one minute to midnight on some metaphorical nuclear-risk clock they were always talking about in those years, and feeling so powerless to do anything but worry.
The threat of nuclear war was a pretty intangible fear for a 20-something Courtenay girl, and that intangibility was probably part of what made it so frightening.
But there's nothing intangible about what's going on in Japan right now. It's all there, from whatever angle you'd care to look at it -tens of thousands of video minutes documenting everything about the terrible series of events hammering the people of Japan.
It's no use wondering whether all that video is a good or bad thing. It is what it is, for better or worse. There's no turning back from this global reality TV show we now all star in.
On the upside, we're moved more deeply by video imagery. It puts us more directly in the moment. It makes you feel a distant country's heartwrenching disaster much more personally, in ways that I'm sure must be very helpful in mobilizing an international response and raising funds for disaster relief.
But the horror is that much more personal, as well, now that video is the tool of the common people.
In days gone by, the chance was slim to none that a news crew would happen to be on hand at the very moment that a tsunami struck. Today, there are "news crews" anywhere there's a person with a cellphone -and there are five billion cellphones out there.
It certainly makes the world a more connected place. Unfortunately, it can also make it feel as if more and more really bad things are happening.
I read an interview the other day with a scientist who was trying to soothe the collective psyche by noting there's really nothing exceptional going on in the world right now. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods -they're just part of the way things work here on Earth.
I'll leave the experts to debate that. But whether this is end of days or just a bumpy patch, we've never before had such real-time, round-the-clock access to the intimate details of the world's natural disasters -to its wars, its uprisings, its suffering and triumphs. These days, you know it's all on video somewhere.
I don't know what it means. But it changes the experience. I feel for the young people, living in a time when there's simply no escaping the brutal truths of the world.
I hope they come out of it as better global citizens. At this stage, it's too soon to tell how the video age will actually shape us, or whether it will take us to new heights of empathy or merely chronic anxiety.
The truth hurts. And with cameras trained on virtually every misery of the world and footage online minutes later, there's just so much more of it to see.

Great event coming up April 30 - Family Connect, a version of the Project Connect event I've done for the street community these past three years, but this time with a focus on the region's poorest families.

 

Family Connect co-ordinator Mary Gidney could really use some help collecting donations of family items to be handed out to participants that day (they're expecting to see 700 people there, and kids of all ages). 

So if you and your co-workers, book-club friends, running group or whoever would like to take on a little side-project, how about a little collection drive for some of the following items?

If you can help out in any way, contact Mary at mgidney@shaw.ca. The event is sponsored by the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness in conjunction with Burnside Gorge Community Association and the Victoria Native Friendship Centre.

• 400 packages of diapers, all sizes
•  100 packages of baby wipes
•   100 diaper cream
•  600 tubes of toothpaste
•  400 toothbrushes (all ages)
•  300 tubes of sunscreen
•   200 boxes of band aids
•   500 bars of soap
•   500 bottles hand-sanitizer
•   700 deodorant
•   600 razors
•   300 boxes of feminine hygiene products
•   100 packages of adult bladder control products
•   300 small toys (cars, yoyos, jump ropes, stuffed animals, playing cards
•   300 school supply items (crayons, markers, notebooks, art supplies)
•    700 bottles of shampoo
•    400 bottles of conditioner
•    200 bottles of dish soap
•   400 packages of toilet paper (individually wrapped if possible)

Just in case you haven't had enough of the Japanese quake/tsunami images yet, here's an amazing video clip from  the moment the tsunami hit. Grim reminder of the power of the ocean. 

Who will you trust in the wild-west information age?

I’ve been doing bits of some work over the last year for a tough little on-line taskmaster called Demand Media. It’s kind of like working at a digital factory, with writers labouring for a few bucks per piece doing what Demand calls “service journalism.”

The work has been enlightening.

The role of a Demand writer is to find answers on-line for the many strange questions people ask in Internet searches.  I figured I’d be a natural fit for the work after all these years in journalism.

But it’s been much more challenging than I anticipated. In particular, I’ve come to see how difficult it is to assess your sources of information when the only place you can look is on-line.

I suspect that’s something we all need to think about more.

Traditional media are no longer the dominant source for news. A 2010 survey on the CNN Tech site found 61 per cent of Americans report getting at least some of their news on-line, compared to just 54 per  cent who cite newspaper and radio as their regular sources.

Demand Media is rightly picky about sources. The company gets paid to provide answers for sites like eHow, so it’s pretty firm with its writers on the need to get things right.

You don’t want writers taking a best-guess approach when writing about how to import moose antlers to the U.S. from Canada, for instance. You don’t want them relying on user blogs or company advertising for assessing the effectiveness of armillatox as a cure for honey fungus. (Be prepared to research many obscure topics if you’re writing for Demand.)

What Demand needs - and really, what we all need - are legitimate, unbiased sources of information. The Internet is an amazing place, and a skilled on-line searcher can get much closer to “truth” now than has ever been the case before. But it truly is the Wild West out there.

If this is the future, we’re going to need new ways to gauge who to trust for the things that matter. With the Demand experience fresh in my mind, here’s what I’ve found to be important:

 Find the original source. When you come across a report being cited or an excerpt quoted, do another search using more specific terms and make your way back to the site where the original material is posted. Second-hand sources (including the traditional media) can miss context and nuance, not to mention get the facts wrong.

Know whose views are being presented. Most Web sites will have some version of “About Us” on their home page. Read it. If you can find an annual report, read that, too.

To take the measure of a source, you need to know who’s talking and what kind of a stake they’ve got in the issue.  You need to know who sits on the board of directors, who pays the bills, who calls the shots. It all matters.

Know your personal criteria for a “trustworthy” Web site. You don’t want to have to second-guess everything you find on-line. What sources do you think you can generally trust?

For the most part, I trust government sites for basic information (like rules around moose-antler importation). I trust their statistics but not always their conclusions, and take with a grain of salt any press release quoting a politician. I trust industry sites for basic product information and sector reports. 

I rely on the sites of traditional media for much of my day-to-day news. But when I’m doing the Demand Media work or research for my column, I view them more as a jumping-off point and look for secondary sources as well.

Trust the wisdom of crowds - to a point. Wikipedia is verboten as a Demand source, but for the most part the “people’s encyclopedia” is strikingly accurate for everyday use. Still, I’d recommend a secondary source. And while I love user-review sites like TripAdvisor and the Internet Movie Database, that’s not to say I’d plan a travel holiday or a movie night solely on the information I find there.

As for blogs, treat them like the random musings that they are unless you absolutely know otherwise.

Keep an open mind. The dangerously seductive quality of the Internet is that it channels you toward information and viewpoints that fit with your own beliefs. For the sake of personal growth, societal tolerance and rational decision-making, watch out for that. Make a point of visiting some credible sites that challenge your thinking.

Big Society, or small government?

*I'm gone after this for a couple of weeks - back blogging March 12

 Britain’s “Big Society” initiative has been showing up as a story line in Canadian media in recent weeks.

Not surprising, really. Our federal and provincial governments are promoting the same principles that British Prime Minister David Cameron is putting forward in his Big Society vision.  

He calls it a Big Society and we call it social entrepreneurship, but the goals are the same: More social enterprise; more collective responsibility for societal ills; more use of the tools of capitalism to fund social care. Canada is suddenly awash in task forces, strategies and policy debate related to social innovation, including a new high-profile advisory committee in B.C.

I like much of what’s being talked about. I’m all for innovation, and for a better way of funding community services if it gets us out of the uncertain, short-term, destructive and inefficient process we’ve got now.

But I can’t shake a certain unease. It feels to me like two very different kinds of dreamers are coming together under the banner of “social enterprise.” And it’s my experience that bad things can happen when that’s the case.

Dear reader, social enterprise is not a particularly compelling column topic. I’ve already stopped and started dozens of times in writing this, struggling for a better turn of phrase to see if I can keep you reading for another paragraph or two.

It has taken me three hard months of really working it just to get the first inkling of what’s being talked about, and why. So I feel your pain (or boredom). But when a Big New Idea suddenly takes hold across the western world, we’d best pay attention even when it makes our heads hurt to think about it.

Social innovation in the current context has emerged from two distinctly different challenges.

One centres around frustrated non-profit agencies exhausted by years of starvation budgets, an absence of consistent, effective policy, and wrong-headed government rules restricting how the agencies can generate and use money.

They see the social problems around them and want to be able to use the tools of business to create their own sources of revenue for addressing them. They want to be able to get a loan just like any other business so they can improve their services. In Canada, neither are possible in the current system.

The other involves modern-day governments from ideologies that favour lower taxes and less service. They seem genuinely baffled that poverty and social ills have increased on their watch, but appear completely unwilling to consider that their governance has had a role in that.

They seem to have concluded that the problem is in our communities. We’ve become too reliant on government to fix our problems. Big Society-type initiatives aim to set things right without government having to foot the bill for it.

The kinds of changes being contemplated are non-threatening and sensible on the surface. In B.C., for instance, we’re talking about encouraging philanthropic foundations to become lending banks for non-profits, and establishing hybrid companies that combine the best of business and social-enterprise practice.

That would let non-profits seek investors to help them launch businesses supporting their work. It would leave them less vulnerable to the whims of government, and free to shape their services based on client needs instead of the dictates of funders.

The ideas aren’t new. Neither are the problems, a fact that perhaps explains some of my suspicion. What has prompted this international outburst of government enthusiasm at this particular time?

It’s striking how similar the language is in the UK, Canada and the U.S. right now around these issues. In mere months, the themes of Cameron’s Big Society have become the darlings of Canadian and U.S. governments, and the impetus for a slew of new “partnerships” between governments and non-profits charged with figuring it all out.

Have governments suddenly awoken to what a jewel they have in the non-profit sector?  Or is this about the opportunity to shrink government funding even further, saddling beleaguered communities with even more of the work of social care that governments once provided?

Intent is everything. Wonderful to see the lion suddenly eager to lie down with the lamb, but a smart lamb will play that scene very carefully. Sometimes you’re a new fuzzy buddy, sometimes you’re dinner.

The conservative governments that have dominated western politics in the last 20 years played a starring role in creating the social ills they now want the Big Society to fix. I guess I just don’t trust them. 

Andre Picard is easily the best health reporter in Canada in my opinion, not only because he writes great stuff and takes the serious measure of issues, but because he gives a public platform to important issues that we need to know about.
Today's column in the Globe and Mail is a good example of that - he's highlighting a study that pokes big holes in the prescription drug industry's assertion that the reason drugs are so expensive is because the industry is spending vast sums on creating them.

OK, I don't usually go in for the flavour-of-the-day studies that have us scrambling this way and that trying to follow whatever new wisdom has popped up to help us guide our lives into better health.
But I'm a long-time devotee of regular exercise, and this latest study on lab mice underlines that exercise really does seem to be the magic bullet.
While it would be hard to test the same theories using weight-training (although I'm enjoying the image of mice doing tiny little bench presses and squats, I can tell you from my own life that weights are definitely part of the magic-bullet equation as well.
And never mind that every now and then you end up with a bit of an injury from too much enthusiastic gym time (like at this very moment, in my case). Weight-training helps restore the muscle we start losing in our 30s as part of the aging process. For every pound of muscle on your body, you're burning at least 10 times the calories just maintaining it as a pound of fat burns in the course of a day. What's not to like? 

Good read from my partner Paul Willcocks, who dug up some enlightening information by taking a look at the B.C. Progress Board reports assessing the record of Gordon Campbell's Liberals in the last few years.
Campbell's government created the Progress Board to measure performance, so you have to give him credit for that - up until that point, it was pretty much impossible to gauge how effective a government had been. But as the reports reveal, the Liberals haven't quite been the saviours of the economy that they position themselves as. 

A grim but fascinating reminder from Salon magazine about our seemingly overpowering need to blame the victim when a woman is sexually assaulted - in this case, CBS reporter Lara Logan. 

Our countries talk a good game about treasuring the war veterans who serve on behalf of all of us. But as with anything, what really counts is what we DO once the heart-warming media images of returning vets fade from view and the soldier returns to "normal" life.
And as this study out of the U.S. shows, the love doesn't appear to last long south of the border, where military veterans are more likely than any other group to end up homeless.

Stigma blinds us

The dictionary defines stigma as “a distinguishing mark of social disgrace.”  Once upon a time, it was the common term for the permanent mark burned into the skin of criminals and slaves.

We like to think of ourselves as too civilized for such things nowadays. But in fact, the practice continues for all kinds of people singled out for scorn and judgment. 

That we even sort people that way is probably the most interesting aspect of this thing we call stigma.

Scorn and judgment are not attitudes a “nice” society generally wants to cultivate in its citizens, and for the most part I think we’re fairly kind to each other. We’re respectful of each other’s differences.

But not always. Some categories of people still end up singled out for social disgrace, their lives marked as surely by stigma as if we’d burned it into them.  

This is Anti-Stigma Week in Greater Victoria, and I love the theme: “Nice People Take Drugs.” People with addictions experience tremendous stigma, and never mind that almost 90 per cent of Canadians report using alcohol or illegal drugs in their lifetime.

But stigma has an impact on a number of other groups, too. Sex workers are profoundly affected by stigma, as everything about the Pickton case continues to remind us.

If it had been bank tellers or 7-Eleven workers or small-business owners who started going missing, I don’t think we’d be in the situation of pulling together a task force 20 years later to try to make sense of why so many died while we dithered.  It simply wouldn’t have happened that way. Stigma kills sex workers.

Stigma against poor people is growing at an alarming rate. It’s why we can justify keeping income-assistance rates at levels that are impossible to live on. It’s why we build way, way less subsidized housing than we did a couple of decades ago, and wince at every tax dollar spent on supporting people unable to work.

Like every group we stigmatize, the poor have become unworthy and shameful in our eyes.

We use hateful language when describing people living homeless. We ignore our governments’ endless service reductions and policy changes that crank up the misery for people in profound poverty. We watch the creep of poverty in our community, and still think it’s “their” fault.

That’s what stigma does. It blinds you to the obvious. It misleads you.

We’ve selectively stigmatized certain health issues, too. Mental illness is the most striking example of that.

If I sprained my ankle, I’d have no compunction about posting it on my Facebook page and waiting for the flood of caring comments. Or writing about it in my column.

But what if I posted that I was staying home to work through a severe anxiety attack? Or a rough period in my schizophrenia? Or had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder?

Truth is, I doubt I’d even write such a thing if I genuinely had a mental illness, which is perhaps the worst part about stigma. It demands silence.

I’ve often thought that if a purple light suddenly appeared in the house of everyone in the region who’d had a problem with drugs or alcohol, we’d be blinded by the light.

If we could ever see the faces of the people in our community who have been affected by mental illness - or participated in the sex trade, for that matter -  we couldn’t help but rethink our views just on the basis of how many familiar faces we’d see around us.

But who’s going to step forward with such declarations when the stigma is unbearable? How many people are prepared to be brave for the good of the group, when the impact on their own lives from publicly revealing themselves can be horrendous?

Stigma costs people jobs. It costs them their children, and their housing. It brands them as outside the norm, forever “other.”

Our laws say we don’t allow things like that to happen. But we do.

Fortunately, there’s a simple enough solution. We can stop. Stigma is kept alive in this day and age primarily by our attitudes, and it will die as soon as we quit substituting prejudice for thought. 

We have banished many of the laws and practices that once fed stigma at the institutional level. What keeps it going now is just us. All it will take to banish stigma is for you and me to refuse to let it cloud our thinking.

So quit.