The long wait for an easier death

“No consensus can be found in favour of the decriminalization of assisted suicide. To the extent that there is a consensus, it is that human life must be respected.”

With those words, Supreme Court Justice John Sopinka ended any hope Sue Rodriguez had of using her own death to change Canadian laws around assisted suicide. She got the word on Sept. 29, 1993, and less than five months later ended her life the old-fashioned way - illegally, helped along by a doctor who has never been publicly identified.

And for the most part, that has been that. A few criminal cases alleging assisted suicide pop up in the media from time to time, but little has changed. Imagine what the courageous Rodriguez might have to say if she’d lived long enough to see that we’d still be paralyzed over assisted suicide 18 years later.

But suddenly the issue is back in the news, with two different proponents now preparing to push challenges through Canada’s court system.

Lawyer Joe Arvay, acting on behalf of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, is representing Gloria Taylor. Like Rodriguez, the B.C. woman has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and wants the right to have someone assist her with her death when the time comes.

 Meanwhile, the Farewell Foundation for the Right to Die - a New Westminster group headed by a veteran of the right-to-die movement - is using its failed attempt to become a non-profit as reason for a constitutional challenge.

Foundation director and B.C. criminologist Russel Ogden has been in the media off and on for years as an advocate of assisted suicide, pursuing the issue with such intensity that it sometimes lands him in trouble with his college and university bosses. He’s got a clip on YouTube demonstrating how to kill yourself with helium.

He and Arvay both contend that much has changed since Rodriguez’s case, and that a legal challenge will have more traction this time around.

I’m not so sure.  Canadians still haven’t had a real conversation about the right to die.

Yes, more countries have changed their laws in the years since Rodriguez’s court fight. Their experiences have demonstrated that legalizing assisted suicide need not tear a society apart.  Oregon legalized assisted suicide the same year Rodriguez died, and in almost two decades only a scant 400 Oregonians - mostly older people with cancer - have chosen that option.

But if the incredibly affecting Rodriguez wasn’t enough to galvanize a country, I don’t know what the odds are for a challenge built around non-profit status. Perhaps Arvay will have more luck, although his goal of seeing Taylor’s challenge settled by November seems out of reach.

The Farewell Foundation was denied non-profit status in March by the B.C. Registrar of Companies, which noted in its decision that no organization whose purpose is criminal - in this case, assisting people to die - can be incorporated under the Society Act.

The foundation is leveraging that rejection into a larger fight about the constitutionality of the assisted-suicide laws. Its case in a nutshell: The activities of the Farewell Foundation are in fact lawful because the laws related to assisted suicide are themselves “unlawful.” 

(And if that doesn’t work, the foundation also filed a civil suit against the Attorney General of Canada challenging the constitutionality of the assisted-suicide prohibition.)

I watched old CBC footage of Rodriguez this week in news clips from the months before her death. I’d forgotten what an amazing advocate she was - so open and well-spoken, lighting up the screen with her big smile even in the late stages of a disease that was slowly taking away her every function.

If charisma had anything to do with whether justice prevailed, Rodriguez would have won her case hands down. The Farewell Foundation is taking things in a different direction, with an approach that will be a tougher sell with a public that still hasn’t sorted out its feelings around the right to die.

It could be that the concept of dying with dignity will find more traction this time around. The politically powerful baby boomer generation was perhaps too young during Rodriguez’s time to care much about the issues she was raising. That’s no longer the case.

A 2010 poll confirmed what other polls over the years have repeatedly found: That a majority of Canadians want assisted suicide legalized. But the missed opportunity of 1993 still hangs over us, and it seems we never quite want it enough.    

No disrespect intended to Times Colonist reporter Katie DeRosa, but what exactly has B.C.'s human-trafficking office been doing with its $500,000 annual budget, anyway?
What got me the most about this agency back in the days when I was at PEERS (and am again, so maybe that's why I'm so het up) was that it was ostensibly fighting the great scourge of human trafficking in B.C. even while the far greater risk was to the garden-variety outdoor sex workers on B.C.'s strolls and working invisibly in a thousand different venues around the province.
We spent $2.25 million on this office in the last four years, apparently to help 100 people. It kills me to think how that money could have been used for real needs rather than for chasing ghosts.
You'd think that with all the sex workers I'd met over the years in B.C., I might have met one who'd been trafficked at some point in her life. Nope.
Hey, maybe it's just coincidence. Or maybe it just seemed easier to fund an office of civil servants than to actually help vulnerable people, who rarely present as the perfect victims that we conjure when we hear the term "human trafficking."
Don't get me wrong - human trafficking is a terrible thing. But if you've got $500,000 a year to spend on helping vulnerable people in B.C., would this be it? Now we just have to hope the savings from this cut get redirected to helping the many vulnerable people in our province. 

The latest survey from AskMen seems to prove the old adage about how the more things change, the more they stay the same. But really, who would actually expect basic behaviours and attitudes around sex and relationships to have changed that much?
Yes, I suppose it's a little disappointing to see that the men who would consider having office affairs would do so only if the woman was in a lower work position than they were, but were you to ask the same question of women, I suspect they'd mostly be aiming up. Is that better?

A century of caring for B.C. parks - until now

The B.C. parks system marked its 100^th birthday this spring. So how are things going?

As an enthusiastic camper, I can attest that the campsites are still lovely, the scenery amazing, and the pit toilets tolerable. By the numbers, though, I think British Columbians have cause to be a little concerned.

It’s been a hard 10 years for BC Parks. Park operations were among the first to be targeted for cuts by former premier Gordon Campbell, whose government closed campgrounds, scrapped forest-reserve sites, dumped interpretative programs and jacked up user fees soon after taking office.

Visits fell by almost four million the year after the 2002 cuts. They’ve never fully recovered, and took another turn for the worse this past year.

Some 19.2 million people visited a B.C. park in 2010-11. That’s down a million from the previous year, and not even close to the 25 million visitors of the mid-1990s. Satisfaction ratings are slipping as well, falling below the 80-per-cent mark for the first time in years.

B.C. Liberals have been enthusiastic proponents of handing off public services to the private sector during their tenure. Private interests now run everything from hospital food preparation and health care to children’s group homes, seniors’ care, employment training and parks. The Socreds had dabbled with privatizing some parks functions in the 1980s, but now virtually all park and campground management has been privatized.

Thinking like a B.C. Liberal, I’d probably argue that it doesn’t really matter who’s running things. People could count on pulling into a nice, clean campground back when government was renting the spot, and they still can.

Sure, they’re paying a little more for the experience, but the taxpayer is paying less. Sure, it bugged visitors when they started being charged for parking, but isn’t it nice that a new premier has rescinded that? Everybody’s happy.

Well, almost. As both a taxpayer and a parks user, I’m feeling a bit taken advantage of. What used to be a cheap night in the woods now feels like something of a shakedown.

Might that have anything to do with why park visits have fallen 20 per cent in the last 15 years?

Here’s a summer night of camping at Bamberton Provincial Park as an example.

The place looks like a deal at $16 a night. But you’ll need to add in the $6-a-night reservation fee that you’re probably going to opt for in the high season.

Then there’s the $7-a-night firewood purchase. The $8 a night for a permit for an extra car to park at your site. The $5 to dump your holding tanks if you’re in a trailer or motor home. Oh, and don’t forget the HST.

Camping revenues have risen 27 per cent since 2006-07, even while camping visits have flatlined. The increase is all due to higher fees.

You get access to a beautiful little piece of B.C. for all those fees, absolutely. But what you don’t get is the power, water, swimming pool, video arcade and store, cable TV and horseshoe pit being offered at the private campground up the road for about the same money.

A provincial park does give you a serene camping experience that few private campsites can rival. But falling visitor numbers - now forecast to stall at around 19 million for the next three years - make it pretty clear that more than a few park visitors aren’t feeling the love.

Meanwhile, a decade-long focus on cutting costs has had a serious impact on the development of new park facilities.  The Socreds built thousands of vehicle-accessible campsites during their tenure. The New Democrats built 1,500. The Liberals haven’t built a single one.

I admire private enterprise for its amazing ability to find new ways of turning a profit. We couldn’t live without the energy and drive of capitalists. I don’t mean to criticize the work of the private sector, or knock the quality of operations in the parks system.

But really, is this what we want for our parks? The private sector is great at making money, but should that be the primary goal for the B.C. parks system? Where’s the vision?

Some things just aren’t suited to the private sector.  Not everything is meant to be a revenue-generating opportunity. After 100 years of public investment, it’s downright shameful to be part of the generation that measures success by how little our government spends on parks.

Happy birthday, BC Parks. At your age, we ought to be showing you more respect.

If families are first, who's second?

My TC colleague Dave Obee usually writes about history when he's not writing editorials for the paper, but I think I like him best when he gets a little edgy and sarcastic, as he does in today's amusing (and dead-on) riff on Premier Christy Clark's "Families First" slogan. 

Add  R&B singer Amy Winehouse to the infamous 27 Club - she was found dead today in London. What a loss - love that woman's voice and musical style. But some people just have too big a monkey on their back, and I always got the impression that Winehouse's was gorilla-size. 

Yes, kids, Grandma does drugs

There’s no planning for an event like Grandma’s Big Talk On Drugs, but I’ve been waiting for the opportunity for a while now as my oldest grandchildren close in on the teen years.

The chance came on Monday, while I was driving four of my five grandsons home to the Comox Valley after a couple weeks of Island travel and camping.

The oldest two are 11 and 12, and well familiar with kids not much older than them using alcohol and illegal drugs.  I knew there’d be a moment one day soon when I could jump in with a word or two on the subject.

I don’t know how it came up - not at my behest, that’s for sure, because the only hope you’ve got of getting a fledgling adolescent to hear you is if you wait for them to bring something up. At any rate, one of the boys said something about drug use, and all of a sudden the door opened.

As was the case when I was their age, my two oldest grandsons are surrounded by people who drink and use illegal drugs. I was 13 when I smoked my first joint, introduced to it by a school pal whose older brother was a teenage science whiz cranking out acid for eager buyers.

I’d already started drinking to get drunk by that point, which I would continue with great enthusiasm for the next three years. I know my mother will be deeply embarrassed that I’m admitting such a thing, but Mom, it’s not your fault. I just came of age in the ‘70s.

My grandsons’ generation have had the added impact of being completely immersed in cultural references to drug use, from TV shows to movies to Web sites like YouTube. This is the generation that can check out photos of their dopey older cousin with a joint in his mouth just by clicking on his Facebook site. No kid today grows up in a vacuum about drugs.

So I figure the options are to either have a frank conversation to prepare kids for those intense teen years, or assume responsibility for sending the poor little sods into high-risk territory without a lick of sense to fall back on.

I have fairly vivid memories of being that kid, teenage drug use being something that my parents’ generation simply hadn’t considered much. In the end, nothing too bad happened to me.  But that was sheer luck.

I always wanted better for my own kids and grandkids - and yours. But I fear that in the 40 years since my generation was being scared with bad-acid movies in guidance class, “just say no” still prevails as the central message to young people. It remains an important message, of course, but hardly the only one.

Years ago a young relative of mine, in Grade 6 at the time, pinned a “Just Say No” poster from a school presentation to his bedroom door, declaring with conviction that he would never use drugs. It hung there for years, through the earnest times and on into irony.

Like me, and maybe you, he has grown into a good and responsible person despite having used drugs as a teen. Most people do. Would it kill us to mention that to our kids once in a while?

My grandsons wanted to know if it was true that crack and crystal meth were addictive after just one use, and whether I agreed that heroin was the worst drug of all. I parsed that first answer carefully, wanting to stress what rotten drugs crack and crystal meth are without portraying them as instant tickets to doom.

Heroin - well, that took a little longer, and gave me the chance to talk about the drug with the most catastrophic potential, alcohol. “Alcohol is a drug?” asked the 11-year-old with much surprise.

As for marijuana, what’s left to say? It’s not a harmless drug, but most B.C. kids over the age of five could probably name that scent what with so many of their parents and grandparents still smoking the stuff. I settled for telling the boys that some studies have found chronic, heavy marijuana use during adolescence is detrimental to brain function.

I doubt they’ll retain much of our talk, but I hope they got my point about making informed choices should it come to that. Kids, just say know.

How are we doing in B.C. now that government is fixated on getting rock-bottom prices from the private sector for contract work? Not so good, apparently, as these immigrants hung out to dry have found out after being exploited and then stiffed by a silviculture company hired by the province.
This one won't turn out to be such a "deal" for taxpayers by the time lost wages and seriously substandard work standards are accounted for. Have to wonder how it's worked out for the new forest these guys were supposed to be planting, too. 

Two weeks of camping are now behind me, and the hordes of grandsons that I seem to have accumulated (OK, five, but they've got big energy) have made their way back to their respective homes. And isn't it just like the sun to start shining on the very day that I return to my work.
But I've promised myself to quit griping about the bad weather - it's tedious, I'm sure. I've got a new project, to write a daily haiku as a way of detailing some aspect of each day, and am determined to find the "poetry" in life's simple moments for at least as long as I manage to stick to this new discipline of haiku journalling.
Here's the link to the site, should you want to take a look. I wouldn't call it art, but hey, it's authentic.

Keep the wrinkles

I watched part of “Burlesque” the other night on TV. The movie was quite awful, but never mind - the really terrible part was seeing what beautiful wild-child Cher has done to herself.

With my aging face looking back at me every morning from the mirror, I completely get the pull of cosmetic surgery. A tuck here, a lift there - would that be so wrong?

Fortunately, Cher and a long line of other celebrity beauties who have tried to stave off aging are out there to remind me of the enormous price to be paid for giving up your real face.

I’m as susceptible to wildly overpriced potions as the next person when it comes to promises of firmer skin, fewer wrinkles, more lustre or less droop. I don’t pass judgment on any woman for the crazy things she may try in an attempt to stop a completely unstoppable process.

But cosmetic surgery - that’s just not going to be my thing. And I’m thankful to the celebrities for helping me see that. As much as I hate the aging process, I know from looking at them that I’d hate even more to go through it with a face that didn’t belong to me.

I read a magazine article years ago offering tips for preventing wrinkles. The main advice was to smile less, because every smile pressed wrinkles into the skin.

You can laugh at advice like that, as I did (and wrinkle up a little more). But cosmetic surgery and toxins like Botox take that article’s premise to a whole new level. We’re actually altering our faces’ ability to smile at all.

When Cher smiles now, what you see is a slight lifting at the corners of her mouth, a Mona Lisa version of the great big smile she once had. A heavily altered face like hers is just too tight, too stuffed, too deadened to produce a full-on smile anymore.

I can hear every anti-aging salon and cosmetic surgeon in town - and there are a lot of them - preparing retorts right now declaring that great progress has been made in cosmetic procedures, and that there’s no need to look anything other than “refreshed” if you get the right work at the right time, done by the right people.

And that’s probably true to a point.

But think about this, people: Celebrities have all the money they need to buy the best cosmetic procedures out there. They’ve got access to the latest stuff and the most renowned professionals.

And yet their faces still end up ruined. They get maybe five or 10 more years of looking better than expected for someone their age, but then it’s a hard, rough fall from there. 

You think it’s going to be any different for the rest of us?

As the procedures pile up - because really, is one facelift, one eyelid tuck, ever going to be enough? - the price of messing with Mother Nature is revealed.

There are the ridges up high on the cheekbones. The tugged, cat-like eyes. Lips so big and tight they look painful to the touch. A mouth line that pulls horizontally rather than vertically.

Cosmetic surgery doesn’t stop you from feeling emotion, of course. Just don’t expect them to play across your face like they used to. Excess cosmetic work leads to a face so devoid of affect, it wouldn’t be out of place on someone with Parkinson’s disease.

Worse still, everyone starts to look alike. It’s as though Kenny Rogers and Joan Rivers and Dolly Parton were siblings from an odd-looking mannequin family, having given up their former faces for the remarkably similar one that emerges after too much cosmetic surgery.

 At this point, I wish I could trot out the old saw about taking pride in each and every one of my hard-won wrinkles.  Truthfully, were it really possible to hang on to a firm, fabulous face at 54 through some Benjamin Button-like miracle of science, I’d definitely be checking it out.

So I won’t lie and say I like the two crescent lines that now bracket my mouth. But I do like the thought that they’re there because I smile a lot.  I don’t like the furrow between my brows, either. But if that’s what a rich, emotion-filled life with frequent eyebrow contractions leads to, so be it.

Youth is a beautiful thing. But only on youth. Hate the wrinkles, love your face.

High government salaries create divide 

Working ourselves up over the salaries of senior government employees and politicians is something of a tradition in B.C. What surprises me is how little the lather ever leads to.

The Vancouver Sun recently updated its excellent database listing B.C.’s highest paid civil servants, and the statistics highlight a worrying situation we’ve created in this province by paying corporate-level salaries to government employees.

Hundreds of people working for taxpayer-funded government bodies in B.C. now earn salaries of $200,000 or more. The last decade has seen nothing but big, big growth in pay, pensons, benefits and severance packages for government managers.

While average British Columbians have seen their weekly wages inch up a total of 26 per cent since 2001, to $830 a week, senior government managers - in provincial offices, Crown corporations, health services, school districts, universities - have in many cases seen their salaries double in that same period.

While the rest of us were belt-tightening and battening down the hatches over the last two years, the number of public servants earning more than $100,000 a year jumped 22 per cent. Just four per cent of B.C. adults have salaries at that level.

It’s the unseemliness of the thing that troubles me. Children go begging, people with developmental disabilities lose their homes, old people pile up in hospital. And the managers in public service repeatedly get double-digit increases.

Some are even landing bonuses because they’ve cut public services. Think about that. We’re paying extra to be provided with less.

We’ve heard many, many times that these increases are needed to keep B.C. competitive. Running a province/hospital/school district/city is complex. Doesn’t B.C. deserve the best? And don’t we nay-sayers comprehend that the private sector will snap these people up if we don’t compensate them well?

(Never underestimate the power of that argument to jack up salaries. Five managers with B.C. Hydro’s marketing arm saw their salaries skyrocket in 2008-09 after a firm on Wall Street started checking them out for hire. One guy’s salary more than tripled that year, to $629,200.)

I’m sure it must be very hard work to be in a senior government position. Then again, it was very hard work when I ran a small non-profit for a salary of $52,000. I’m not convinced that the public servants earning six-figure salaries are really working two times, four times, even 12 times harder and better than I was in those years.

In a perfect world, everybody would be paid richly for a job well done.

But we’re not talking about a perfect world here. We’re talking about a public system, funded by people who pool their tax money to pay for services that will benefit British Columbians overall. Where’s the rationale for compensating the managers of such a system at ever-increasing amounts while those paying the bills get by on ever-dwindling services?

Is all that expensive governance at least buying us a better province?

As Times Colonist columnist Paul Willcocks noted in a February piece, not really. Citing the most recent report from the government’s own Progress Board, Willcocks found B.C. has at best done a middling job of meeting economic goals in the last decade, and is failing outright on a number of social measures. 

Productivity, personal income and exports per capita have all slipped since 2001. University graduation rates have stagnated.

On infant health, B.C. has fallen from second place to eighth in Canada. Where we were once in the middle of the pack on child poverty, we’re now routinely at the bottom, and have been for eight consecutive years.

And yet the generous pay raises continue. The gulf grows wider between average British Columbians and the government that purports to represent them. The big salaries beget other big increases all around them, because that’s how it works. Everyone wins except for the people paying for it.

This issue has no champions.

The pundits - public servants themselves, for the most part - generally come out on the side of higher public salaries, pointing to provinces where other pundits and governments are saying the same thing. Well-paid people compare themselves to other well-paid people, and not surprisingly conclude that everyone is worth every penny.

People in the public service - or wanting to be - certainly aren’t about to jump on any bandwagon aimed at slowing down salary increases. Even if a senior job isn’t in their future, wage inflation at the top has a ripple effect.

And you and I?  We’ll just keep paying more for less. It’s what we do.

I'm on vacation for a couple of weeks, and will return   to regular blogging in the week of July 18. In the meantime, I write a column every Friday in the Times Colonist and have left some behind in my absence to run on July 8 and 15 - you'll find them here. 

That something weird is going on with our weather ought to be clear by now, on this July 1 morning that feels more like, what, March? Not exactly what comes to mind when you hear "global warming," but a definite signal that things just aren't like they used to be.
The 2010 State of the Climate report underlines that in a very worrying way. Here's a link to a Nunavut newspaper article that highlights the report's findings, with a link to the report itself at the bottom of the story.

I'm sharing my blog space today with a Victoria man who is justifiably frustrated with the system in B.C. for people with developmental disabilities, and wonders why Premier Christy Clark's promises to put "families first" doesn't seem to apply to his family: 

By Ian McInnes

Families First, a political concept that resonates well if you have 2.3 children, are a member of the middle class and live in urban BC

 In fact, it is rather easy to put Families First as a member of these strata of our society; you have the financial strength, community support, and educational opportunities to do just that.  And if you vote Liberal you not only get government support but receive a pat on the back from your premier saying “keep up the good work” we’ve got your back.

 But if you have a family unit that includes a member with a developmental disability, it is impossible to put family first.

 The reality is the family member with the disability comes first at the expense of you, your spouse and the other members of your family.

If the family member needs to be fed because they are unable to feed themselves, they come first.

If they need to be dressed because they cannot accomplish the task, they come first.

If they need to be diapered 5 times a day because of incontinence, they come first.

If they need be turned in the middle of the night, you get up and do it.

 Other siblings say, “What about me; don’t I come first sometime?” Your spouse says, “What about me don’t I deserve a little attention sometime?”

And you say, “What about us don’t we deserve a holiday; a break from this 24/7 responsibility; a time to be just us?”

 For families with a disabled member, Families First is just empty political rhetoric

 A slogan of “Retaining a Semblance of Family” would be a more apt rallying call. Faced with the responsibility and stress of developmental disability, most families just fly apart (over 90 per cent end in divorce).

Being a couple, handling a family member with a disability is extremely difficult.  As a single parent, it is impossible without a great deal of external support.

And unlike the conventional family unit there is never an “empty nest” period to look forward to.  The responsibility, for those willing to accept the challenge, is for life, either yours or that of the person with the disability.

As a caring community we must support such family units and support them more vigorously than conventional family units. Families First must include those with a disability.

 Since 2005, Community Living BC is the crown agency mandated to provide that support. But instead of increasing or at the very least maintaining service, CLBC is cutting and curtailing services to the developmentally disabled.

According to Paul Willcocks, a keen observer of B.C. politics, “the amount of funding per client has fallen every year since it (CLBC) was created six years ago.” 

The final irony may be that Harry Bloy, the minister responsible for CLBC, has been made a cabinet committee member of Families First. 

He has had the opportunity to improve the lives of the developmentally disability and by extension their families, but to date has chosen to make their lives more difficult.

 Families First remains a political rallying cry for the Liberal government but does not apply to families with a member having a developmental disability.

Great news from Turn off the Blue Light, the anti-criminalization campaign in Ireland launched by sex workers and supporters. Google has changed its mind on prohibiting the group from buying an AdWord, one of those little paid links you see at the top of some Google searches.
I mean, it's a pretty small victory in the grand scheme of things, but what the heck. Take the wins wherever they come, especially when the issue is sex work. You just don't see many wins if that's your cause.
The power of social media and electronic distribution lists were certainly obvious to me after I wrote a column on this subject (it'll be the June 24 blog post below this one) and then used Facebook and two sex-work-friendly researcher-based distribution lists to get the word out as far as possible. I've now got new "friends" in Bangladesh and Thailand as a result.
Of course, none of this is to suggest that my Victoria column was the reason Google changed its mind, prompt and thorough use of Facebook and distribution lists notwithstanding. But maybe it helped a little.
The Blue Light organizers were prepared to protest outside Google's European headquarters in Dublin when they got word from Google that it had taken another look at the group's Web site and approved them to advertise.
Google had deemed that the group was selling sexual services,which it doesn't allow. But when the company took a closer look, it must have seen what Blue Light had been telling them all along: The Web site, and the Blue Light campaign, is strictly about human rights, not selling sex. 

An inquiry into murdered sex workers, without any sex workers taking part in the proceedings - how well do you think that's going to work? This story from the Globe has a comment from the Attorney General's ministry that would be amusing if it weren't so tragic.
In defence of the government's refusal to cover legal costs at the Pickton inquiry for groups representing the interests of aboriginals and women, the government lawyer suggests his team could assume the interests of aboriginals and women for the purposes of questioning witnesses.
Yeah, that'll work. A bunch of largely white, largely male privileged people with law degrees, reimagining themselves as impoverished aboriginal women working the Downtown Eastside stroll.
I get that it's painful for government to pay the legal bills of all the groups that Pickton inquiry chief Wally Oppal has said need to be heard at the inquiry. But it's completely unacceptable to deny legal support for virtually every group with a connection to the victims. Whose voices should be louder at this inquiry than theirs? 

Google decision snuffs out human-rights ad for sex workers

Everybody’s got an opinion on the sex industry. But when you’re Google, what you think really matters.

So when Google yanks the online ads of a small group of Dublin sex workers trying to talk about human rights for people in the industry, it’s a big statement. I’m going to have to rethink everything I thought I knew about Google.

Ten escorts launched “Turn Off the Blue Light” earlier this year, responding to a major campaign in Ireland right now to outlaw the last legal vestiges of prostitution.

The anti-prostitution campaign is called “Turn off the Red Light.” The escorts picked their name as an allusion to the blue lights on Ireland’s police cars, and the impact of criminalization.

Ireland’s prostitution laws are essentially the same as Canada’s. The sale of sex is legal, but everything else to do with the industry is a crime. As in Canada, that has led to a thriving industry that operates almost completely in the shadows.

The Red Light campaign - a broad coalition of 39 religious groups, unions, non-profits, feminist organizations, political parties and so on - is pushing for Ireland to follow Sweden and make the sale of sex illegal. Sex workers in both countries contend that only increases the risk to workers.

Desperate to be heard on the subject, a few Dublin escorts and supporters struck up their own small rights campaign and bought a Google AdWord - those paid links that you’ve probably noticed at the top of some of your Google searches.

The ad linked to the Blue Light Web site. Here’s what it said: “Turn off the Blue Light: Sex workers in Ireland need human rights, not legal wrongs.”

It ran for several weeks without issue. But in May, Google yanked the ad, having suddenly decided the content was an “egregious violation” of company ad policy.

Google contends the ad is selling adult sexual services, a sector the company prohibits from advertising (with an interesting exception for stripping or lap-dancing services).

But Blue Light isn’t selling sexual services. It’s campaigning for human rights. Unfortunately, Google won’t budge.

As if to add insult, the company then sold an AdWord to a religious organization leading a campaign against sex trafficking in Ireland. With “Turn Off the Blue Light” worked into the ad’s keyword search, the anti-prostitution site is now the first to come up on Google’s Irish search engine (google.ie) when anyone looks for information on the Blue Light campaign.

What does Google have to say about all this? Not much.

I got two very polite responses from the company’s press department after a little prodding. But neither addressed the questions I’d asked - like why an ad for workers’ rights is considered to be selling sexual services just because the workers happen to be escorts.

Blue Light knew its tiny Google ad wouldn’t make much of a splash in the face of widespread and aggressive opposition. But it was better than no voice at all, says a campaign organizer I talked to this week.

The sex workers appealed Google’s decision. They lost, or at least presume they did. Google said they’d get an email from the company within three days if the appeal was successful, and no notice if it was rejected. The three days came and went a while ago, with no further word.

The sentiment in Ireland feels overwhelmingly against people in the industry, says the Blue Light organizer. Even the unions have joined the anti-prostitution campaign, as have a long list of women’s organizations. Google’s rejection was one more blow.

How Google managed to find the tiny Blue Light ad amid the gamillion AdWords that generate almost $28 billion a year in revenues for the company - well, that’s an intriguing question.

But as Google notes in its correspondence with Blue Light, the company acts when it gets complaints. And it obviously feels little compunction to verify the accuracy of a complaint before it acts.

Responding to my interview request, Google first sent me an email detailing how it handles political ads, noting that it strives to be neutral and fair. I hope CEO Larry Page reads that policy with more intent sometime soon.

The company followed up half an hour later with a second email on its sexual-services policy, reiterating that escort services are prohibited from advertising.  

As are legal workers who dare to speak up on their own behalf, it appears. That’s a frightening development in a company that controls the world’s information.

***

Please urge Google to reconsider their decision. You can comment on the Google wall on Facebook (you'll have to "like" it first), and I notice that my post from this morning is already gone!) and on the walls of Larry Page and Larry Page/Sergey Brin. 

Here's an idea: Pull together a panel of average citizens and ask THEM to take a look at health care and what they think needs to be done. The Globe's Andre Picard summarizes here what the group of 28 Ontarians recommended as part of the Citizens' Reference Panel on Health Services.
If you like your information full-on, read the full report here. It's 44 pages, but there's also a one-page summary. 
Nothing world-shaking in the panel's findings, but that's the point. It doesn't take shiny new equipment, expensive new drugs and an influx of even more health-care professionals to fix much of what ails the "health" system - it just takes common sense and policy-makers brave enough to get beyond the individual interests of the big players.
Note the recommendation to end the fee-for-service pay system for doctors. Yes, please - the incentives are all wrong in that system, resulting in high costs to taxpayers with no assurances that all that spending is actually resulting in a healthier population. Governments are all about "outcomes" these days - why should the medical system be exempt?

Just bite the bullet, government - developmental disability is for life

I can feel for governments on issues like health spending, which has no top limit to its growth. As long as there are people desperate to stay alive and clever entrepreneurs eager to capitalize on that, no amount of money will ever be “enough.”

So yes, let’s have a heart for the plight of government in trying to manage that challenging issue. But that’s no excuse for why they’re not better at managing other costs that are far more predictable year over year.

The crazy stuff going on right now for people with developmental disabilities in B.C. is a fitting example.

Yes, there are cost pressures on that front, too: double-digit growth in autism diagnoses in Canada; expanded services on reduced budgets; more private-sector interests finding ways to turn a profit in the delivery of social services.

But allowing for all of that, the big costs for a funding body like Community Living B.C. still ought to be relatively predictable over the long term.

When it comes to a lifetime condition like developmental disability, you can budget with assurance knowing that the people needing services and support today will still need them tomorrow. The number of babies born with developmental disabilities every year is also stable enough to be built into the spending plan.

And unlike the health system, caps on care are common for developmental-disability services, restricting the number of people who can access support.

In contrast to our all-you-can-eat health system, there are multiple tests to take, professional assessments to acquire, hurdles to overcome and “analyst” scrutiny to bear before anyone gets CLBC funding. It all adds up to more budgetary certainty.  

Yet here we are again, acting like the cost of caring for British Columbians with developmental disability has caught us by surprise.  Here we are again, trying to downgrade the housing support and work opportunities for people who we know with certainty can’t manage without them.

B.C. looked progressive back in the 1980s when it shut down the big institutions - Glendale, Tranquille, Woodlands - where “the retarded” had been locked away. But the years haven’t been kind to the chronically underfunded community system that developed as a replacement for institutional care.

The creation of CLBC in 2005 was supposed to improve things. The Crown corporation was conceived as a parent-driven initiative that would finally put people with developmental disabilities and their families first in establishing spending priorities.

Not quite. The TC reported this week on the concerns of group-home operators facing a 19 per cent jump in B.C.’s minimum wage this year. Some overnight staff at the homes earn minimum wage, and agencies are wondering where they’ll find the money.

Not from CLBC. The Crown corporation told agencies to cut client services if it comes to that.

“We would encourage your members to continue to explore new and more cost-effective ways to meet individuals’ disability-related needs,” wrote the CLBC’s Doug Woollard in a letter last month to the Community Living Agencies Network, which had raised the issue.  

Much has changed for the better for people with developmental disabilities in the last 30 years, mind you.

The level of integration in our school system now would have been a distant dream in the days when I was in elementary school and the mentally handicapped kids were hidden away in the basement.

In terms of employment, the best that any of those kids could hope for back then was a seat in a sheltered workshop, where they’d maybe make a few dollars a week. Now, there’s the possibility of getting a real job - for real money - at the growing number of community-minded businesses stepping up to do their part.

But those gains are worthless if government waffles on its commitment to people’s basic needs. The closure of group homes this year is destabilizing decades of effort to create those homes and bring a little certainty into people’s lives. Recent cuts to work programs and job training are just plain cruel.

Everybody has to be prepared to give up something in a recession, I suppose. But should that include secure housing, social connection and job training for a few thousand extremely vulnerable people who we know won’t make it in this world without our help?

People with developmental disabilities need a lifetime of support. It’s frustrating, inefficient and sad that government still resists that reality.

CLBC execs clean up as services dwindle

*Note: Here's further news coverage from October after Rick Mowles was fired, and another follow from Nov. 4 detailing Mowles' $345,000 severance package

While browsing the Community Living BC Web site for information about cuts to services, I found myself comparing compensation paid to CLBC executives since the Crown corporation was started in 2005-2006. Very, very interesting.
CEO Rick Mowles has seen a 59 per cent increase in his annual compensation over the four fiscal years from 2005-06 to 2009-10, pushing him to almost $231,000. Doug Woollard, vice-president of operations and the man most often mentioned in stories about more service cuts at CLBC, has seen his compensation climb 57 per cent in that same period, to almost $176,000.
Wow.
Meanwhile, the money for contracted services for people with developmental disabilities - the raison d'etre of CLBC - fell $5 million in the 2009-10 fiscal year compared to the previous year. (Can't do comparisons back to 2006, as funded services have changed.) I guess we now know why the CLBC bosses get the big bucks.
See the figures for yourself here. You'll need to go into each year's financial statements to do the comparison.


*June 23: Heard from CLBC communications and I just want to underline that the increases above are for total compensation - salary, incentive, pension, and a category called "all other compensation."
CLBC says Rick Mowles hasn't had a salary increase since 2005. But when I take his partial-year salary from fiscal-year 2006 and calculate it as a full year for comparison's sake, I still come out with his salary increasing from $138,660 to $195,000 by 2009-10, so the "zero salary increase" doesn't square with the numbers in CLBC's financials.
But at least Mowles didn't take the $21,500 incentive this year that he got in 2008-09. That has been discontinued as of the most recent fiscal year. That paid the CEO up to 15 per cent additional on top of his salary if he hit his performance targets in any given year.
Only the incentive to the CEO was discontinued. Other CLBC executives continue to receive that. Doug Woollard, Richard Hunter (VP of corporate services) and Carol Goozh (VP of policy and program development) each got more than $13,780 in performance incentives in the last fiscal year, and an additional $10,700 or so in the "all other compensation" category.
And here's what those incentive measurements are, from the CLBC Web site:

Incentive Plan Performance Measurement 
CLBC’s CEO and NEOs incentive plan performance targets and measures are captured in the organization’s Operational Plan which is derived from the Strategic and Service Plan initiatives. All three documents are accessible to the public on CLBC’s web site. The main categories within the Operational Plan are as follows:
1. Transformation and Organizational Development
2.  Community Supports and Services
3.  Services for Children
4.  Safeguards
5.  Policy/Program Development
6. Community Involvement and Partnerships
7. Governance, Financial & Information Management
8. Communication
Operational goals within each category are assigned to CLBC executives and performance measures are assigned to each operational goal.  The executive’s progress towards the achievement of stated goals is regularly monitored throughout the year and assessed at fiscal year-end.  The annual review provides the basis for the performance incentive calculation.

Nice to have the Ontario Appeal Court calling prosecutors on their guff about the constitutional rights of sex workers in the landmark case that's before the courts right now. The judges cut through the blah-blah-blah and just got down to the bare facts - that Canadian laws around prostitution aren't just shutting sex workers out from constitutional protection, but are actively making the work much more dangerous than it needs to be.
With two sex-work-related court cases progressing toward the Supreme Court of Canada right now, those of us who support the decriminalization of the adult, consensual sex industry are feeling stirrings of hope. However, I'm a little fearful that the federal government's response to a pro-decriminalization court ruling could be to declare sex work illegal, which will improve nothing and possibly make the situation even worse for workers.

If anyone's still wondering whether things are going well in the psychiatric facilities here in Victoria, this ought to set them straight. Terrific TC opinion piece from a psych-ward survivor, who writes in my favourite style: Straight-up.

Great column from the Vancouver Sun's Craig McInnes, who raises some very good points about where we put our priorities for spending. What's going to do us the most good in the long run - a fair tax system that ensures our children are educated and our civic needs are tended to for generations to come, or a flat-screen TV for the  living room?

Gotta love the young page who seized a moment and pointed her protest sign toward the cameras in the House of Commons during the Throne Speech. She lost a job but is obviously creating quite a following.
Whether she was an infiltrator from the start or truly was moved to action by her growing understanding of the Harper government's agenda - her assertion - Brigette DePape's protest was a bold thing to do. She'll feel the repercussions, good and bad, for a lifetime. How many of us would be brave enough to take such an action, no matter how passionately we might think we feel?
Interesting letters in the Times Colonist this morning present the two polarities of viewpoints: A big hurrah from people who think like me, which is also to say they probably don't like Stephen Harper either; and a thumbs-down from those who think DePape's act shames Canadian legislative custom. (Sorry, I couldn't seem to find the letters on the TC Web site, but will keep working at that.)
I like to think Brigette DePape simply saw a grand moment - perhaps the grandest of her life - to make a statement that would literally be heard around the world. You go, girl. 

Only dead sex workers get our support

So we’ve got an inquiry into a B.C. mass murder headed up by a man tainted by his political connections, presiding over a process that shuts out almost everyone on the side of the victims.

Yup, that sounds like a solid way to get at the truth about the Robert Pickton case.

Only sex workers could draw straws this short. Then again, only sex workers would be left to go missing and murdered on our streets for so long in the first place. It’s baffling and heartbreaking, this misery we sustain in the name of “morality.”

Should we be surprised, then, that the B.C. government has refused to cover legal costs for groups representing the interests of sex workers at the upcoming Robert Pickton inquiry?

It’s a more blatant rejection than I’d have expected from a new premier, sure.

But isolated howls of protest aside, the government likely knows it’s politically safe to stick it to groups acting in the interests of sex workers.

More than a decade of dead and missing women in the Downtown Eastside wasn’t enough to get British Columbians riled enough to change one damn thing for sex workers. Why would they rise up now over a lack of money for legal representation?

The government’s denial of support is reprehensible, but you can’t argue with its political instincts. It’s got the public’s number on this one.

Lawyers collected $21 million after Pickton’s trial. RCMP rang up $84 million on the investigation. We’ll spend many millions more to revisit all of that during the inquiry that former attorney general Wally Oppal will be presiding over.  

How far might money like that have gone if used instead to improve the lives of the troubled women Pickton preyed on? It turns my stomach to think of all the desperate women and their children who came looking for help in my three years at PEERS Victoria, and how little was available. 

I was in the last year of that non-profit job when Pickton went on trial. As I’ve noted in past rants on this subject, media called me from across the country that spring and summer to ask what I thought would change for outdoor sex workers now that “justice” was being done.

What can possibly change when the only time a sex worker gets any consideration is as a dead body?

Women were going missing for a long, long time from the Downtown Eastside before Pickton was ever brought to trial. If British Columbians had wanted to do right by outdoor sex workers, we would have taken preventive steps well before Pickton was even a suspect, and certainly in the years following his conviction. But we didn’t.

I hope Pickton’s victims are out there right now in some version of an afterlife, having a good, rueful laugh about all of this.

They were universally shafted in life, that’s for sure. But I think they’d see the black humour in the small fortune we’ve lavished on them in death. Do the math on the $102 million in legal and police costs for the Pickton proceedings and it turns out we’ve spent almost $4 million for  each of the 26 women Pickton was charged with killing.  

All that for women we didn’t have the time of day for back when they were alive. Women who struggled to find housing, support, addiction treatment or even an ounce of public sympathy when they were still walking the stroll.

And the kicker: None of that money altered one thing for the future victims of a future Pickton. It didn’t change the law, or make a bit of difference in the lives of the vulnerable, impoverished women still working the grim outdoor strolls in our communities.

 Families of Pickton’s victims understandably want an inquiry. And they’ll have it starting in September, albeit under the direction of a man who presided with indifference over the plight of outdoor sex workers in the years when he was attorney general.

The families will be able to share a lawyer at the government’s expense during the inquiry. At least that ensures the voices of the dead are represented.

But the denial of legal aid to the sex workers’ coalitions and community advocacy groups silences the voices of the living.  Those groups have now withdrawn from the inquiry in protest. Once again, only the dead will be heard.

All that’s left to feel is shame.

Say it ain't so, smiling Jack! Are you really the least civil MP in Parliament? 
That's what the researchers concluded after analyzing the questions and answers of MPs who rose to say something in the House of Commons at least 50 times in the last session. The higher the score, the more "civil" the tone of the parliamentarian; Jack Layton scored a 39, the lowest score of the bunch.
I'm no fan of the highly uncivil heckling and name-calling that goes on in Parliament, and no defender of Jack Layton. But it seems to me these times call for a little incivility when questioning government, so I won't hold his low score against him.
Then again, maybe I'm biased. I notice that the database where all Post Media newspaper stories are archived now includes a measurement of how many stories pulled up in a particular search are positive, negative or neutral. Search on my columns for the past year and you'll see that the Tone Gods have deemed that my negative pieces outstripped my positive ones two to one. (Fortunately, adding in the "neutrals" balances things out.)
But is that an indicator of incivility, or frustration? Sometimes - OK, most times - a girl just has to express a little outrage. Be nice when you can, Jack, but keep sticking it to 'em when you need to.

Why waste time and money to say nothing?

The new premier clearly enjoys the chance to knock off some of the no-brainer stuff that riles British Columbians. I thought fondly of Christy Clark myself on the long weekend, when my family converged for a picnic at Rathtrevor Provincial Park and didn’t have to pay to park.

If she’s making quick fixes behind the scenes, too, I’ve got one for the list. How about a look at the way the province communicates with media?

It’s been a dispiriting experience these past 15 years to watch governments close the lid on communications.  

You’ll catch me at parties on this one, holding forth to some unfortunate party-goer about being from a generation of journalists who actually remember interviewing deputy ministers.

And nowadays? We exchange emails with "government communications and public engagement" staff (formerly the Public Affairs Bureau), who work very hard to answer our questions without actually saying anything.

You can still get interviews with cabinet ministers, of course.

But in most cases that just means you’ll now have a name to put to the bland, say-nothing comments that the communications people were going to give you anyway. You still don’t have the information you went looking for.

 The unhealthy fixation with trying to control the government “message” started during the NDP era of Glen Clark, in the late 1990s.

Communications under his leadership was a dense pad of cotton wool wrapped tight around government, one that kept a journalist wandering in a whiteout for days. Interviews with knowledgeable people inside government gave way to frustrating exchanges with friendly communications staff who mostly didn’t know a thing about what you were asking about.

The situation worsened under Gordon Campbell. His government gave up any attempt at neutrality in 2002 and converted communications positions to political appointments. All pretence of being an information bridge between government and the public was abandoned, and PAB became a fully politicized arm of the premier’s office.

That marked a major shift. The old PAB was in the business of helping media connect to people in government who knew the answers. The new one worked to shut that down.  

Government represents the people. We are intended to be kept in the loop about what’s going on in B.C., and heard when we question government decision-making.

But beyond the principled argument, running a communications department like you’re Kim Jong-il is also just plain stupid in the information age.

Keeping a lid on things is no longer an option. Government merely forfeits the chance for input into a story - and looks dishonest and secretive to boot - when it hides information, silences its experts, and teaches its people to repeat “key messages” even when they don’t make one damn bit of sense.  

This is not a sexy issue to sell to the public, I admit. Journalists have tumbled ever lower down the list of professions the public distrust. I’m bracing for the “cry me a river” comments that follow anytime I’m perceived to be whining on behalf of media.

But like us or not, we’re still the public’s best bet for finding out things you’d never know otherwise. Media pressure is still one of the most reliable ways to try to right a government wrong. A civil society doesn’t want to give that up.

Even positive stories are getting hard to do now if it involves talking to a government employee.

I set out to get an interview with a particular income-assistance worker a while back after I kept on hearing really nice things about her from people living homeless in Victoria. It took weeks of emails and phone exchanges with worried-sounding communications staff to make it happen.

The communications staffer who sat in on the interview said he couldn’t recall media ever having direct access to a government employee. I launched into my I-used-to-talk-to-deputy-ministers rant.

There are some very good communicators working for government. The problem is not communications staff, it’s the way they’re being used.

Nor has it all been a downward spiral when it comes to government communications. The province’s Web site is a treasure trove of information for journalists, and a resource that didn’t exist back in the days when senior government managers still spoke aloud.

 But sometimes a journalist just needs a real person. They need someone who knows what’s going on because it’s his or her job to know. Christy Clark must know that from her own recent experiences as a radio commentator.

Premier, please lower the drawbridge. We need to talk.

What are we to conclude about this development - everyone on the government side of the Pickton inquiry gets their legal funds covered, but there's no help for sex workers, aboriginals or residents of the Downtown Eastside. Does that not strike you as just a little obvious?
Public funds can't be treated like a bottomless pit, of course. And yes, you don't want to think too long about the massive sums that will have gone to lawyers by the time the various aspects of the Pickton case have run their course. Imagine what those millions could have done to change the lives of the women who were Pickton's victims - and could still do for the women who continue to be out there on the street night after night, risking their lives with every "date."
But really, to stack the deck quite so blatantly is just plain offensive. If there's no more money for lawyers so that sex workers can be heard as part of the inquest, then funds need to be pried out of the hands of some of the groups on the government side to even things out.

New University of Victoria research shows that exercise can improve the brain function of people with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Good on the Saanich News for putting this story out there - the official statistic is that FASD affects about one per cent of the babies born in any given year in Canada, but an anonymous screening of newborns at a Toronto hospital a while back put that figure at three per cent.
It's a miserable brain injury at its worst, as it affects the child's ability to measure risk and learn from experience long into adulthood.
Those most affected by FASD do poorly in school, run into trouble with authority figures, are at higher risk of homelessness and addiction, and risk their own life and limbs on a regular basis due to poor decision-making. We saw a lot of people with FASD - some diagnosed, many we just suspected - during my time at PEERS among the most multi-barriered women working the outdoor stroll.
So it's a happy day to hear of a simple exercise regimen that helps people manage after the fact. But of course, FASD is completely preventable, so I hope we also do more to spread the word about the risks of drinking alcohol during pregnancy. Alcohol remains the most damaging of the recreational drugs to use while pregnant.

B.C. criminal records now searchable on-line

I'm feeling very divided about a new B.C. government initiative that makes all criminal records searchable, on-line, for free.
The media person inside me is pretty damn excited about it, because it means I can plug in the name of anyone I'm writing about just to see if they might have a criminal record - and hey, that's kind of cool when you're in the business of scrounging up information on people. It also makes it a heck of a lot easier for people who have to do criminal-record checks on volunteers, as it ends that slow business of having to go to the police station and wait (not to mention pay money in some cases).
But the social-advocate side of me is thinking whoa, this is wild. Can't you see every employer in the city wanting to run every staff member's name to see if they have a criminal record? Is that good?
The initiative appears to have emerged with virtually no media attention - I found out only because a friend in the social-services sector sent me the link. It's being done in the name of transparency, but I just don't know if it's good to remove all transparency around someone's criminal record. Traffic violations are now public, too.
It's certainly going to make it more difficult to "put it all behind you." It could make it very difficult for people who commit comparably minor crimes to get a job, regardless of whether their crime has anything to do with the kind of work they were trying for.
***
Just found out this came about in the fall due to a series done by TC reporter Lindsay Kines. I'm a fan of Lindsay's work, but still not quite sure how to feel about this new freedom.

A response for Jay, who posted a comment on my piece last week about the Prince George specialized foster home owned  by Jordy Hoover, where an 11-year-old boy was Tasered by police last month.
Jay says somebody tried to get the Prince George media interested in this story last year but the newspaper said they couldn't write about MCFD unless an issue came up in the legislature. Jay was wondering whether this was true when it comes to what the media can or can't do.
While it certainly is easier for media to write about things once they become matters of public record, it's a load of hooey for anyone to suggest that media can't get into MCFD issues until they're raised in the legislature.
Yes, there are publication rules around identifying a child who is in foster care, so media can't name a child. But there's nothing stopping the media from looking into the way MCFD contracts, how much it pays people for those contracts, how it selects its contractors, etc.
I would assume that even the specifics of how a particular group home (or "specialized resource," as MCFD calls the kinds of homes where the Tasering occurred, as they house just one child) is fair game for a media query, as long as the individual children aren't identified by name.
That said, MCFD does make it really, really difficult to get information. Nothing in that piece of mine actually came from the Ministry. I did contact the Public Affairs Bureau, which is what you have to do if you're a media person looking for answers. But I knew from past experience that I would get nothing useful back from their communications people.
So media do need to be prepared to do some sleuthing when they do an MCFD story - but then again, that's the raison d'etre for even having media, isn't it?
 It's also much easier for me as a columnist than if I were a reporter - we're both required to have solid sources, be truthful and to be very careful to avoid libel and defamation, but a columnist has more freedom to voice an opinion and present information without saying specifically who the source was.
Fortunately, we are in the age of social media, and need not wait anymore for hometown media to decide whether to cover a story. On-line newspapers like the Tyee would be interested in stories like this one, and there are a number of savvy political bloggers in B.C. who might also do their own digging.
I'd suggest people shop out a wider variety of writers when looking to take a story public, and not just rely on the traditional media. However, all "public" writing is still subject to the libel laws and the Web is still very much the wild, wild west, so seek out proven writers who you trust to do a thorough, responsible piece.
Here's what I got back from MCFD's communications department when I asked them about how they contract for foster homes and what qualifications an operator has to have to get those contracts. Please note that while it may be true that most requests for proposals are posted on BC Bid, that does not appear to have been the case for Jordy Hoover's homes, or for the many other "one-offs" for vulnerable, high-risk children that the Ministry now funds all over the province:

The ministry does not specifically track the number of for-profit vs not-for-profit contractors for residential services; those contracts are held by the individual regions and would require a substantial amount of staff resources to calculate a specific breakdown.

 In most cases, requests for proposals to provide residential services are posted on BCBid.com. The specific requirements for each contract varies depending on the individual needs of the children involved. Children and youth living in staffed specialized homes may include children and youth with intellectual or physical disabilities, mental health issues or behavioural difficulties and who are unable to reside in either their own home or a foster home. The requirements for the facility would vary according to the specific challenges of the children it was meant to provide care for.

 As an example, there may be a requirement that the proponent possess a knowledge of aboriginal culture, have experience in dealing with physical disabilities,  or have expertise in caring for children with complex needs.

 For all proponents – new or existing – there are additional requirements for the staff working with clients that would again vary depending on the individual children involved. All staff would need to undergo a criminal record check and would need to be adequately trained and have access to ongoing training and supervision to meet the needs of their respective jobs.

 More information can be found in the ministry’s Standards for Staffed Children’s Residential Services at http://www.mcf.gov.bc.ca/child_protection/pdf/standards_residential_services.pdf

Insite can't be allowed to close

Writing a column means finding some quiet time to let yourself think.

Which is how a morning walk this week in brilliant sunshine turned into a long and dark reflection on my readiness for civil disobedience if Ottawa tries to shut down Vancouver’s supervised injection site.

A few of my activist acquaintances have pointed out that I’m not much for actually showing up at a protest, even when it’s an issue I feel strongly about. I suspect they take that as an indicator that I’m a bit of an armchair quarterback (even though the truth is that I just think writing is the more effective protest tool for me).

Still, ever since I heard a retired medical health officer vow years ago at a Vancouver harm-reduction forum to chain himself to the door of Insite if that’s what it took to prevent its closure, I knew I felt the same way. Count me in for a blockade if it comes to that.

I have great faith in our court system to get past the unthinking politics of the moment. So my first hope is that the Supreme Court of Canada - which heard arguments on this issue Thursday - makes mincemeat of the federal government’s attempts to close down the quiet little clinic in the Downtown Eastside.

But if worse comes to worse, this is an issue that’s well worth going to battle for. Denying life-saving health services to people solely because you don’t like their illness is morality-based health care. No democratic, civilized country should be setting foot on that slippery slope.

Back in its early days, Insite was a bold experiment for Canada. Supervised injection sites were old news elsewhere in the world by the time Insite opened in 2003, but still an untested and controversial concept for Canadians to get their heads around. People understandably had many concerns at the time about what it would mean to open such a site.

But that was then. Now, we know absolutely that Insite saves lives. We know that it doesn’t increase drug use or public disorder, and that it helps people connect to services that can get them out of their addiction entirely. More than 800 people now access Insite in a typical day.

The federal government of a decade ago was extremely wary about allowing an exemption to the Criminal Code so that people addicted to illicit drugs could use them under the watchful eye of nurses at the clinic. Insite has endured intense scrutiny for eight years as a condition of being allowed to open.

The facility has passed every test. 

Some 30 peer-reviewed scientific studies have examined the impact of Insite. They all found that the clinic prevents overdose deaths, reduces the transmission of potentially fatal diseases, and helps people connect to treatment for their addiction.

Other researchers were tasked with gauging the harms Insite might be inadvertently causing. They didn’t find any.

So what’s the problem? There isn’t one. The current federal government simply believes - against all scientific evidence - that harm-reduction strategies encourage people to use drugs.

Never mind that nothing about being addicted is easy, and no amount of supervised injection sites will ever change that. Never mind that everybody wins if we get our heads out of the sand and actually provide services for a terrible, debilitating illness.

Crime drops. Health-care costs fall. Productivity rises. Police are free to return to the important work of catching criminals rather than wasting time busting people with addictions. Why would any government fight against such positive developments?

Court rulings tend to be based on narrow legal arguments, so it’s hard to predict whether the Supreme Court will come down on the side of all that’s right in this particular case. The federal government is arguing there will be “chaos” if Insite is allowed to remain open and provinces start making their own decisions around access to illicit drugs.

That sounds like one of those sweeping statements a government trots out to dress up a specious argument. The time for chaos is if Ottawa tries to close the facility.

I'm not a regular Margaret Wente reader (she's such a contrarian), but I caught her column in the Globe today and it led me to this great piece in the Guardian by George Monbiot. It's a eyes-wide-open look at the difficulty of getting past the heartfelt intents and declarations of the environmental movement and actually doing something. 

It's unbelievable and deeply embarrassing that our own federal government is trying to shut Insite down, based solely on an ideological viewpoint. The safe-injection site is a health service, and a very effective one. The case will be heard by the federal court on Thursday - here's hoping they've got more savvy and an open mind than our political leadership.