Aboriginal realities
June 26, 2006
Well, well. Aboriginal children are dying at higher rates than their non-aboriginal peers. I don’t suppose anyone could be surprised at that.
What will we do about it? If past behavior is any indicator, not much. We’ve been telling each other stories of aboriginal disaster on any number of fronts for decades now, but doing very little. The result: Things just keep getting worse for Canada’s aboriginals.
Being aboriginal in Canada is now very much like being black in the United States. Just belonging to either of those racial backgrounds is now a risk factor all on its own for things like youth suicide, drug addiction and diabetes, not to mention a predictor of future income and level of education.
Our country’s aboriginals are three times more likely to be the victims of violent crime. Aboriginal youth are at higher risk of suicide, addiction and obesity. Diabetes is near-epidemic. HIV infections are rising sharply.
The dropout rate for aboriginals is an unbelievable 70 per cent. Almost half of the 10,000 children in the B.C. government’s care at any given point are aboriginal. That distinction adds a whole new set of risk factors to their troubled lives, as being a government ward is very nearly as bad as being an aboriginal in terms of the pall it casts over how well your life will turn out.
My recollection is of much hand-wringing in the past 20 years as to what could be done about such terrible revelations. But it’s clear that little of it had an effect. Case in point: School attendance for aboriginals actually fell between 1981 and 2001 in B.C., even while debates were raging on all fronts in that period around the importance of improving high-school graduation rates. The province’s rates were among the worst in Canada.
Fortunately, all is not lost. I attended the Victoria Native Friendship Center’s grand opening this week in the former Hampton Elementary, and felt the power of good ideas at work in the many busy rooms of the friendship centre.
A destitute and ruined aboriginal population need not be a Canadian certainty. People know what needs to be done, and it’s as fundamental as mom-and-tot groups and a place for kids heading into trouble to hang out. No magic involved - just thoughtful and sustained effort, led by people who know how to make good things happen.
If we’d gotten started all those years ago when we first identified a disaster in the making, we’d be a long way down that road by now. But talking about aboriginals almost always slides into a furious debate around whether they even deserve help and empowerment. Sure, some mistakes were made around aboriginals, the argument goes: cultural genocide; child kidnappings; forcing aboriginals to use a different door at B.C. beer parlours, to name a few from the last 50 years. Get over it.
But the terrible history of Canada’s aboriginals is exactly why everything is so wrong for them today. It was a war of sorts, and the damage has accumulated through the generations. And as the stats reveal, the situation worsens for every year we do nothing.
Where will we start? At the beginning, of course. The world will be saved through happy, healthy families connected to vibrant communities.
Making that happen on the ground means paying attention to everything from child mortality rates and levels of community involvement to the impact of opening another mall on the far side of town. Everything matters. Equally importantly, we need to act on the information. The importance of studies notwithstanding, it’s action that moves things forward in this world.
Seeing Victoria’s native friendship centre in its sprawling new digs - kids bouncing on the playground equipment outside, moms pushing strollers along the wide hallways - was heartening evidence of just such action. Families are being reborn at the centre. And that will be the way that Canada will ultimately combat the discouraging statistics around aboriginal health and well-being - one friendship centre at a time.
The lessons from a country that was unable to rouse itself to action around such issues are as close as our southern border. U.S. inaction around social policy has fueled widespread urban decay, and the dramatic growth of a poorly educated and hostile underclass operating outside the strictures of mainstream culture. In Canadian communities like Saskatoon and Winnipeg, the number of aboriginal gang members is on the rise, setting the stage for a similar disconnect.
Terry Smith, B.C.’s chief coroner, commented in Vancouver this week on his report, a review of 640 child deaths since 2003. He said his report’s findings will “save lives.”
And if the report sparks action to prevent aboriginal kids from dying young and in violent circumstance, it just might. But for as long as it sits on the shelf, it’s just more words.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Impact of television
June 24, 2006
Television’s power can be harnessed for great good, as the New Yorker magazine notes in an article about a socially minded style of Mexican soap opera that has been working its magic for three decades. More than 100 countries now air versions of Miguel Sabido’s soaps, which manage to be entertaining while also acting as agents for social change.
The story lines are as intricate and dramatic as any soap, reflecting the drama in the lives of their real-world viewers: HIV, an abusive spouse, too many kids, a secret abortion, discrimination. The social messages are subtle, woven inobtrusively into a broader story. Still, the messages come across loud and clear, as evidenced by the things that happen after a particular show airs. Viewers not only like what they see in Sabido-style telenovelas, but take action based on watching them.
From the very earliest days in the mid-1970s, Sabido’s soaps have underscored the awesome reach and potential of television as an agent for change.
One of the early episodes in 1974 featured a story line about visiting the Mexico City headquarters of the government literacy program. The day after the show aired, an unprecedented stampede of 12,000 people showed up at those same headquarters to see for themselves. Almost a million people signed up for literacy classes as a result of the show.
A story line about the search for birth-control alternatives by a stressed-out mother of three led to a 23 per cent increase in sales of over-the-counter contraceptives in Mexico. In India, a village enthralled by the story line of a young girl’s fight to be educated went on to petition government for a day-care centre in their own community, so that young girls could attend school rather than be left at home to babysit younger siblings.
Without the power of television, how would such sea changes be accomplished?
The average Canadian devotes a month and a half to television in any given year. Our youngsters watch at least 13 hours of TV a week - almost a month’s worth over the course of a year. A typical senior spends almost five hours a day watching TV, the equivalent of two and a half months annually. More than a third of Canadian households have at least three televisions.
And when TV is good, it’s very good, as the Sabido experience makes clear. But what about when it’s bad? .
What about when it crashes and bashes around with barely a thought to whether it’s having any impact at all? What about round-the-clock exposure to sex, drugs, violence and inexcusable behaviour, often on hundreds of channels? Where will it end - and will we be happy with where it takes us?
The power of Sabido’s telenovelas to affect change underlines our failure in Canada and the U.S. to harness television for anything resembling public good. But it also serves as a grim reminder that television left to follow its own random course could be having an equally dramatic impact on viewers, and not necessarily for the good.
“All television is educational,” former U.S. Federal Communications commissioner Nicholas Johnson once said. “The question is, what does it teach?”
Consider, for instance, the U.S. finding that 15- to 26-year-olds drink more for every alcohol ad they see on TV or at the movies in a month. By the time a kid hits 14 in the U.S., they’ve seen the equivalent of eight hours of alcohol consumption play out on the screen. And if you’re feeling smug because you’re Canadian, keep in mind that almost 65 per cent of the TV we watch originates in the U.S.
New Zealand found a direct link between hours of TV watched as a child or teenager, and lower levels of formal education. Children who watched more than two hours a day were less likely to get a university degree as adults; adolescents who watched that much TV were more likely to drop out. A 2004 study published in Pediatrics, the magazine of the American Academy of Pediatricians, found that every hour of TV that preschoolers watched daily increased their chances of being diagnosed with attention deficit by 10 per cent.
And even when the content doesn’t harm us, just sitting still for all those hours of TV is a danger.
The British medical journal The Lancet reported in 2004 that higher rates of obesity and smoking had been found among those watching more than two hours of TV a day (Canadians on average watch three). Longer hours in front of the television ended up being at the root of almost a fifth of all problems among the 1,000 people studied related to overweight, high cholesterol, cigarette smoking and poor fitness levels.
Sabido’s dramas remind us that it doesn’t have to be that way. But until North American television fare gets the rethink that it so badly needs, that’s how it is.
June 24, 2006
Television’s power can be harnessed for great good, as the New Yorker magazine notes in an article about a socially minded style of Mexican soap opera that has been working its magic for three decades. More than 100 countries now air versions of Miguel Sabido’s soaps, which manage to be entertaining while also acting as agents for social change.
The story lines are as intricate and dramatic as any soap, reflecting the drama in the lives of their real-world viewers: HIV, an abusive spouse, too many kids, a secret abortion, discrimination. The social messages are subtle, woven inobtrusively into a broader story. Still, the messages come across loud and clear, as evidenced by the things that happen after a particular show airs. Viewers not only like what they see in Sabido-style telenovelas, but take action based on watching them.
From the very earliest days in the mid-1970s, Sabido’s soaps have underscored the awesome reach and potential of television as an agent for change.
One of the early episodes in 1974 featured a story line about visiting the Mexico City headquarters of the government literacy program. The day after the show aired, an unprecedented stampede of 12,000 people showed up at those same headquarters to see for themselves. Almost a million people signed up for literacy classes as a result of the show.
A story line about the search for birth-control alternatives by a stressed-out mother of three led to a 23 per cent increase in sales of over-the-counter contraceptives in Mexico. In India, a village enthralled by the story line of a young girl’s fight to be educated went on to petition government for a day-care centre in their own community, so that young girls could attend school rather than be left at home to babysit younger siblings.
Without the power of television, how would such sea changes be accomplished?
The average Canadian devotes a month and a half to television in any given year. Our youngsters watch at least 13 hours of TV a week - almost a month’s worth over the course of a year. A typical senior spends almost five hours a day watching TV, the equivalent of two and a half months annually. More than a third of Canadian households have at least three televisions.
And when TV is good, it’s very good, as the Sabido experience makes clear. But what about when it’s bad? .
What about when it crashes and bashes around with barely a thought to whether it’s having any impact at all? What about round-the-clock exposure to sex, drugs, violence and inexcusable behaviour, often on hundreds of channels? Where will it end - and will we be happy with where it takes us?
The power of Sabido’s telenovelas to affect change underlines our failure in Canada and the U.S. to harness television for anything resembling public good. But it also serves as a grim reminder that television left to follow its own random course could be having an equally dramatic impact on viewers, and not necessarily for the good.
“All television is educational,” former U.S. Federal Communications commissioner Nicholas Johnson once said. “The question is, what does it teach?”
Consider, for instance, the U.S. finding that 15- to 26-year-olds drink more for every alcohol ad they see on TV or at the movies in a month. By the time a kid hits 14 in the U.S., they’ve seen the equivalent of eight hours of alcohol consumption play out on the screen. And if you’re feeling smug because you’re Canadian, keep in mind that almost 65 per cent of the TV we watch originates in the U.S.
New Zealand found a direct link between hours of TV watched as a child or teenager, and lower levels of formal education. Children who watched more than two hours a day were less likely to get a university degree as adults; adolescents who watched that much TV were more likely to drop out. A 2004 study published in Pediatrics, the magazine of the American Academy of Pediatricians, found that every hour of TV that preschoolers watched daily increased their chances of being diagnosed with attention deficit by 10 per cent.
And even when the content doesn’t harm us, just sitting still for all those hours of TV is a danger.
The British medical journal The Lancet reported in 2004 that higher rates of obesity and smoking had been found among those watching more than two hours of TV a day (Canadians on average watch three). Longer hours in front of the television ended up being at the root of almost a fifth of all problems among the 1,000 people studied related to overweight, high cholesterol, cigarette smoking and poor fitness levels.
Sabido’s dramas remind us that it doesn’t have to be that way. But until North American television fare gets the rethink that it so badly needs, that’s how it is.
Gay marriage
June 17, 2006
So let me get this straight. Iraq’s a disaster. Afghanistan’s going sideways. Terrorists are emerging with made-in-Canada credentials, and people are going hungry and homeless in virtually every town in North America.
And our leaders have nothing better to do than try to stop people in love from getting married?
Some people don’t like the idea of gays and lesbians getting married. Then again, some people didn’t like the idea of black Americans riding at the front of the bus, either. It’s all a question of civil rights.
Equality under the law is one of the underpinnings of a just society. Personally, I don’t take that to mean that the law can be used arbitrarily to deny certain groups equality, but that’s how the Bush government, Canada’s Conservatives and 45 individual states interpret the concept in terms of gay marriage. They want marriage laws that deliberately create inequality.
The hard-won right to marry regardless of sexual orientation has been law in Canada for barely a year now. Already, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced his government will revisit the law this fall and put it to a vote in the House of Commons.
In the U.S., gay marriage is still illegal, and the battle to keep it that way is intensifying. Forty-five states have either banned gay marriages outright or are in the process of it. For now, President George Bush’s pitch for a constitutional amendment reserving marriage solely for heterosexuals was stalled Thursday when the U.S. Senate voted it down, but he’ll no doubt take another run at it.
“Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society,” said Bush in recent media reports.
Bush may truly believe that, in which case there are still many more things to worry about than gay marriage.
Forty-four per cent of married U.S. couples don’t make it to their 30th wedding anniversary. In Canada, the breakdown rate is 38 per cent. More than a quarter of our marriages fail in the first three years.
Not only do we divorce five times more often than we did in the 1960s, fewer of us even bother with marriage. In the last 25 years, the number of common-law couples in Canada grew from six per cent of all couples to 14 per cent.
If Bush and Harper see the marriage of a man and woman as the backbone of our society, any of those stats ought to really alarm them. Those trends will have an impact on marriage far greater than anything gay couples could ever provoke. And if not that, then any number of ongoing and looming disasters - war, pestilence, plague, the usual.
But no. We’re still talking about stopping gay people from marrying. Harper is actually putting Canada into the position of considering whether to roll back civil rights. That’s scary.
In Canada, we infringe on people’s rights only for the common good. But where is the harm to society from gay marriage? Marriage is a battered institution, and if anything stands only to be strengthened from gays and lesbians embracing it.
We prevent 14-year-olds from driving and 16-year-olds from drinking, because we know for a fact that young people can wreak havoc without some societal restraints. We curtail rights in thousands of other ways for young and old alike. You can’t park where you want, live where you want or dicker over whether to give the government a share of your income. You can’t call yourself a doctor if you aren’t one.
But there’s a reason for each of those laws. There’s somebody in an office somewhere who can explain to you exactly why a law was created, and at the root of all of them is an intent to protect the common good.
Marriage has rules, too. But they were developed for clear reasons - in many cases, to prevent families from marrying each other. Perfectly good biological explanations for laws like that.
The case for prohibiting gay marriage isn’t nearly so clear. Where are the stats around societal harm? What’s the concern? What’s the compelling case for infringing on people’s civil rights?
So far, the debate seems to centre solely on whether “marriage” is a term that only heterosexuals can lay claim to. If that’s the only question, then there’s only one answer. We can’t tolerate laws that encroach on civil rights for no valid and quantifiable societal reason.
Conservative movements in both the U.S. and Canada have affirmed that strong families matter. Loving, supported couples raising happy, connected children will change the world.
And how wonderful that a brand-new population is coming forward to remind us of the power of marriage in creating those families. May they find the secrets that too often elude the modern-day heterosexual.
In the meantime, let’s move on. We’ve got much bigger things to worry about than love.
June 17, 2006
So let me get this straight. Iraq’s a disaster. Afghanistan’s going sideways. Terrorists are emerging with made-in-Canada credentials, and people are going hungry and homeless in virtually every town in North America.
And our leaders have nothing better to do than try to stop people in love from getting married?
Some people don’t like the idea of gays and lesbians getting married. Then again, some people didn’t like the idea of black Americans riding at the front of the bus, either. It’s all a question of civil rights.
Equality under the law is one of the underpinnings of a just society. Personally, I don’t take that to mean that the law can be used arbitrarily to deny certain groups equality, but that’s how the Bush government, Canada’s Conservatives and 45 individual states interpret the concept in terms of gay marriage. They want marriage laws that deliberately create inequality.
The hard-won right to marry regardless of sexual orientation has been law in Canada for barely a year now. Already, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced his government will revisit the law this fall and put it to a vote in the House of Commons.
In the U.S., gay marriage is still illegal, and the battle to keep it that way is intensifying. Forty-five states have either banned gay marriages outright or are in the process of it. For now, President George Bush’s pitch for a constitutional amendment reserving marriage solely for heterosexuals was stalled Thursday when the U.S. Senate voted it down, but he’ll no doubt take another run at it.
“Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society,” said Bush in recent media reports.
Bush may truly believe that, in which case there are still many more things to worry about than gay marriage.
Forty-four per cent of married U.S. couples don’t make it to their 30th wedding anniversary. In Canada, the breakdown rate is 38 per cent. More than a quarter of our marriages fail in the first three years.
Not only do we divorce five times more often than we did in the 1960s, fewer of us even bother with marriage. In the last 25 years, the number of common-law couples in Canada grew from six per cent of all couples to 14 per cent.
If Bush and Harper see the marriage of a man and woman as the backbone of our society, any of those stats ought to really alarm them. Those trends will have an impact on marriage far greater than anything gay couples could ever provoke. And if not that, then any number of ongoing and looming disasters - war, pestilence, plague, the usual.
But no. We’re still talking about stopping gay people from marrying. Harper is actually putting Canada into the position of considering whether to roll back civil rights. That’s scary.
In Canada, we infringe on people’s rights only for the common good. But where is the harm to society from gay marriage? Marriage is a battered institution, and if anything stands only to be strengthened from gays and lesbians embracing it.
We prevent 14-year-olds from driving and 16-year-olds from drinking, because we know for a fact that young people can wreak havoc without some societal restraints. We curtail rights in thousands of other ways for young and old alike. You can’t park where you want, live where you want or dicker over whether to give the government a share of your income. You can’t call yourself a doctor if you aren’t one.
But there’s a reason for each of those laws. There’s somebody in an office somewhere who can explain to you exactly why a law was created, and at the root of all of them is an intent to protect the common good.
Marriage has rules, too. But they were developed for clear reasons - in many cases, to prevent families from marrying each other. Perfectly good biological explanations for laws like that.
The case for prohibiting gay marriage isn’t nearly so clear. Where are the stats around societal harm? What’s the concern? What’s the compelling case for infringing on people’s civil rights?
So far, the debate seems to centre solely on whether “marriage” is a term that only heterosexuals can lay claim to. If that’s the only question, then there’s only one answer. We can’t tolerate laws that encroach on civil rights for no valid and quantifiable societal reason.
Conservative movements in both the U.S. and Canada have affirmed that strong families matter. Loving, supported couples raising happy, connected children will change the world.
And how wonderful that a brand-new population is coming forward to remind us of the power of marriage in creating those families. May they find the secrets that too often elude the modern-day heterosexual.
In the meantime, let’s move on. We’ve got much bigger things to worry about than love.
Sewage treatment
June 2, 2006
Scientific evidence is anything but absolute, as we’ve learned the hard way over the decades. Science certainly got radiation wrong the first time out, and most recently has failed us utterly around the safety of prescription drugs. Only one thing is for certain: Nothing’s for certain.
So when talk turns to sewage treatment - as it’s bound to every now and then in a community that pumps 47 billion litres of raw sewage into the surrounding ocean every year - you don’t want to be trusting everything to “science.” You just never know.
Sewage treatment was a hot topic when I moved here in 1989. A study (oh, you don’t want to THINK about the studies we’ve paid for) was just wrapping up, and people were talking about whether it might be time to move forward on treatment. While there did seem to be something different about local waters in terms of their ability to rapidly whisk away sewage, public distaste for dumping raw sewage was growing.
That was 17 years ago. Then as now, we are awaiting the findings of a scientific study - the most recent one costing $600,000 and due in July - on the pros and cons of treatment. We’ve come exactly nowhere in the intervening years, and spent a small fortune doing it.
Scientific evidence still prevails as the argument for doing nothing. Those with only a gut feeling that it has to be wrong to dump that much sewage into the ocean have obviously not been enough of a political force to register on anyone’s political radar, because sewage treatment is rarely raised as an issue.
I was horrified when I first learned that my new town dumped its sewage raw into the ocean. I wrote about it furiously for a while in my days of reporting on the Capital Regional District, but eventually moved on. Like almost everybody else, I soon forgot that I was once outraged.
But Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to town last week promising money for sewage treatment, and praise be to Victoria and Langford mayors Alan Lowe and Stew Young for making it clear that they’d like to talk.
“You might as well jump at it when money is available,” Lowe told local media after Harper’s visit. “Even if some people believe what we’re doing right now works, it’s still not going to be good enough for the future.”
He’s right - one of these days, we’re going to have treatment. So what are we waiting for? The price will always seem unbearable, but we’ll live. And at least it will be spent on action, not more study.
Fierce debate is inevitable whenever we talk sewage treatment, of course. Those versed in current scientific evidence around the special churning action of our waters are passionate and well-informed, as evidenced by numerous heated exchanges on this issue over the years.
But science doesn’t explain everything. Nor does it always get things right. Ever seen that old footage of the poor sots at the first nuclear-test sites in the U.S., mugging for the camera while brushing radiation dust off themselves with brooms?
No doubt it’s true that our ocean currents disperse raw sewage really well. But that’s not to say that our dumping habits aren’t having an impact. Forty-seven billion litres of untreated human waste a year simply has to have an impact.
As Chamber of Commerce chairman Robin Adair noted last week, “The optics outweigh any other consideration.” There’s an economic price to being one of the last cities in Canada still dumping raw sewage into the ocean. We don’t need that kind of reputation, especially not in a wealthy and fabulously beautiful region that can actually afford to treat its sewage.
In 1993, former federal cabinet minister David Anderson described sewage treatment for Greater Victoria as a “sheer waste of money and an exercise in woolly, soggy-minded thinking.” He said he’d be surprised if the federal government would ever lend an inch of land, an hour of time or “a dollar of our money” to the cause.
Times have changed, and so should we. What was right yesterday - a garbage scow dumping local waste into the ocean, for instance - isn’t necessarily right forever. And if the goal is to tread lightly on this earth, 47 billion litres of raw sewage is surely over the line.
Money needn’t be the stumbling block. Treatment won’t break the bank if all levels of government ante up, and it seems as though the stars may be aligning on that point. As Alan Lowe pointed out, the time is now.
More than 400 articles and letters on sewage treatment have run in the Times-Colonist in the last 15 years. But few cut to the chase better than the letter from a young West Langley Elementary student to the region back in 1993: “I think your idea of throwing raw sewage in the ocean is horrible.”
June 2, 2006
Scientific evidence is anything but absolute, as we’ve learned the hard way over the decades. Science certainly got radiation wrong the first time out, and most recently has failed us utterly around the safety of prescription drugs. Only one thing is for certain: Nothing’s for certain.
So when talk turns to sewage treatment - as it’s bound to every now and then in a community that pumps 47 billion litres of raw sewage into the surrounding ocean every year - you don’t want to be trusting everything to “science.” You just never know.
Sewage treatment was a hot topic when I moved here in 1989. A study (oh, you don’t want to THINK about the studies we’ve paid for) was just wrapping up, and people were talking about whether it might be time to move forward on treatment. While there did seem to be something different about local waters in terms of their ability to rapidly whisk away sewage, public distaste for dumping raw sewage was growing.
That was 17 years ago. Then as now, we are awaiting the findings of a scientific study - the most recent one costing $600,000 and due in July - on the pros and cons of treatment. We’ve come exactly nowhere in the intervening years, and spent a small fortune doing it.
Scientific evidence still prevails as the argument for doing nothing. Those with only a gut feeling that it has to be wrong to dump that much sewage into the ocean have obviously not been enough of a political force to register on anyone’s political radar, because sewage treatment is rarely raised as an issue.
I was horrified when I first learned that my new town dumped its sewage raw into the ocean. I wrote about it furiously for a while in my days of reporting on the Capital Regional District, but eventually moved on. Like almost everybody else, I soon forgot that I was once outraged.
But Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to town last week promising money for sewage treatment, and praise be to Victoria and Langford mayors Alan Lowe and Stew Young for making it clear that they’d like to talk.
“You might as well jump at it when money is available,” Lowe told local media after Harper’s visit. “Even if some people believe what we’re doing right now works, it’s still not going to be good enough for the future.”
He’s right - one of these days, we’re going to have treatment. So what are we waiting for? The price will always seem unbearable, but we’ll live. And at least it will be spent on action, not more study.
Fierce debate is inevitable whenever we talk sewage treatment, of course. Those versed in current scientific evidence around the special churning action of our waters are passionate and well-informed, as evidenced by numerous heated exchanges on this issue over the years.
But science doesn’t explain everything. Nor does it always get things right. Ever seen that old footage of the poor sots at the first nuclear-test sites in the U.S., mugging for the camera while brushing radiation dust off themselves with brooms?
No doubt it’s true that our ocean currents disperse raw sewage really well. But that’s not to say that our dumping habits aren’t having an impact. Forty-seven billion litres of untreated human waste a year simply has to have an impact.
As Chamber of Commerce chairman Robin Adair noted last week, “The optics outweigh any other consideration.” There’s an economic price to being one of the last cities in Canada still dumping raw sewage into the ocean. We don’t need that kind of reputation, especially not in a wealthy and fabulously beautiful region that can actually afford to treat its sewage.
In 1993, former federal cabinet minister David Anderson described sewage treatment for Greater Victoria as a “sheer waste of money and an exercise in woolly, soggy-minded thinking.” He said he’d be surprised if the federal government would ever lend an inch of land, an hour of time or “a dollar of our money” to the cause.
Times have changed, and so should we. What was right yesterday - a garbage scow dumping local waste into the ocean, for instance - isn’t necessarily right forever. And if the goal is to tread lightly on this earth, 47 billion litres of raw sewage is surely over the line.
Money needn’t be the stumbling block. Treatment won’t break the bank if all levels of government ante up, and it seems as though the stars may be aligning on that point. As Alan Lowe pointed out, the time is now.
More than 400 articles and letters on sewage treatment have run in the Times-Colonist in the last 15 years. But few cut to the chase better than the letter from a young West Langley Elementary student to the region back in 1993: “I think your idea of throwing raw sewage in the ocean is horrible.”
Mental health
May 26, 2006
The executive summary alone is 112 pages, so you can imagine how much the authors of this week’s national mental-health report had to say in full about the state of Canada’s system of care. But the essence of the standing Senate committee’s tens of thousands of informed words on the subject can really be boiled down to just two key ones: Do something.
Like so many other significant reports that have gone before it, the final report of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology is a heartfelt, wise read. After hearing from more than 2,000 people whose lives are directly affected by mental-health problems, the committee came to see the issue as one of the great travesties of our health system, and one in desperate need of transformation.
The report’s authors - senators Michael Kirby and Wilbert Keon - clearly developed a passion for the subject in the course of their three years of study. Their recommendations ought to elicit rousing cheers of approval from mental-health advocates when it comes to the vision the report sets out for dramatic reform. Whether our nation will be capable of putting the report into action - well, I’ve seen too many grand visions die on the shelf to make any assumptions on that point. But surely we have to try.
“Mental illness, even today,” notes the Canadian Mental Health Association in a quote featured in the report, “is all too often considered a crime to be punished, a sin to be expiated, a possessing demon to be exorcised, a disgrace to be hushed up, a personality weakness to be deplored, or a welfare problem to be handled as cheaply as possible.”
So true, and all the more discouraging because the CMHA quote dates back almost 50 years. Our culture understands physical illness, to the point of spending almost any sum to ensure people get cutting-edge treatment as rapidly as possible. But mental illness bedevils us still, as demonstrated very clearly by our ragtag, inadequate mental-health system and endless tragic stories from families affected by mental illness.
The fix is both incredibly simple and immensely complicated.
On the one hand, improving the way we manage mental illness is as simple as providing the services that people need.
Nobody tries to tell someone with cancer that there’s nothing out there for him; they just figure out what’s needed and provide it. Whatever criticisms a person might have about the continuum of services for physical illness, at least there IS a continuum: From the family doctor to the specialist, from the radiologist to the oncologist, and to any number of helpful services in between. Why can’t the same be true for mental illness?
On the other, anything grand our country undertakes seems to run a serious risk of bureaucratic paralysis and staggeringly high, poorly executed expenditures. So while there’s obvious merit in the report’s recommendation to create a national mental health commission to oversee the transformation of the system, I shudder at the thought of how much time, effort and money could be lost in the course of bringing such an entity to life. People currently living with mental illness need action, not the makings of another federal sinkhole.
Oversight is important, of course. If we hope to one day to treat mental health on par with physical health in terms of range and timeliness of service, we’ll need national leadership to ensure standards are established and provinces’ feet are held to the fire if they stray from the plan.
But we needn’t begin with administrative structure. Service agencies and families in every community across Canada know what’s needed to improve the lives of people with mental illness. They don’t need a mental-health commission to get things going - just a designated pot of money and an invitation to put their ideas forward for funding.
The senate committee’s report notes the importance of outcomes in monitoring the effectiveness of services. Absolutely. If we’re spending money on something, we deserve to know that it’s having a positive impact.
But those working on the front lines - or living in a family affected by mental illness - are well aware of what works and what doesn’t. Proving effectiveness of services isn’t the problem. The real problem is a lack of consistent, adequate funding over the long term to provide those services, which run the gamut from crisis intervention and medication to housing, addiction treatment and support for an exhausted caregiver.
As noted by Keon and Kirby in media reports this week, we needn’t look far afield for a better model to follow. In the ‘80s and ‘90s when other Canadian communities were fumbling the closures of their large psychiatric hospitals, things were going right in Brandon, Man. At every level, the city identified potential problems in the way it managed mental health and corrected course as needed. It now has the best community-based system of care in the country.
We asked all the questions, and know all the answers. Now it’s time to act.
May 26, 2006
The executive summary alone is 112 pages, so you can imagine how much the authors of this week’s national mental-health report had to say in full about the state of Canada’s system of care. But the essence of the standing Senate committee’s tens of thousands of informed words on the subject can really be boiled down to just two key ones: Do something.
Like so many other significant reports that have gone before it, the final report of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology is a heartfelt, wise read. After hearing from more than 2,000 people whose lives are directly affected by mental-health problems, the committee came to see the issue as one of the great travesties of our health system, and one in desperate need of transformation.
The report’s authors - senators Michael Kirby and Wilbert Keon - clearly developed a passion for the subject in the course of their three years of study. Their recommendations ought to elicit rousing cheers of approval from mental-health advocates when it comes to the vision the report sets out for dramatic reform. Whether our nation will be capable of putting the report into action - well, I’ve seen too many grand visions die on the shelf to make any assumptions on that point. But surely we have to try.
“Mental illness, even today,” notes the Canadian Mental Health Association in a quote featured in the report, “is all too often considered a crime to be punished, a sin to be expiated, a possessing demon to be exorcised, a disgrace to be hushed up, a personality weakness to be deplored, or a welfare problem to be handled as cheaply as possible.”
So true, and all the more discouraging because the CMHA quote dates back almost 50 years. Our culture understands physical illness, to the point of spending almost any sum to ensure people get cutting-edge treatment as rapidly as possible. But mental illness bedevils us still, as demonstrated very clearly by our ragtag, inadequate mental-health system and endless tragic stories from families affected by mental illness.
The fix is both incredibly simple and immensely complicated.
On the one hand, improving the way we manage mental illness is as simple as providing the services that people need.
Nobody tries to tell someone with cancer that there’s nothing out there for him; they just figure out what’s needed and provide it. Whatever criticisms a person might have about the continuum of services for physical illness, at least there IS a continuum: From the family doctor to the specialist, from the radiologist to the oncologist, and to any number of helpful services in between. Why can’t the same be true for mental illness?
On the other, anything grand our country undertakes seems to run a serious risk of bureaucratic paralysis and staggeringly high, poorly executed expenditures. So while there’s obvious merit in the report’s recommendation to create a national mental health commission to oversee the transformation of the system, I shudder at the thought of how much time, effort and money could be lost in the course of bringing such an entity to life. People currently living with mental illness need action, not the makings of another federal sinkhole.
Oversight is important, of course. If we hope to one day to treat mental health on par with physical health in terms of range and timeliness of service, we’ll need national leadership to ensure standards are established and provinces’ feet are held to the fire if they stray from the plan.
But we needn’t begin with administrative structure. Service agencies and families in every community across Canada know what’s needed to improve the lives of people with mental illness. They don’t need a mental-health commission to get things going - just a designated pot of money and an invitation to put their ideas forward for funding.
The senate committee’s report notes the importance of outcomes in monitoring the effectiveness of services. Absolutely. If we’re spending money on something, we deserve to know that it’s having a positive impact.
But those working on the front lines - or living in a family affected by mental illness - are well aware of what works and what doesn’t. Proving effectiveness of services isn’t the problem. The real problem is a lack of consistent, adequate funding over the long term to provide those services, which run the gamut from crisis intervention and medication to housing, addiction treatment and support for an exhausted caregiver.
As noted by Keon and Kirby in media reports this week, we needn’t look far afield for a better model to follow. In the ‘80s and ‘90s when other Canadian communities were fumbling the closures of their large psychiatric hospitals, things were going right in Brandon, Man. At every level, the city identified potential problems in the way it managed mental health and corrected course as needed. It now has the best community-based system of care in the country.
We asked all the questions, and know all the answers. Now it’s time to act.
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