Outright homelessness just most obvious face of Canadian poverty, study finds

The latest eye-opener on the state of social health in our country confirmed what anyone working in poverty services has known for a long time - that there’s a frighteningly large number of people barely hanging on in our communities.

What the broader community notices is the absolute homelessness - the people huddled in the doorways and camping on the boulevards. But as the authors of the just-released Housing Vulnerability and Health: Canada’s Hidden Emergency have discovered, that’s just the visible edge of a much bigger problem.

For every person occupying an emergency shelter bed, multiply by 23 to calculate how many people in that community are actually falling in and out of their housing at least a couple of times a year, says the report from the Research Alliance for Canadian Homelessness, Housing and Health.

Do the math in our region and that’s more than 10,000 people.  Forget the distinction between “homeless” and “vulnerably housed,” advises the alliance: “This is one large, severely disadvantaged group that transitions between the two housing states.”

Some 400,000 Canadians are living like that, says the alliance, a partnership of 14 hospitals, universities and community services across the country. That includes more than 54,000 in B.C., giving our province and Quebec the dubious distinction of having the highest percentages in Canada of households at risk (3.6 per cent).

These people are dead-poor, hungry and sick, with high rates of chronic and severe health problems.  Almost two-thirds have suffered a traumatic brain injury at some point in their lives. More than half have a diagnosed mental illness.

Whatever the disease or condition, rates are at least double for this impoverished group compared to the broader population - from heart disease to hepatitis-C infections, diabetes to cancer. And while the rest of us experience violent crime at a rate of one in 100, more than one in three of the 1,200 people interviewed for the study reported being beaten up or attacked in the previous year.

The rates of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome are four times higher than in the general population. Asthma rates are triple. Problems with mobility - trouble walking, missing limbs - are more than twice as common.

This is what two decades of social cuts and poorly considered policy changes look like, Canada. How much more will it take to get us to act?

It’s too bad that the annual report from the Select Standing Committee on Finance was released at such an intensely political moment this month, because the findings got lost in the noise of an unexpected tax cut from a desperate premier and the subsequent resignations of affronted New Democrats on the committee.

Side shows aside, I thought the committee really recognized this year that cuts to community services had gone too far in B.C. That’s especially significant given that it was an all-Liberal version of the committee that issued the final report after the NDP walkout.

Hardly a surprise, mind you.  Dozens of presentations to the committee this fall came from people whose work puts them in the midst of B.C.’s growing sub-class. Say what you will about trickle-down economics and “hand up” strategies, it ought to be obvious at this point to anyone with their eyes open that poor people are starting to pile up in our province.

What to do? Get real, for one thing. People on income assistance can’t possibly stay housed on current rates - a single room in a shared home goes for at least $500 in Greater Victoria right now, impossible on a shelter rate of $375 and a total cheque of $610.

Raise the rates and allow people to keep some earnings from part-time work. If someone’s just too sick or disabled to ever achieve financial independence, put them on a guaranteed income tied to the cost of living and help them find volunteer work.

Give employment-insurance benefits to people who are unemployed, which is not the way the system works at the moment.  Raise the minimum wage and tie it to cost-of-living increases.

Mental-health care needs to shake off its stigmatized poor-sister status and become a genuine part of the health-care system, not a rag-tag bit of bother that’s always the first to lose funding and the last to get it. Brain injuries need to be treated as the lifelong sea change that they are, with services and supports lasting well beyond the hospital door.

Not rocket science, as they say. Yet here we are, 400,000 people deep and still dithering.  

Great blog post from Ernie Tadla today, a local fellow whose passion and moment of transformation really comes through in this piece.

You know, you don't think things like this can happen when you come from the Land of the Wide-Open Spaces, but I've now had two freaky incidents with a massive crowd of people on the edge of losing it, and it's a terrifying experience.
Nothing here in Canada, of course - the first time for me was at a Carnaval celebration in Mazatlan, and the more recent time was this spring at a famous cave site in Vietnam where thousands and thousands of Vietnamese Buddhists do a pilgrimage to in the weeks after New Year.
No bad stuff actually happened in the end, but the possibility of it was made very, very real to me. This latest tragedy in Cambodia is particularly sad in a country that's had a hell of a time coming back from that massive slaughter of so many of its intellectuals and artists under Pol Pot.

Strong stats in this new report looking at the "nearly homeless" in Canada, an estimated 400,000 people. If we presume our region still has at least 1,000 people living homeless, that puts our population of  nearly homeless at 23,000  based on the finding in this report that for every homeless person there's 23 others living at significant risk. Our inability to support people with brain injuries really comes across in this study - two-thirds of the people they looked at in the category of "nearly homeless" had an acquired brain injury.
Not good enough for the federal government to say that housing is a provincial responsibility. There used to be much, much more federal money flowing into the provinces for subsidized housing - let's get those taps open again, because the provinces can't fix the mess that's been created on their own.

No column for me in the TC today - it's that unfortunate Friday once a month when I no longer get a column (budget cuts). Fortunately, there are good writers out there keeping an eye on the scene in my absence - here's a piece from Vaughn Palmer making his prediction on how NDP leader Carole James will make out with her membership this weekend. 
 Personally, I hope Bill Bennett takes the "independent" option and that he and the other three independents in the legislature right now form some kind of  Party of Real People. Four is enough to form a party, and all the better in my mind if it has no right/left ideology. 
How about a party of common sense? Of true public representation? I would love the option to vote for people who were out there representing their constituencies plain and simple, with no need to be currying favour with a particular leader or filtering everything they said through the party line.
I'd definitely rather see a politician in a full-on meltdown like Bill Bennett this week than sitting there in helpless silence while bad things happen under their watch. Nice to see some of them getting some real spine.

OK, it's not cheery news, but you need to know it - figures from the country's food banks on the growing number of people living in poverty in this country of ours. I was coincidentally just down at the Mustard Seed Food Bank here in Victoria, and they were telling me that 8,000 people in our region now count on the Mustard Seed for a bag of groceries once a month.
Now that the B.C. Liberals are imploding, maybe we can get back to the business of doing something about that.

Good on (former) B.C. cabinet minister Bill Bennett for laying it on the line on his way out the door. Here's today's story - check out the audio file of Bennett on the right-hand side of the story. And hurrah hurrah to a sober second thought on that ridiculous 15 per cent tax cut Gordon Campbell dreamed up in his final days - the government has now rescinded that cut. Maybe that will let us get back to funding at least some of the community services that have been dismantled in B.C. under the Liberal regime.

I do think Health Minister Kevin Falcon has a point in this little squib about how we're housing the homeless in $1000-a-day hospital beds. Yeah, that's a stupid and immensely costly way to do it, but the media would be all over the government if they were just kicking people out of those beds into homelessness rather than leaving them there for a few days in the hopes that a better option can be found.
So thanks for leaving them there, Kevin. But now let's figure out some housing and health supports so that they can get out of hospital sooner and into their own place for a fraction of that crazy cost. Better still, let's give them the support they need to not get sick in the first place.
The truth is that the cutbacks under this government and the Glen Clark New Democrats over the last 15 years have intensified poverty dramatically in B.C. It's showing up in all kinds of ways - including far too many people stuck in costly hospital beds. Not all of them are homeless - a shortage of long-term care beds in our communities is also stranding the frail elderly, the disabled and the brain-injured in those expensive hospital beds.

How do you stay optimistic in light of reality?

My son was teasing me recently about the “tough job” of having to have an opinion on everything.

I admit, grumbling about the stresses of having a weekly platform in the Island’s largest daily newspaper for whatever you feel like going on about must come across as just a bit precious for all the writers and ranters out there who would jump at the opportunity.

But the truth is, having an opinion all the time does take its toll. It requires you to stay informed - and that turns out to be an incredibly discouraging process.

I place great value on having informed opinions, and on changing my mind if new information comes available. Think of me what you will as a columnist, but I’d hope that even the people who can’t stand what I write would at least agree I check into things before weighing in with an opinion.

It’s that checking-in that beats you down. You start to see the unmistakable pattern in how we humans operate, which all too often involves “fixing” specific problems only to neglect them back to life again a few years later. I mean, we’ve made an art form out of reinventing the wheel.

And once you know, there’s no “unknowing” - you see everything differently from that point on. You see the limits on the starry-eyed dreams of those who don’t yet know how things tend to work out. I don’t want to be rolling my eyes at someone’s big new vision for tackling the stubborn problems of our world, but it’s hard not to when you’re acutely aware of how often our enthusiastic plans go awry and our attention strays.

Getting informed has a lot of sleuthing in it. You’re lifting up the rocks to learn why things are happening a particular way. You’re asking questions, reading reports, looking at public records.

I love the process, and that being a journalist leads me to the people who can answer my questions. (Whether they will or not is another question, mind you.) I love this amazing age of accessible information. I love the chance to understand.

But what I’ve come to understand the most from all that paying attention is that we’re people of grand vision with fairly hopeless long-term commitment for seeing things through. We build up and tear down on all kinds of front, wasting heartbreaking amounts of time and energy on things that we soon forget we ever cared about.

My biggest fear is that all this knowing is making me bitter and cynical. I don’t want to be the type of person who pours cold water on every hopeful suggestion. I don’t want to be the Eeyore in the room.

I fear I’m already becoming one of those wet blankets at a party who is always bringing people down with their alarmed anecdotes and unpleasant statistics.

I can take a perfectly amusing little conversation and turn it into a deep and slightly uncomfortable talk about a pressing social concern in under a minute, even when I’m trying to keep things light. I’m sure people can spot the flaming colours of my outraged aura from across the room these days, and who could blame them for quietly hoping I wasn’t coming their way?

The other day, I heard myself making crabby comments about a shiny new family centre for autism being planned for Vancouver (more on that later). What an odd position to be in.

Then I startled a sales clerk at a local store with my passionate refusal to sign an anti-trafficking petition until I knew more about the campaign.  I saw in her eyes that I could very quickly become a real drag to be around.

On balance, I guess I wouldn’t have it any other way. The world just doesn’t need another uninformed opinion. But should you and I find ourselves in the same room one day, I’ll understand if you avoid me. There are days when I wish I could do the same.

***

Farewell to the late Bob Wise, whose own informed opinions around sex work made the Victoria artist and agent provocateur a favourite of mine in my years at PEERS Victoria.

He could have just stayed angry about having the prostitution stroll on his doorstep at Rock Bay. But instead he got to know the sex workers, and found clever ways to raise their issues in his artwork.  I’ll miss you, Bob.

Couldn't agree more with today's Times Colonist editorial. What the heck is with these guys? They go on and on about the need to prevent drunk driving, then they introduce laws that actually work, then they start talking about reversing the laws because the hospitality industry is griping that people aren't drinking enough anymore??
Please make a pact with me that we will not allow Rich Coleman or Kevin Falcon to be the next Liberal leader. Even a couple years under either of those two would be disastrous.

Here's an open letter to Premier Gordon Campbell issued today by First Call, a coalition of BC child and youth advocacy organizations, that notes the grand betrayal of British Columbians resulting from the instant tax cut Campbell used in a desperate attempt to increase his popularity. And here's a terrific Vaughn Palmer column on the same subject. 

November 9, 2010

Dear Premier Campbell,

First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition was one of the organizations that took time to respond to the call for input into next year’s budget by the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.  Many of our coalition partner organizations also participated in sharing their ideas and recommendations with the Committee.  We all participated in this exercise in good faith, trusting that the Committee’s report and recommendations, expected on November 15, would reflect our views, among others.

Your announcement on October 27, 2010 of an income tax cut costing the 2011 provincial budget $568 million was a slap in the face to the Standing Committee and everyone who made submissions to its deliberations.  The consultation document specifically asked British Columbians to share our budget priorities for 2011/12, with the figure of $650 million shown as “Available Revenues.”

Our coalition exists to mobilize British Columbians on behalf of children and youth.  We regularly encourage our coalition partners and contacts around the province to engage in the democratic process, such as participating in formal consultations by legislative committees, in order to make the case for the importance of allocating resources to properly support children, youth and families. 

Your action, preempting even the appearance of considering the Standing Committee’s recommendations, has made it harder for people to believe that their time is well spent preparing briefs and recommendations to inform government decision-making.  It has increased cynicism about our relationship as citizens with our government.  It has made it more difficult to convince young people that public consultations by government have integrity and are worthy of their interest and effort.

On behalf of our coalition partners, we would appreciate hearing from you as to why this 2011/12 budget decision was made prior to the submission of the Standing Committee’s report from its public consultations.

We look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

[original signed by]

Adrienne Montani

Provincial Coordinator

First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition

Copies to Finance Minister Colin Hansen and the members of the Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

See First Call's submission on the provincial budget here: http://www.firstcallbc.org/pdfs/CurrentIssues/2011%20prov%20budget.pdf

Bye, Mr. Premier. Wish I could think of something nice to say, you having been the premier for nine long years now. But I can't. 

Social conditions have worsened significantly under your leadership. You have insulated yourself from the people, choosing to surround yourself with paid cheerleaders who told you what you wanted to hear. I can’t tell you how many times the phrase, “The emperor has no clothes” has come to my mind when thinking about your governance style.

There was a moment when I glimpsed the human being that I know must be inside you. It was after you got busted for driving drunk in Maui. You came home to what must have been the most horrendous press conference you've ever had to be part of, and I saw in your eyes a man in real pain.

I wish you'd let that guy loose more often - the guy who knows what it feels like to screw up, to not always be the golden one. Your government operates like it's never known a moment like that. If I was going to describe the B.C. Liberals in a few words, I'd say: "Smug and dangerously certain."

These are complex times, Mr. Premier. I do know a little about your life, and that you've experienced complex events. So how come it never feels like you bring that personal experience to bear when making decisions for British Columbia? 

You guys feel cold as ice in so much of your decision-making. It’s like being run by a corporation. And that is not a good thing when so much of what a provincial government does is about looking after people.

Thanks to you, I do have a better understanding that the business model can be put to good application in much of what government does. But I guess I also have you to thank for showing me its striking limitations. 

 You will not be remembered well by people like me, but who knows - you still have years to go in your life, and are uniquely placed as a former premier to do some really good work out here in the world should you put your mind to it. I never say never.

But I don’t think you can be expected to be forgiven easily, and certainly not by me. I’ve actually met people who your government has pulled the rug out from under. OK, you’re just the premier, but you set the tone. And it’s way off.

I’m a media type, always looking for someone to talk to. I’ve noticed that people have become much more fearful about speaking up under your leadership. That says volumes about the climate you’ve created in government. 

In fairness, it hasn’t all been bad.

You’ve definitely made B.C. a better place to do business, and that needed to happen. You pulled off the Olympics - and I admit, I sat riveted in front of the TV for much of it despite my fervent vow that I would boycott the whole thing.

You got things going with First Nations. That’s particularly impressive given how very far back some members of your government were on that issue when you first came to power.

 And I think all-day kindergarten will turn out to be a good thing in years to come, even though it’s also a prime example of the kind of shove-it-down-your-throat style of government that has brought you to this point.

My sense of you is that you never had a clue what consultation is actually about. You seem quite certain that you know best about everything.

But you don’t. You can’t. That’s how it is for everyone, Mr. Campbell. We all need help figuring out the problems of life, even premiers.

Why have you never been able to see the tremendous potential for transformation you have right here in your own communities? Why do you always think that the people you talk to in your high circles are wiser than the people who are actually doing the work for you here in B.C.?

I’ve been a manager, too. I know the compulsion to have a finger in every pie, control over every situation.

But if you could have only let that go, you would have seen that everything you needed to lead B.C. into prosperity and stability was right there among your citizens. We were actually doing a lot of things right before you showed up.

We didn’t anoint you king, Gordon - we elected you premier, “first among equals.” I just don’t think you ever got that.

We generally picture the U.S. as a black hole of social support, but not necessarily. Here's an article out of Minnesota about a recent expansion to that state's food program to feed poor families.
A family of four earning $3000 or less a month now qualifies for food aid in Minnesota. Eight per cent of the state's population relies on food aid every month.
Compare these changes to the situation in B.C., where the best you can hope for even if you're scratching by on welfare (for a family of four, as low as $1,100 a month) is a place in line at the local food bank.
If there's a food bank in your town. If the food bank has food....

What will be left after the Liberals?

I don’t know if you lived in B.C. back when we were actually building community services instead of tearing them apart, but I did.  I was one of the taxpayers helping fund it all.

So how am I supposed to feel as that same taxpayer, watching all that investment be dismantled because we’ve got a short-sighted, self-interested political party at the helm with some very sketchy ethics?

People, what are we doing here? Please tell me we’re not actually prepared to just sit back in seething silence until the next provincial election in 2013. I think I might have to move away if that’s the case, just to stop my head from exploding.

What gets me the most is the sheer arrogance of the decision-making in the last couple of years.  A colleague recently reminded me that the same arrogance gripped the New Democrats in their final term, so maybe it’s just what happens when parties get to believing their own myths.

The government’s active role in the potential ruination of community services is ever-present on my mind at the moment. The funding levels and service structure for social care are changing so fast in B.C. right now that it really is like the Wild West out there, and I think I can say with certainty that no one has any idea where it will all lead.

Dressed up variously as “transformation” and “greater community integration and independence,” the government is flailing around for savings by dismantling, starving and squeezing services that in some cases have been in place for decades. With no social policy to guide cuts and changes, it’s essentially snipping random holes in the safety net, with no predicting where things will fall out.

But even if you don’t give a hoot about social issues, there’s a lot more to worry about when it comes to the B.C. Liberals.

The Basi-Virk stuff, for instance.

First you’ve got the high-flying guy in government who thinks it’s OK to take a $50,000 bribe from a developer wanting property taken out of the Agricultural Land Reserve. Then you’ve got the very government that bred a guy like that telling us we should just accept their word that the bribe had no effect on the decision, and never mind that the land did indeed get removed from the reserve.

Then you’ve got the $6 million payoff to cover the legal fees of Dave Basi and Bobby Virk, a decision reached by government mere days before a number of high-profile witnesses were to testify about how much the government knew.

And then to insult us with the explanation that government covered the legal bills because it was clear Basi and Virk could never afford to pay that amount back. How kind. This from the same government that will relentlessly grind people on income assistance to pay back $20.

Before Basi-Virk, there was the HST. I’m not so much bothered by the tax itself, because the work I do keeps me up close and personal to the problems that have resulted from the relentless drive to lower taxes. But the lying definitely offends me.

Finance Minister Colin Hansen - a man of integrity, I once thought - almost had us believing that government hadn’t considered introducing the HST until after the 2009 election.

When the media put the lie to that statement after finding an email from the federal government to Hansen sent two months before the election, the finance minister just kept up the Sergeant Schultz defence of knowing nothing. It was as if sheer repetition alone could make us believe.

I’m sure it must be very difficult to be government these days. People howling at the door for services, less money to go around.

But how is any of that helped by starving services that prevent much bigger, costlier problems from developing? And why should I believe anything the government says on that front or any other now that I know that bribes, lying and the paying of hush money are part of the way it does business?

It bothers me a lot that when the bill for failed social care finally comes due years from now, the B.C. Liberals of the moment will be gone and their pivotal role in the tragedy overlooked.  It bothers me more to see our province in the hands of a government that feels so little respect for the people.

I don’t know what the answer is. But it sure isn’t about waiting until 2013.

Read this story out of Indiana and weep. There would have been a time I couldn't have imagined people in B.C. and Canada ever finding themselves in a similar situation, but not anymore.

Here's a very thorough recounting of the terrible injustices going on right now for people with developmental disabilities in B.C. It's from a B.C. blogger who attended a big meeting in Vancouver on Monday over the $22 million in cuts to group homes and services going on right now. Share this information far and wide, and jump on one of the action items at the end of the blog entry. This is wrong!

A disturbing story out of the U.S. on the disproportionate impact the housing crisis is having on black Americans. Some scary figures in here beyond that issue - like the fact that almost five per cent of recent borrowers in the U.S. have lost their house to foreclosure.

I'm in Vancouver tonight, working here for a couple of days. As always, I can't figure out how I feel about this city.
It's beautiful on a day like today - the sun shining, the beautiful mountains aglow in the distance. The high rises in the city core are things of beauty in their own right, catching the sunlight at different angles in the daytime and then turning into sparkling jewels as the night closes in. I drove along the Stanley Park waterfront at dusk today and marvelled at the city scape across the way, perfect right down to the neon-blue and green light spilling down the side of one of the tallest buildings like an electric waterfall.
And yet. Something about a tall city always makes me feel lonely. I don't know what that is - is it the spots of light all signalling other human being out there, yet no way to actually make contact? I'm in one such Rapunzel's tower myself at the moment, on a high enough floor that my only company is the lights from neighbouring glass towers. It just kind of weirds me out.
But earlier tonight, I came out of a day of conferencing, loaded my accordion into my truck, and headed down to the seawall around Stanley Park before the sun set.
I sat there playing music in this incredible sunset, looking at this amazing view of boats and water and beautiful urban landscapes. And it was a real moment.
Then a young couple on bikes rode up and stopped to listen for a couple of songs, which was more or less what happened the last time I played accordion in Stanley Park a year or so ago. That time, a couple passersby had also just dropped onto a bench to enjoy the music.
That's the thing about Vancouver - I feel this lonely vibe when I look out from my glass tower, but at the same time have had special moments in this city that I just don't think would have happened in Victoria. I'm not sure if I could live here, but then again, I'm often not sure I can live in Victoria, either.
But enough with the reflections. I think I'll head out into Vancouver's pretty night streets and find myself a bowl of noodles.

Another insightful report from the team of Mary Ellen Turpel Lafond, representative for B.C.'s children and youth, and provincial medical health officer Dr. Perry Kendall. Lots of good information in this highly readable report.

Thank you, community-builders - where would we be without you?

Organizing an event is an unusual undertaking at the best of times. Things get even more interesting when you’re dependent on community donations and goodwill to pull it off, as has been the case for the three years I’ve been doing the annual Project Connect event for the street community.

Doing anything to benefit the poor evokes a peculiar reaction in some people, as if it’s sainted work. But staging an event like Project Connect, sponsored by the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness, is less the work of saints than it is of community worker bees.  They fill my heart with hope for a better day every time I have the privilege to see them in action.

Every year, the outpouring of goodwill and effort reminds me of how much can be accomplished when everyone steps up to the plate even just a little. From the local businesses that donate gift cards and products to the hundreds of people in the community who donate items for “survival packs” or give their time, people attach to the event for all kinds of reasons.

But what really stands out for me is the leadership shown by the local faith community, both in mobilizing for donations and providing wonderful, committed volunteers.

I’m a secular person myself, so my tendency is to look for some broader explanation as to what brings out humanity in people. But what I’ve come to see is that you often find a higher concentration of it within the faith community.

My time at PEERS Victoria helped me see the role that faith and hope play for people in desperate circumstance. They need to believe.

But really, don’t we all? Some of us are fortunate enough to enjoy abundance and happiness to the point of never feeling the need to reflect on the faith and hope in our lives. In truth, life would be unbearable without them.

Much to the benefit of our communities, faith and hope at a collective level manifest as a whole lot of good-hearted men and women prepared to do what it takes to make something happen. Like that noble character Horton the Elephant, the people I’ve come to treasure as community-builders say what they mean and mean what they say.

They show up. They work hard, and for all the right reasons.  

That’s not to suggest that everyone who helps out with Project Connect belongs to a church. But the faith community plays a significant part. I know we couldn’t have filled 700 packs so generously for people at Wednesday’s event at Our Place were it not for the efforts of local Christian congregations.

Every year is a learning experience with Project Connect. But the point that definitely sticks with me three years on is how much I like people who show up.

They say they’ll get a task done, and they do. They inquire about what you need help with, and then they make it happen. They reach out across their personal networks and pull in all kinds of kindnesses.

Obviously, you needn’t attach to a particular spiritual identity to do that work. (Case in point: Me.) But there’s no denying that a significant part of the hard, free work of our region gets done by the faith community, and by the broad base of volunteers they are skilled at mustering around them.

It’s faith and hope that brought so many of the 35 service providers into the room for Project Connect as well, and never mind that some do this work for a living. There’s real love at the heart of a lot of poverty work.

I saw a woman transform lives Wednesday with a set of hair clippers and a friendly willingness to jump into even the most tangled, wiry beard. Who’s to say God wasn’t among the crowd when one of her beaming, newly groomed clients emerged into the courtyard at Our Place to a spontaneous round of applause from his admiring peers?

A hand massage for a person who rarely feels a kind touch is, for the moment, a miracle. When your bike rides better, your dog gets help, your socks no longer cling damp and fetid on your aching feet, your sore tooth is finally dealt with - well, that’s how hope takes root.

Talk is cheap. So is caring, unless you’re prepared to put action to it. Thank God - literally, in many cases - for the people in our community who get that.

Goofy little story I thought you might find interesting. I mean, is this what "low-level" federal bureaucrats do all today - come up with peculiar ideas certain to inflame people? As you may have deduced by now, I'm very supportive of decriminalizing the adult sex industry, but that's not to suggest our country is remotely ready to be viewing that work as just another job to be posted on the regular job board alongside dishwashing and accounting.

I'm all for normalizing the work of adult, consensual sex workers, who have been doing "normal" work in our communities for a very long time. But putting too much politically correct spin on an issue like this will only outrage those who feel otherwise, and lend credence to that ridiculous argument that decriminalizing opens the door for governments to force women into sex work when they can't find any other kind of work.

I'm reprinting a letter from a desperate mom of a young man with a mental handicap, who is one of several thousand in B.C. experiencing major cutbacks in service and residential care right now. I've heard from many people like this woman - and there are many, many more people with developmental disabilities in our province who don't even have any family to advocate for them. 

Hi Jody

I'm a mother of a mentally handicapped 24 year old man. I would like to thank you for your article to let people know what's really going on. I think the government and CLBC should be sued for falsely advertising themselves as trying to help families care for their handicapped family member. 

My husband and I  take care of our son as he still lives at home. They do not want to give us as parents the help we need. All we hear is no money and wait lists! These government bodies are looking to take away their responsibility and push it on aging  family members.

This is all fine for us right now, as I want to care for my son. But I would like the resources and help I need to achieve this. As soon as he turned 19 all my rights as a parent were gone  because he's an adult. I had to pay a lawyer to be able to have something drawn up so I can represent my son.This province is pathetic - they keep low income, seniors and handicapped people in poverty. It's really disgusting.

I'm one of the lucky ones to be able to work my own hours. If I worked a 9-to-5 job I could never do it. His day program is over at 2 p.m. and he's home by 2:30 . With no funding for after-program hours what does a family do? My son can't stay be himself so I have to be home for him. This is also why people have to give up their family member, because they don't get the help they need and the stress becomes to0 much.

Now with all the closures what's going to happen ? I'm so scared for my son when we are no longer able to care for him. Like most parents who keep their adult children at home, we sacrifice the opportunity to have a normal life without kids at home .We don't have the same opportunity like most people whose kids grow up and leave home ......ours don't.

At this point even if I wanted to have him move out and be in his own home, the funding isn't there to help make this happen . I have no choice but to care for my son until we are physically or mentally not able to do so. 

We need to fight this government, for what they are doing is so wrong . I would like them to spend a week in my shoes.

It's cruel and stupid to close group homes

The provincial government can dance all it likes, and certainly has, around the sticky issue of whether it’s closing group homes for people with developmental disabilities.

But it is. So let’s give up this crazy pretence that B.C. isn’t closing group homes, when the fact is that anyone with an ear to the ground knows it’s already well underway. I mean, come on, guys - the least you can do is be honest.

Here’s Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman in the legislature April 13, as captured in Hansard during a strategically worded cat-and-mouse game on the subject with New Democrat MLA Shane Simpson.

“We don't do forced moves, if that's what the member is getting to,” Coleman told Simpson. “We do, though, sometimes, when we have a redesign or have to have a repositioning with regards to our facilities, work extensively with the families and the advocates to walk them through what other opportunities are available in addition to maybe moving to another facility, if there's a capacity issue.”

Whatever that tongue-twister means, you can see now that he was already parsing things carefully to clear the way for government and Community Living B.C. to cut $22 million in spending. (He’s also caught in a lie, because forced moves are happening.)

CLBC savings are to come from phasing out group homes and cutting support services.  I heard a heartbreaking story of a fellow who has gone to “work” with great enthusiasm for 20 years now at a program that fills his days, but will soon have nowhere to go.

The government likes to portray the issue as being more about having to spread the same amount of expenditure out over an ever-larger group of people and families who really need the help, as opposed to cutting services. It’s a “capacity issue,” as Coleman noted in April.

Whatever. Call it what you will, group homes are closing and services are being cut for people who are completely vulnerable without the right supports. Anyone who cares about rights, fairness, homelessness, abuse prevention, health-care costs down the road or even just plain human decency ought to be completely up in arms about what’s going on for people with developmental disabilities.

Mental illness and mental handicaps get mixed up all the time in the public’s mind. What I’m talking about here are people with low IQs, for all the reasons that such things happen. They often have physical disabilities as well, and some have mental illness complicating things.

I get the government’s point that they’re a drain on the public purse. Then again, so is the government itself, and all the rest of the vast public and political functions we pay for.

Smart government isn’t about singling out specific groups of people for misery because they cost us more. It’s about priorizing spending in ways that best satisfy voters while not burdening future generations with the fruits of our screwups. How does the stupid cruelty of cutting services to people with developmental disabilities benefit anyone?

The Victoria Foundation’s Vital Signs report this week highlighted the priority our region puts on social care. But if we really mean it, we should be jumping up and down right now on behalf of people with developmental disabilities.

We’re not talking big numbers. All told, just a third of the 36,000 British Columbians with developmental disabilities get any help from CLBC, and only 2,400 live in group homes.

The theory is that people moved out of their group homes will go onto enriched lives in a less structured, more independent housing arrangement.  A few group homes may linger on, but they’re no longer an option for new people coming into the CLBC system.

The whole thing has been done extremely quietly, and perhaps it would have all been a done deal by now were it not for a few anguished cries from family members of those getting the boot from the homes where they’ve lived contentedly for years, even decades. That government and CLBC seem surprised to have encountered resistance just underlines the disconnect with the real world.

British Columbians ought to be celebrating the network of group homes and day programs built by previous generations of taxpayers who invested in a better future for people with developmental disabilities. Do we want to be the generation remembered for tearing it apart for fleeting savings?

It’s wrong, and shameful. But families can’t win this on their own.  Learn more at www.momsnetwork.ca, and add some muscle to an important issue.

There's been some terrific (and terrible) commentary and writing about Canada's prostitution laws since the Ontario Superior Court struck down three key laws around the sex trade last week. Here are a couple pieces from the former category, one from SFU professor John Lowman in the Vancouver Sun, and the other from the Ottawa Citizen by Steve Sullivan, Canada's federal ombudsman for victims of crime. Nice to see some smart, thoughtful writing on this subject.

Court ruling finally brings sex workers out of the shadow

You’ll be reading this today, or maybe even weeks from now. By then it will be old news that the Ontario Superior Court tossed out the bulk of Canada’s prostitution laws.

But it’s Tuesday, Sept. 28 right now, 11:01 a.m. I’m sitting down to write this mere minutes after the first amazing email landed in my inbox with the news. I’ve been crying happy tears ever since. I’m still in the buzz of the moment, so please don’t mind me if I get all emotional.

Years of battle lie ahead, of course. Brothels, living off the avails and communicating for the purposes of prostitution were all rendered legal in Ontario with the decision, which ultimately has implications coast to coast. The first thing the Crown’s going to do after everybody gets past the shock is file an appeal. Then it’s off to the ultimate arbiter, the Supreme Court of Canada.

Still, there’s no going back from what has already changed. The moment Ontario Superior Court Judge Susan Himel handed down her decision Tuesday, sex workers finally became people. They became flesh-and-blood women and men, out there working for a living like the rest of us.

"By increasing the risk of harm to street prostitutes, the communicating law is simply too high a price to pay for the alleviation of social nuisance," Himel wrote in her 131-page ruling. The danger sex workers face “greatly outweighs any harm which may be faced by the public.”

Court decisions seem like pretty sterile documents by the time the public gets a look at them. But there’s real pain, and incredible bravery, in the process that brought about this most recent judgment.

The sex workers who appeared before the court were subjected to intense and prying questions by prosecutors. I still remember the day a friend of mine came back from giving her testimony, the broken way she looked. It had been a hard and humiliating experience.

These women put their lives on public display as few would be willing to do. Without them, there would have been no case. I hope they are celebrating like crazy this week.

University of Toronto law professor Alan Young and the legal team who took on this challenge worked for free. They went to extraordinary effort to build a story that spoke to the law while also bringing the voices of Canada’s sex workers and advocates to the fore. There would have been no case without them, either.

When all of this got underway, I couldn’t have guessed how the court might finally rule. At that level, the law is not often something that the common person can understand.

But then I learned a few months back that the legal test was essentially whether Canada’s prostitution laws caused more harm than good. And that’s when I knew there was a good chance that the sex workers were going to win.

Our laws are well-documented for hurting and killing sex workers while doing nothing to curb the industry. If harm versus public good was the test, there was no question in my mind.

Even when the laws aren’t enforced - which is mostly the case in Canada for the laws around keeping a bawdyhouse or living off the avails - they cause harm by shutting sex workers out of the mainstream and deepening stigma.

It took me a long time to form my views on sex work, through many twists and turns in career and personal experience. I now feel unequivocally that adult, consensual sex work must be legalized.

But it took me years to get here, and I respect that not everybody will greet Judge Himel’s ruling as a gift from the heavens. Some may even see it as the end of the world.

But what is the argument for anyone being subjected to injury, death, immense shame and stigma just because another segment of the population believes the way they make their living is immoral?

Perhaps you can’t imagine doing the work and wouldn’t want it for your own daughter. But is that really reason enough for laws that ramp up the danger and difficulty for other people’s daughters and sons?

People struggle with the idea that sex work could ever be part of their community. But the truth is that it already is. Thank you, Judge Himel, for seeing the people in the shadows.

Wow, we are living in kooky times when a U.S. newspaper does a straight-up story about how homeless students have a tougher time than other students when schools in their neighbourhood close down. Pretty unsettling story not so much because of what it's actually about, but because it treats the concept of homeless students like it's a normal thing.

Check out the fascinating buzz going on at the CCSVI Facebook page, where the piece I wrote today about multiple sclerosis got posted. This is clearly one hot topic among people with MS.

What's the real reason for resisting help for people with MS?

Paulo Zamboni must have been hanging out with the marketers too long when he coined that cursed phrase “liberation therapy” for a garden-variety angioplasty.

Maybe if the Italian doctor hadn’t made it all sound quite so fancy and amazing, we’d just be doing what we always do for people with blocked veins, giving them angioplasties to open things up.  Instead, we’re acting like it’s some unheard-of procedure and putting up a real fight to stop people with MS from trying it.

You probably know the story by now. Zamboni tried angioplasty on people with MS to test his theory that the devastating illness might be caused by blocked veins that affected blood flow in the brain. Patients responded in near-miraculous ways, and the “liberation therapy” was quickly news all over the world.

But even as people with MS grew hopeful at the news, a massive resistance was building among governments, doctors, MS support groups and virtually anyone else with a professional tie to the issue.

On the one hand, it’s understandable.

Zamboni didn’t do the double-blind, control-group kinds of studies that are required in countries like Canada.  His theory goes against everything we think we know about MS, challenging the common wisdom that it’s an incurable auto-immune disorder best managed through lifelong drug therapy.

On the other, what’s this wave of resistance really about? More than 35,000 angioplasties are performed in Canada every year, 99 per cent of them without incident. Other than touting it as a potential cure for MS, Zamboni isn’t advocating an unusual or dangerous procedure.

 So why are the MS professionals so resistant to even considering that people with MS might have blocked veins? Why are we forcing ill Canadians to travel to other countries on their own dime just to get a scan to confirm whether their veins might indeed be blocked? Why are we making it so hard for desperate people to hold onto hope of reclaiming at least a little mobility?

“Right now, it’s my only hope,” says Sharon Kristiansen, a Victoria woman who has lived with MS for 31 years. “Maybe it would mean that one day I could walk again. But if not that, then at least maybe I could get more feeling back in my fingertips. The slightest things make a difference.”

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but the power of the pharmaceutical companies can’t be underestimated when trying to understand the resistance.

On average, people with MS use $20,000 to $40,000 worth of prescription drugs every year to control their symptoms. (Kristiansen’s annual drug costs are $25,000.) Onset is typically between ages 20 and 40. MS isn’t noted for shortening your lifespan, so many people live 40 to 60 years with the disease.

Close to three million people around the world have MS, including 55,000 Canadians. Based on my rudimentary math calculations, that means that just the current crop of Canadians with MS will use between $44 billion and $134 billion worth of prescription drugs over their combined lifetimes.

Assuming people in other countries are also paying at least $20,000 a year for drug therapy and living with MS for the same length of time, we’re talking a mind-blowing $2.4 trillion worldwide  just to treat the people who have the disease right now.

That’s a lot of sales at risk. I know that’s an ugly thing to say, but can we honestly feel confident that we’re exploring potential cures for MS when that much money is at stake?

Drug companies are very good at public relations, to the point that everyone from researchers to doctors to advocacy groups and “grassroots” health organizations ends up compromised. Case in point: The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada.

Kudos to the society for issuing its first-ever proposal call last fall for further research into Zamboni’s theory. That can’t have been an easy decision given that drug companies donate half a million dollars or more every year to the society.

Six drugs are approved for use in Canada for the treatment of MS. The manufacturers of five of them were listed as major donors in the MS Society’s 2008 and 2009 annual reports.

Just four donors in the country gave at the top level last year, with gifts of $100,000 or more. Two were drug companies.

Is any of that proof of something afoot? No. Zamboni’s theory challenges the status quo in all kinds of ways, and for all I know the resistance is simply about sound medical practise.

But for the first time ever, there’s a glimmer of real hope on the horizon for people with MS. I just find it odd that we’re putting so much effort into raining on their parade.

  

Why some of our biggest problems just drag on (and on)

My late father took to calling me “Little Miss Know-It-All” once I became a columnist. My mother still teases me about it.

It’s a funny thing, being an opinion writer. You have to be out there with something to say - otherwise, what’s the point? It seems I’m always weighing in on one thing or another, and never mind that I might not have known the first thing about the subject prior to that. 

I wish I really did know it all, because wouldn’t that just be the coolest thing? But what journalists are good at is identifying problems. That doesn’t mean we know how to solve them.

Still, you learn a lot after years of writing about problems.  The upside of journalism is getting to see big thinkers working together with the information, insight and team skills needed to solve a problem. The downside is realizing how often we get stuck, and how the ruts in the road just keep on getting deeper in the places where we’ve spun our wheels a hundred times before.

Every positive change - gay rights, fewer motor-vehicle deaths, lower dropout rates, higher birth weights, environmental protection, equality for women, on and on - came about because people who knew their stuff simply got to it and figured things out. We’re impressive problem-solvers when we want to be.

Yet other problems linger on. Why? In my opinion, it usually comes down to a lack of honesty within the process and conflicting interests. We talk about our commitment to the issue at hand, but not about the hidden agendas and politically influenced decision-making that derails any problem-solving process.

We do not badly in the first stage of problem-solving, where we’re gathering information. Think of all those fabulous reports that have come out of the many royal commissions, task forces and inquiries we’ve created to help us with stubborn, complex issues.

But so many of those recommendations never make it off the shelf. We appear genuine in our search for answers, but rarely are.

I was part of a corporate process years ago in which complex problems got addressed by bringing anyone with a piece of the issue into the same room to figure things out as a group. It’s amazing how quickly a problem can be resolved when everybody puts aside their own self-interest and works for the greater good.

But there’s the sticking point. If anybody is there for the wrong reason, or less than honest about adopting the solutions that emerge from the process, it all goes wrong pretty quickly. You need to be willing to compromise your own interests to solve a problem, and honest in talking about the challenges. Change can’t happen otherwise.

An example: We can’t possibly solve the problem of people with mental illness falling into homelessness until those with the power and the funding base to change that are honest about the level of service needed and the fact that we’re not even close to having enough.

We can’t wish everybody off our streets while at the same time slowing the building of subsidized housing across Canada to a trickle and gentrifying every neighbourhood to suit the middle-class.

We can’t address the crisis in our health, social and justice systems caused by drug addiction without acknowledging that we’ve stripped down services so aggressively in the last decade that treatment these days is readily available only if you’ve got  money to buy private care at $10,000-plus a month.

We can’t address the needs of the 35,000 British Columbians who live with mental handicaps while cutting and capping vital supports that were never generous in the first place. We can’t feel good about expanding disability services to include people with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder while at the same time cutting overall funding so that everybody will receive less help.

We can’t help people with brain injuries by scrapping a community program that used to help them make the transition from hospital to home, as we did two years ago. That not only exacerbated problems for that group, it complicated potential solutions around homelessness: Brain injury is a fact of life for more than half of the people living on our streets, and the reason why many are homeless in the first place.

We’ll solve our tough problems when we’re honest about them, and cognizant of the political spin and self-interest that undermines the process. 

I’d like to say the day is soon coming. But Little Miss Know-It-All isn’t at all sure about that.

There's a great new report out from the Vancouver Board of Trade and the Justice Institute that really puts some solid figures to the argument that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to social services to children and families.
We all know that - even government knows it. But the reality is that time and again we ignore the wisdom and scrap preventive services, leaving some future taxpayer to foot the bill for all the crisis costs that will come due once the child who didn't get the support they need grows up into the adult awash in poor health outcomes, criminal involvement and low productivity.
Read the report here. 

I can relate to that poor bus driver who got lost on the way to Bamfield with a busload of students. I've done that drive, and found myself wondering many times along the way which was the most likely outcome: That I would take a wrong turn and get lost forever on the winding gravel roads between Victoria and Bamfield, or be killed by one of the giganto super-size logging trucks whooshing past me.
Fortunately, I happened to pick up a mom-and-son hitchhiking duo a couple weeks ago on a drive back to Victoria from Courtenay, and they hailed from Bamfield. The son gave me very sound advice for staying on the straight and narrow while driving to Bamfield: Follow the power lines.
Either that or drive in sensible fashion to Port Alberni and take the Lady Rose steamboat in. Lovely way to see Bamfield.

Thank you, UBC researcher Kate Shannon, who wrote this piece for the Canadian Medical Association Journal this month. Note the tremendous surge in arrests for outdoor sex workers in Canada due to short-sighted changes in the communications law in the 1980s, and with zero improvement in the lives of sex workers despite a lot of talk around that time of how the new laws were going to "help" women. We can't let them add another bad, poorly considered law to the mix by toughening up sentences for keeping a common bawdyhouse.

From the September edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal:

(All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Can adian Medical Association.)

The hypocrisy of Canada’s prostitution legislation

Often described as the world’s oldest profession, the exchange of sex for money has always

existed and will continue to exist worldwide.

For many, the sex industry evokes a sense of moral unease, and divides feminists and society alike on whether it is an oppression and commodification of women, or a woman’s right and choice to sell her body. Canada’s federal legislation reflects this divide: The buying and selling of sex among consensual adults has always been legal, yet criminal code provisions on communicating, procuring, bawdy houses and living off the avails of prostitution make it virtually impossible to work legally in safer indoor settings.

Against this backdrop, the numbers of missing and murdered women continue to swell in Canadian cities and street-involved women engaged in sex work experience some of the worst health outcomes in our society, including drug-related harms, trauma, and HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Standardized mortality rates among female street-based sex workers are higher than any other population of women in North America, with homicide being the most common cause of death.

Sadly, there are multiple examples of convictions of serial murderers of sex workers over the last decade in North America and the United Kingdom, and ongoing concerns remain of potential

serial murderers in Edmonton, Winnipeg and along the “Highway of Tears” in Northern British Columbia. The recent convictions for the gruesome homicides of women on the streets of Vancouver and Seattle — the largest serial murders in Canadian and American history — should be a vivid and chilling reminder.

Importantly, growing peer-reviewed research published in some of the top medical journals now suggest that enforcement of criminal sanctions targeting sex work, including communicating

in public spaces, displaces sex workers to isolated alleys and industrial settings away from health and support services.

Enforced displacement and lack of access to safer indoor work environments independently increase sex workers’ risk of physical violence and rape, and reduces their ability to safely negotiate condom use with clients, thereby protecting themselves from sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies. Qualitative evidence further describes how criminal sanctions limiting sex workers’ ability to regulate safer industry practices (e.g., create unions,

safer indoor work spaces. etc.) compound health-related risks.

Globally, evidence-based public health research is being used in calls to remove criminal sanctions targeting sex work; one such call even came from the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Yet in Canada this public health policy gap has been met with

scaled up enforcement-based efforts targeting sex workers and their clients.

According to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, following the enactment of the 1985 ‘communicating code’legislation designed to remove the visible presence of sex work, annual prostitution arrests increased nearly 10-fold,

from 1, 255 arrests in 1985 to 10, 457 arrests in 1987. These rates have remained constant at about 10, 000 arrests per year, with 97 per cent occurring in Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal.

Despite three separate parliamentary sub-committees on prostitution since the

mid-1980s, sex workers and human rights experts are now being forced to

challenge the criminal sanctions through the courts, as a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedom.

Now, as we wait for the Ontario Supreme Court decision on one challenge, the federal government has taken another backward step, this time by reclassifying the Criminal Code on

“keeping a bawdy house” (a place kept for the purpose prostitution) making it a

serious crime with a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment.6 This new

Criminal Code regulation, introduced without Parliamentary debate, is in blatant

disregard of the evidence and has the concerning risk of pushing sex workers

further underground and outside the public health umbrella.

In perhaps the saddest reflection of this public health policy gap, in 2008 sex workers in Edmonton began giving samples of their DNA to a community agency and RCMP network to ensure their bodies would be identified in case of future harm.

While rigorous evaluation of legal policy approaches to sex work remains critical, it is also time for government and policy makers to take into account the evidence of the failures of the criminalized approach to sex work on health and human rights in Canadian society.

Kate Shannon PhD

Assistant professor

Department of Medicine

University of British Columbia

Vancouver, BC

REFERENCES

1. Shannon K, Strathdee SA, Shoveller J, et al. Structural and environmental barriers to condom use negotiation with clients among female sex workers: Implications for HIV prevention strategies and policy. Am J Public Health 2009;99:659-65.

2. Shannon K, Kerr T, Strathdee SA, et al. Prevalence and structural correlates of gender-based violence in a prospective cohort of female sex workers. BMJ 2009;339: b2939.

3. Rekart ML. Sex-work harm reduction. Lancet 2005;366: 2123-34.

4. Goodyear M, Cusick L. Protection of sex workers. BMJ 2007;334:52-3.

5. Duchesne D. Street prostitution in Canada. Ottawa (ON): Statistics Canada; 2002. Cat. no. 85-002-XPE

6. Perreaux L. Tory legislation takes aim at brothels and bookies. The Globe and Mail [Toronto] 2010 Aug. 5. Sect A:6 DOI:10.1503/cmaj.100410

© 2010 Jupiterimages Corp.

Previously published at www.cmaj.ca

CMAJ • SEPTEMBER 7, 2010 • 182(12)

© 2010 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors

Canada has a habit of following the U.S. into good times and bad. But with that big country to the south of us deep in the grips of truly terrible economic times, let's hope we're not following too closely.
Here's an alarming read about the astounding amount of U.S. households going into foreclosure these days, and the equally astounding rise in homelessness happening in the big cities like Los Angeles, where homelessness grew  30 per cent between 2007 and 2009.
As the story notes, one in 400 homes went into foreclosure in July 2010. In Nevada and California, the foreclosure rates are five times higher - one in 80. Scary to contemplate where this is all going.

If you needed any more of an excuse to lie around in the sun (oh, wait - that's me), there's a new study linking a lack of Vitamin D to the development of schizophrenia. Seeing as a lack of that vitamin has also been linked to higher risk of multiple sclerosis and a few cancers, maybe it's time for us to quit slathering on the sunscreen QUITE so thickly and start letting a little of that Vitamin-D-maker-in-the-sky shine on our skin. Just a little.

Google has changed my life, but you do have to wonder if they're aiming to take over the world. Here they are talking about their new "instant search" feature, in which you don't even have to wait that draggy millisecond after you hit Enter to find the info you're searching for on-line. Pretty soon, you won't even have to type in your search criteria - Google will just know.

Scientific evidence isn't for everybody

An intriguing article out of the U.S. on how people have a tendency not to trust scientists. Apparently we don't trust scientists as a general rule, and tend to pay more attention to the bad news and less to the good. But really, why is it a surprise that we don't always trust science? Science has been known to get things wrong many times in the past. So it is when you're human, of course - scientists are no more able than any of us to avoid mistakes and see past their own prejudices and presumptions that could slant findings. Pharmaceutical companies' growing power as funders of scientific research should only make us even more suspicious.