A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

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

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

Update Oct. 18, 2011: More details from police on the tasering of an 11-year-old boy with severe developmental disability All the world’s an onion. Peel back a layer on any issue and a dozen more await, each more intriguing than the one before. An example: The Tasering of an 11-year-old boy in Prince George last month. I went digging around for information this week on that troubling incident, only to end up puzzling over how a company with a history of running bars and liquor stores ends up in the group-home business. The lowdown on this particular case will ultimately come from B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Her office is reviewing the incident and other issues at B.C. group homes for children in care, and we’ll all know more when her analysis and two separate police reviews are complete. But even a cursory look at the Prince George situation raises questions about how B.C. contracts services for its most at-risk children. ...

An excerpt from Hansard, from the May 3 session of the BC legislature. Social Development Minister Harry Bloy, a brand-new cabinet minister, has obviously learned the lesson well of just repeating the same key message over and over, even when it makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the information that the Opposition members are bringing forward.  Really, the public should not let Community Living B.C. and the government get away with this fairy tale about how nobody with a developmental disability has been forced out of their group home against their will - it simply isn't true. And yes, there have been cuts, regardless of what Bloy says - when you add in new people who qualify for service without increasing funding, the others who have been receiving services up to that point have to take a cut for that to happen. It's basic math.  SERVICES FOR DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED PERSONS N. Simons: Last week in this House the minister responsible for Community Living B.C. ...

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

Why I'm not voting for Stephen Harper Some people think you’re not supposed to get personal in your politics. They contend that what matters most in a political leader is whether he or she can run the country, not whether you like them. Part of me agrees with that. Government has to be able to function like a business to get things done efficiently, and having leaders with a half-decent head for such things is pretty important. But I’d argue that there are times when judging political leaders by the way you feel about them is perfectly sensible. When it happens in other areas of our lives, we call it “a gut feeling” and go with it. Why should it be any different when picking the people who will lead our country? It’s something of a standing joke in Canada that women don’t like Prime Minister Stephen Harper. I’m one of them. And I admit, it started out as a feeling.   But it grew to much more than that soon enough. My reasons for disliking Harper may have been visceral initially, ...

There's some great information and Election 2011 toolkits out there on the Web sites of some of the big child/family organizations. So if you're like me and wondering how the federal parties stack up when it comes to social and community issues, check out these sites before you head to the polls May 2. National Alliance for Children and Youth UNICEF Canada First Call Canadian Association for Community Living Canadian Association of Social Workers