CLBC execs clean up as services dwindle

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Only dead sex workers get our support

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All that’s left to feel is shame.

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

Why waste time and money to say nothing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

B.C. criminal records now searchable on-line

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Insite can't be allowed to close

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The facility has passed every test. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tasering incident brings many more layers to light

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SERVICES FOR
DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED PERSONS

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1415]

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Minister.

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

HSE - 20110503 PM 010/dmm/1415

I'm sorry.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Minister.

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

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

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

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

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

[1420]

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

HSE - 20110503 PM 011/jag/1420

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

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

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

Why I'm not voting for Stephen Harper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    

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

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

Grab the chance to change B.C. politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grizzly-bear status under review


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slam-dunked by the anonymous posters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

Women still wearing the blame for rape

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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