Almost 600,000 reasons Harper’s pot policy doomed

VICTORIA - It wasn’t exactly a newsflash that British Columbians are fond of marijuana. All those jokes about BC Bud have to be based on something.
But last week’s report on marijuana use in B.C. from the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addiction Research should be a reminder of the need to overhaul our policies on pot.
And it should be a special warning to the Harper government that tougher enforcement, longer sentences and hardline rhetoric are doomed to be costly failures. In B.C. especially, an effort to wipe out marijuana use - and by extension production and sale - has about the same chance of success as banning alcohol.
Governments concerned about the negative effects of marijuana use need to come up with a smarter approach.
The problem for the get-tough crowd is that the B.C. public doesn’t buy the idea that marijuana use should be a crime.
A majority of British Columbia adults have used marijuana, the study found, about 1.8 million people.
More significantly, almost 600,000 used pot in the last 12 months. That’s more people than voted for either the NDP or the Liberals in B.C. in the last federal election and almost equal to the number who voted Conservative.
That reality has at least three significant public policy implications.
First, a get-tough approached based on the argument that marijuana is an imminent threat is doomed. Marijuana still trails far behind alcohol as a drug of choice - about 2.7 million of us reported drinking in the last year. But by the time almost 600,000 people are using marijuana occasionally the chances of winning public support for a big criminal crackdown have vanished.
It doesn’t matter if politicians think that’s good or bad. It’s reality. Arrests for cannabis-related offences have doubled in the last decade, with 75 per cent of them for possession. There’s been no effect on use.
Second, that traditional efforts to attack the supply side - more police, longer sentences and all the rest - won’t work. When demand for a product is strong and there’s widespread public acceptance of it, than the laws of the market take effect. Suppliers will emerge to meet the demand. Shut down one, and another will step forward. That’s the lesson of Prohibition in the U.S. and of virtually every drug strategy since.
And third, that the risks marijuana - and other drugs - pose in terms of public health and safety will not be addressed as long as governments pursue a doomed strategy.
And there are risks, contrary to the claims of some marijuana advocates. The centre’s study found that about 10 per cent of users were at moderate risk of problems related to their marijuana use. No one could imagine that daily marijuana use is a good thing for an already unmotivated 15-year-old. And production and sales are fattening the bank accounts of organized criminals.
But as long as the emphasis is on talking tough, then there’s little time or money left for education about risks, smart use or recognizing and dealing with problems.
There’s no targeted effort to restrict access to youth, as there is for alcohol and tobacco. (The report notes daily use of marijuana is now more common among young Canadians than tobacco.)
And criminals still profit from sales.
At the same time, the resources going toward marijuana enforcement could be better spent. About half of drug arrests in Canada in 2004 were for cannabis offences, the study notes. Most Canadians would likely welcome broader efforts to curb meth, heroin and cocaine use, the drugs driving crime in most cities.
The former Liberal government appeared to be heading toward decriminalization for possession of pot and up to three plants. (That alone would likely make a big dent in the profits of from criminal grow-ops)
But the Harper government has so far talked about enforcement and tougher penalties, the old language of prohibition.
It’s not going to work. The study makes that obvious.
Footnote: When a drug reaches a certain level of use, enforcement becomes impossible. A University of the Fraser Valley study on grow ops found that in 1997 police across B.C. investigated more than 90 per cent of grow-op reports within one month. By 2003, that had fallen to 50 per cent. Up to 25 per cent of reports were never followed up.

Health 'conversation' too good to miss

VICTORIA - You can come up with a long list of reasons to shun Premier Gordon Campbell’s “conversation” on health care.
Maybe you’re irked at a $5-million budget for lightweight ads, wishing that money had gone to fix your knee.
And maybe you’re put off by the premier’s bogus claim that they within the next 10 years health care costs will somehow suddenly become this all-consuming monster. The facts contradict the spin. Health care costs represented about one-third of government revenue in 1985, and 1995, and 2005. Cost pressures are a concern, but there’s no crisis.
But the wise move is to leap into the debate and sign up for the chance to be one of the 100 citizens chosen for each of 16 regional forums.
For starters, give Campbell credit. He handed the question of electoral reform over to a random assembly of citizens even though it was not in his political interests. When their STV proposal was narrowly defeated in a referendum, despite majority support, Campbell decided on a second vote.
No Canadian politician has ever showed so much confidence in the good judgment of average citizens.
The health-care conversation owes a lot to the citizens’ assembly on electoral reform. There are opportunities to participate through web forums but the main element, so far, looks to be the regional forums on care.
The expectation is that a lot of people will want to talk about the future of heath care, knowing their deliberations might matter. So if 2,000 people apply to take part in one of the forums, a random draw will be used to select the 100 participants.
You can have a lot of confidence in the wisdom of 100 citizens, if they are genuinely representative. The group would then include some hard-nosed numbers types, a doctor and nurse or two, patients and people on waiting lists, perhaps an engineer and a therapist, strident lefties and archconservatives. You would have a vast amount of life experience, a broad range of skills and perspectives, With time and competent facilitation you can expect some very useful ideas.
But it only works if everybody is represented at the table. If unions or politicos of whatever stripe or any other interest group dominates the process, the results will be inevitably be second-rate. Too much experience and wisdom will be missing.
You can fix that problem by going to bcconversationonhealth.ca and signing up.
In the meantime, there are a lot of issues to consider and research to be done to help make for an intelligent debate.
It’s disappointing that the government’s ads promoting the health-care conversation have so been short on useful content. The PR flyer mailed to every household could easily have included some useful background material on budgets and wait lists and an explanation of the Canada Health Act and a directory of web sites. Instead it was devoid of useful content.
But there’s time for a full debate and a lot of exchanges of facts and ideas before things really get going.
For instance, what do we mean when we talk about controlling health-care spending? Some people seem to think allowing patients to pay for private care reduces health-care costs, when in fact it drives up total health spending significantly. The way the bills are paid changes, shifting from taxes to direct payments. But the money going out the door for health increases.
And what sort of changes are we prepared to make? About 25 per cent of health spending goes towards people in the last 12 months of their lives. In B.C. about $2.8 billion will be spent on 28,000 people who will die within 12 months, or $100,000 each. The average expense for the rest of us will be $2,100. Is that money well-spent, or are we committing large amounts for little benefit. (And perhaps prolonged suffering.)
These are big questions. You should take the chance to help answer them.
Footnote: This is the first time patients or consumers get a real voice in the health-care debate. Doctors, unions, business groups, big pharmaceutical companies, they all have clout. And politicians don’t really speak for patients, because they’re worried about cutting taxes and other pressures as well as health care. Finally, we get a real voice. The first regional forums are planned for Burnaby, Campbell River, Castlegar, Chilliwack, Cranbrook, Fort St. John, Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo, North Vancouver, Prince George, Richmond, Smithers, Surrey, Vancouver and Victoria.

Not a housing strategy, but a small step

It's a fine idea to bring in a rent-subsidy program for about 15,000 poor families in B.C., but it doesn't qualify as the cornerstone of a housing policy.
Forest Minister Rich Coleman, who is also responsible for housing, unveiled what he called a housing strategy this week.
The general direction seemed fine, but there wasn't a lot of meat - or in this case money - on the bones of the plan, dubbed Housing Matters BC.
The most significant news was the $40-million available in rent subsidies for up to 15,000 of the province's poorest families.
People with children who are trying to live on less than $20,000 a year can apply for the subsidy. If they're successful, they will get a cheque every month to help them pay the rent.
That's obviously needed help. There is a 15,000-family waiting list for affordable housing in the province. In the meantime, families are struggling desperately to pay the rent and put food on the table, clothes on their kids and hope in their lives.
But the program is only a small start. The subsidy will be based mainly on the family's income and and number of children. Across most of the province, a family of four getting by on $18,000 a year would get a rent subsidy of $76.50 a month.
Coleman said the theory is that the program will help families keep their housing costs to 30 per cent of their income, a widely used benchmark for acceptable levels.
There's a catch. The government assumes that a family of four anywhere outside Greater Vancouver should be able to find housing for $705 a month. (Vancouver residents are allowed rents of up to $875 and a correspondingly higher subsidy.)
But in many communities acceptable rental accommodation for a family in that price range has become hard to find.
Coleman observed, rightly, that without the subsidies families are suffering and children's futures are at risk. Soaring rents have left families with so little money that children are malnourished and their education suffers, he said.
Which makes it both inexplicable and outrageous that the subsidy program is closed to people on welfare. The same family of four on welfare is allowed a maximum of $590 a month for housing. Anything more has to come from their already inadequate support. The notion that those children's suffering is less significant or that they are less worthy of help is appalling.
The subsidy program signalled a big shift from past policies. The government had focused on building - either directly or in partnership with non-profits - affordable housing units to increase the supply.
Coleman, a former developer, isn't keen on that approach. It takes too long to get affordable housing built, especially given NIMBYism and municipal zoning problems, and costs too much. More people can be helped more quickly with subsidies.
Which is partly true. The problems come when rental housing simply isn't available,a reality in many communities as developers choose condo projects over rental units.
The announcement included other measures - modest amounts of new money for shelters and seniors' housing and a small outreach program to support the homeless.
The theory behind all this makes sense. There is no one magic solution to homelessness and housing affordability. Subsidies will help some families. Government-supported housing is also needed to ensure there is an adequate supply of affordable rental units. Homeless people need shelters and places to live where they get the support needed to keep them from sliding back to the streets.
All the elements have to be in place. Outreach programs fail when there is no housing available for people ready to get off the streets.
The housing crisis in B.C., is real, and not just for the homeless or the extremely poor. More than 60,000 families are spending more than half their income on rent.
The government took a very small step toward dealing with a very large problem.
Footnote: There is more to come. Coleman wants tax breaks for developers willing to build rental units and municipal policies that don't slow development and push up costs. He's also keen on seeing existing affordable housing projects cash in on the value of their land holdings and use the proceeds to construct higher density projects.

Liberal MLAs stall search for child and youth representative

VICTORIA - I can't recall any MLAs behaving quite as irresponsibly or arrogantly as the three Liberals on the legislative committee charged with finding a new representative for children and youth.
The new office was a central recommendation in Ted Hughes' scathing report on the government's many failures in the children and families ministry.
Hughes said the representative should be appointed "as soon as possible" to restore effective, independent oversight. Among other things the new representative would advocate for children in care, investigate trends in child deaths and monitor and report on the effectiveness of the support and care government provides.
The overall report was sharply critical of the role budget cuts and mismanagement had played in hurting services for children and families.
Right, said Premier Gordon Campbell back in the spring. We're on it. The government would work "around the clock" to get the representative's office up and running, he vowed.
But now, in the most blatant way, the three Liberals on the selection committee are stalling the process. Their indifference to Hughes' report, their lack of urgency, are outrageous.
The three are John Rustad of Prince George-Omineca, the chair, and Ron Cantelon of Nanaimo-Parksville and Mary Polak of Langley.
The committee is already far behind schedule. Now the three Liberals say they can't find a single time to meet and work toward finding a representative in the entire month of October.
It's just impossible for the Liberal members to attend a meeting, says Rustad.
"We went through everybody's calendars and October is a zoo," he told Times Colonist reporter Lindsay Kines. "There are so many committees and so many issues that are out there that everyone is booked solid." (The more important meetings include the annual five-day convention for municipal politicians.)
What a pathetic excuse for inaction. This is supposed to be a government priority, according to the premier. It's a rare chance for backbench MLAs to take on a specific, important task.The two NDP committe members, Diane Thorne of Coquitlam and Maurine Karagianis of Esquimalt, say they are available any time for meetings.
But the Liberal MLAs are treating this responsibility like an unwanted intrusion on their time.
The application deadline for the representatives' position closed six weeks ago. The committee's original work schedule called for interviews to be completed in September and a candidate to be selected by now. The legislature would then quickly meet for a day or two to approve the committee's recommendation.
Then the new representative would get on with the important job and begin setting up the office.
Now Rustad and the Liberals propose to finish the interviews in November.
The new representative might not be in place until spring, almost a year after Hughes made his report.
It's hard to accept that the MLAs' behaviour is just a result of indifference. Rustad claims he understands the urgency of the work. "It's very important to have this position in place as soon as possible for the children of the province," he says. "The Ted Hughes report was very clear in terms of that."
Which leaves observers searching for some other explanation for the Liberals' failure.
Do they want to stall the return of an independent officer who would report publicly on the children and families ministry performance? Is the idea of the representative still something the Liberals don't really accept?
Or is the Campbell government worried about having the legislature sit this fall, even for the day or two required to approve the committee's choice for the representative's post? After all, the Liberals did cancel the fall session, eliminating the chance for MLAs to raise issues from health care problems to the softwood agreement to forest safety.
The reasons don't matter. The Liberal MLAs' negligence does. The Hughes' report indicated that the government really didn't care much about its responsibilities to children and families.
Rustad, Polak and Cantelon are showing that not much has changed.
Footnote: When asked about the delays, Rustad initially told Kines that the process was still on track and a representative would be named by mid-October. But 24 hours later he revealed the long delay in the search. It's alarming that the committee chair has such a poor sense of what's going on.

This time, maybe we will see treaties

VICTORIA - Treaty commissioners are optimists. It’s practically part of the job description to be able to look ahead - year after year - and predict that finally, the long, expensive process is going to produce an agreement.
Every fall, the commission holds a news conference in a hotel here to release its annual report and offer an update on treaty talks. There’s been a couple of gloomy ones. Back in 2002 - in the wake of Gordon Campbell’s destructive and now ignored treaty referendum - the commission warned that unless things changed there was little chance of reaching settlements.
But mostly the message is hopeful. Treaties are just around the corner, the commissioners have regularly said, even as the corner seemed to be moving farther away.
That was the message again this week. Two final agreements have been initialled. The commission expects another three by the end of the year.
This time, the commissioners may be right.
It’s been a long, expensive road to get this far. The treaty process started back in 1992. So far the commission has advanced First Nations $362 million to support negotiations, with $289 million of that loans that at least theoretically to be repaid. The federal and provincial government have spent something similar on their role in the talks, so figure about $600 million total.
It’s money well-spent, if we can reach treaties.
Chief commissioner Steven Point and commissioners Jack Weisgerber and Mike Harcourt made a pretty good case this week that agreements are near. (Even though they have been wrong before.)
All three attended the press conference. (Commissioners Jody Wilson and Wilf Adam, both elected as representatives by the First Nations Summit, didn’t attend. They were attending the First Nations Summit meeting in Kamloops, which was looking at ways to push the treaty process along.)
Weisgerber, the province’s appointment to the commission, is a former Socred MLA and the province’s first aboriginal affairs minister. He was a leader - maybe the leader - in arguing B.C. needed to negotiate treaties.. Harcourt is the former NDP premier who launched the commission and the current process. He’s the federal appointment. And Point, a provincial court judge and former chair of the Sto:lo Nation, was the joint selection of the First Nations Summit and provincial and federal governments. The commission has an impressive roster.
The most encouraging development is that the commission is now looking beyond the immediate challenge of negotiating treaties. It urged provincial and federal governments to be prepared to ratify any final treaties quickly, to build momentum.
That’s a reasonable request. Negotiators for the province and Ottawa have mandates from their masters. Unless they make some terrible blunder, political approval fort he deal they negotiate should be routine.
That wasn’t the case in 1998 when the NIsga’a agreement, reached outside the treaty process, was signed. The provincial Liberals, then in opposition, opposed the treaty. Ottawa delayed its ratification. The process took two years.
A lot of things have changed, starting with the political climate. Campbell was prepared to go to court to kill the Nisga’a deal; now he’s committed to a “New Relationship” that recognizes broad First Nations’ rights. The federal Conservative government may have killed the Kelowna Accord, but Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice says he wants treaties. First Nations, despite lots of frustrations, see a chance for a reasonable deal.
None of this means you should get wildly hopeful that you still won’t be reading columns like this in a decade. There are 57 First Nations involved in talks at 47 tables. Some are going nowhere, as governments focus on negotiations that might produce a quick deal. Some are going backwards.
But there is reason to be hopeful. If three or four treaties can be negotiated - and if they’re approved by the First Nations’ members, another big question mark - then an important pattern will be set.
Every First Nation will still want specific issues addressed. But a basic approach to compensation and rights and self-government will emerge. Things will get easier and progress will be faster.
If the commission is right.
Footnote: Why is this all so important? There’s a moral element. You can’t actually just take peoples’ land and not reach some agreement with them. That didn’t happen. And there’s a practical element. Harcourt noted that business and First Nations should be preparing for the opportunities that land-use certainty will bring once treaties are reached.

Health-care spending scare tactics unfair to public

VICTORIA - Carole Taylor created a pretty big splash with a single PowerPoint slide suggesting that within 11 years health and education could take every penny of government spending.
Too bad it was such a bogus claim. Worse that so many people bought it.
Taylor, the finance minister, tucked the slide into her first quarter financial update this month.
Do you realize, she asked as the slide popped up in the Press Theatre, that by 2017 health care could consume 71 per cent of all government spending? Education would take the rest and everything else would just vanish. It was a pretty dramatic scene setter for the "conversation" on health care that's to kick off this week.
Except it was a fraud. By 2017 my dog Jack could learn to talk. But it's not likely, based on everything I've seen from him so far.
And neither is the health crisis projected by Taylor.
Here's what the finance ministry assumed to reach her worrisome projection. Health ministry costs would increase by eight per cent year after year. Government revenues by three per cent. Education spending by three per cent.
Here's reality. From 1995 to 2005 health ministry spending increased an average 5.5 per cent, not eight per cent.
Education spending over the last five years has increased at 1.3 per cent a year, less than half the rate Taylor projects.
And between 1995 and 2005 government revenues increased by about six per cent a year, not the three per cent the finance minister assumes.
So. Taylor's forecast assumed a 50-per-cent reduction in the growth of government revenue. (That assumes big tax cuts, or a weakening economy.) Education funding would suddenly grow more than twice as fast it has in recent years. And health spending would reach new heights.
Plug in numbers based on reality - the real record from the last decade - and everything changes. The health ministry would then count for about 40 per cent of the total budget by 2017. Just as it does now. The slide looks dramatic; the reality not so much.
The finance ministry now says the graphs were just something worked up in 2004, interesting but not a real projection, they say.
But there were fewer than 20 slides in Taylor's presentation. If one of them shows a crisis barely a decade away, people will pay attention.
Especially as Premier Gordon Campbell kicks off his conversation on health care with British Columbians.
The conversation is a good idea, if done properly. Almost every interest in the health-care world has an advocate - unions, the BC Medical Association, the pharmaceutical companies, the government.
But not the patients or customers or whatever you want to call us.
Taylor's slide - if people took it seriously - would shut down any real conversation. Too many options are eliminated if you think disaster is looming.
It's not. Back in 1985, about one in every three dollars the government took in went to pay for health care. In 1995, the same. And this year, based on the latest financial reports, health will consume less than one-third of provincial revenues.
Look at it another way. In 1985, health spending was about five percent of GDP. By 1995, it was 6.6 per cent. This year it will be about 7.3 per cent. The increase is an issue, but the notion that we can't afford health care - that it's not sustainable - is simply not supported by the facts.
And while we fret about $12 billion in health care costs, we pump $7 billion into slot machines, lotteries and other legalized gambling without any significant public concern.
There are good reasons to manage health-care costs. It's government's biggest budget item and the cost pressures are significant. New technology and drugs are increasingly expensive and as out average age rises we place more demands on the system.
But there's no reason to panic. And a a real health conversation should start with facts, not phony fear-mongering.
Footnote: Taylor also cited warnings from the health authorities that the budget left them without enough money for the coming two years as a sign of pressures in the system In fact, it's a sign of unrealistic budgeting by the province. The current fiscal plan actually calls for a small cut in real per-capita health ministry spending in 2007/8.

A better way for klds in care

VICTORIA - Life is tough for children in the care of the government.
That’s not a slag on them, foster parents, social workers or the Liberals or New Democrats. It’s reality. Children in care have a tough time. Their lives - in care and after - are typically a struggle.
A new report from provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall and child youth officer Jane Morley confirms the problems and suggests useful areas for more research.
Most importantly, it suggests things that we can do now to start fixing the problems.
The report is groundbreaking, which should give you satisfaction that it was done and frustration that it’s taken so long. The study looked at the lives of more than 12,000 children in care between 1997 and 2005 and tracked their health-care records.
It was grim. Children in continuing care were five times as likely to commit suicide. They were 10 times as likely to end up in hospital as an assault victim. They were four times as likely to die.
Girls were four times as likely to become pregnant. Ten-year-old boys were 10 times as likely to be on Ritalin or other behaviour modification drugs.
Stop and reread those last two paragraphs and consider the odds for a little five-year-old boy starting his school years in the government’s care, toting his possessions in a cardboard bos as he starts his life with strangers.
This all shouldn’t be surprising. Children don’t just suddenly end up in the government’s care. They tend to come from troubled backgrounds. They suffer from malnutrition, fetal alcohol issues, neglect and all the illnesses and disadvantages that poverty brings. Messed-up parents have messed-up kids.
But so what?
If our own kids have problems, we don’t write them off. We work harder to do whatever it takes to give them the best chance.
These children and youths, whether we like it or not, are our responsibility too. They don’t have anyone else; that’s why they are in care. We, as a society, said we’d look after them.
And we do a bad job. We’re cheap, inattentive and callous. The Children’s Commission final annual report, in 2002, found that half the 9,700 children in the government’s care didn’t have the required care plans to provide direction and stability to their lives. At the same time, we watched as the government cut the ministry budget to save money. A tax increase worth 50 cents a week per British Columbian would change everything for these children, but the goverment has calculated that we don't think it's worth spending the money.
So what do we do? For starters, press the government to accept all 13 recommendations from the report. Children and Families Minister Tom Christensen seemed supportive, but ministers almost always do. Action does not necessarily follow.
For a specific test, watch to see what Christensen does about the report’s recommendation that the government come up with new funding for a cross-ministry plan for “post-majority supports for youth leaving care.”
Right now, children who have spent their lives in foster care and considered fully capable adults as soon as they turn 19. They get $700 and are sent out into the world to find a job and an apartment and make a life. "There's really no post-majority programs in place with the ministry of children and families," Morley said as she and KEndall released the report. Basic support, like counselling and help with budgeting or looking for work or considering school options doesn’t exist.
That’s cruel and stupid. The study followed who had been in care until they were 25. Unsurprisingly their problems continued and their risks of suicide, injury and mental health issues remained high. So did their pregancy rate. Young women barely able to care for themselves were much more likely to end up trying to care for bay.
Shamefully, the government is now appealing a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that it couldn’t arbitrarily cut needed support the day someone turns 19.
Christensen is new in the job. If, in the next 60 days, he can announce new funding to provide the needed support for children in care - as the report recommends - you can be optimistic that perhaps things will begin to get better for these children.
The first steps forward have been set out. Now we’ll see if the government is interested in improving the lives of these children and youth.
Footnote: There was good news in the report. While things may be bleak, in a number of areas - including mortality rates - there has been a steady improvement over the last two decades and a narrowing gap between the prospects for children in care and their peers in the rest of the population. It's important to celebrate successes.

NDP’s patronage charge falls short

VICTORIA - The agency that produced the Liberals' election campaign ads was pretty steamed when the government decided to hold an open competition for a $150,000 contract to prepare anti-smoking ads.
Wait a minute, the people at TBWA/Vancouver said. No fair. We won the right to be the health ministry's ad agency. That's supposed to be our work.
Managers in the health ministry and the government's purchasing branch disagreed, pointing to government policies that they said called for open competition for all contracts worth more than $100,000.
TBWA/Vancouver started complaining to the health ministry as soon as the call for proposals was listed on the BC Bid website in late August 2004.
And eventually, after much confusion, internal panic and considerable wasted time and money - on behalf of taxpayers and the companies competing in good faith for the work - the bid was pulled.
TBWA was awarded the contract, over the spirited objections of some of the people involved in directing the anti-smoking campaign.
The NDP, brandishing almost 300 pages of documents obtained through a freedom of information request, this week accused the Liberals of political favouritism in awarding the contract. TBWA hadn’t hadn't just prepared the Liberal ads in the last two elections, the NDP noted. President Andrea Southcott was part of a small group of senior campaign advisors. The company had also prepared the “Best Place” government campaigns run in the lead-up to the election that looked much like Liberal campaign ads.
The government broke its own purchasing rules and over-ruled staff to reward its favoured ad agency, charged NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston.
Nope, said Finance Minister Carole Taylor. It was a mistake to call for competing bids and the government fixed it. Case closed.
So who to believe?
It’s confusing. Government policy, driven in part by a Canada-wide agreement on trade, does call for competitions for all contracts worth more than $100,000.
But the policy also allows for exceptions when there is a “corporate supply agreement.” If a government has signed a multi-year agreement to buy all its vehicles from one supplier, it doesn’t have to seek bids when it’s time to buy a batch of new heavy duty trucks worth more than $100,000.
Or, as in this case, when it wants to spend more than $100,000 on an ad campaign.
The concept of an agency of record is fading, but still convenient and popular in government. The idea is that you hold one contest and pick an ad agency that will get the ministry’s work for the next two years. The theory is the agency develops some expertise and the ministry is saved the time and trouble of seeking bids every time it wants to run some ads.
And there’s no suggestion that the selection process for agencies of record was faulty; it was endorsed by an internal audit.
On balance, the government did a pretty good job of rebutting the NDP charges.
But it didn’t emerge unscathed. If the policy of not seeking bids was in place, a lot of fairly senior people in the health ministry and the government’s purchasing department didn’t know about it.
And if the case was so clearcut as Taylor maintains, the government’s response to TBWA’s complaint was baffling.
The call for bids wasn’t cancelled for six weeks, until until after it had closed. During that time staff were involved in answering questions from bidders and setting up the assessment process. (And in trying to get clear answers about the pressure to cancel the whole thing.) Two other ad agencies were shortlisted for the work. The process finally stopped the day before they were to be interviewed by the selection committee.
The confusion and disorganization wasted a lot of time. The government’s public affairs bureau said it would take responsibility for compensating the two agencies for their wasted efforts, though it’s unclear if they actually got money.
The favouritism charge wasn’t proved. A charge of bungling would have stuck.
Footnote: In a strange twist, the NDP revealed the freedom of information request was made by NOW Communications, which was snarled in its own scandal over its dealings with the Harcourt government.

Minister's MRI answers just create more questions

VICTORIA - It started to feel like a "Yes Minister" episode as Health Minister George Abbott attempted to explain just what he's doing - and not doing - about paid queue-jumping in B.C.
Reporters caught up with Abbott on his way into a Liberal caucus meeting Tuesday, looking for an update on the latest case of a public hospital selling special access for people who didn't want to wait in line.
The issue has kept Abbott off balance for almost two weeks, since NDP health critic Adrian Dix revealed that patients were paying to jump the waiting list for MRIs. A private company, Timely Medical Alternatives, cut a deal with St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver. Pay the company up to $1,400 and you could avoid the average four-month wait for a non-urgent MRI.
Abbott first doubted the reports. But once a patient came forward and described making the payment, he denounced the practice, which violates  the Canada Health Act, provincial law and government policy. He asked his deputy minister to investigate and then offered assurances that St. Paul's was alone in violating the policy.
Until this week, when news broke that Mount St. Joseph Hospital, also in the Lower Mainland, was cutting the same deal for CT scans and other diagnostic tests.
So how come, Abbott was asked, he didn't know about this second infraction? Did the hospital or health authority not know about the provincial policy, or were they concealing the information?
No, no, said Abbott, nothing like that. But the deputy minister likely just asked the health authorities if they were selling access to MRI machines - not CT scans or other equipment. And they didn't volunteer the information.
So the deputy minister wasn't asking the right questions then?
"I think that one always builds on one's understanding of these issues and one is able to ask more, further questions that further illuminate the situation," said Abbott.
Yes, minister.
One of the themes of the British political sitcom was the usefulness of keeping the minister out of the loop about unpleasant issues. That seems much like what has happened in this case.
And it sounded much like ministry officials and the health authorities have been playing some strange game, a combination of 20 Questions and Catch Me If You Can. The deputy ministry asked if patients were paying to jump the waiting lists for MRIs. The health authority said yes, or no, without feeling it necessary to add that they were paying for speedier access to CT scans or other tests.
Which led, naturally, to another question for Abbott. How do you know that health authorities aren't also cutting deals with private companies to let people jump the queue for surgery? Is the deputy asking the health authorities that question?
"I don't believe he is pursuing the issue of surgeries at this point in time," said Abbott.  "What we do is that where issues are raised or complaints are made then we pursue,  through either the ministry or through the Medical Services Commission or through the College of Physicians and Surgeons, whether in fact the complaint exposes something being done outside of policy."
"I don't believe that either I or my deputy or his team have unfilled days to go and look for issues that we don't know exist," Abbott added.
But how would the ministry know if the Canada Health Act or its own policies were being violated? The health authority making money by selling access wouldn't raise the issue. Neither would the private broker. And most patients who could afford the prompt treatment would likely pay and keep quiet.
"Are we sure that there are no surgeries that are going on," Abbot asked himself. "I don't believe that in as large a health-care system, as we have in British Columbia that we can be 100-per-cent certain of that."
Just don't expect much of an effort to find out if the practice is happening, or how widespread it has become. Footnote: Abbott also said the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority hasn't explained why it was violating the policy, which was set out in 2002. As well as barring two-tier care, the policy requires the health authorities to check with the health ministry if there's any doubt about a planned practice or charges. The authority won't say how much it charged the private company for the service.

Bigger surplus good news, but not for you

VICTORIA - It should be good news for British Columbians. The government looked at the books after the fiscal year’s first three months and found the surpluse will be $600 million more than expected.
That’s thanks to a good economy and you. Income taxes and sales taxes will bring in $542 million more than budgeted. BC Hydro’s rate increase will mean an extra $377 million in profits. The good news is more than enough to offset a $775-million shortfall because natural gas prices are lower than expected.
So instead of a $600-million surplus for this year, Finance Minister Carole Taylor says B.C. is on track to finish at least $1.2 billion in the black.
When most families get good news like that, they think about what to do with the extra money. They consider paying down debt. But they also look at what they need today. Maybe some money should pay for tutoring for a child having trouble in school, or extra help for an aged parent. It’s a question of smart choices.
But not for the government. I asked Taylor if this was a chance for ministries to make another pitch for programs that didn’t make the cut at budget time.
No, said Taylor. There’s a contingency fund for emergency expense requirements, but no plan to look at what could be done with the unexpected surplus.
That’s a shame. And it’s a position that ignores the advice British Columbians have offered the government in prebudget consultations.
You can’t be reckless with this kind of windfall. It would be irresponsible to start some multi-year program only to find there wasn’t enough money to keep it going.
But there are many opportunities for one-off improvements. Maybe health authorities could buy time in private MRI clinics and reduce the long wait for needed tests. Tourism BC could get extra money to launch a pre-Olympic ad marketing campaign. The government could offer tax cuts - perhaps an extra deduction for any company’s research spending that could lead to economic diversification in the province’s struggling northwest.
But those options aren’t on the table.
Paying down debt is important. But the province is already committed to devoting 100 per cent of its budgeted surplus to debt repayment. That, remember, is $600 million this year.
The other $600 million, which was not included in the budget, should be available to meet the public’s needs and expectations.
As Taylor was releasing the quarterly report, she also unveiled the budget consultation flyer that’s to be mailed to every home in the province. It’s a slight document - half the front and back pages are taken up with two big pictures. But it does seek input on budget priorities.
Based on Taylor’s comments on the use of this surplus, there’s not much point in filling it out.
After all, two years ago the budget consultation process produced clear results. British Columbians believed about 15 per cent of any surplus should go to debt repayment. The priority should be improving services, especially health and education.
Last year, the budget consultation committee report was muddled, but the results were much the same. The public wanted a balanced approach to using surpluses, with improved services a priority.
British Columbians recognize the cost of debt. But they also know from their own experience the importance of balance. The mortgage has to be paid down, but the family’s needs today have to be looked after too.
And they know that B.C. does not have a debt problem. The province has the second lowest debt burden in Canada, after Alberta, which no longer has any real debt to repay.
The public’s view so far hasn’t much mattered. The government’s choice is to use all of the surplus to pay down debt, no matter what British Columbians say.
Which leads to obvious questions about how seriously British Columbians should take the coming “conversations” on health care Premier Gordon Campbell has promised. A conversation requires people listening, as well as talking.
For now, British Columbians should be wondering about the point of a budget consultation, given the government’s demonstrated willingness to ignore their clearly expressed views.
Footnote: Fill out the budget consultation flyer, by all means, when it hits your mailbox. But be aware that two years ago - before the election - the government mailed a similar piece to every home. About 26,000 people filled it out. But 23,500 of those forms never really got looked at. Time was tight, so the finance ministry picked a regionally representative 2,550 and tallied the results. The rest were dumped, unread. It was an awfully expensive way to conduct a very rough opinion poll.

Auditor sounds alarm about Olympic costs, stumbles

VICTORIA - It's time to get worried about the 2010 Olympics.
Not just about what the Games are going to cost you, although that's a big concern in the light of three sharply critical reports released this week.
But also about whether the government is fumbling the chance to ensure that B.C. gets some lasting benefits from the two-week event.
Acting auditor general Arn van Iersel released the office's second review of the province's Olympic activities this week. It was alarming reading.
A lot of the talk was around what the Olympics are really costing British Columbians. Premier Gordon Campbell insists the tab is just $600 million - the direct cost of narrowly defined Games spending.
But the auditor general, like almost everyone else, has again dismissed that claim. he Sea-to-Sky Highway improvements were part of the bid and should be included, he found. And it's foolish to claim that the government's Olympic Secretariat isn't part of the Games cost.
All in, the auditor general says, and provincial taxpayers are on the hook for at least $1.5 billion.
Municipalities are putting up another $400 million and the federal government $607 million.
The total tab from taxpayers will be at least $2.5 billion.
The government can stick to its story; the public will decide whether they believe the politicians or the auditor general.
But by not including all the costs, van Iersel says, the government is making it difficult to properly manage the programs. The budget for the Olympic Secretariat, for example, has increased from $24 million to $41million.
"For the province to manage its costs for the Games, the costs must first be defined and measured," he says. "The province, however, has not yet developed a comprehensive definition of Olympic costs."
The report raises bigger questions about what lies ahead.
The province has only $76 million left in its contingency fund for Games overruns, having already handed the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee $55 million to cover rising venue costs.
That's not likely going to be enough, says van Iersel.
For starters, there could be more cost overruns on Games construction. (A federal report released at the same time offers the same warning.)
And three years after B.C. was awarded the Games, organizers still don't have a handle on the costs of security or medical care. Ottawa and the province have agreed to split security costs, but they are still using the bid book estimate of $175 million in 2002 dollars. Inflation, increased security threats and other issues could easily double or triple that cost.
The problems aren't just on the cost side. If the Games are going to be more than an expensive party, the auditor general warned in 2003, the province needed a well-funded, well-planned marketing plan to seize the benefits. A government report in 2002 urged an immediate start on marketing efforts to ensure potential indirect economic benefits of $4 billion.
It hasn't happened. "The marketing effort to date has been delayed and unco-ordinated, with no central agency taking the lead," the new report found.
And the province apparently didn't realize that the International Olympic Committee restricts international marketing until the previous Games have concluded. B.C.'s hands are largely tied until after the Beijing Games, leaving just 18 months to woo the world.
That should be a special concern for communities outside the Vancouver-Whistler corridor. People who live in the rest of the B.C. are paying for the Games, but are at risk of seeing few benefits.
Finally, the report raises concerns about the secrecy around Games spending and plans.
"We are also concerned that the province has not done more to make the Games budget a public document," the auditor general's office says. The province has agreed to cover all cost overruns, he report notes, and the public is entitled to better information.
The alarm bells are sounding. It's far from clear that Campbell and company are listening.
Footnote: The province's marketing plan is also being hobbled by VANOC, the auditor general reports. Even though the province is by far the largest contributor, the Games organizers want to keep the best marketing tools for corporate donors. It won't even let the government use the Olympic rings or the word Olympic in ads.

MRI queue-jumping symptom of sick health care

VICTORIA - The controversy about patients paying $1,400 to jump the waiting lists for MRIs - and having the tests done in a public hospital - shows how far B.C. has allowed the basic principle of public health care to be eroded.
At the heart of our system is a commitment that health care will be provided based on need. That’s why the Canada Health Act bars extra billing for any medically necessary treatment covered under the public plan.
The MRI scandal shows that principle was abandoned.
St. Paul’s Hospital allowed a private broker, Timely Medical Alternatives, to buy time on its machine and use its technicians to help people jump the waiting list. For $1,400 you could buy your way to speedier, better treatment than your neighbour. Two children might be diagnosed with an illness that required an MRI and placed on a waiting list together. A family with money could buy an immediate MRI scan, while the other child waited and perhaps suffered.
Canadians have so far decided that’s wrong. It is, in fact, illegal.
But B.C. governments, NDP and Liberal, have allowed the expansion of private clinics and companies that facilitate queue-jumping for people who can pay. There are about two dozen clinics in the province that offer faster treatment for people with money. They can operate mainly because the government chooses to turn a blind eye to the Canada Health Act violations.
The Liberal government can’t claim ignorance. Less than three years ago former health minister Colin Hansen introduced a bill aimed at upholding the Canada Health Act and ending two-tier care in the province. It was important to plug the loopholes and make it clear that B.C. wouldn’t tolerate extra-billing, Hansen said.
The bill was debated and passed by the legislature. MLAs decided it was necessary to protect medicare.
But then Premier Gordon Campbell said the government wouldn’t put the law into effect. It remains in limbo; Campbell has never explained why the government passed a bill to protect medicare one month and abandoned the next.
The government has known two-tier health care was increasing, but chose not to act.
That’s allowed companies like Timely Medical Alternatives to expand. The business started in 2003 to sell better health care to people who could pay for it. Some activities are clearly within the Canada Health Act. The company arranges surgery in Washington State, for example, for people who don’t want to wait for a knee replacement.
Others, like the MRI deal with St. Paul’s Hospital, aren’t.
Timely Medical Alternatives gives the B.C. government great marks for its “acceptance of private alternatives.” The business rates provinces based on their willingness to tolerate deals like the MRI arrangement. B.C. gets a six out of 10; Alberta gets three. The rest of the provinces get a one rating.
And the company is unabashed in crediting government for its success.
People are driven outside the public health-care system because it is performing poorly, the company says. ”Many Canadians wait unreasonably long for treatment of life-threatening conditions,” the company says. “Every year, scores of Canadians die while on long waiting lists for needed surgery.”
Timely Medical Alternatives is brutal in assessing government’s failure to pay for needed MRI scans. The real purpose is to make surgical wait times appear shorter than they are, the company says on its website. Patients aren’t added to surgical waiting lists until after they have the necessary MRI scans. If government provided the test promptly, then there would be more people “officially” waiting and wait lists would look worse.
Patient care is sacrificed so the truth about wait times can be concealed, the company explains.
Health Minister George Abbott says he’s investigating the queue-jumping at St. Paul’s.
But based on past practice, don’t hold you breath waiting for any real action. If the Campbell government was concerned about two-tier care, it would have acted long ago.
Footnote: NDP health critic Adrian Dix effectively raised the issue, producing a patient who has paid $1,400 and walked into St. Paul’s for an almost immediate MRI, while people in the public system were waiting for months for access to the same machine.

'Rest of B.C.' faces electoral squeeze play

VICTORIA - Get ready for some anguished howls from rural B.C. as the Electoral Boundaries Commission starts overhauling the province's ridings.
The commission is heading out on the road this month, the first steps towards an overhaul of riding boundaries for the 2009 election. It's going to be a painful process for people in much of the province.
We're supposed to have a fair system of electing MLAs, with all voters having roughly equal influence and representation.
But we don't. The three ridings in the northwest - North Coast, Skeena, Bulkley Valley-Stikine - have 92,000 people and send three MLAs to Victoria.
In Vancouver, three ridings - Burrard, Hastings and Point Grey - have twice as many people, but also send three MLAs to Victoria. The votes of people in those ridings are worth half as much - at least in terms of electing a government - as people in the northwest.
There are reasons for the inequity. Liberal Lorne Mayencourt represents some 75,000 people in his Vancouver-Burrard riding; New Democrat Gary Coons about 28,000 in the North Coast riding.
But Mayencourt's riding is nine square kilometres; he can cover it with a $7 cab ride. North Coast is 66,000 square kilometres. It's hard to represent people spread out over such an area.
There's an argument for slacking off on the principle of rep by pop. The question is how far do you go? In a close election, should voters in the north have twice as much weight in deciding which party forms government?
Those are the questions the boundaries commission will struggle with over the next 18 months. The commission - Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen, chief electoral officer Harry Neufeld and retired school administrator Stewart Ladyman of Penticton - has to come up with recommended changes to the current electoral boundaries.
They have a big task. In an attempt to head off legal challenges, the province has established principles. True representation by population would mean all ridings would have the same population. The legislature has decided that it will allow riding size to vary by plus or minus 25 per cent. The commission can recommend ridings larger or smaller than those guidelines "In very special circumstances."
The last commission, which reported in 1999, recommended six ridings be granted special consideration. That was mostly based on the vast geographic distances in remote ridings, but also on the effect of stripping representation away from northern voters.
Since then the population shift has continued. My count indicates three Lower Mainland ridings are too large, given the 25-per--cent rule. Ten ridings have too few people.
Fortunately, the commission isn't forced to cut the number of ridings in the North and Interior to add MLAs in the Lower Mainland. It's mandate includes the right to propose adding up to six seats, taking the legislature from 79 to 85 MLAs. That provides the opportunity to reduce the size of some of the Lower Mainland ridings without cutting back on representation from the rest of the province.
There will still be power shift. The regions' influence will be reduced by the new urban seats. (What ever happened to all that Heartland talk, anyway?)
But the principle of representation by population will be preserved.
This particular commission has another huge challenge. It has been asked to come up with proposed electoral boundaries that could be used if British Columbians decide they would prefer proportional representation to the current system. Another referendum on the single-transferable-vote system will be held along with the provincial election in 2009.
It's a wise move by Premier Gordon Campbell. The change was approved by 58 per cent of voters in 2005, just short of the required 60-per-cent. Campbell decided to put the question to the people again, this time with more information.
But it means much more work for the commission.
The commission is on its way to communities around the province over the next two months. It's well worth paying attention to its work.
Footnote: Questions around representation quickly become complex. A political party in B.C., once this redistribution is complete, may be able to form government without a single seat outside the Lower Mainland and Victoria. But party which has its support concentrated in the rest of the province will be doomed to outsider status. That's a profound change in the political landscape over the course of a few decades.

Five years of errors since 9/11

VICTORIA - Five years on from the World Trade Centre, and it looks we have got it mostly wrong since then, starting with the fiction that as a result of the 9/11 terror attacks "everything had changed."
That just wasn't true. Terror had taken a shocking new form, deadly on a mass scale and symbolically powerful.
But the world hadn't changed. People still worried about their jobs and their children. Countries still struggled with a host of problems. Bad states still oppressed their people and threatened their neighbours. None of that was different.
That was the terrorists' big victory. A relatively small gang of them staged one spectacular attack and convinced us that we had to change everything. We let them decide our future.
We could have said no. That would not have meant ignoring the attacks. We could have gone after the terrorists who were responsible and looked at what we needed to do improve basic security. Modest, pragmatic responses.
Instead, we accepted the fiction that everything had changed.
In the last five years, that belief has been expensive. Thousands of people have died as a result, and hundreds of thousands have suffered terribly. Canadians have accepted the loss of some basic civil liberties through anti-terror legislation. America has sacrificed its position as champion of democracy and the rule of law, joining those states which sanction kidnapping and secret prisons.
We've spent billions on security and made travelling and trade much more difficult.
We - that is Canada and the rest of the West - have spent something like $1 trillion in total in responding to the 9/11 attacks. That's an astonishing amount of money that could have done quite a lot of good.
And we've gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You could make an argument that those things were all necessary for our safety.
Except for a large problem. They haven't worked. The aim of all these efforts - the laws that eroded our rights, the airport security, the wars - was to make us safer by punishing the bad guys, deterring other terrorists and reducing the risk of attack.
At best, they have been unsuccessful. They may have made things worse.
The U.S. State Department reports there were 11,111 terror attacks in 2005, up from 3,192 the year before. The increase may be misleading, it warns, because it's tough to count accurately. But the trend since 2001 and has been steadily upward. The greater our efforts to increase safety, the more terror attacks.
New terrorists have emerged, organized in autonomous cells, like the people who blew up bombs in London's subway. Perhaps that would have happened anyway. But perhaps the response has fuelled the fire.
Everyone in the world must have expected the West to hunt attack Osama bin Laden and the people responsible for the attacks. The 2001 Afghanistan campaign, which saw the Taliban removed and some 3,000 Al Qaeda operatives killed or captured, was even quietly welcomed by some in the Muslim world.
But the war in Iraq, the confrontation with Iran and the rest have left too many people convinced this a war with Islam.
It's time to rethink our assumptions, in light of the failure so far. You can speculate that things might be worse if we had not responded as we did, but the evidence indicates our efforts have been ineffective.
We can't turn back the clock. We can take a different approach going forward. Canada's commitment to fighting in Afghanistan, for example, rests on the belief that the war reduces the risk of a terror attack in our country. (Humanitarian work and regime stabilization are part of the mission, but no one could seriously argue that Canadians would be fighting based on those issues alone.)
If that belief is wrong and if we are not reducing the terror threat, then we need to rethink the mission.
We've given up a lot in the last five years, for too little.
Footnote: Canadians have given up more than the right to take toothpaste on airplanes. Anti-terror laws passed after 9/11 allow people to be held indefinitely without a charges, a trial or appeal if they are deemed a threat. Police can arrest people who have broken no laws on the suspicion that they are involved in terrorist activities. The prime minister can outlaw groups based on secret evidence. You can be jailed for refusing to answer police questions.

Cancelled fall legislature a disservice to public

VICTORIA - You’re getting short-changed by the Liberals’ decision to cancel the fall session of the legislature.
House leader Mike de Jong confirmed the government is pulling the plug on the session, which was to start Oct. 2 and run until the end of November.
The government has no legislation to pass, he said, so there’s no need. "We're not sitting just for the sake of sitting or passing laws just for the sake of passing laws," he said. "That's not how I measure a successful government."
Fair enough. More laws does not equal better government. In fact, sometimes the public would be well-served by fewer big new ideas from government.
But a successful government can be measured by its willingness to account for its actions and policies. And any government can be improved when MLAs - from all parties - have a chance to raise questions and concerns on behalf of their communities.
The Liberals are shutting down an opportunity for those kind of useful debates.
Gordon Campbell introduced fixed fall and spring legislative sessions in 2001. That was a useful improvement. In the past sessions had been called and ended at the whim of the party in power. When the heat got too much - either  summer heat or political heat - the government could shut the legislature down. The legislature only sat for 40 days in 1996, when the newly elected NDP government was taking a kicking over its false campaign claim of a balanced budget.
The Liberals hinted this might happen in last year’s Throne Speech, which said fall sessions were intended to deal with unfinished business from the spring.
Politically, the move probably makes sense. There’s a sharper focus on the government when the legislature is in session. The opposition uses Question Period each day to grill ministers about policies and problems, and reporters and columnists are watching closely. The government faces a daily risk of bad-news stories. (The Liberals deserve full credit for doubling the length of Question Period to 30 minutes, a major improvement.)
But cancelling the session brings another set of political problems. NDP leader Carole James was quick to accuse the Liberals of “running away from the public" and trying to avoid accountability. Anytime an issue emerges over the next few months James will be reminding people that the legislature could have worked at finding solutions if the sitting hadn’t been cancelled.
Leaving politics aside, the cancellation is a loss for the public. The accountability that the legislature provides is important. Without it, issues can be ignored and problems can fester.
Until last fall’s legislative session, for example, the government had insisted that everything was fine in the ministry of children and families, despite evidence of mounting problems that were leaving children at risk.
It took daily hammering by the NDP to force the government to admit that the system, battered by budget cuts and mismanagement, was in fact failing. Without the session, and the forum it provided, the Hughes inquiry and badly needed improvements might have been stalled. Children and families would have suffered as a result.
And while the focus is on Question Period, the legislature provides a forum for all MLAs - Liberals and New Democrats - to raise issues important to their communities.
There’s no shortage of issues. Communities across B.C. are struggling with homelessness, addictions and mental illness. Health care remains an issue. Forest-dependent communities are waiting for information on how the softwood lumber agreement will affect them. De Jong said that even with the cancelled session, the legislature will sit for a fairly typical number of days this year.
That’s not true. The legislature sat for 42 days in the spring. That will be the third fewest days sine 1991. The average for the last decade is about 63 days.
A much shortened session might have made sense. But the public, and MLAs, are poorly served by the decision to cancel the entire sitting.
Footnote: The legislature may be recalled for one day in the fall. A special committee is seeking a candidate to become the child and youth officer, a new advocacy and oversight position recommended by Ted Hughes in his report on child protection problems. If the committee comes up with a recommendation, the legislature would have to approve the choice.

Clement’s non-decision on safe-injection ignores the facts

VICTORIA - It’s frustrating to watch the Harper government fumble and stumble over the future of Vancouver’s safe-injection site.
After months of waffling - and with less than two weeks before the site’s licence expired - Health Minister Tony Clement said he still couldn’t make up his mind. Instead of granting the three-year licence extension sought for the Insite centre, Clement stalled. The centre can keep going until he makes a decision by end of next year, he said.
It was a blatantly political move. Clement’s non-decision was announced on the Friday before the long weekend, at 7 p.m. Ottawa time. He refused to answer any questions. His handling of the issue suggests the Conservatives want to kill the site, but are afraid it would hurt them politically. By stalling they can keep their intentions secret until after the next election.
Every shred of evidence suggests the safe-injection site has achieved its relatively modest goals without any documented negative effects. The Insite project offers a clean, safe place for people to inject their drugs.  
A nurse is there to deal with problems, help people avoid infection or other medical complications and refer addicts to treatment or services.  Clean needles are available.
The alternative is to have addicts injecting in a flophouse or alley.
The site, the first in North America, has been intensively studied by health researchers. Last month, in Harm Reduction Journal, a report found that it saves taxpayers up to $8 million a year.
Without Insite, there would have been 2,000 additional emergency room visits for abscesses, infections and overdoses, the study found. About 100 of those visits would have resulted in hospitalization, using a desperately needed acute-care bed for an average two weeks.
There were 453 overdoses at Insite. None resulted in death and few required hospital care. Without the centre, 18 to 20 people would have died and and about 100 would have required hospital care.
About 100 people were referred to methadone programs, for many a first step toward dealing with their addiction. At the least, those people will not be scrambling, panhandling and stealing to get money for drugs.
The centre, by cutting down on shared needles and other unsafe practices, also reduced the spread of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C,  serious public health problems.
Other reviews done for the RCMP found there was no increase in crime in the area. The centre did not create new drug users.
Health care costs reduced. Lives saved. People leaving illegal drug use behind. No increase in crime or drug use. Support from the B.C. government, he City of Vancouver and public health officials.
Surely continuing the program - and extending it to other centres across B.C. and Canada where there is support - is a no-brainer.
Clement doesn’t think so. He wants more studies. In the news release announcing the decision, he offered these crafted quotes.
“We believe the best form of harm reduction is to help addicts to break the cycle of dependency,” Clements is quoted. “We also need better education and prevention to ensure Canadians don’t get addicted to drugs in the first place.” Of course. There is likely not a sane person in Canada - including the operators of the safe-injection site - who would not agree with those words. (And wonder why Clement wasn’t doing more in those areas.)
Safe-injection sites aren’t some miracle solution that makes the problem go away. People using the site are still struggling with their addictions and the pain or emptiness or genetic bad luck that brought them there. Their lives are still terrible, dangerous messes. But the site works, by the most pragmatic measures. It saves lives, prevents the spread of deadly diseases, frees up millions in health care costs for other uses and helps some people get clean. All without one real, demonstrated negative effect.
It’s shameful that a government would, apparently, place politics ahead of both sound health policy and peoples’ lives.
Footnote: Clement  has never visited the Vancouver safe-injection site to see how it works. He did travel to Sweden and Denmark this summer to look at drug policies in those two countries,  including a meeting with a Swedish lobby group promoting tougher drug policies. Vancouver’s experiment has attracted world attention; Clement should have visited before making his decision.

On Tofino's water crisis and the opportunity for Elizabeth May

VICTORIA - Newly Green party leader Elizabeth May is already ahead of the game.
May captured the leadership this week in Ottawa, sweeping aside two other candidates.
People - or at least the media - actually paid attention. That’s a big change for the federal Greens.
May looks a smart choice on the basis of her skills and experience. She’s 52, with a law degree and a long history in the environmental movement. As executive director of the Sierra Club, she’s shown the ability to come up with ways of pitching an environmental message that win media attention and resonate with voters. She’s had some experience inside the world of government, working as an advisor to then environment minister Tom McMilan during the Mulroney years.
The Greens are still a desperate long shot to have any electoral success under Canada’s current winner-take-all system.
But that doesn’t mean the party can’t be influential, if it focuses on the right issues in a compelling way. The Harper Conservatives are weak on the environment, especially on the major problem of global warming. They’ve effectively pulled Canada out of the Kyoto accord, with no indication yet what alternate plan they have.
Stephen Harper doesn’t have much to fear from the Liberals on the issue. All he has to do is point to their record in power, which featured much talk and no action.
May is a more serious threat. It doesn’t matter if see convinces voters to back her party. Effective attacks on the Conservatives’ position will still undermine Harper’s chances.
It’s a good issue. Poll show Canadians are convinced global warming is a threat and that it’s important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Leaving aside the warming issue, spiking oil and gas prices have convinced many Canadians it’s wreckless to be so dependent on fossil fuels.
If May needs a talking point for speeches in B.C., she needs to look no farther than the water crisis in Tofino that’s shut down tourist businesses on one of the busiest weekends of the year.
The story has it all for the Greens. The threat of climate change, shown by the virtually non-existent rainfall this summer. The importance of conservation. The consequences of poor planning and lack of concern for environmental issues.
And on top of that, an good case study in the economic costs of neglect. The community will lose something like $350,000 a day in economic activity when the indefinite ban starts. That would have paid for a lot of conservation programs or an improved water supply system.
Instead of focusing on that kind of issue, May’s first public comments after winning the leadership were about the need to repeal NAFTA, pointing to the softwood lumber dispute and perceived threats to Canada’s right to have independent environmental policies.
It was an odd choice. NAFTA really isn’t on most Canadians’ list of pressing issues, in part because the agreement has mostly been beneficial in ensuring access to U.S. markets. Thirteen years after the deal was signed, the dire warnings about the Americans taking our water or gutting environmental regulations just haven’t happened. The sky has not fallen.
May has a good opportunity. The party has more than $1 million a year in public funding, based on its showing in the last election. May has good skills and wisely plans to watch the Commons from the visitors’ gallery and offer her critiques daily to the media. It’s tactic that worked reasonably well for NDP leader Jack Layton until he won a seat.
Most importantly, May takes the helm at a time when there’s a political vacuum. The Liberals are discredited; the Conservatives make many voters nervous; and the NDP is seen as irrelevant.
Even if the Greens are unlikely to win any seats, all the other parties will be edgy about losing critical votes in close ridings and shifting their policies accordingly.
It’s a fine time for a new leader and new party to make a mark.
Footnote: Despite their traditional decent showing in B.C., the Greens’ best chance for a breakthrough may be Quebec. Polls show Quebecers are the strongest on environmental issues, especially in support for Kyoto. And they have no trouble with the idea of casting a protest vote; after all, they sent 51 Bloc Quebecois MPs to Ottawa out of 75 seats. Unfortunately, May’s French is poor to mediocre.

Alcan's sweet power deal still a mystery

VICTORIA - The people in Kitimat complaining that the province is handing a giant gift to Alcan have been taking some hits lately.
Since the corporation announced plans to modernize its smelter, the critics have been painted as a bunch of out-of-touch, whiny ingrates.
Alcan’s announcement is great news, says Premier Gordon Campbell. It shows that B.C. is a good place to invest.
The smelter in Kitimat employs about 1,550 people and is the heart of the company town. Alcan has announced plans to spend about $2 billion to modernize the smelter. Production capacity will increase by more than 40 per cent, but new technology means the smelter will employ about 550 fewer people. There will be several hundred construction jobs as the work is done. And the investment likely guarantees that the smelter will be around for a few decades.
A lot of that is good news, especially the certainty. Alcan has operations around the world and there’s always the risk some other government will offer dirt-cheap power and the company will move on.
The job losses aren’t good news. Kitimat has seen a steady reduction in jobs at the smelter, with a damaging effect on residential property values and small businesses. The announcement that more than one-third of the jobs at the smelter will vanish is a major blow.
Usually you would still say tough luck. Technology has meant job losses in other industries. Companies adapt to global competitors or vanish. It’s painful, and sometimes government help is needed during the transition, but change is inevitable.
But there’s a difference here.
Kitimat exists because of a deal between Alcan and the provincial government reached in the later 1940s. The government wanted economic activity in the northwest. Alcan wanted cheap power and ocean access for an aluminum smelter. (Making aluminum requires lots of electric power to generate heat.)
B.C. had an extraordinary resource to offer. Back in 1928 a provincial bureaucrat named Frederick Knewstubb had looked up from a pile of maps in Victoria and announced that he had discovered one of the world's great hydroelectric sites.
He proposed damming the Nechako River, reversing its flow and sending the water rocketing down to the coast, driving turbines at the bottom. But the power wasn’t needed in the northwest and there was no way to get it out to other markets. Nothing happened.
Until 1949, when the province handed over the water rights and Alcan agreed to build the power project, smelter and planned community. It was a trade - cheap electricity for jobs.
But the government was prudent. Even though there was no transmission grid for Alcan to tap into then, then the agreement anticipated the risk that Alcan would just sell the cheap electricity at a profit instead of creating jobs. The act and agreements handing over the water rights said the power was to be used to make aluminum or for other industrial projects "in the vicinity of the works."
The people in Kitimat - including Mayor Richard Wozney, a former Liberal candidate - want the agreement enforced. If it was, they say, Alcan would have expanded the smelter to make use of the electricity at the same time as it modernized, preserving jobs.
Or the province could reclaim the power and make it available to other industries willing to develop in the area.
Instead, Alcan will keep on selling electricity from Kemano that was supposed to be used to generate economic activity in the region, first to BCHydro, then direct to the U.S. Profits are huge, because the energy is so cheap to produce. Conservatively, figure about $1 billion over the next 20 years - half the smelter project costs.
It’s been a long a battle for Kitimat, with few successes. The provincial government hasn’t given any real answers about why the original agreement is no longer valid, or when the public resource became Alcan’s property. Some straight answers would go a long way.
Footnote: Kitimat is continuing legal efforts to enforce the original agreement, but the chances of winning any real change look slim. Politically, the issue is costly for the Liberals. Former MLA Roger Harris, widely respected, lost to New Democrat Robin Austin by 440 votes in 2005. The government’s stonewalling on Alcan power sales was a big factor.

Heritage fund makes for better energy decisions

VICTORIA - The NDP and the Liberals have been slagging each other over whether the government is selling off B.C. natural gas reserves too cheaply.
The NDP says royalty rate cuts worth about $240 million to oil companies since 2003 have been too generous. The Liberals say the New Democrats are “clueless” and the industry wouldn’t be as active without the special deals.
The whole affair is a reminder of why B.C. needs a heritage fund for a chunk of B.C.’s energy revenues.
The B.C. government cut the price of some of our natural gas reserves in 2003 to encourage companies to get the resources out of the ground quickly.
Across the country, Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams is raising prices on his province’s offshore oil reserves. If the energy companies don’t want to pay, that’s fine, he says. The oil will be worth more in the future anyway.
It’s a dilemma faced by anyone setting prices, even if you’re just trying to sell an old car. Too high and buyers may go elsewhere. Too low, and you give away money that you could have had. There's no easy formula.
The government put some of B.C.’s gas reserves on sale in mid-2003, cutting prices to encourage companies to step up their operations. The deals have cost taxpayers about $240 million. But the ministry figures that the activity they sparked was worth $900 million in additional revenue to the province — plus a lot of jobs in the northeast.
The discounts seem sensible. Companies got a lower rate for drilling deeper wells to get gas, for example, as an incentive to take on the challenge.
Another program cut royalty rates once the amount of gas coming from a well fell below a threshold. The idea was that companies would be encouraged to keep on pumping gas, instead of capping wells. Even at a lower rate, the province would get more money.
Based on the ministry’s analysis, the discounts worked.
But the Liberals’ claim the NDP was “clueless” for questioning the cuts looks shaky. This week the Alberta government announced it’s changing four royalty programs because oil and gas companies aren’t paying enough. The changes will bring in an extra $186 million a year.
Alberta’s equivalent of the deep-well and low-volume well discounts that I just described are getting an overhaul to increase the amount the oil companies pay. Alberta’s Conservative government and the NDP are on the same page.
Ultimately government has to makes the pricing decisions based on the best advice of professional staff.
But there is a built-in conflict of interest.
These are non-renewable resources that will appreciate in value. It may be in the overall public interest to hold out for the best price, even if that means waiting.
But governments face short-term pressures. They may be tempted to cut royalties to get cash quickly to pay tor today’s problems - even if it’s not in the province’s long-term interest.
A heritage fund reduces that pressure. If a chunk of oil and gas revenues are going into a fund to cushion future economic bumps, then governments face less temptation to cut royalties in a bid for quick cash.
A heritage fund also helps prepare for the day the oil and gas run out. There’s been a steady growth in identified gas reserves, but B.C’s. known reserves only support 16 more years of production at current rates. The government’s natural gas revenues were $100 million a decade ago. This year they will be $2.3 billion. In 20 years, no one knows.
And a fund would acknowledge that these resources should be creating benefits for future generations, not just for the people who happened to around while they lasted. It’s not a wacky idea. The BC Progress Board said last year the government should be looking at a heritage fund.
Now is the time to start.
Footnote: Neufeld says the measures have worked. More than 1,400 oil and gas wells were drilled in B.C. last year, more than double the 2002 total, the last full year before the royalty cuts. But it’s difficult to isolate the effect of the discounts. Natural gas prices were almost four times higher in 2005 than they were in 2002, a large factor in companies’ eagerness to develop the resource.

Battling researcher proves a sea-lice point

VICTORIA - Alexandra Morton has taken some serious abuse for her research showing that sea lice from fish farms were killing wild salmon.
“Questionable research methods,” critics said. “Blatant misrepresentations.” Unqualified and biased.
Turns out she was right. The question now is what are the federal and provincial governments are going to do about it?
Morton lives in the Broughton Archipelago, the dense scattering of islands off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. She moved there to study whales 27 years ago and has been doing research ever since.
In the last few years she has been alarmed at the spread of sea lice from salmon farms on to migrating wild salmon. The sea lice are like blood-sucking tiny tadpoles. On a five-kilogram Atlantic salmon in a net cage, they’re a nuisance. On a wild salmon as long as your little finger, they’re life-threatening.
Morton didn’t just work up a theory. She did the research, spent the days and weeks on the ocean. Her work has been peer-reviewed and published.
But the critics kept sniping. The provincial government ordered some fish farms along the migration emptied for a few months as a precautionary measure. The industry continued to say Morton was wrong. Governments said nothing was proven.
So Morton launched a private prosecution under the Fisheries Act, charging a company and federal and provincial governments with releasing sea lice into the salmon habitat, harming the wild fish.
Private prosecutions rarely go ahead. Generally, the Crown takes over the case and stays the charges.
This time, because the province was charged, an outside lawyer, Bill Smart, was named special prosecutor. He decided to hire an independent science expert to review Morton’s research and look at the allegations.
And the expert, Dr. Frederick Whoriskey of the Atlantic Salmon Federation in New Brunswick, found she was right.
Morton alleged the salmon farm was releasing millions of sea lice a month. Whoriskey calculated the farm would produce 55 million sea lice eggs per year. Studies had found 95 per cent of sea lice off a section of Ireland’s coast came from salmon farms.
Morton charged that sea lice from the farm infected passing young salmon. Whoriskey, after reviewing her research and studies from around the world, concluded that is also true.
And Morton alleged that the pink salmon smolts were vulnerable to sea lice and many were killed. There hasn’t been a definitive study, Whoriskey reported, but sea lice infestations have found to weaken and kill young salmon.
Whoriskey summed up. “The evidence shows that sea lice in the Broughton Archipelago are infecting and killing pink salmon,” he found.
And the independent expert also commented on her research. “Ms. Morton and her colleagues have carefully and diligently executed their scientific work,” he wrote. It meets “the globally accepted procedure for good science.”
Smart, the special prosecutor, said Morton’s charges were sound and raised an important public issue. “It appears to us that there is validity to Ms. Morton’s assertions that sea lice from fish farms are having a deleterious effect on the pink salmon population in the Broughton Archipelago”, he reported. “There may be debates about the extent of the problem or risk, those debates cannot obscure the existence of the problem itself.“
Smart still decided the prosecution shouldn’t go ahead because convictions were unlikely. The law prohibits the release of harmful species, but the sea lice weren’t really released. And the company could argue that it had obeyed all the governments’ rules.
But he noted that while he had to apply a strict test in deciding whether to go ahead with case, governments don’t when it comes to “addressing the potential environmental consequences of fish farms.”
Morton won the important victory. An independent review by the government’s own prosecutor found the evidence showed the fish farms are hurting wild salmon stocks.
Now it’s up to government to say what it’s going to do about that reality.
Footnote: Meanwhile, the legislative committee looking at the aquaculture industry is heading back out for another round of hearings this fall. The committee, which has an NDP majority, has been hearing completely contradictory and equally passionate views from the industry’s supporters and opponents. It’s trying for an interim report before the end of the year and a full report next May.

Park development a bad idea

VICTORIA - There are some passable arguments for promoting development in provincial parks, but ultimately it remains a bad idea. The government is opening the door to development in a dozen parks this month, encouraging everything from cabins for hikers to lodges with up to 100 beds. The first calls for proposals have already gone out, and they include wilderness parks like Cape Scott at the northern tip of Vancouver Island.
Environment Minister Barry Penner says it’s all about access. Just because people can’t sleep in a tent doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get to stay in a wilderness park, he says. British Columbians are getting older and more rickety and want somewhere comfy to stay, and Penner says the environment ministry has to meet the need. And he promises that the government is being careful to make sure that any development won’t wreck the parks.
The problem is that once you begin constructing lodges and cabins and the various facilities needed to support them, you no longer have a wilderness park. Paving the West Coast Trail and creating little lodges along the way would make it more accessible. It would also destroy it.
Penner doesn’t mention the money, but that’s also behind this drive for commercial development. The government is counting on companies to pay for the right to build and operate businesses inside parks. The successful developers will get 30-year leases.
You can make a weak case for development in some parks, I suppose, particularly ones already on major highways or partially developed.
But the best policy would be to recognize the importance of preservation and the responsibility to keep parks whole.
That doesn’t mean that parks have to be exclusively for the fit and able-bodied.
If greater access is the goal – and if there is consumer demand - then development could be encouraged just outside parks, in communities that would be glad of the economic activity and additional tax base. Instead of plunking a lodge down inside a park, services could be provided just outside the park boundaries and steps taken to improve access for visitors.
And if developers want a shot at operating a true wilderness lodge, there are thousands of square kilometres of Crown and private land available outside parks. Negotiate a lease and build away.
That’s what some operators have already done. And those projects have shown that development inevitably brings significant change. It’s not just the construction of a lodge or cabins. The operator needs to transport supplies into the park; staff have to be housed; visitors will almost certainly demand more services or better roads. The government claims it consulted with the public on the plan to expand commercial development in parks, but it’s hard to find supporters.
The opposition, however, is remarkably broad-based. More than a dozen conservation and environmental groups oppose the plan. The B.C. Wildlife Association, which represents fishermen and hunters, thinks it’s a bad idea. So do wilderness tourism operators.
And they all fear that these proposals are just the start and that development will be encouraged in more provincial parks across the province.
These aren’t the extremists, the people who would be happiest if no one – or at most a handful of people - ever ventured into parks. They recognize that parks, while vital in protecting wilderness, are also for people.
But they believe that access can be offered without unnecessary commercial development inside park boundaries. Penner says the public will get a say on whether the specific proposals go ahead. But the government’s official policy on park development, released last month, is alarmingly vague on how the public will have a meaningful chance to offer its views. There are no provisions for public hearings or formal consultation.
B.C. has a magnificent park system, which we hold in trust for future generations.
We shouldn’t permanently damage that heritage, especially when there are alternative ways of improving access.
Footnote: The 12 parks covered in the first new development wave are Mount Robson in the Omineca Region, Elk Lakes, Mount Assiniboine and Nancy Greene in the Kootenays,  Wells Gray (in the Cariboo, Foch-Giltoyees in the Skeena region, Cape Scott on northern Vancouver Island, Maxhamish Lake in the Peace, Golden Ears in the Lower Mainland and Fintry, Silver Star and Myra Bellevue in the Okanagan.

Surprise shuffle all aimed at children and families

VICTORIA - So the revolving door spins again at the ministry of children and familes, sweeping Stan Hagen out and Tom Christensen in.
Based on past history, he shouldn’t unpack. Christensen is the fourth minister in less than six years for the Liberals; tenth in the last decade if you include the NDP follies.
Premier Gordon Campbell’s shuffle caught everyone by surprise Tuesday. He was supposed to be on holidays and all was to be quiet. The only warning was a news release at 12:15 p.m. that said there would be a shuffle in Vancouver less than two hours later.
It wasn’t a giant shift. Four ministers got new jobs, with the change at children and families driving the rest.
The premier wanted Mike de Jong to replace Christensen at aboriginal affairs, an important ministry for the Liberals now.
That left a hole at labour. Richmond MLA Olga Ilich, who had been minister for tourism, sports and culture, got the labour job, which not coincidentally left her pleasant ministry as a landing spot for Hagen.
Campbell didn’t just shuffle, he added. Surrey-White Rock MLA Gordon Hogg is back in cabinet as a junior minister responsible for getting us all to eat right, exercise and quit smoking. Hogg, who resigned as childen and families minister in 2004 after a troubled tenure, is to champion the ActNow BC program announced by Campbell last year.
The most significant changes are in children and families and aboriginal relations.
The Liberals’ 2001 platform included a promise to stop the endless shuffling and re-organizations at the children and families ministry. They’ve failed badly. Hogg resigned after three chaotic years of stumbles; Christy Clark lasted about nine months before quitting; and Hagen has been in the job less than two years. Community groups desperate to get the minister’s attention are constantly starting work all over again.
Hagen had said that he wanted to keep the job. It was important to provide some stability while making the changes flowing from Ted Hughes’ report on ministry problems, he said.
But Campbell didn’t agree. The premier’s office has already installed its chosen deputy minister in children and families. Leslie du Toit was recruited from South Africa to work as an advisor to the premier before being installed in the ministry. She’s in charge of the ministry’s rather vague future direction.
And now she gets a new minister.
Christensen looks like a good choice. It’s been tough to judge his effectiveness in aboriginal affairs, in part because the premier’s office has played such a large role. But he succeeded in bringing people together when he followed Christy Clark into education. Now he has the chance to tackle one of the government’s critical problem areas. (And his experience in aboriginal affairs will be useful; the children and families’ ministry has large aboriginal focus and significant challenges in dealing with First Nations communities.)
De Jong is a reasonable choice to move into aboriginal affairs. He showed in the labour job that he could temper his natural tendency to love to give reporters a good quote. Caution will be a good thing in aboriginal affairs.
Ilich’s promotion is surprising. She was considered a strong candidate in 2005. But she hasn’t made any particular impression in her current tourism, sports and culture post. The elevation to labour - even at a time when things are likely to be pretty quiet - is a surprise.
But her promotion did open up a place fo Hagen.
I don’t know what to say about Hogg’s return. It seems odd that the Liberals, once the champions of small government, are now creating a fitness minister. The gesture will cost another $200,000 and it’s hard to know what the minister will actually do beyond some cheerleading. And it’s baffling that the junior minister is under tourism, sports and culture, where he will be lost, and not health.
But who can argue against getting people to exercise more, eat less and quit smoking and drinking?
It shouldn’t be hard to tell if this cabinet shuffle was successful. If Christensen is still minister of children and families in three years, and if the ministry is adequately funded and delivering effective services, then it succeeded.
If not, it is just another in a long series of failed efforts.

Harper dips into the pork barrel on defence deal

VICTORIA - How does it happen? How do we vote for a whole new approach to government and end up with the same old politics?
Like or loathe them, what Stephen Harper and the Conservatives mostly promised was something different. No more political pandering, just good common sense. An end to politicians interfering in the awarding of government contracts, for example. From now on, the goal would be to get the best deal for taxpayers.
But not a year in power and it looks like same old, same old in some troubling ways.
The Conservative government plans some big military spending. Top of the shopping list are 16 Chinook helicopters and four C-17 transport planes from Boeing. The deal will cost you something like $8 billion, including 20 years of support.
The Canadian government wants some of that money to stay here, so the contracts are going to specify that half the total spending has to be in Canada. Boeing will want to keep the manufacturing at home; Canadian firms are most likely to be able to bid for the maintenance contracts.
That should mean companies across Canada would get a chance to compete for the work. The ones that came up with the best proposals to keep the aircraft flying safely at the lowest cost would get the work.
That’s even supposed to be the rule. In 1994 Ottawa and the provinces signed a deal to ensure all Canadian suppliers had equal access to government procurement. Provinces weren’t allowed to overlook the best bid just because it came from outside their boundaries. The federal government agreed it wouldn’t hand out contracts to favoured companies or regions.
But there was an exception. The federal government could over-ride the commitment to open bidding “to protect national security or to maintain international peace and security."
And that’s the clause the government has invoked in the Boeing deals. It has become a matter of national security to protect the government’s right to steer contracts to chosen companies, even if their work costs more or is of inferior quality.
You’d think the Conservatives would have learned, since they’ve been down this road before. Back in 1986 a consortium led by Bristol Aircraft in Winnipeg had submitted the best bid on a contract to maintain the military’s CF-18 jet fighters, according to the Defence Ministry.
But at the last minute the Mulroney government over-ruled the military and handed the deal to another group headed by Canadair of Montreal. The decision was seen as an insult to the West; really it was an insult to taxpayers and the pilots who would fly the planes.
Now the current Conservative government has chosen the same path, invoking the “national security” loophole to let it parcel out the goodies.
Industry Minister Maxime Bernier says it’s not about patronage. But the government is going to set quotas, still to be decided, on where the work has to go. Quebec, the West, Atlantic Canada all have to get a taste - even if that means taxpayers are subsidizing companies by paying higher prices.
The decision embraces the culture of the old Ottawa. Companies that want to get these contracts can’t just concentrate on having the best technology or workforce.
They have to find the best lobbyists, the ones with the tightest ties to senior bureaucrats and politicians. Influence in pushing the quota system and steering work their way matters as much as their competence or ability to deliver value for money.
How can the Conservatives have forgotten so quickly? The Liberals were defeated in part because Canadians were tired of this way of doing business. They wanted the political influence, the lobbying and the efforts to favour one region taken out of spending decisions.
Instead, they got a new government that seems quickly to be sliding into the ways of its predecessors, despite all the talk about a new way of doing business.
Footnote: Why not guarantee all regions get some of the work? It increases costs, opens the door to political patronage and to rewards for friends and doesn’t really accomplish anything in terms of regional development. Propping up uncompetitive businesses with government money is just an expensive way to delay the inevitable. (Think Skeena Cellulose.)