The five-point B.C. budget guide

OK, here's the five things you need to know about the budget in about 700 words.
First, you're going to get a cheque in June for $100 per person in your household. It's called the "Climate Action Dividend" to try and link it to the budget's green theme. The government hopes you'll use the money to buy a bicycle or a more efficient fridge.
Really it just reflects the fact the government - once again - wildly underestimated revenues in last year's budget. It was on track to a $3-billion surplus this year, and to facing tough questions about why people were waiting for knee surgery or paying such high taxes with all that cash piling up in the government accounts.
So you get a cheque. The measure will cost government $440 million.
Second, you're also going to pay more for gas, oil and other carbon fuels. A new carbon tax will be based on the amount of greenhouse gases the fuel produces, starting at $10 per tonne this year and rising to $30 a tonne by 2012.
Beginning July 1, you'll pay 2.41 cents a litre in a carbon tax on gas - something like $50 a year for a typical family. It will go up 1.2 cents a year. All fuels will be taxed. Figure $35 extra this year if you heat with natural gas, $50 if you heat with oil.
The tax will bring in $338 million this year, rising to $880 million within two years.
The government wants the tax to be revenue neutral -any new money taken in is to be offset by other tax cuts.
So it's made several other tax reductions. A carbon tax tends to hurt low-income families, grabbing a larger share of their limited income. People eligible for the federal GST credit - about 25 per cent of British Columbians - will get $100 per adult and $30 per child. (A carbon tax also hits rural residents harder, but there is no special aid for them.)
Personal income tax reductions will be worth $215 million. For a family of four with household income of $70,000, the savings will be about $200 a year. For a family with an income of $120,000, about $360.
Corporations will get $170 million in tax cuts this year.
Third, this carbon tax is a leap into the unknown. No province or state has a similar tax. The business reps in the budget lockup appeared unsure how much the tax would affect them.
For some industries, like money-losing pulp mills, it's clearly bad news. They'll pay more for fuel and, since they aren't profitable and paying taxes, they won't benefit from the tax cuts.
Broadly, it looks resource industries - which generally use a lot of energy and can't pass increased costs onto their customers - are most worried.
Fourth, beyond the carbon tax, this is largely a status quo budget, for better and worse. Spending leaps a bit this year, thanks to some one-time initiatives, but is forecast to increase less than three per cent in each of the next two years.
So health spending, for example, will rise about six per cent a year for each of the next three years. Not enough to actually allow the health authorities to deliver needed care, but not the noose some had feared.
It showed that the public's message in the conversation on health - that people would to preserve decent care - got through.
It's also status quo in terms of government neglect of some critical areas. The funding to deal with homelessness is almost non-existent. There is a token commitment, for example, to help 1,065 families with rent subsidies of about $80 each, a tiny step. More outreach workers will be hired and shelters will stay open in the daytime.
At a time when some 10,000 to 15,000 British Columbians are homeless and communities across the province are being damaged, the inaction is baffling.
Fifth, there was a broad sense that this government sees the province's future in the Lower Mainland. There was money for mining exploration and incentives to encourage movie-making in the North and Interior.
But the focus was on tech and Asia-Pacific opportunities and financial institutions.
And that, in about 700 words, is what you need to know from this year's 10-inch stack of budget documents.
I hope.

Throne speech surprisingly interesting

Maybe I've been doing this stuff for too long, but that seemed an interesting throne speech from the Campbell government.
It's foolish to get too fired up about the ritual. There's not necessarily a link between all those words, read by the lieutenant governor, and what government actually does.
But the speech read by the province's first aboriginal lieutenant governor - a significant milestone - had some interesting ideas. Both good interesting and bad interesting.
Take three. In education, health and climate change.
The government promised a serious look at dramatic improvements in early childhood education. A new agency will "assess the feasibility and costs of full school day kindergarten for five-year-olds." It will also look at providing parents with the choice of day-long kindergarten for four-year-olds by 2010, and for three-year-olds by 2012. The report is to be done by next spring - a few months before the election.
The change could be hugely positive, especially for kids from poorer families. The reality is that a five-year-old from an affluent family, with a stay-at-home mum and play groups and story times and junior gym is a lot more ready for kindergarten than a five-year-old growing up with a single-parent earning just above minimum wage.
A good early childhood education program would let more children start school confidently and capably. That success could carry them a long way.
And if cost is an issue, then the FSA test results could be put to good use. Start the program in the schools with the weakest performance in basic skills.
In health, there's proposals to cheer and to fear.
The government seems keen on doing things cheaper, which is good. It wants nurses to do more - sewing up wounds and such. And it wants their schooling cut from four years to three, another good change. Better more nurses - or doctors - slightly less well-trained, than a shortage.
But it's also still pitching the myth that we can't afford health care. The government wants to pass a law making "sustainability" a sixth principle under the Canada Health Act, alongside equal access to care and the rest. It's unclear what that means, but the suggestion is that access to care will be cut to reduce costs.
And maybe, at some point, there will be have to tough limits on car.
But we're spending relatively little on health care in B.C. today. Internationally, health-care costs in Canada are smaller share of GDP than most Western countries - about one-third less than the U.S.
In 1985, government health care spending was five per cent. By 1995, it had risen to 6.6 per cent. The increase has slowed since. This year, it will be about 7.2 per cent. Given our rising expectations and aging population, that's not an unreasonable increase.
Looked at another way, government health spending consumes about one-third of revenues today - as it did in 1995 and 1985.
And the throne speech promises a study of an Independent Living Savings Account. It sounds like an RRSP, except you can only use the money for care when you're old - home support or residential care.
That would benefit people with money to set aside. And those who didn't have any extra income available would subsidize their tax break.
And it raises questions how limited the government believes support for seniors in the future, if it's warning people to set aside money today if they can.
On climate change, the throne speech was alarmingly short on specifics. Campbell was clear that the government wasn't going to be deterred from tough action.
But there is a sense of a great leap into the unknown here. The targets are in place, but the government still doesn't seem to know how to get there or what it will cost.
Footnote: The throne speech included a big flood of ideas and initiatives. But there were some gaps. The big problems in the forest industry - right now and the coast, and coming in the Interior - received no real attention. And there was no mention of the Heartland, or whatever the current favorite term is. The challenges of smaller communities no longer seem a priority.

The premier used to think mental health was important

Things are badly out of control on Victoria’s downtown streets, and in communities across the province. More and more addicted and mentally ill people have ended up on the streets and the problems have hit a critical point.
How did this happen? The short answer is that government — and most of us — chose to ignore the problem. It just wasn’t a priority.
Premier Gordon Campbell can explain that as well as anyone.
Back in 2001, Campbell eliminated the office of the mental health advocate. The office was created in 1998. That was four years after the ombudsman had recommended an independent monitor in a critical report on mental health services. The NDP government was no better at paying attention to these issues.
Campbell said the advocate wasn’t a strong enough response. That’s why he was naming a cabinet minister to be responsible for mental health and addiction services.
“A minister of state for mental health is clearly a requirement,” Campbell told the legislature in 2001. “Let’s assume that the last government cared about mental health. They failed people with mental illness miserably.”
Why?
“I would suggest that they did it because there was no one focusing on mental health issues,” said Campbell.
But the minister of state for addictions and mental health never seemed to get much done, beyond some reports and useful mailings to doctors. The evidence on the streets and from families showed things were getting worse.
After the 2005 election, Campbell decided mental health and addictions didn’t need a minister after all. The job followed the advocate onto the dust heap. Since then, people in desperate need of help have created growing street problems.
Some communications person is likely even now preparing a letter to the editor for the health minister to sign in response to this column. The government spent more than $1 billion on mental health and addictions last year and did this and that.
But that’s like boasting about how much you spent fixing your car, without acknowledging that it still doesn’t run. Governments are not elected to spend money, but to help solve problems and provide needed care.
Look at the streets. Talk to families trying to get help. Things are worse.
The answer is also misleading. The government allocates almost no money for mental health or addictions — $8 million for the entire province in 2005-6. It tells the six health authorities how much they can spend on all services and leaves the rest — mostly — up to them.
The budgets aren’t based on what’s needed to provide care. So the authority managers and medical staff decide where the money should go. Fixing knees or catching up on seniors’ long-term-care needs tend to be more compelling than treatment beds for the mentally ill or addicted.
Those people don’t have influence. They don’t hire lobbyists. They aren’t effective in advancing their own needs; if they could do things like that they wouldn’t be on the streets.
So until they become a sufficient irritation, they are ignored.
If you are diagnosed with cancer in B.C., you’ll get excellent care. If you’re alcoholic, or schizophrenic, you won’t. Even the throne speech this week didn’t deal with addiction and mental illness as health issues.
Things might be changing. The problems have become big enough that the community has taken notice. Politicians respond to that.
But how wasteful this has been. In lives, in preventable crime, in health-care costs.
Campbell was right in 2001. Unless someone is focused on the issues, advocating for the ill and holding government to account, we’re likely to see more years of failure.
It’s time to bring back the mental health advocate.
Footnote: Another gap needs to be filled. The Liberals had a minister responsible for seniors’ long-term care in their first term, but axed the position in 2005. The Premier’s Council on Aging recommended in 2006 that a minister of state for aging be appointed “to champion a co-ordinated change agenda across government.” At the least, a seniors’ advocate could ensure that their interests — particularly around issues like residential care — are represented. Many seniors don’t have family or friends to advocate for them or raise concerns.

Risky session ahead for Liberals

The MLAs will be back here this week, for the Throne Speech, the budget and all the rest of the spring sitting.
Of course, you might never have noticed they were gone. For people who pay close attention to provincial politics, this will be a big three months. For most people, not so much.
I find it interesting, although most days dispiriting. These are capable people, respected in their hometowns. The ideal would see them coming together to debate measures that would make life better in the province. They might divide along
party lines, but they would respect each other's intelligence and commitment - or if not, the fact that the voters had chosen them. They would be full participants in government.
It's not like that. Much of the session is a weird, ritualistic game, from the rudeness and shouting of Question Period to the set speeches for and against legislation. Useful things get done, but they're islands in a sea of
embarrassing foolishness.
Still, it's what we've got. And, as I said, some useful things do get done.
This session could be the last chance for the government to do take any significant action that requires legislative approval.
The next election will be May 12, 2009. The Liberals haven't been keen on fall sittings; next spring will be an election session, as much show as substance.
This will be the chance to make some good laws.
But that's been a problem for the Liberals. They were elected in 2001 with the basic hope that they would be better than the NDP government they replaced. Competent, in a word.
Generally, the Liberals were suspicious of government and convinced it should be smaller.
Those were broadly justified views and responding to them kept the Liberals going for the first few years.
Then what? Cutting the size of government can't be a perpetual task and at a certain point the public is looking for positive efforts to deal with their concerns.
The Liberals pitched their first budget after the 2005 election as a senior's budget. The 2006 effort was supposed to be a children's budget, an acknowledgement of the mess the government had made in services for families.
Last year, the theme was housing.
But once the snappy graphics and backdrops for the budget announcement come down, interest seems to fade.
It's hard to say that things have got better for seniors, children or the homeless or people struggling to afford housing in any material ways.
This year the theme is likely to be climate change, with a budget that proposes some concrete actions to build on the dramatic rhetoric of the 2007 throne speech.
That's a challenge. The business community is worried the government will go too far and hurt the economy. The public, having been told by Premier Gordon Campbell that this is a global crisis, is expecting some significant measures.
The Liberals will have some other measures to announce - things like the new proposal to encourage burning waste wood to generate power.
There should be announcements about what B.C. will do with its share of the federal $1-billion aid program aimed at helping single-industry towns hurt by the high Canadian dollar. The province is to get about $133 million.
The session also means the New Democrats have question period four days a week to raise tough issues.
There are a lot of good targets. There are the obvious traditional favorites for any opposition - health care wait times, the continued mystery about the direction of the Children and Families Ministry, Olympic costs.
And the NDP will also focus on public safety concerns, from the gang killings in Vancouver to the disorder created by the mounting populations of homeless, addicted and mentally ill people on the streets across the province. The New
Democrats think the Liberals are vulnerable on law-and-order issues.
It all starts next Tuesday with the Throne Speech. With barely a year to go
before the election, the stakes are high for both parties.
Footnote: The big, dangerous issue hanging over the government is the corruption trial in connection with the B.C. Rail sale. Campbell has dodged questions on the case so far, but the government's ongoing efforts to keep evidence from the
court and the special prosecutor's failure to meet the legal requirements for disclosing documents could blow up in the next two months. The trial is to start in mid-March.

A weird way to hand out playground money

I just glanced at the government press release last month announcing $1 million in funding for 66 selected school playground projects across the province.
It did seem like be a column might be lurking in there somewhere. When did government decide that its responsibility stopped once the school building was up?
Who made the decision that if kids expect more than a field, their parents should get cracking and raise the money?
For most of the last few decades, playground equipment was something governments provided for children. Often a bit unsafe, maybe, but part of the neighbourhood.
No more. Parent advisory councils are supposed to come up with the money for swings or climbing structures and make it happen.
Which is not too bad for some schools. If Jesse's dad owns a construction company that can provide a crew to install things, the work is taken care of. And maybe Willow's mum, the lawyer, will offer to prepare a couple of wills for someone as an item in silent auction. People pitch in, the $30,000 is raised, the children have somewhere to play. That's how it worked in my neighbourhoods.
But for other schools, it's not so easy. If parents are scraping by, or local economic times are hard, or they just aren't interested, then the playground doesn't get built.
If we were a poor province, you could understand. But when the fiscal year ends March 31, the government will likely have a surplus of close to $3 billion. Last year it was $4 billion.
There is a great deal of official worry about children's fitness. But playgrounds are too expensive.
Anyway, I didn't write that column.
But Jason Harshenin, editor of the Grand Forks Gazette, was considerably more alert.
He wondered why Hutton Elementary School's Parents Advisory Council had been left off the list. The parents had raised $37,000. Pretty good for a school with 240 students. They applied for provincial help through ActNow B.C. for another $23,000. No luck.
Harshenin found out that more than 600 schools had applied for funding under the program designed to encourage children to be more active. Between them, they had $11 million in proposals - about $18,000 per school.
The government only wanted to spend $1 million. It handed the problem of rejecting more than 90 per cent of the requests over to the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils.
So Harshenin asked the confederation how it decided to distribute the money.
A lottery, he was told. The confederation didn't have the time to look at individual applications to assess how urgently they needed help or whether the proposal made sense. All 600 schools' proposals went in a hat, and 66 winners were drawn.
Harshenin was incredulous. Why would the ministry "allocate $1 million to playground funding without instituting some funding formula or funding mechanism for how that money is distributed, especially in light of some of the major challenges facing forestry-based communities in the Interior?"
The ministry pleaded ignorance. We just sent the cheque for $1 million. After that, well, whatever.
Harshenin was also suspicious. Was it really a lottery? Why did only one school in the Kootenays get help? Why wasn't the government more responsible in handling taxpayers' money?
Good questions, but no answers.
I read the column, thought it interesting, and with Harshenin's consent put it up on my blog (www.willcocks.blogspot.com).
And then, as so often in these days of the Internet, things got even more interesting. The blog allows comments. One poster noted that fewer than half the parent advisory councils in the province are members of the provincial association and wondered if non-members had a chance at the money.
Another parent noted her school had received $10,000 from the parents' council confederation, even though all the money needed for a playground had been raised.
Which highlights the issue. If the government can't afford to pay for all playgrounds, why isn't it least distributing money based on need or some logical criteria?
Footnote: Thanks, obviously, to Jason Harshinen for doing all the real work. His column can be found at his brand new blog at www.harshpointofview.blogspot.com.

Liberals look to have run out of forestry ideas

These are tough days for the forest industry. The future doesn't appear much better.
And the government looks like it has pretty much run out of ideas. When Premier Gordon Campbell made his eleventh annual speech to the Truck Loggers Association convention last month, the contractors were hoping for a meaningful announcement.
Instead, Campbell announced another round table to look at the problems and report to cabinet every three months. The membership and terms of reference were still to be set, he said.
The effort can't hurt, but it looked like one those announcements that governments make when they really don't know what to do. It might have been unfair just to focus on the lack of ideas in Campbell's speech.
But two days earlier, the provincial Forest Practices Board had released a report that indicated companies and government no longer considered forest sustainability the top priority.
The board looked at 54 helicopter logging sites on the coast. In more than half, the companies were taking out the most valuable cedar trees and leaving the aged hemlock around them. There was no replanting or thinning. The forests were being mined, not sustainably managed.
The board found logging plans were often shoddy, but the companies were following the province's rules.
It was another indication the industry has moved into its twilight, at least in terms of government attention.
Then, a few days after the premier spoke to the truck loggers, the auditor general released a report on safety in the forest industry. It too was grim.
Back in 2003, the government expressed concern about the death and injury rate. Campbell pledged to cut them in half in three years. He appointed a task force (which is somehow different than a round table).
Auditor general John Doyle's review attempted to look at the results. But there weren't any. The death and injury rates are unchanged. Government policies were part of the problem. Safety inspections had been cut sharply.
Policy changes meant responsibility for safety shifted from the land leaseholder or owner - usually a big company - to hundreds of contractors with a few employees. They didn't have the experience or resources.
And there was "race to the bottom" in forest practices because of economic pressures, the auditor general found. That, combined with the lack of enforcement, led to unsafe practices.
The bottom line? "The goal of eliminating forest worker death or serious injury has not been achieved.''
Taken together, the three developments are discouraging. Then add the government's decision to shift vast tracts out of the working forest on Vancouver Island, because companies want to make more selling it for real estate development.
And throw in the slow response to the coming disaster when timber supplies are slashed because of the pine beetle devastation. The government has been pretty good at salvage efforts and Interior mills have improved their efficiency.
But beyond some vague hopes for wood-based power, there are no plans in place to help the industry and communities cope with the decades required for pine forests to regenerate, even with aggressive replanting efforts.
The provincial government's big forestry overhaul in 2003 seemed to make sense. Companies gained more freedom to do what they liked with Crown timber. The change meant mill closures and job losses, but government and industry said it would bring investment and a more competitive industry. A shift to market-based stumpage was supposed to help resolve the softwood dispute. But the measures didn't work and the government didn't adapt to their failure. There are no easy solutions. We've stripped the best parts of the forest - ones that took at least 500 years to grow - in about 40 years. Everybody involved grabbed the easy money.
And B.C. faces competition from other regions that operate more efficiently. But still, this is an extraordinary resource. It should provide jobs, in the woods and mills and pulp and paper towns, for thousands of British Columbians for decades to come.
And while the government will point to lots of funding announcements and initiatives like the round table, the fact remains that the Liberals' policies over the last seven years haven't worked and there's no change in sight.

Government playground funding system just plain weird

I just glanced at the government press release last month announcing funding for 66 school playground projects across the province. It seemed wrong that playground equipment is no longer considered something kids are entitled to. The government won't pay, so parents have to raise the money. That's easy in some schools, way harder in others.
Jason Harshenin, editor of the Grand Forks Gazette, paid more attention. It turned the grants covered about 10 per cent of the school playground requests. And they were awarded by lucky draw, not need.
Here's his excellent column.

Grant lottery irresponsible
By Jason Harshenin
Grand Forks Gazette
When the Hutton Elementary School Parent Advisory Council (PAC) initiated its fund raising efforts to replace the school’s old and dilapidated playground, nobody anticipated that the British Columbia Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils (BCCPAC) would not support their fundraising efforts.
Hutton PAC members applied for grant funding through ActNow BC – a “partnership-based, cross-ministry health and wellness Initiative” that is supposed to “promote healthy living choices to improve the quality of life for all British Columbians”. BCCPAC administered the funding and selected a lottery in order to do so. According to BCCPAC communications and media coordinator, Gabrielle Moore, over 600 schools initially applied for the funding and between them they requested $11 million dollars in funding. Only 66 schools across the province, however, were distributed the $1 million allocated by the Ministry of Education.
Obviously there is a major need for better playground equipment across the entire province. Obviously not enough money has been set aside to address this concern.
But when asked why BCCPAC opted to pursue a lottery as opposed to looking at individual applications and assessing need, Moore stated that volunteers run BCCPAC and they simply do not have the human power needed to scrutinize individual applications. When I asked Moore if she was concerned that the ministry of education would allocate $1 million dollars to playground funding without instituting some funding formula or funding mechanism for how that money is distributed, especially in light of some of the major challenges facing forestry-based communities in the Interior, Moore was unresponsive. I asked Moore to contact BCCPAC president Kim Howland. I would like Howland to explain why BCCPAC utilized a lottery system and whether the decision to hold a lottery was politically motivated. I would also like to know why the ministry of education would agree to that criteria for funding when it would want its $1 million spent on the schools in most need of support.
According to Ministry of Education spokesperson Lara Perzoff, the ministry was not aware that BCCPAC opted to use a lottery; however, Perzoff is identified as the contact person on the ministry’s press release.  I would also like to know why the majority of the schools on the list are in Liberal ridings and in the Lower Mainland or Vancouver Island. And why did only one school in the entire Kootenays (both east and west) get funding?
So far the Hutton PAC has raised $37,000 in just over one year. Pretty impressive to say the least. Hutton PAC is now determined to raise the rest (over $60,000 ) by summer so kids going to school this fall will have a new playground to enjoy – a playground that is safe, fun and helps to get them active. In the mean time, I will wait to hear from the ministry and from BCCPAC. Maybe they can explain to me why the children and families at Hutton Elementary school have not been supported.

Jean's Eastside visit just a 2010 preview

Michaëlle Jean's visit to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside should be a wake-up call.
The Governor General toured the tormented streets last week, a visit that went predictably awry. She was flanked by a bunch of security people; many of the residents jeered and called questions. (Most of the rougher comments were directed at the Vancouver councilor along on the walkabout; Mayor Sam Sullivan stayed away.)
Jean said she wished she had been able to see the area without so much fuss. She could have, just by slipping into town early and walking around. She wasn't likely going to be recognized down there.
The whole weird event was a reminder of what's ahead two years from now when media from around the world descend on Vancouver for the Olympics. Short of gathering up the addicted, homeless, mentally ill and dirt poor and busing them out of town, there is almost no chance that the horror show will be on full display in 2010.
People who don't get to Vancouver - or don't venture into the few blocks off the business and tourist zones - likely don't know how bad it is.
The five or six blocks of chaos aren't necessarily dangerous, at least in the daytime.
They are, though, sad and horrifying both. This isn't like the old days, when a few hundred alcoholic men made up the Eastside skid-row community. Some of them drank in parks and fought and panhandled and froze to death on cold nights.
But they were a small problem, one everyone was used to.
Today the same streets are like something out of a bleak movie about the future, when social order has collapsed. I've travelled a little bit, in some poor and strange places.
Nowhere have I seen any place as weird. (The South Bronx in the mid-seventies came close; with its blocks of burned out buildings it looked like there had been some sort of war, complete with aerial bombardment.)
There are stores, but customers run a gauntlet of the sick and addicted to get to them. Sketchy looking pawn shops and vacant storefronts predominate.
The sidewalks are the living room for people with nowhere else to spend time. They're skinny, pale, dressed badly and often obviously sick - coughing, or with abscesses. They gather in groups. Some shout, some in deep conversation with voices only they hear. No one looks real young, but who can tell. Some look like they're grandparents, except everything's gone wrong.
And drugs are everywhere.
It is crazy: Part Third World and part science fiction.
There are a lot of reasons. We closed mental institutions over the last several decades, but never provided support for the people who had lived in them. Now many have fallen to the Eastside. Addiction and drug polices have been a dismal failure. Housing and welfare polices haven't worked.
Perhaps most significantly, we haven't worked at prevention - at catching young mothers before things spin out of control, at supporting kids so they don't slide into addiction and hopelessness.
Now our failures are about to go on display for the world. As the Michaëlle Jean tour showed, all this makes good television. It will be a perfect colour story for every TV station from every country in the world in 2010 - how blocks from Olympic hockey games, and minutes from condos worth million, there's another, wretched British Columbia.
And the more intrepid reporters will take the story a little farther - a feature on the troubled street scene in Victoria, or drug problems in almost any town or city.
The government has taken a lot of useful steps in the last few months, especially in working towards protecting or creating housing. Even small communities have got funding for outreach workers to help people find and keep homes.
But it's not nearly enough to even patch over the problems by 2010. Either the government has to get much more serious, quickly, or the world is going to get an ugly eyeful when the Games are on.
Footnote: The heckling and abuse were the roughest treatment Jean has experienced since starting the job more than two years ago. The visit ended with protests outside a formal dinner. One man was tasered by police.

Why do governments make it harder to escape welfare?

Judith Maxwell says real progress on poverty is being made by communities and businesses, not government, and looks at some of the government policies making things worse in this column. in today's Globe.
And coincidentally, Victoria columnist Jody Paterson tells one man's story that demonstrates the problem here.

Manley's report raises too many Afghan doubts

The question of continuing the war in Afghanistan largely comes down to how much Canadians trust Stephen Harper.
The Manley panel report on the mission this week was grim reading.
Harper asked the five members to recommend whether Canada should extend the military mission, scheduled to end next February.
The members, led by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, said yes, with conditions.
But in looking at the effort so far, the panel found things have badly managed by the government.
That's no reflection on the troops. The report noted their commitment and great efforts.
The government, though, has not shown the same dedication to the mission's importance.
It hasn't equipped the troops properly or ensured that there were enough of them to maintain security.
The $100 million a year being spent could be used much more effectively.
The government hasn't set clear benchmarks or objectives and has failed to push for more support from other NATO countries. The mission hasn't received continuing, serious attention from the politicians.
And the government hasn't been open and candid about the mission in communicating with Canadians.
I'm stating things more bluntly than the Manley report, but not much. (It's at www.independent-panel-independant.ca. Check for yourself. Not to be melodramatic, but people's lives are at stake.)
This is not really a partisan issue. The Liberals committed Canada to fighting in Afghanistan with no real plan or vision. The Conservatives have continued to treat the responsibility without the required seriousness.
Despite all that, the panel recommended that the military mission continue past 2009. The effort in Afghanistan is improving lives there and preventing the country from once again becoming a haven for terrorists, it said. And there is a chance at least of limited success - seeing Afghanistan emerge as a stable, sort of democratic, very poor country.
It's a troubling report on a troubling mission. There's sharp criticism of the current commitment and no ringing endorsement of a path forward.
That's as it should be. This is not a simple decision, or one that can be decided on the basis of simplistic sloganeering.
The panel does recommend conditions be set on Canada's continued military involvement in Kandahar.
There are simply not enough of our soldiers to maintain peace in the violent region, it found. Unless other NATO countries will add 1,000 troops to the 2,500 Canadians, we should withdraw.
Our soldiers also lack basic equipment that would make the mission safer, especially by reducing their vulnerability to roadside bombs.
The panel said that unless helicopters and unmanned aerial reconnaissance drones could be provided within 12 months, we should withdraw.
And it found the government has to change the way it approaches the war, bringing a much more serious, focused effort to its planning and management.
The prime minister should be leading the effort to increase the role played by other NATO troops and set clear goals and benchmarks to measure progress.
And the government should communicate honestly with Canadians about what's going on in Afghanistan.
This is pretty horrifying stuff, really. Almost 80 Canadians have died in Afghanistan. The troops have risked their lives and made a difference.
Yet the government has not done its part to equip them, support them or manage the effort.
There's no simple answer to whether Canada should continue this mission, from my perspective. There is the chance to improve life for the Afghan people and increase our security. But there is also a huge cost, in lives and dollars, and a risk of failure. Afghanistan has overwhelmed outside forces for centuries.
One critical factor is trust. Will Canada insist on additional NATO troops and pay for helicopters? Will the government be honest in measuring the mission's success and failures and communicating them to Canadians, or will it continue to mislead? Can the Harper government - or for that matter a Dion government - be trusted to provide the support and leadership and attention needed?
If it was my child or brother being asked to serve, the answer would be no.
Footnote: Harper said he welcomed the report but would take a few days to decide on the government's response. Stéphane Dion said the Liberals continue to believe the current combat role should end in February 2009. Harper has promised a vote in Parliament on the mission, but has not said when that might be held. None of the parties should be keen on an election that would turn into a referendum on the war.

Conservatives self-destruct over nuclear plant

Gary Lunn is taking quite a hammering these days. The natural resources minister and Victoria area MP has got seriously on the wrong side of the national press.
If you read the papers — especially the two national newspapers — you’re probably wondering how Lunn could qualify for a driver’s licence, let alone a cabinet job.
He’s been soundly bashed for his role in the Chalk River nuclear reactor fiasco.
Here’s the stripped-down version of events. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., a federal Crown corporation, operates a 50-year-old nuclear reactor at Chalk River that produces about two-thirds of the radioactive isotopes used in medical tests, like cancer screening.
You can’t store them, so no one has reserves; if the supply is disrupted problems mount quickly.
The Chalk River reactor was supposed to be replaced 15 years ago; the federal government has spent $300 million on the project. But the replacements aren’t ready.
People are nervous about nuclear energy. So the government set up the Nuclear Safety Commission as an independent licensing agency. Its job is to make sure nuclear reactors meet licensing requirements.
Chalk River didn’t. The back-up cooling system needed to protect against a meltdown wasn’t in place.
When the commission learned the problem hadn’t been fixed during a maintenance shutdown in November, it refused to allow the plant to start up. The licence requirements had to be met.
The government seemed to take a long time to figure out what this meant. Lunn’s office was sent an e-mail, but didn’t grasp its significance.
Then everyone went into panic. People’s cancer tests were cancelled; other countries wanted answers. Lunn sought advice from experts, who told him the plant had operated without the back-up system for decades and there was no increased safety risk. Everyone was clamouring for the isotopes.
So he called Linda Keen, the head of the commission, and pressured her to allow the plant to open, despite the violations. She looked at the commission’s mandate – public safety – and couldn’t justify allowing the plant to operate when it couldn’t meet the licensing requirements.
Then things got ugly. Prime Minister Stephen Harper implied Keen was out to make the Conservatives look bad because she had been appointed by the Liberal government.
It was an unfair charge; Keen had a career in government as a non-partisan manager.
Worse, Harper’s comments revealed that he knew the smear was false. His purpose, he said, was to convince the Liberals not to try to score political points over the shutdown. A pre-emptive dirty trick, you might say.
Ultimately, the government did what it should have done all along. It asked Parliament to pass legislation allowing the plant to re-open despite the licensing problems. All parties supported the proposal. Problem solved.
But by that point, Lunn and the government looked bad. The whole point of the Nuclear Safety Commission is to enforce the licensing requirements in the interest of public safety. Part of the purpose is to take political pressure out of the equation.
When Lunn called Keen and tried to pressure her, he brought politics back into issues of nuclear safety. That’s wrong.
Things got stranger, and worse. Lunn then wrote a letter – leaked to the media – to Keen asking her why she shouldn’t be fired.
The day before Keen and Lunn were both to appear before a Commons committee, Lunn did fire here — at 11 p.m.
Harper says Keen was fired because she showed poor judgment in not appreciating the seriousness of the isotope shortage and finding a way to keep the plant open.
But the commission is legally charged with ensuring nuclear safety.
The bigger problem is that it looks like Keen is really being fired because she wouldn’t cave into Lunn’s political pressure.
And that sends a message to all the other independent commissions and agencies that are supposed to protect the public interest free from political pressure. Obey the politicians in power, or face firing.
Footnote: The whole affair also drew public attention to years of neglect of reactors at Chalk River and huge spending on new reactors that don’t work. And it raised questions about the regulation of the nuclear industry at a time when it’s finally hoping for new power projects in Canada.

The hard part is coming for Campbell on climate change

This whole climate-change issue will be tricky for the Liberals, practically and politically.
The controversy about a new carbon tax on gasoline is a good illustration of how complex the issues will get.
It's one thing for Premier Gordon Campbell to declare global warming a threat to the Earth and commit the province to a major effort to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.
Actually doing something about it is trickier. Since Campbell's conversion a year ago, there hasn't been a lot of action. The government knows that without some concrete measures in the budget, it faces a credibility problem. If you've declared war on a global warming, you better follow through.
So the government needs to show something significant - beyond targets plucked from the air and a plan to buy carbon credits to offset ministers' plane travel - in the budget.
But there is a cost to most of the measures that would help. An affordable, reasonable cost, I'd say. But not everyone sees it that way.
The gas tax expected in the budget is a good example. The plan is apparently to introduce the tax at 3.5 cents a litre and raise it progressively in coming years.
It's a sensible measure that works in two ways. Higher gasoline prices would encourage people and companies to use less. That's a basic law of economics. People might cut travel or bus or buy fuel-efficient cars when the time comes. Companies would look for ways to deliver goods twice a week, instead of daily.
And the money from a gas tax could fund efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions - for transit or research or green power production.
But a lot of people think of this as a tax grab, especially the people more likely to vote Liberal than NDP. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation - which, in B.C, has become a credible voice - is opposed.
It's a balancing act for the Liberals. This week, Campbell announced a 12-year, $14-billion transit plan. You might have expected that to be the kind of thing that could be funded by a gas tax. But the premier was emphatic that there was no connection.
One reason could be found in criticism from Maureen Bader of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. Almost all of the transit money will be spent in the Lower Mainland; the gas tax will hit all British Columbians.
It's an interesting challenge for a politician like Campbell, who after a reckless first term seems intent on staking a solid claim to the political centre. It has worked; despite some big problems last year the Liberals still have a comfortable lead in the polls.
Given good judgment and reasonable luck Campbell can steer a course that leaves the NDP with almost no room to make gains. Unless the worst happens, from the Liberals' perspective, and there's some sort of splinter party on the right.
There's no sign of that. But Campbell's careful separation of the transit plan and the gas tax suggests an effort to manage this all very closely.
That makes the handling of the gas tax revenues - assuming the tax is introduced with the budget - interesting. Financed Minister Carole Taylor has been unclear what would happen to the money, expected to start at $200 million and rise to $2 billion a year.
One option would be to make the tax truly revenue neutral, with offsetting cuts elsewhere. The government could impose a 3.5-cent a litre gas tax and take in about $200 million in revenue and cut the sales tax by one-half per cent, returning the same amount to taxpayers.
Taylor is leaving the door to a sort-of neutrality, where the money would go to new climate-change measures.
It's all going to be interesting. Campbell has made a major commitment, an important one. But delivering remains a big challenge. The first real test will come Feb. 19, with the budget.
Footnote: Campbell got caught in wildly misleading spin on the transit announcement. The $14-billion plan would result in a cumulative reduction of 4.7 million tonnes of emissions, he said. But that's the total over the next 12 years. By 2020 the transit plan will reduce emissions by 650,000 tonnes a year - 1.6 per cent of the reductions needed to meet the province's commitment.

No need for Harper to delay on Mulroney inquiry

Let's get on with the inquiry into those fat envelopes of $1,000 bills Brian Mulroney took from shady German businessman and fixer Karlheinz Schreiber.
And into why Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn't act on allegations and documents Schreiber sent to him in March - more than six months before the scandal re-erupted.
Harper has accepted the need for an inquiry. And he says he'll accept the framework set our in recommendations by special advisor David Johnston last week.
But he wants to wait until a Parliamentary committee completes its hearings into the affair, which could drag out over months.
If the issue was just about Mulroney's dealings with Schreiber between 1992 and 1996 - the $225,000 in cash the former PM admits taking in hotel rooms - you could make a case for waiting. The committee might discover information that would help the inquiry. And there's no need for haste. Mulroney is long out of politics and there are few implications for anybody in public life today.
But while those dealings are Johnston main issue, he also believes the inquiry should answer questions about the role of Harper and his senior staff.
It's riskier to wait for answers to those questions. The minority government could fall at any time and Canadians would be asked to choose whether to continue Harper's time as prime minister.
There's been much speculation about when that might happen. Commentators disagree on who would benefit from an early election. The poll results aren't encouraging the Liberals or Conservatives to take risks.
But an election could still happen. It would be better for both Harper and Canadians if the inquiry were done by then.
Johnston ruled out a wide-ranging inquiry into all the allegations stretching over a 15-year period.
That's reasonable. While there are disturbing issues, any inquiry would become unwieldy, costly and probably inconclusive.
Instead, Johnston decided 17 questions needed answering. The first 14 all related to Mulroney's business dealings with Schreiber in the 1990s. The last three are about Harper's inaction after Schreiber sent hundreds of pages of evidence to his office last March.
It's worth going through Johnston's questions.
What were the business and financial dealings between Schreiber and Mulroney?
Was there an agreement reached by Mulroney while still a sitting prime minister? If so, what was that agreement, when and where was it made?
Was there an agreement reached by Mulroney while still sitting as a Member of Parliament or during the limitation periods prescribed by the 1985 ethics code? If so, what was that agreement, when and where was it made?
What payments were made, when and how and why? What was the source of the funds? What services, if any, were rendered in return for the payments?
Why were the payments made and accepted in cash? What happened to the cash; in particular, if a significant amount of cash was received in the U.S., what happened to that cash?
Were these business and financial dealings appropriate considering the position of Mulroney as a current or former prime minister and Member of Parliament?
Was there appropriate disclosure and reporting of the dealings and payments?
Were there ethical rules or guidelines which related to these business and financial dealings? Were they followed?
Are there ethical rules or guidelines which currently would have covered these business and financial dealings? Are they sufficient or should there be additional ethical rules or guidelines concerning the activities of politicians as they transition from office or after they leave office?
What steps were taken in processing Schreiber's correspondence to Prime Minister Stephen Harper of March 29, 2007?
Why was the correspondence not passed on to Harper?
Should the Privy Council Office have adopted any different procedures in this case?
The entire cases raises troubling questions about way politics and money interact in our system. Failing to seek answers would signal our acceptance of dubious practices.
And failing to seek them as quickly as possible raises a whole new set of questions.
Footnote: No one knows how long the Commons committee could take to complete its investigations. The chair said he'd expected work to continue at least until the end of February, but there's no certainty given the potential for new evidence and political wrangling. It could Harper hopes to influence the committee to cut its inquiries short.

Carbon tax the best way to cut emissions

You would think that most of Canada's governments would agree on the power of the marketplace.
That's what's driven the great advances in computers, for example, that let anyone with a few hundred dollars buy a machine that outperforms anything available at any price two decades ago.
And it's what makes the drug trade so resilient in the face of decades of police activity. As long as there's serious demand, suppliers will take the needed risks.
But when it comes to climate change, Canadian governments - even free enterprise ones like the federal Conservatives - are reluctant to rely on market forces.
This week the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy weighed in with a report on climate change. More specifically, what needs to be done to reduce greenhouse-gas emmissions.
It was mostly a good news report. The roundtable, an advisory panel set up by Brian Mulroney when he was in office, said Canada could make dramatic cuts without significant harm to the economy.
But it said that to make that happen, the government would have to introduce a carbon tax, a cap-and-trade system, or both.
The principle seems obvious. Companies and governments and individuals won't change their behaviours without some incentives, especially if the change involves short-term sacrifice.
Businesses, for example, have an obligation to make profits for shareholders. If reducing emissions would cut those profits, they're unlikely to take action.
A carbon tax would provide the necessary incentive, the roundtable reported. A tax on fossil fuels - gas and diesel and coal and oil - would make it smart for companies and individuals to use less of them.
The cap-and-trade system works on the same principle. The government - or an agency of government - would set emission caps for industries and organizations. If a company couldn't meet its target, it would have to buy offsetting credits from some other company that was emitting less than it was allowed.
Again, it's a market-based incentive. If carbon credits have value, then it's worth investing in cleaner fuels or more efficient processes. There's an actual return on investment.
The roundtable's support for the idea isn't surprising. The group includes environmental and business leaders. It's headed by David McLaughlin, who until August was Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's chief of staff.
The group has both an understanding of the environmental issues, the business risks and the value of letting the market drive change.
But it took federal Environment Minister John Baird a matter of hours to reject the report's conclusions.
Partly, Baird was just playing politics. "We think a new tax sounds like a Liberal idea," he said, a silly way to dismiss the proposals without dealing with their substance.
He also says the government will ensure that big emitters will pay in some still-to-be-determined way under the Conservatives' climate-change plans.
But the roundtable found that without a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, the federal government would not meet its targets for greenhouse-gas reductions.
None of this is new. The European Union has a successful carbon-credit trading market and B.C. is working with several states and provinces to launch one.
And Sweden and Norway have carbon taxes. Quebec introduced its own version in October, imposing a 0.8 cents per litre tax on gasoline. The revenue - about $200 million a year - will go to greenhouse-gas reduction measures. Finance Minister Carole Taylor is also considering some sort of carbon tax as part of next month's provincial budget.
The plans would have to be well thought-out. The roundtable said the carbon tax should start at a low level and increase gradually, to give industry a chance to adapt.
If that's done, it said, there would be no serious economic impact.
And Alberta has raised legitimate concerns that a carbon tax would see money taken from the province and redistributed elsewhere.
But the problems are manageable. The Harper government should not be so quick to reject its expert panel's advice.
Footnote: The report offers a good backgrounder for the coming provincial budget. Premier Gordon Campbell declared climate change a central issue a year ago and the province has announced tough targets. But so far, there are few details. The budget will be watched closely for signs of progress.

Basi-Virk trial faces more delays, troubles

More troubling developments in the Basi-Virk government corruption case.
It's been more than four years since the raid on the legislature and the RCMP's warnings about the reach of organized crime.
Things have dragged terribly. Now, the special prosecutor appointed by the Attorney General's Ministry has taken his battle to have a witness testify in secret to the B.C. Court of Appeal. The trial date was set for March; that's now unlikely.
To recap. The RCMP searched the legislature in connection with allegations of corruption in the $1-billion sale of B.C. Rail. Dave Basi, key aide to former finance minister Gary Collins, and Bob Virk, aide to then transport minister Judith Reid, were charged. A lobbyist for one of the bidders will apparently say he supplied the bribes. He wasn't charged.
Progress has been slow, mostly because of failures by the prosecutor and RCMP. In our system, the Crown has to disclose the evidence it has collected to the defence. The process is supposed to be about justice, not winning convictions.
The prosecutor and police have failed to meet their disclosure obligations, drawing repeated rebukes from Justice Elizabeth Bennett,
The latest twist is the prosecutors' application to have a police informant provide evidence in secret.
Not only the public and reporters would be kept in the dark; the Crown wanted defence lawyers barred from hearing the evidence. It's an aggressive legal move, based on a three-month-old Supreme Court of Canada decision.
Last month Bennett rejected the prosecutors' application and ruled the defence lawyers should be present.
But now special prosecutor Bill Berardino is challenging her decision in the B.C. Court of Appeal. Figure a long delay as a result.
It's a tricky issue. Perhaps the testimony is important and can only be obtained in secret. Berardino would have an obligation, you could argue, to fight to ensure it is heard. If he didn't, he could face criticism for not pursuing the case diligently
But the appeal raises fairness issues. Prosecutors can spend endless amounts of public money on hearings and appeals; defendants are mortgaging their futures to pay their legal bills. For the prosecutors, delays have few consequences; for defendants they mean more months or years with unproven criminal charges hanging over them.
Another big issue is about to break. Premier Gordon Campbell promised complete co-operation with the investigation. But now the government is arguing some documents should be kept secret, even though they are relevant.
The government is citing lawyer-client privilege. Anyone has a right to keep conversations with their lawyer secret. That's considered one of the protections needed to allow people the right to a proper defence.
But anyone can also exercise the right to waive solicitor-client privilege - to say that they have nothing to hide and consider the first priority getting at the truth. (The Liberals, in opposition, urged the former government not to use solicitor-client privilege as a justification for withholding information.)
The Campbell government's effort to withhold evidence is a big mistake.
The other interesting development comes courtesy of Bill Tieleman, columnist for 24 Hours, a Vancouver free newspaper (and a New Democrat). Tieleman, who has done a first-rate job covering the trial, did a freedom of information request for the notes of a government public affairs staffer who had been monitoring the trial daily.
There's nothing wrong with that. Given the nature of the case, the government has reason to want to know what's going on.
But Attorney General Wally Oppal originally offered some quite goofy reasons for the premier's office watch on the trial when the news broke. The staffer was there to help the media and the public, he suggested. The FOI response shows that was not true.
This is all getting awfully messy. And much muckier days are ahead.
Footnote: The wrangling over disclosure and other issues has generally not made much news. Expect that to change this year as the trial grows closer and the legal issues - like the Crown's desire to have witnesses testify in secret - become more significant.

If this is such a great place, why aren’t we happier

We can be a smug lot here in B.C., especially in Victoria.
But we’re the least happy people in the country, according to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which looked at peoples’ satisfaction with their quality of life in 18 Canadian cities.
Victoria — the oceanside city of gardens and warm weather — ranked last. We’re the least happy people in the country when it comes to the way we live.
The happiest city is Saint John, N.B., also an oceanside city, but in most ways the opposite of Victoria. It’s a city of industry and faded glory, not gardens. There’s a pulp mill on one side of town and a sprawling oil refinery on the other. Poverty is much more prevalent; the average family income is 15 per cent lower. The climate is much harsher — cold, snowy winters, foggy, gloomy springs. On many levels, the city has struggled for much of the last 100 years.
So why are the people there happier than us?
I’ve lived in both, and propose two reasons. (They fit with a larger theory of geography as destiny.)
Saint John’s glory days ended in 1860; since then there has been a steady exodus of people, mostly seeking work and opportunity.
It’s not just that people moved away. It’s who moved away. For decades, Saint John has lost the ambitious, bright and career-focused. It was not a place of opportunity. Those who sought it – in business, or science or any other area – picked up and moved away.
There are thousands of exceptions. But Saint John, like much of the Maritimes, lost a lot of bright, achieving people over the years. Bad news for the communities in many ways.
There’s a flip side, though. The people who left — by definition — placed a lower value on community and family and friends. If those things were important to them, they would have stayed.
The people who remained valued those things, and nurtured them.
And they are happier today.
Here in Victoria, the population has been increasing for decades. The people who come here aren’t interested in career. This is a pretty small backwater, really.
And they aren’t that interested in community or family. They chose to leave those things behind, after all.
They’re interested – generalizing broadly - in a pleasant, easy place to pursue their individual interests – especially things like gardening and golf and sailing and hiking that require warm weather.
There’s nothing wrong with that. It might indicate selfishness or self-absorption. Equally, it could show a commitment to exploring individual interests and passions.
But the result is that a lot of people not much interested in community have ended up living here.
And the study suggests that we’re less happy as a result.
This isn’t all just my — logical — conjecture. A colleague reminded me of a reader research project done about a decade ago for the Times Colonist. The consultant, from the U.S., found our market interesting in part because people here had what she called “low news needs.” Their interest often stopped at the property line.
There’s nothing definitely good or bad about all this. People have a right to pursue personal interests, ambition or a great fondness for the place they grew up.
But the research does suggest that we pay a price in happiness for our lack of community here.
We should worry about that. In fact, it’s puzzling how little weight we give to the whole idea of happiness in thinking about the way our society or community or lives function. We measure economic performance religiously, and even monitor health stats and school performance scores. The Progress Board can tell you how British Columbia ranks with other provinces on everything from research spending to poverty to environmental protection.
But not in happiness.
It’s something worth thinking a lot more about. Who wants to live in the least happy city in Canada?
Footnote: The decline of geographic community has been one of the biggest changes in North American life over the past 40 years. We were bound together in a web of social relationships – church groups, service clubs, community sports leagues, curling clubs, even neighbourhood gatherings for drinks parents who gathered Friday nights for drinks and games – that has largely unravelled.

A New Year's resolution, with a twist

A New Year’s resolution, with a twist
I’ve been writing similar columns this time of year for a while now, always urging readers to make the same resolution.
Decide to pay attention for the next 12 months. To the people closest to you, but also to the way life works for people in your town and across the world. We’re not good at paying attention.
We suddenly notice people have changed - children have grown up, parents have grown old, lovers have grown apart. We wonder, when did that happen?
Of course it happened every day, right in front of us. But we weren’t paying attention.
We miss a lot. You grow close to people when you share experiences with them, travel through life together.
But if you don’t notice where their lives are taking them, the little bumps and joys, you’re left behind. Soon you’re somewhere else all together.
And the smallest things you missed put you there. A hesitation when you ask how things are. A laugh. A brief sad look. The kind of things you don’t notice, unless you’re paying attention.
It’s not just about the people right around you, though. I believe that when people see that something is wrong - an injustice, cruelty, waste, foolishness - they want to right it.
If they can’t, they expect those responsible to fix it, with that responsibility often falling to governments.
I have to believe that. There’s not much point in writing this kind of column unless you believe that people will consider the information and analysis and - at least sometimes - do something with it. Just chronicling our troubles isn’t enough.
I also believe it’s true. It takes us a while for us to figure out there is really a problem, and then longer to decide what to do. Longer still to judge who should do it.
But we don’t like to see people left behind, or children in care shortchanged, or businesses struggling with pointless government regulations and paperwork. Eventually, we deal with the problems.
But only if we notice - if we’re paying attention.
Here in Victoria, we’ve suddenly noticed big problems on our streets. Drunken louts at bar closing time. A lot of homeless people, including many dealing with serious mental illness, damaging drug addictions or both.
They didn’t just appear one day, a group of 50 hanging around the needle exchange, panhandlers on the corners, heaps of belongings and cold-looking people outside Streetlink, the main shelter.
But we didn’t notice when the first people released from mental hospitals in the 1970s, with the promise of support in the community, started showing up on the streets. The support wasn’t there; they could make their way without it; so they fell.
We didn’t notice when the small group of older alcohol addicts were joined by more and more people haunted by cocaine, their limbs twitching, sores on neck and arms and faces.
Because we didn’t notice, governments thought we didn’t care. If we’d been paying attention, it would never have got so bad.
Instead, this all got so much worse that we now face a giant problem.
So I’m amending the resolution that I hope you’ll adopt. It’s still to pay attention. And really, it’s best to start close to home. With the people you live with each day, the world you inhabit - the way the breeze feels on your face or the sky looks like at dusk on a middling spring day.
But when it comes to the bigger world, maybe this year we could all resolve to focus. To pick something that seems wrong, and make it better.
Maybe it troubles you that children in care are pushed out into the world the day they turn 19, with no real support or guidance. (Except for the efforts of some extraordinary foster parents.) Or you don’t think people with mental illnesses should be dumped on the streets.
Pick something, and resolve to make it better by the end of the year. Demand action of politicians. Give some money. Give some time. Hold yourself accountable.
Footnote: To the regular readers out there, and the editors who decide to run the columns: Thanks. It’s a great privilege to be able to share information and thoughts on things I think important. And a great responsibility. I do appreciate you’re willingness to read this far, whether you agree with me or not.

Censored government reports on Basi-Virk raise questions

Bill Tieleman, who has done a fine job covering the Basi-Virk BC Rail corruption trial, writes on the results of an FOI request for the reports of the government staffer who has been monitoring the courtroom happenings. The results suggest Attorney General Wally Oppal mislead the legislature about what the staffer was doing.
And the censored reports raise questions about what the government is keeping from the public.
You can read it here.

Government's silence on sea lice and wild salmon a problem

Sea lice are quite creepy. They look like little tadpoles - maybe one-quarter of an inch long. And they attach themselves to salmon and other fish and suck their blood.
It's usually not a problem. A few lice don't hurt a fish.
But for several years, researchers have been finding that salmon farms changed things. The concentration of fish in a small area meant dense sea lice populations as well. And the lice didn't just stick around. If a migrating wild salmon passed through the area, it encountered much denser populations than in the rest of the ocean.
And too many sea lice - particularly on a three-inch young salmon - can kill. (It's not a B.C. problem. European fish farms have faced the same issue.)
The industry and government have denied the problem exists. The industry has tended to attack the researchers.
The province has ordered a few farms fallowed during migration periods. But it's pro-industry. The government has had an all-party legislative committee report on aquaculture for eight months now without responding in anyway to the recommendations.
But the evidence of the sea lice problem has been piling up. Last year, when an environmental group laid charges, the Attorney General's Ministry appointed a special prosecutor to decide whether they should go ahead. Bill Smart - the special prosecutor in the Glen Clark case - sought independent scientific advice. The fisheries expert, Frederick Whoriskey, concluded salmon farms were creating a sea lice problem that was killing pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago. A single farm produces more than 50 million sea lice eggs a year, he found.
Smart concluded that sea lice from salmon farms were harming the wild fish. He decided not to go ahead with the prosecution because it wasn't clear that was against the law.
The industry went on the attack; the government ignored the independent prosector's report.
This month, a research study published in the journal Science found the sea lice from salmon farms in the area threaten wild pink salmon with extinction. Local pinks could be gone within four years, the researchers reported.
This was a peer-reviewed study; other scientists had to assess its legitimacy before it could be published.
Research can always be disputed. The provincially funded Pacific Salmon Forum says its research shows no connection between fish farms and sea lice on wild salmon.
But the findings published in Science can't sensibly be ignored. Risking the future of wild salmon stocks, given the evidence, would be reckless.
The question is whether the industry and the government will see it that way.
The industry's reaction so far has unfortunately been to deny a problem. Accepting the risk would open the door to potential solutions. The authors of the Science article note that relocating the fish farms to deeper waters or away from wild salmon migration routes would help.
The provincial government has seemed frozen. It handed the whole problem off to an all-party committee of MLAs, with an NDP majority, which held hearings. Its report was done in May.
Agriculture Minister Pat Bell said the government would have a new aquaculture policy by the fall. But so far, nothing.
The industry provides needed jobs in coastal communities and the farmed salmon fetches about $240 million a year. The economic impact is significant.
But opposition has moved beyond the environmental movement. A coalition of some 100 ecotourism businesses says the sea lice damage to wild salmon threatens their $1.4-billion industry. It bought a full-page ad in The Globe and Mail this fall to press the federal and provincial governments for action.
And the future of wild salmon is one those issues that goes beyond fishermen and coastal communities.
There are lots of factors in the vanishing salmon, from climate change to development to logging practices.
But sea lice are part of the problem, according to solid research. The government is going to face increasing pressure to deal with the issue.
Footnote: The legislative committee called for governments to help the industry to move to "closed containment" systems instead of mesh pens. But the salmon farmers say practical technology doesn't exist. The committee also offered common sense measures like removing environmental protection from the Agricuture Ministry, was is charged with promoting the industry.

Mulroney makes the case an inquiry is needed

I want an inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber scandal. It will cost a lot, say $75 million, and no one will likely be found guilty of anything.
But we need a light that can shine into the dark and sleazy world of lobbyists and pals and politicians in Ottawa. An inquiry might do that.
Brian Mulroney's testimony before the ethics committee was the last straw.
Sure, he succeeded in reminding everyone that Karlheinz Schreiber, the German businessmen who paid him with bundles of cash, has a tenuous grasp of the truth.
That was no surprise. Schreiber has shown he'll lie under oath if it's advantageous.
Schreiber had been distributing money and favours around Ottawa for years in an effort to get an arms plant built in Nova Scotia.
Mulroney testified he met with on June 23, 1993, while he was still prime minister. They didn't talk about future work, Mulroney said, "except to say that given my international background and contact he'd like to keep in touch and perhaps call on me again some day in the future."
Nine weeks later, while Mulroney was no longer prime minister was still an MP, he went off to meet with Schreiber in an airport hotel room.
According to Mulroney, Schreiber wanted him to lobby other countries to buy armoured vehicles from the same company that hoped to build a plant in Canada.
Schreiber says he was paying Mulroney to use his influence to clear the way for the Nova Scotia plant.
Both agree that Mulroney took an envelope of cash from Schreiber. There was no contract or written agreement or even a specific indication of what he was supposed to do. Just an envelope stuffed with $1,000 bills - $75,000 Mulroney says, while Schreiber says $100,000.
Mulroney's explanation was that Schreiber said he was an international businessman who dealt in cash.
But what kind of international businessman is that? Are we really to believe that Bill Gates and Richard Branson don't use cheques?
Mulroney says it was a mistake on his part.
But he repeated the mistake twice more, meeting Schreiber in hotel rooms in Montreal and New York over the next year and taking more envelopes full of cash.
Mulroney never deposited the money in a bank. He just kept in safe deposit boxes and "integrated" it into his requirements.
The former prime minister testified he lobbied world leaders on Schreiber's behalf, but there's no record of his activities or corroboration.
Mulroney also acknowledged that while he took the money in 1993 and 1994, he didn't report it to Revenue Canada until 1999, after Schreiber faced criminal charges.
His explanation didn't make much sense. He claimed the money was used only for his expenses; he took no money for his work. So it wasn't income.
But then once Schreiber got in trouble, Mulroney said he decided to declare it to Revenue Canada.
Mulroney also left questions about his 1996 testimony in his lawsuit against the federal government over allegations related to Air Canada's purchase of planes from Airbus. The government paid Mulroney $2.1 million to settle the suit, which he says all went to expenses related to it.
During that process, Mulroney testified under oath that he had met Schreiber "once or twice for coffee" after leaving office. He said the question he was asked only related to the Airbus affair, and he had no obligation to reveal the hotel room meetings to collect cash.
Who knows what to believe? And that's not even getting into Schreiber's other political donations, or his claim that he contributed money to the effort to oust Joe Clark, clearing the way for Mulroney.
Add the whole sordid mess to the corruption uncovered by the Gomery inquiry, and it is impossible to have confidence the federal government is not tainted.
An inquiry is the only way to restore public trust.
Footnote: Columnist Norman Spector had a front row seat as Mulroney's chief of staff. He wrote in The Globe and Mail that action needs to be taken to curb the influence of lobbyists who move back and forth between partisan activities and attempts to influence the politicians they support with time and money.

What's the government hiding in the Basi-Virk case?

The always interesting PacificGazette takes a look at the government's effort to keep secret documents the lawyers in the Basi-Virk trial say are needed to defend their clients.
The government is apparently choosing to invoke lawyer-client privilege to keep documents from the court. Like any client, it could choose to waive the privilege and release the information.
The Gazeteer offers a good summary and links here.

Liberals reverse child rep budget cut blunder

Score another one for democracy and Vaughn Palmer.
The Liberals made a big blunder earlier this month, practically and politically. Government MLAs on the legislative finance committee cut the budget request of the Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond.
After about 45 minutes of unfocused questioning, the Liberal MLAs decided to cut the proposed budget of the representative by 11 per cent. They didn't say where the office should reduce spending or offer any rationale. Turpel-Lafond had told them the cuts would make it impossible to do critical elements of her job, like investigating children's deaths,
But the Liberals went ahead. The New Democrats on the committee, who wanted to provide the full amount requested, were outvoted.
Why? The other officers of the legislature - the ombudsman, auditor general and the rest - had received their full requests. Why chop the representative?
Given the lack of any answers that made sense, it was hard not to notice that days before Turpel-Lafond had reported critically on the government's lack of progress on implementing the Hughes report. She found there had been no action on key recommendations designed to improve things in the troubled ministry of children and families.
The budget cut looked much like payback, petty, vindictive - and self-destructive.
The Liberal attack was led by MLAs Randy Hawes and Ian Black. It showed a remarkable lack of common sense or awareness of just what a mess the government has made of most areas affecting the lives of children and families over the last six years.
Hawes has tried to defend the cuts to the budget. He says there wasn't enough detail to satisfy him that the extra money Turpel-Lafond was seeking, so he pushed for a lower budget.
Fair enough, on some level. But 45 minutes of questions followed by a closed-door decision to cut funding doesn't seem like a serious attempt to find out about any concerns.
And if Hawes and his fellow Liberals didn't have enough information to approve the budget, the certainly didn't have enough to cut it, either.
The representative was looking for more money - an increase from $4.8 million to $6.6 million.
But that was no surprise. The office was created as a result of Ted Hughes report on the many problems in the government's support for vulnerable children and families. The agency started with a rough budget set up by managers in the attorney generals ministry, before there were any real plans or staff.
The government acknowledged the guess at funding. A year ago, the Liberal chair of the same committee assured Turpel-Lafond that money wouldn't stand in the way of working on a better future for B.C. children.
"As the budget moves forward, if you have any requests, if something isn't working, if you find that it wasn't enough or there have been changes, as a committee, we are mandated to be here for you," said Blair Lekstrom, then the committee chairman.
But the six Liberal MLAs on the committee didn't agree. The committee chopped $700,000 from the budget.
Hawes hadn't complained about a lavish $560,000 reno at the ministry of children and families. He and the other Liberals voted for a 29-per-cent raise and expensive pension plan for themselves. Then they got all careful when the advocate for children came looking for money.
The public reaction was quick and negative. Vaughn Palmer of the Vancouver Sun, one of Canada's best political columnists, is insightful but usually judicious in assessing politicians' performance. This time he called the Liberals on the committee "nitwits."
And Friday, the committee called special meeting to take another look at the budget. The premier's office had read the clippings.
You, and Palmer, helped convince the Liberals that it was a mistake. They could not get away with cutting the money for independent oversight in this area. They restored all the money they had cut.
In all, it's probably been useful. Turpel-Lafond need to establish her independence, She's done that by facing down the government on budget cuts.
Footnote: Liberal MLA Bill Bennett chairs the committee. I'm not sure if he deserves blame for letting the cuts go ahead or credit for working out solution after meetings with Premier Gordon Campbell. A pre-election cabinet shuffle is likely in June; Bennett, dumped over an abusive e-mail he sent, would be a good addition.

We all helped Pickton kill those women

Robert Pickton had it right. If you're going to kill somebody, pick someone whose death won't much matter, at least to the people who do.
Like addicted women, working in the low end of the sex trade. When they disappear, hardly anyone notices, outside of a few family members.
The missing women's case showed that Vancouver police didn't even care much as they heard the stories - more and more - of women who just vanished. It just didn't rate as serious.
That's largely our fault. When the street sex trade gets too visible, or moves to close to our neighbourhoods or places we go, we're unhappy.
Understandably. The trade brings drugs and cars and noisy fights. Who wants to explain what's happening down the block to a curious six-year-old?
But for at least two decades, our unhappiness has never led us actually to demand a change in the way the trade works. We just want the police to push the street sex trade somewhere else.
After that has happened a half-dozen times, the women end up in the worst possible places, for them. In Vancouver, the Downtown Eastside, a place almost extraterrestrial in its weirdness. In Victoria, a light industrial area that's largely deserted at night. Around the province, the sex trade ends up where there's not much help for the women if something goes wrong.
So they get beat up, or raped - or just vanish, like they were never there. We don't care about that, once they're out of sight. Not enough to do anything, anyway.
And Robert Pickton - and too many others - figure that out. We don't expect the sex trade to stop, really. In fact, in Canada, we've made it legal.
But in one of these cruel and ridiculous perversions, we've fixed the rules so that people who try and work in the legal business face massive risks. Prostitution is legal. But talking to clients about what the arrangement isn't. Living off the avails - or providing a safe workplace, to look at it another way - is also illegal.
Most people selling sex find ways around the problems, sort of. Escort agencies and massage parlours provide a place to work. Independents operate from apartments.
But at any time, about 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the business is done on the street. The women are generally addicted and struggling to live. The work is low-paying and very risky.
And sometimes, deadly. And the risk is largely because of the law, which forces them to work in the most dangerous places.
A lot of people have professed to be troubled by the Pickton trial. Newspapers have nervously warned that their coverage might be upsetting.
But not all that upsetting. Not so upsetting that we would actually change anything so that more women don't die.
The reality is that nothing is different today. The work is as dangerous. Another Robert Pickton could be out there, probably is out there.
It's a cliché to point out how much more we cared about the missing women when they were dead than when they're alive.
But it's also truly telling. The Pickton trial cost about $45 million. The investigation into the crimes - including the huge effort at the farm - cost about $70 million. The total is $115 million and rising.
Imagine what could have been done for the 500 street level prostitutes across B.C. - that's a guess - with that money. That's $115 million that could have been spent on addiction services or housing or support - or the early intervention that made have a difference in the lives of the people who ended up on the street.
Yet we can't even be bothered to change the laws so the worst dangers of the sex trade are reduced.
Robert Pickton murdered the six women. His sentence will likely keep him off the streets.
But we helped him kill them. And we've done nothing to change the grim reality that more women will die in the same way.
Footnote: The debate has begun on whether the Crown should press ahead and try Pickton on the other 20 murder charges he faces. There seems little point. The families will get few answers; Pickton, 58, is unlikely ever to be released from custody; and the $30 million could be better spent on the living.

Norman Spector on the lobbyist disease

Norman Spector offers an inside and insightful look at the lessons we should learn from the Schreiber-Mulroney affair (and from the Basi-Virk affair as well, I'd say). The column is in The Globe and Mail today or here today.

Basi-Virk B.C. Rail case grows messier all the time

I take a look at the latest twists and turns, glance at why it's gone so wrong and remind readers what;s going on in a Times Colonist column today.

Taylor's departure caps rough session for Liberals

Some not entirely random notes on the legislature session just ended.
Yes, the legislature was sitting. The MLAs have been back here for four days a week since Oct. 1, with a couple of breaks. They will have sat 19 weeks this year.
It's been an eventful fall. The big news last week was Finance Minister Carole Taylor's announcement that she won't run in the 2009 election.
That's too bad. Taylor has been good for the Liberals and public life in B.C. since she was elected in 2005. It's not just her success in the job, including reaching agreements with public sector unions at a time when they were fiercely angry with the government.
She's shown that respect, courtesy and civility - and niceness - can be part of the job, even in the ugliest moments in the legislature.
I was won over early. Not long after Taylor was named finance minister, I called on a Friday with some question for the minister. There was no callback by deadline, but that's OK. Ministers are busy.
But about 8 p.m. I got a call from Taylor. She knew it was too late, but she wanted to apologize for not being able to get back to me in time.
Of course, the flip side to her departure lies in the questions it raises. Even one of the best jobs in cabinet wasn't enough to keep Taylor in the life. It's hardly a recommendation for smart, sane people considering a leap into politics.
All in, it was a good session for the New Democrats. When it started, there was a lot of sniping about Carole James' leadership. By the end, that had been silenced.
Partly, that reflected the problems the government faced over the last eight weeks. Every week brought new bad-news stories. There was the $400-million convention centre cost overrun and Solicitor General John Les' fumbling on the airport Taser death, gang slayings and policing.
Forests Minister Rich Coleman couldn't explain or defend forest land deals that enriched a few select companies by up to $1 billion, at the public's expense.
And Children and Families Minister Tom Christensen was hung out to dry as the Representative for Children and Youth reported the government has failed to act on critical recommendations from the Hughes report. (Christensen also faced revelations that the ministry blew $560,000 on a lavish head-office reno while it refused to provide needed money to help children who had been sexually abused.)
And as well as the usual problems in health care, the NDP raised questions about care-home quality.
There was still lots of good news on the economy. And it's hugely significant that the legislature approved the first two agreements reached under the B.C. treaty process.
But all in all, the Liberals were glad to get out of Dodge.
The session seemed to mark a turning point for a lot of the New Democrats. There was a sense up until now that many of the MLAs were intimidated by the job of holding ministers to account, nervous of making a mistake.
In this session, you could see them getting confident and comfortable, and as a result much more effective. There were a few MLAs who have been consistently effective - Leonard Krog, Adrian Dix, Mike Farnworth, Bob Simpson.
Now there are another dozen who should make ministers nervous.
(One downside is that abuse and catcalling in the legislature rose sharply. The NDP opted for a more combative approach; sadly - at least for those who hope for civility in politics - it seems to have been effective.)
Meanwhile, another big potential time bomb for the Liberals is ticking down. The Basi-Virk corruption case is now scheduled to go to trial in March, amid more twists and turns about evidence and testimony. If it goes ahead, it will be an interesting backdrop for the spring session.
Footnote: Remember the government's $10-million Conversation on Health, an idea of Premier Gordon Campbell? The report was released last week - on the day after the session ended, when Taylor announced she was stepping down and while Campbell was out of the country. It's fair to say the government is not thrilled with what it heard from the public.

Liberals stumble – again – on children and families

I can't figure out why the Liberals are bungling the important work of protecting children and helping families.
They made a mess of the responsibility in their first five years, with reckless budget cuts and mismanagement. That ended with the Ted Hughes review of child and family services in 2005, when the problems spun out of control.
Hughes held the government to account. He blamed the problems in part on budget cuts and botched restructurings. And he made 62 recommendations to get things back on track.
It was an opportunity for a fresh start, and Premier Gordon Campbell grabbed it. He promised to do better. The government would accept and implement every one of the recommendations, Campbell said.
But the Hughes report was delivered in April 2006. And the government has a dismal job in acting on the recommendations.
One of things it did do was restore independent oversight, appointing a representative for children and youth.
This week, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the Saskatchewan judge who got the job, reported on progress on the Hughes recommendations.
It was horrible. She found only 18 recommendations had been implemented, or almost implemented. Progress was made on another 19.
But that left 25 recommendations - 40 per cent - where there had either been no action, or the Ministry of Children and Families hadn't been able to provide any information to indicate what had been done.
We're talking about protecting the most vulnerable kids and helping struggling families.
The recommendations that have fallen by the way were serious. Some dealt with making sure First Nations child protection agencies were fully supported in the terribly important and difficult work they do. (The death of Sherry Charlie, beaten after being placed in a home by a native agency, led to the Hughes inquiry.)
Hughes said the ministry urgently needed a functioning complaint process, both to help people and gather information about problem areas.
There should be an actual plan for the regionalization push at the core of the government's strategy, Hughes said.
But 19 months later, the ministry couldn't show that those basic recommendations had been acted on.
Worse, the representative's report - couched in polite language - said there were signs the ministry was paying lip service both to the Hughes report and the principle of independent oversight.
Turpel-Lafond said she had hoped the ministry and her office would do a joint, co-operative report on progress on the Hughes' recommendations, which they would present together. Children first and all that. But the ministry balked.
Turpel-Lafond also noted that after she reviewed ministry plans and asked about the lack of reference to the recommendations, it sent her the same document with a few references to the Hughes report inserted.
All this left the government in a bad spot. And then things got worse. When the ministry entered its public meltdown phase, Campbell hired Lesley du Toit, a South African who had been on a ministry expert panel, as a special advisor. Weeks after the Hughes report came down, du Toit was named children and families deputy minister.
Since then, there have been a lot of meetings and talking about transformation, but not much in terms things you can see or measure.
Du Toit did an interview with the Times Colonist - the first time she had agreed to speak with reporters at any length since taking the job. She maintained the representative was wrong in finding a lack of leadership on the recommendations,
Her explanation for the missing information on progress wasn't reassuring. "Part of that is because a lot of the progress we make isn't written into documents; it's progress that is made that can be reflected by saying, 'this is what we've done,'" she said.
Anyone who has been a manager knows that when people can't offer any evidence of actions - especially on specific recommendations like Hughes made - they generally don't exist. Talk of restructuring and continuums is not a substitute for actually getting things done in the meantime.
Campbell and the Liberals were rightly critical of the wretched job the NDP did in managing the children and families file.
Amazingly, they have done worse and are blowing their chance to make a fresh start and set things right.

Courts give another boot toward treaties

The government expected a celebration last week.
The second B.C. treaty process success, an agreement with the Maa-nulth of Vancouver Island, was being introduced in the legislature.
But a big court ruling stole the show. One of the longest, most expensive land-claim cases came to an end with a very big win for the Tsilhqot'in First Nation.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice David Vickers heard the natives claim for their traditional territory, about 4,000 square kilometres in the Chilicotin, near Williams Lake. (That's about two-thirds of the size of Prince Edward Island.)
The Tsilhqot'in claimed title - actual ownership of the land. The provincial and federal governments said that couldn't be proven. Even if the natives spent time there, that didn't equate to ownership.
That's one of the big irritants in relations with First Nations today. They say the government's starting point in negotiations is to fight any title claims.
Vickers found the Tsilhqot'in had occupied the land for 200 years before it was taken from them. There was no payment or agreement to transfer ownership.
So they still owned it. He found they could show title to about half the plan claimed - about 2,000 square kilometres. The Tsilhqot'in had an interest and right to be consulted on the rest of the land.
There are some technical hitches that affect the claim.
But the ruling still sent quick shock waves through the treaty process. Typically, treaty talks have seen First Nations getting about five per cent of the traditional claimed territories. The Tsilhqot'in got 50 per cent by going to court.
There are other variables, of course. Treaty settlements have included cash and resource allocations.
But the Tsilhqot'ins' success means that expectations have just been raised sharply at the negotiating table.
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip sees it as a bigger change than that. "Clearly the process is dead," he said after the ruling. It makes more sense to go to court than negotiate, said Phillip, a long-time opponent of the treaty process.
Not really. For starters, this case has taken 17 years and the Tsilhqot'in still don't actually have anything. If the governments decide to appeal, the case could be lost in the courts for another 10 years. That means more than a generation will have lost a chance at a better life.
Negotiations only work - in any situation from selling a car to trading hockey cards - if both parties have at least some interest in reaching an agreement. The more both want a deal, the better the chances of success.
The track record of the B.C. treaty process suggests no one is that keen on a deal. It's been 14 years since it all began, and more than $1 billion has been spent - about $6,000 per native in the province.
And so far, there are two treaties - the Maa-nulth and the Tsawwassen.
Sure, it's complex sorting out what happened and how much is owed. But two treaties numbers don't suggest great urgency. When people want a deal, they find a way to get it. That has not been happening.
It's understandable. For the federal and provincial governments, there are not many reasons to be keen on agreements. It would be good to have the issue put to bed, and for B.C. some certainty around land claims would bring increased investment and economic activity.
On the other hand, doing nothing has a lot of advantages. It doesn't cost much and the problem can be pushed off into the future, when someone else is in power.
For First Nations, there should be reasons to do a deal and get on with life, with digging out of the hole they're in. But there's also a big fear about settling too soon, for too little.
The Tsilhqot'in ruling should encourage the governments to get serious about reaching agreements. The risk in leaving to the courts is enormous.
And First Nations, all they have to do is look around to see why it's time to settle these claims.
Footnote: Vickers urged the governments and First Nations to sit down and reach agreements, rather than spend money and years in legal battles. "This case demonstrates how the court ... is ill-equipped to effect a reconciliation of competing interests," he noted.