Thanks, Liberals for discrediting sleazy attack ads

VICTORIA - The Liberals deserve some credit for exploding an irritating myth about negative attack ads.
Savvy political types smile smugly at critics of negative campaigning. Voters may claim to dislike the ads, but they work, the operatives claim.
Not always, as the stumbling Paul Martin campaign showed this week. If the ads are extreme enough, and stupid enough, and so ridiculous that they insult voters' intelligence, they don't work. They backfire.
And that's especially true when the attacking party has gone through a month of campaigning without establishing strong clear positive reasons why people should vote for them.
I have no real problem with negative advertising. It's fair to drag out your opponents' past comments - like Stephen Harper's apparent support for Canadian involvement in Iraq - and demand that they explain them. (Though it becomes ludicrous when carried to extremes; a Liberal candidate in Ontario is being badgered about a comment he made in 1974 as a student.)
And it's legitimate to draw voters' attention to the flaws of your rivals as part of your overall campaign.
But the Liberals have shown that voters will turn on the attackers if the ads are seen as dishonest or unfair.
The lesson isn't new. The Conservatives were hammered in 1993 when, in an effort to salvage Kim Campbell's doomed campaign, the party ran an ad that mocked Jean Chretien's tilted smile, a a product of facial paralysis that struck in childhood.
It shouldn't be hard to know when the ads have crossed the line.
DIshonesty is fatal. One of the Liberal ads claims Harper "admits he'll have to either raise taxes, or run a deficit" to deliver his campaign promises. That is simply untrue, the Liberals have admitted, although the ad continues to run. The :Liberals don't think the Conservative fiscal plan works, but Harper didn't say any such thing. Another ad suggests Harper's rise was funded by powerful U.S. right-wing interests. The Liberals admit they have not a shred of evidence.
Sleaze is also self-destructive. The famous ad that implies jack-booted soldiers will soon be ordering Canadians around at gunpoint fails the sleaze test. The fact that the ad didn't run makes little difference; the party paid for the ad and posted it on its web site along with the others. It can't pretend it doesn't exist.
What Harper actually proposed during a Courtenay campaign stop two weeks ago was to set up army units of 100 soldiers in big cities where there is no military presence. to improve emergency response. It may not be a good policy, but it isn't a step toward a police state.
Attack ads, in this media savvy age, also can't be transparently manipulative. Both parties have stumbled into that trap, using a sinister looking photo of their opponents' leader as the backdrop to their ads.
And the effectiveness of negative ads depends on the public's attitude toward the attacking party. If voters like you, you can get away with more. If they don't, the ads will be seen as desperate efforts to snatch an election after the party has blown its chance to win legitimately.
At this point in the campaign the polls show the public has grown increasingly disenchanted with Paul Martin. That increases the risk that the ads will be seen as unfair and dishonest.
The big losers are Liberal candidates in close races - people like David Mulroney and Sheila Orr and Keith Martin.
Martin, for example, is battling to hold his seat in Esquimalt, which includes a large naval base. It was damaging to have his party paint members of the Canadian military as menacing oppressors. He says the ad was released by "some idiot" within the party. The party isn't sleazy, just incompetent, he's arguing, a troubling position with one week left in the campaign.
The Liberals could have run effective attack ads. A series of quotes from Conservative hopefuls, for example, on abortion, same sex marriage and First Nations, followed with a question about whether voters can believe Harper, or his candidates. Accurate, negative and acceptable.
The ads are bad news for the Liberals, but perhaps good news for the political process. The public reaction has demonstrated to all parties that voters' tolerance for attack ads is limited, and that parties veering into dishonesty or sleaze will pay a price.
Footnote: Some pundits have wondered if the Liberals intended the controversy, especially over the military ad. Perhaps it was a ploy to allow them to have the ad seen on newscasts while still being able to deny any intent to air it, they speculate. Anyone who has talked to furious Liberal candidates would laugh at the conspiracy theory.

NDP picks up Southern Interior seat from Tories

OK, that's a little premature.
But Stephen Harper's reasonable decision to dump candidate Derek Zeisman should hand the riding to New Democrat Alex Atamanenko.
The race was already expected to be close.
But then came the news that Zeisman is charged with attempting to smuggle a used Mercedes and alcohol into Canada, and hadn't told the party about his legal problems. Harper said it's too late to drop Zeisman as a candidate, but he won't be allowed to sit as a Conservative if he's elected.
Not much chance of that.
Score a gain for the New Democrats.

Beware the experts in the campaign's last days (Not me, of course, those other guys)

VICTORIA - Most of the experts telling you what's going on in this election are likely no more astute than the average lab rat.
That's the conclusion - perhaps slightly overstated - of an American book that looks at the performance of political commentators, and it's an important thing to remember as the campaign enters its final days. People who plan to vote strategically to block a Liberal or Conservative government are likely relying on the experts' analysis, if only to assess the closeness of the local and national races. Other voters may be interested in pundits' predictions on how the parties would behave if elected.
But Philip Tetlock's' book, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It, shows those voters could be led badly astray. (I haven't read the book, just a fine review by Louis Menand in the New Yorker. At least I confess my knowledge gaps.)
Tetlock, from the University of California, has spent 20 years studying the accuracy and quality of experts' opinions. He's tracked the pronouncements of the academics and pundits who show up on the news offering their analysis - or write columns like this.
The experts are no more insightful or accurate than the average citizen, he found. In fact the more well-known they are, and the more frequently quoted, the less likely their predictions and judgments are to be accurate.
Tetlock set up experiments to test the insight and acumen of 284 experts over a long period, asking for predictions on topics within their areas. Then he measured their success, and found you would do better by writing the options on a wall and throwing a dart blindfolded.
So why do these smart people, paid for their insight and expertise, get it so wrong?
A bunch of reasons. Experts feel pressure to come up with predictions and opinions that are clever and somewhat surprising. You don't get invited back to a TV panel or asked to write more newspaper op-ed pieces if you state the obvious. I do radio and TV commentary from time to time. Often the interviewer winds up the interview by asking what's going to happen next on the topic of the day, and I sense disappointment if I say I have no idea, or state the obvious. No one likes to disappoint.
So experts look for obscure angles, or complicated ideas that are novel, interesting and reinforce their status as smart observers. Because they've studied the issues, they can grab bits of information to support their view. The problem is that the most obvious analysis is often the right one.
That's why lab rats can be better at making predictions. Tetlock writes about a Yale study where rats were placed in a T-shaped maze, with food at the end of one of the arms. The food placement appeared random, but it was placed at the end of the left arm 60 per cent of the time. The rats figured that out, and started going left most often, playing the percentages. Yale students were asked to observe the experiment, and say where they thought the food would be each time. They looked for patterns, and trends, and did worse than the rats at predicting because they ignored the obvious in favour of complex theories.
And experts, once they develop those theories, tend to stick to them and bend the facts to fit their views.
None of this means experts are irrelevant. It simply reminds us to be skeptical, to test the analysis and predictions against our own knowledge as well as the comments of others. It's a good time for that reminder. Many voters will be making complex calculations over the next few days, about the likely outcome of the election and the real agendas of the parties. It's reasonable to look for the experts for help.
But it's important to remember that they are quite likely to be wrong.
Footnote: The other trend is the emergence of the psuedo-expert, the pundits with close ties to each of the parties who gather to engage in predictable partisan bickering under the guise of commentary. The panels have become a media staple, even though they add little fresh or original to the public debate.

Skeena Liberal hopeful stomps out of all-candidates meeting over corruption charges

From the always interesting Smithers Interior News, we learn one Liberal candidate has an unusual way of dealing with the corruption question.
Liberal Gordon Stamp-Vincent has no chance of winning the riding. But his unusual approach to all-candidates' meetings could still matter. The NDP hopes Nathan Cullen can hold the huge riding; the Conservatives have hopes for Mike Scott, a two-term Reform MP for Skeena. Stamp-Vincent's outburst could shift potential Liberal supporters to the NDP.
Be interesting, given his demand for civil debate, to hear how he feels about the Liberal attack TV ads that accuse Harper of being funded by U.S. right-wing extremists and plotting some sort of military coup.


Liberal unapologetic for storming out of Houston meeting
By Thomas Barker
Smithers Interior News
HOUSTON — Skeena-Bulkley Valley Liberal candidate Gordon Stamp-Vincent stormed out of the all candidates forum at the Community Hall in Houston Monday night shortly after the candidates had finished their opening remarks.
The political rookie from Prince Rupert used his rebuttal card after a media question to Green Party candidate Phil Brienese to demand an apology from Conservative Mike Scott for allegations of Liberal corruption.
Stamp-Vincent said the allegations were insulting to him personally and many other honest hard-working people who belong to or work for the Liberal Party.
"I will have an apology, sir," Stamp Vincent said handing Scott the microphone.
Debate moderator Arnold Amonson intervened before Scott could reply but after the very next question, Scott used his rebuttal card to respond.
Scott requested a show of hands from the audience of how many people did not think the Liberal Party is corrupt to which only a few people responded.
"Are you going to demand an apology from all of these people too, Mr. Stamp-Vincent," Scott asked.
Stamp-Vincent immediately stood up and left the hall saying: "I do not have to take that, certainly not from you, sir."
All of the other candidates were dismayed by the disrespect the display represented to Houston voters.
"I'm surprised and disappointed," said NDP-incumbent Nathan Cullen.
On Tuesday, Stamp-Vincent stood by his behaviour.
"I felt I had to make more than a statement, I had to take an action," he said.
"I've knocked on over a thousand doors and most of the people I've talked to are disgusted with the negative campaigning."
During closing remarks, Scott used part of his two minutes to assure the audience that his corruption allegations were directed at the Liberal Party and not at Stamp-Vincent personally.
"I hope you all know that," Scott said. "I hope [Stamp-Vincent] knows that."
Stamp-Vincent, however, was not appeased.
"[The accusation] was directed at Liberals, I'm a Liberal as are many other honest Canadians," he said.
"It's a tactic to broadly smear a group based on the actions of four people.
"Sorry, that's not acceptable and there's a little more explaining to be done."

Martin stumbles, and a Conservative government looms

VICTORIA - Paul Martin was terrible in the leaders' debate Monday, and the question now is what that means for the last two weeks of this campaign.
I'm writing this minutes after the leaders have delivered their well-rehearsed closing statements. There is always the chance that I got it all wrong as I scribbled notes for two hours.
But Martin's performance looked sadly desperate and floundering. He appeared to be mentally searching through the key talking points his handlers had insisted he memorize, only to find them all jumbled and somehow wrong, and blurting out some barely relevant line. An actor auditioning, once again, for a role he needed terribly but probably wasn't going to get.
Partly Martin is the victim of expectations. He's been doing this job for almost 20 years, and working towards being prime minister most of that time. That creates an expectation of some skill, and perhaps a performance that could pull a faltering Liberal campaign back on track.
That didn't happen. Martin was semicoherent, off-topic, slightly crabby, offering a stream of obviously pat answers and rehearsed ad libs. There was no sense of the man, what he cared about or what he really would do in the next few years.
And he seemed desperate, among the most unattractive qualities in anyone seeking our love or affection.
Suddenly, from nowhere, Martin proposed changing the Canadian constitution. The federal government should never be able, even in extraordinary circumstances, to use the nothwithstanding clause to override the charter of rights, he said.
It's an obviously clunky effort to get same sex marriage back on the agenda. Maybe, Martin was suggesting, Harper would break his promise not to use the notwithstanding clause to ban gay marriages.
I'm an extremist on individual rights and freedoms.
But this is reckless. In Martin's new world, everything would be left to the courts and Parliament would have no recourse as judges interpreted the charter of rights.
And since Martin has not said one word about this major constitutional change before this week, it also looks terrible. The Liberals are prepared to mess around with the constitution to score a few political points.
The ploy was also ineffective. Stephen Harper brushed off the attack, saying he thought the current constitutional balance between Parliament and the courts was reasonable. He positioned himself as the man in the middle.
Harper and Jack Layton were not brilliant, but they consistently did better than Martin.
Harper's job was to avoid frightening people, and he succeeded. I'm not sure people who watched the debate ended up liking him better, but I don't think they would be scared. Harper seemed a slightly too smart policy wonk, but not terrifying. ("My strengths are not spin, or passion, and you know that," he said.)
Layton and the NDP should be much energized by the debate. He did fine, but that's not the news. Martin's collapse means a Conservative minority government is now looking very likely. Potential New Democrat supporters who were prepared to vote Liberal in order to block Harper can now return to the fold. The New Democrats had faced being caught in a squeeze between the two main parties. Now they can hope for four or five more seats in British Columbia.
We're in a complicated feedback loop now. If the Conservatives look sure to win - a good bet after the debate - will some people who just wanted to the Liberals a lesson have second thoughts? Where they will go?
But people who watched the debate saw the end of Martin's political career. It's strange in many ways. Canadians are working, the economy is strong, the government is paying down debt, yet Martin couldn't make that part of the debate.
Momentum does matter in politics. As the campaign winds down, and on election day, the party with the keenest volunteers will have an advantage.
Today, that is not much likely to be the Liberals.
Footnote: It was a long two hours for viewers looking for B.C. issues. Layton raised raw log exports, and Martin talked about the advantages of having Pacific ports. But that was it in terms of the province's special issues.
willcockcs@ultranet.ca

To solve the gun problem, overhaul our drug policy

VICTORIA - The Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats are falling all over themselves to get tough on gun crime.
And both parties are missing the real problem.
To deal with guns, you have to deal with gangs. And to deal with gangs, you need to make the drug trade less profitable. Nothing that has been proposed by the parties will do that.
Despite the Boxing Day killing in Toronto and several gang shootings in Vancouver, the rate of gun deaths has steadily declined over the last 20 years. When the final numbers are in, forest industry accidents in B.C.will likely have claimed more people than gun violence in 2005.
But the concern is legitimate. Gun deaths are down across Canada, but in centres like Toronto and Vancouver they are rising. There were likely about 100 murders in B.C. this year - the numbers are still being tallied - with three-quarters in the Lower Mainland. Vancouver police report they are dealing with about six per cent more gun incidents each year.
Without effective action, the problem will spill into Victoria and Kelowna and Prince George.
Guns aren't a problem across the urban centres. In Vancouver, young IndoCanadian men have been doing much of the shooting, and dying. In Toronto, it is young black men. The common link is an involvement in gangs.
That's who has the guns, police say, gang members and wannabes.
The Conservatives propose longer mandatory minimum sentences, an end to early parole release and more police. The increased policing, if targeted, will help. The other measures are costly and largely ineffective.
That didn't stop the Liberals from joining the 'get-tough' bandwagon this week. (We're no soft Pollyannas, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler proclaimed this week as the party flip-flopped on mandatory minimum sentences.)
This kind of talk may be good politics, but it's lousy policy.
The people who drive into a neighbourhood and spray a house with bullets already risk serious jail time. They are not given to assessing consequences, so longer prison terms aren’t going to make much difference.
The priority in tackling the gun problem should be eliminating gangs, or at least reducing their power and allure.
And without the big profits from drugs, the gangs could not exist. Young men may still hang around together, and do crime. But without the drug money, they would be a nuisance, not a threat. (The deadly Boxing Day gunfight in Toronto was reportedly over drug turf.)
Prohibition in the U.S. created Al Capone and his rivals, who turned streets into war zones over the big profits. We're creating the same kind of problem with our drug policies.
People who need and want an illegal drug - alcohol, heroin, marijuana - will get it. Criminals will take advantage of the opportunity to supply the market; the more difficult it becomes, the higher the prices and the more profitable the business.
The theory that aggressive enforcement can drive suppliers from the market has been proven wrong. Drug enforcement efforts have cost Canadians more than $2 billion over the last five years. And illegal drugs are easier to get, stronger and cheaper than ever. Attacking the supply has failed over decades, in many countries.
Instead governments should be tackling the demand side. Effective education to reduce the number of young people starting drugs. A massive investment in detox and treatment and support so people can quit, and stay off.
And legalization in various forms to end the hunt for drugs and money that consumes many addicts, and rob the gangs of their profits. Provide controlled heroin supplies and addicts can stabilize their lives, while gangs lose billions in profits that fund their enterprise. Allow possession of a dozen marijuana plants, and gang-run grow ops lose their domestic market.
The drug trade drives this problem. It's the reason gangs can form and thrive, and they're responsible for the rise in gun crime.
After years of failure, surely it's time for politicians to start talking about an approach that could actually work.
Footnote: Switzerland conducted a widely reported experiment in which 1,100 addicts received free heroin. During the test there was a massive reduction in criminal activity by the drug users and an increase in employment -- and not one overdose death. More than 80 people quit drugs while using free legal heroin.

B.C. voters will decide if Harper or Martin rules

VICTORIA - There's a good chance that a British Columbia voter is going to decide whether we have a Liberal or Conservative minority government.
A lot can change, but the polls suggest an extraordinarily close election, with the two main parties looking at about 115 seats each. They need 159 for a majority.
That means that Paul Martin and Stephen Harper will have to wait until the polls close in B.C. before they find who will be prime minister. Voters in about 20 ridings here will decide which party forms the next government.
That's why you're seeing the party leaders so often. B.C. only has 36 seats to Ontario's 106, but this time each one matters. And 22 of the races in B.C. are too close to call today, with seven of them so tight that any of the three main parties could win. There are potentially critical races in every part of the province.
The Conservatives have a lock on most of the Interior and North, but even in those regions there are some battles. The New Democrats hope Nathan Cullen will hang on to Skeena-Bulkley Valley, one of their five seats, but the Conservatives have a high-profile candidate in two-term Reform MP Mike Scott.
And the New Democrats are looking to make a gain in Southern Interior, where they lost by about 700 votes in 2004. Their candidate, Alex Atamaenko is running again. Conservative incumbent Jim Gouk is retiring, and Derek Zeisman - hurt in a campaign car crash - is attempting to hold the seat for them.
But the biggest battlegrounds will be in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island.
On the Island, New Democrat Jean Crowder is a solid bet to hold on to her Nanaimo-Cowichan seat. But the other five ridings are up for grabs. The Liberals hope Keith Martin can win again in Esquimalt, and that newcomer David Mulroney can hang on to David Anderson's Victoria seat. But in those ridings and across the Island the races are too close to call.
That's also true for many of the 21 seats in the Lower Mainland. Liberals David Emerson, Stephen Owen and Ujjal Dosanjh are likely safe. The Conservatives are counting on wins in Fraser Valley ridings and the New Democrats can count on Libby Davies winning in Vancouver East.
That leaves 14 Lower Mainland ridings too close to call, with all three parties having legitimate hopes . Former NDP provincial cabinet minister Penny Priddy has a good shot at replacing Chuck Cadman in Surrey North, thanks to an endorsement from Cadman's widow. Conservative Cindy Silver - of Focus on the Family fame - hopes to topple Liberal Don Bell in North Vancouver. Liberal insider Billy Cunningham hopes to knock off one-term New Democrat MP Bill Siksay.
The politicians have seen the importance of B.C. Martin was in Vancouver and Victoria this week, announcing plans to reduce the $975 fee that immigrants are charged, a move entirely aimed at winning back voters in Vancouver's multicultural community.
It's a volatile situation, and one that's hard to read.
Most voters seem polarized between those disgusted with the Liberals, and those afraid of the Conservatives. That means we will see more strategic voting. If voters are not enthusiastic about any party, their goal can be to block the most objectionable one.
That's a challenge for all parties, but especially the New Democrats. Liberal Sheila Orr is hoping to make up a 5,000-vote deficit to topple Gary Lunn in Saanich-Gulf Islands. Her best bet is convince some of the 14,000 NDP voters that they have a chance to prevent a Harper government, simply by voting Liberal. The New Democrats have to battle to avoid being squeezed into irrelevance.
It's good news for the province, which is getting extraordinary attention from all the parties.
And it shifts the pressure on to you. Your vote may well choose the next prime minister of Canada.
Footnote: This will be the year of strategic voting. Candidates have to establish their credibility as serious contenders, or risk seeing their support drift away. If a riding is seen as a two-way race, the third candidate is in big trouble as supporters opt to make their votes matter.

Haggard got $81,000 from taxpayers between campaigns

VICTORIA - Dave Haggard turned out to be one of the fainter star candidates on the Liberals' BC Dream Team in 2004, coming third in the election.
But all was not lost. Months after the vote, the federal cabinet government hired Haggard on a $9,000-a-month contract to write a report on apprenticeship. The former IWA union head was paid $81,000 between January and October, and then started to prepare for another run as a Liberal candidate in tis election.
It all shows quite breathtaking contempt for the public.
The Liberals recruit a candidate and parachute him into a riding. The voters reject him, and the Martin team uses taxpayers' money to pay him until it's time to try again, in a different riding.
No patronage or payoff here, says Haggard. Just the happy coincidence that he was the best person in Canada to prepare a report on apprenticeship issues. The pay - $108,000 on an annual basis - wasn't that great, less than he used to make as IWA president, he adds.
Haggard told the Vancouver Sun he did a first-rate job, talking to 275 stakeholders and delivering his report to Human Resources Minister Belinda Stronach. You can't actually judge how useful or necessary the report was, because it hasn't been released. Haggard blames the bureaucracy and Stronach's inexperience for the delay.
The whole affair leaves two questions. Do the Liberals think we're stupid? Or has the Martin team just decided that it doesn't matter what they do, as long as they can convince people that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives would be worse?
It's simply insulting to claim that politics and patronage weren't involved. The study could have been done by government employees. The work could have been awarded fairly, going to the best, most experienced contractor. Instead it went to a failed Liberal candidate, one the Liberal wheels in the province had wooed.
The decision to recruit Haggard for the Dream Teams shows how far out of touch the Liberals are. He's apparently supposed to help them woo leftish voters from the NDP, especially people with strong union sympathies.
But most people interested in a strong and democratic labour movement see Haggard and the IWA as partners with the provincial Liberal government in attacking unionized health care workers.
The BC Liberals wanted to privatize support services in hospitals and care homes. They thought the workers were overpaid, and that the best way to deal with the situation was to fire them - after using legislation to remove all job protection from their existing union agreements - and contract the work out to private companies which would hire new workers at lower wages, with poorer benefits and no protection.
But the health authorities that had to execute the plan were still worried. The private companies might be able to hire people at 30-per-cent lower wages. But then those employees might decide to join join a union -- perhaps even join the HEU -- and seek higher rates.
Haggard and his union saved the day for the employers. The IWA sat down with the three main companies bidding for the privatized work and - before employees were hired - agreed to contracts that provided low wages and few benefits. Job applicants had to sign an IWA membership card if they wanted a job interview.
The IWA got a big jump in dues revenue, including some unprecedented payments. The companies got contracts that they liked.
The employees got the shaft. They were denied the right to decide if they even wanted a union, or which one it should be. They were locked into an agreement they never approved, paying dues to a union they never chose.
Haggard and the IWA, now part of the United Steelworkers, were scorned by most people in the union movement for betraying the employees' rights. It hardly makes him an appealing candidate.
The Liberals didn't get that, just as they didn't get that the $81,000 contract for a failed candidate was simply wrong.
Footnote: Haggard stands little chance of success. He's running against New Democrat Libby Davies, who won by almost 13,000 votes in 2004. Former provincial cabinet minister Joyce Murray is carrying the Liberal banner in New Westminster, where Haggard ran last time and is given a good chance of success.

Test your global cultural awareness

OK, a question for all those who think themselves well up on popular culture around the world.
Which Canadian sporting event made it into the top three for global television audience this year, trailing only the Superbowl and the UEFA Champions Leage football final?
The answer is the Montreal Grand Prix, one of two North American stops on the F1 circuit. About 53 million people tuned into the race, according to Iniative, a media tracking company that follows such things.
I watch F1, although I'm not sure why. Most races involve four minutes of excitement among 90 minutes of routine, and they are often on at weird times. But the sheer scale of the whole thing and the vast technological effort put into such a limited end are compelling.
But what struck me about the item is how few Canadians would guess at the global reach of the Montreal event, and the potential promotional value.

Leak or not, Liberals bungled corporate tax policy

VICTORIA - I don’t know if Ralph Goodale should resign now that the RCMP are investigating whether pre-election leaks from his ministry helped insiders get richer at the expense of the rest of us.
But I do know that the whole income trust saga is a case study of tax policy bungling, and the triumph of politics over sound planning.
Stripped down to its essence, this is pretty straightforward stuff.
Some smart tax lawyers and corporate types found a loophole in Canada’s income tax laws, and drove through it in ever increasing numbers.
The ploy was simple enough. A corporation is taxed on its profits, including the money sent out to shareholders as dividends. But companies found they could create income trusts and funnel their profits through the trusts to shareholders without paying taxes on the money.
They paid less tax, the payouts to investors were bigger and the value of the businesses increased. Happy days.
Except for people who pay income tax. The rush to take advantage of the trust loophole meant that the federal government was losing about $300 million a year in tax revenue. The money has to come from somewhere.
The federal finance ministry started to worry, belatedly, about the losses. Some economists also questioned whether the shift hurt corporations’ ability to innovate and invest to create growth, since the priority would be on keeping up payments to the trust.
None of this should have caught the government off guard. Australia and the U.S. went through similar experiences almost two decades ago, and decided to close the tax loopholes.
But Ottawa dithered. By the time the federal government started talking about changing the rules, Canadian income trusts were worth $120 billion. They had become popular investments, and a reduction in their tax benefits would cut their value. Canadians would see their RRSPs and mutual fund holdings lose ground.
Corporations, the investment community and seniors’ groups were all over the government. And with an election imminent, the Liberals backed down. On Nov. 23 Goodale announced that income trusts would keep their tax status, and that the tax on regular corporate dividends would be cut to try and reduce the rush to trusts.
The news was sure to have a big effect on investment markets. So the finance ministry made the announcement in the evening. That way everyone supposedly had the same chance to consider the implications before markets opened the next day.
Except that trading patterns that afternoon, hours before the information was public, strongly suggest some people knew what was coming. Trading volumes soared, and some buyers started snapping up shares in companies that would benefit from the announcement. BCE Inc., the communications conglomerate, was a big winner as a result of the dividend tax cut. Its shares jumped 3.3 per cent in the final two hours of trading before the announcement. The Yellow Pages Income Fund rose by 3.4 per cent. Other stocks showed similar extraordinary trading.
The people who bought made quick gains. After Goodale’s announcement that evening their holdings were worth even more.
But the people who sold to them lost out. If they had hung on to those shares for one more day, they would have got much more for them.
It could be that the buyers just made a good guess. Rumors of similar action were flying around in the pre-election frenzy.
But the analysts who have looked closely at the trading patterns say it’s much more likely that some investors had advance knowledge, which they used to their advantage - and to the detriment of those who weren’t in on the plan.
That’s what the RCMP is investigating. It’s a serious issue. If information leaked, then people were cheated and Canada’s reputation as a safe place to invest will have been harmed.
But just as serious is the government’s stumbling response to the whole issue of income trusts, ending with the last-minute pre-election corporate tax cut.
Canadians deserve a more considered, intelligent tax policy.
Footnote: Goodale says he asked his staff if there was a leak and they said no; Paul Martin is standing by his finance minister. But newspaper headlines on the RCMP investigation were not the kind of kick-off the Liberals wanted for the second half of this long campaign.

Rights case finds government abandoned special needs students

VICTORIA - It hardly seems revolutionary to declare that students with learning disabilities have the right to an education.
That’s the essence of a BC Human Rights Tribunal ruling that found the government discriminated against children with disabilities. When cash-strapped school districts needed to cut spending, they made kids like Jeffry Moore take the hit.
Moore’s family launched the human rights’ complaint after he was abandoned by the public school system. Jeffry is bright, but severely dyslexic. By the end of Grade 3 he still couldn’t read. The North Vancouver school district had referred him to its centre for special needs students for intensive help, but then closed it in 1994 to save about $290,000 a year.
Find a private school if you want your child to learn, the Moores were told.
So they did. Jeffrey’s father was a bus driver, and his mother a secretary. Private school bills were crushing. But they didn’t see a choice.
The Moores did see a chance to turn things around for other children, and launched their human rights complaint.
Their victory was complete. They get compensation for a decade of private school costs.
And the tribunal ordered the government to mend its ways. The education ministry has a year to ensure that funding for students with severe learning disabilities reflects the number of children who need help, and to set up a system to make sure that school districts are delivering the services.
It’s the kind of ruling - by a court or tribunal - that raises worries about non-elected people setting public policy. The theory is that politicians are elected to make those decisions. They should have the right to deny education to kids with disabilities, or aboriginal children, or whoever else they choose. the argument goes.
But a reading of the ruling shows the tribunal stayed within the laws the politicians created. The school act says “it is the goal of a democratic society to ensure that all of its members receive an education that enables them to become personally fulfilled and publicly useful, thereby increasing the strength and contributions to the health and stability of that society.”
And the Human Rights Code prevents discrimination. Denying a child an education because of a disability is against the law.
The government can still set education funding levels and spending priorities. School districts can justify a lack of services if providing them would cause extreme hardship, the tribunal noted.
But it’s illegal to deny services to people with disabilities as an easy way of saving money.
British Columbians should welcome the ruling on practical grounds.
Jeffry got the help he needed in a private school. He has just graduated from BCIT and is apprenticing as a plumber. He’s achieving what the school act promised - personal fulfillment and a chance to make society stronger.
Contrast that with the outlook if he had continued to struggle, without adequate help, in the public school system, and dropped out or simply graduated without basic literacy skills.
This isn’t a partisan issue. Jeffry’s case started way back when the Harcourt government was in power, and more than decade later students with special needs are still often the first to suffer when school districts face money troubles. In 2001 school districts had identified 47,000 with special needs. Then the Liberals ended targeted funding for those students. Now school districts say there are only 40,000 students with special needs. Either there has been a miraculous drop in students with learning problems, or thousands of children have been abandoned as a low spending priority.
Vince Ready’s fact-finding report on the teachers’ strike confirmed that support for special needs students is inadequate.
Education Minister Shirley Bond isn’t commenting on the tribunal decision. The government has 60 days to launch an appeal.
But the principle seems simple. The government promises children a chance at an education. It’s a commitment that’s worth keeping, for all students.
Footnote: The government faces more problems over the issue. A Vancouver law firm is planning a class-action lawsuit on behalf of dyslexic students and their families, arguing the failure to identify the disability and help students resulted in serious long-term damage to their lives.

Eat badly, smoke and lose your right to health care

VICTORIA - Down in the U.S. companies are getting ready to fire smokers.
Over in England, overweight people are being told they won't get knee or hip replacements.
And here in B.C., the province's chief medical health officer has just warned that diabetes - largely preventable - is already a $1-billion annual cost to the health care system. Within a decade, that will double unless we change our ways.
All three stories point to the need to start a debate on just how we're going to handle self-inflicted illness and injury when it comes to allocating scarce treatment resources.
Provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall focused on diabetes in his annual report. About 220,000 British Columbians have been diagnosed with the disease, and the number is expected to reach 390,000 within 10 years. Its complications can be cruel - heart and kidney disease, amputations and death.
And the problems are, Kendall reported, largely preventable. About 90 per cent of the cases are Type 2 diabetes, and people can slash their risk - and the cost to us all - if they eat healthier diets, exercise and keep their weight down.
Which raises a question about individual responsibility and the how we allocate finite health care resources.
U.S. companies, facing a health cost crisis far greater than anything we've seen in Canada, have started to make choices, with smokers the first target. Some are increasing health care premiums for smokers, or offering incentives and support for people who quit.
And some are firing people who fail tests for tobacco use. Scotts Miracle-Gro has told its 5,400 employees they have until next fall to quit, or they'll get the chop. (About 30 states have laws protecting people from being fired for smoking.)
It's not a moral judgment that smokers are flawed. The decision is based on economics. Smokers cost too much.
The British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has just reported on the right of people with self-inflicted medical problems to treatment, and taken a similar approach The influential institute looked at the hard practical questions. Is it right to make a child needing a liver transplant wait in the queue behind a person whose illness is caused by years of alcohol abuse?
It's a tough question. Alcoholism is a disease too.
The institute took a cautious approach. Patients shouldn't be penalized for making themselves sick, it said. But if their behaviour reduces the chance of a successful outcome, then treatment can legitimately be delayed or denied. Why spend scarce resources on a liver transplant for someone like alcoholic former footballer George Best, who kept drinking and died within three years?
In reality health care providers have made those kinds of decisions. British National Health Managers in East Suffolk needed to save money this year, and so have stopped doing knee and hip replacements for anyone with a Body Mass Index over 30. If you're five foot nine inches and weigh 205 lbs, for example, no replacement. The surgery is riskier, outcomes poorer and artificial joints don't last as long. Joint replacements for overweight people are an inefficient use of scarce dollars.
A similar approach is take by some doctors in B.C, openly or not.
It's a difficult issue, theoretically and practically.
Type 2 diabetes, for example, is not always linked to diet and exercise. And people do not always have control over their circumstances. B.C.'s welfare rates, according to a new study from the Dietitians of Canada, don't allow a nutritious diet. Children from families on welfare are at increased risk of diabetes, and most people wouldn't argue they should be denied treatment.
But we shouldn't dodge the questions. We're already rationing surgery, often in arbitrary and unreasonable ways.
Demand and treatment options are increasing, while resources are finite. Finding the fairest, most efficient way of allocating those resources means looking at all the factors - even ones that make people uncomfortable.
Footnote: The other obvious issue is prevention. Kendall says a 25-per-cent reduction in the diabetes rate would produce annual savings of $200 million. That justifies a large upfront investment to expand existing programs aimed at increasing our health, and reducing the risk of diabetes and other illness.

STV referendum plan, electoral boundary commission both need work

VICTORIA - Things are looking rocky for the Electoral Boundaries Commission, the panel with a lot to say about how democracy works in B.C.
So rocky - and expensive - that it's time to rethink the path ahead.
The commission is important. It will decide how the province is carved up into ridings for the next election, a process that's complicated and politically sensitive. Rural areas will lose seats, growing urban areas will gain and boundaries will be bent.
And this time the commission has to come up with riding boundaries both for the current system and the proposed single transferable vote proportional representation option. That's part of the preparation for another referendum on STV to be held along with the municipal elections in the fall of 2008.
Premier Gordon Campbell's plan for a second referendum is a clever solution to the narrow defeat for STV in May. The proposed reform just missed the required 60-per-cent threshold. But almost 58 per cent of voters backed the new system. It would be irresponsible for government to ignore that kind of message.
So Campbell announced another referendum for the fall of 2008. This time voters will have more details, including the ridings to be used under the new system.
Under STV there would be fewer, larger ridings, with two to seven MLAs each. Most of Greater Victoria could be one riding, for example, with four MLAs. On election day you would no longer just mark an 'X' beside one candidate, rejecting the rest. You would rank as many candidates as you liked.
When the votes were counted, the results would reflect the rankings. A voter might rank an NDP candidate first, and two Liberals second and third, and a Green fourth. All the votes would matter.
The result should be a more representative and diverse legislature, with MLAs who are more responsive to their communities.
Campbell's proposal makes excellent sense.
But the timing is looking like a problem. Chief Electoral Officer Harry Neufeld told a legislature committee that he is still working out all the planing details. But the tight timeline between the fall referendum in 2008 and the May election in 2009 means Elections BC will have to prepare to run the election under both systems, he says. That could mean a large cost, possibly tens of millions of dollars, to prepare for STV with the money wasted if - unhappily - the referendum should fail.
There are options. Holding the referendum along with the fall municipal elections offers some cost savings. But the overall savings might be greater if a standalone referendum in the fall of 2007 allowed Elections BC to prepare more effectively. Pushing the provincial election back six months to the fall of 2009 would ensure that the budget was debated before the vote and reduce the pressure on Elections BC to spend time and money preparing for two different kinds of elections.
A delay would also allow time to look at controversial appointment to the three-person Electoral Boundaries Commission. The commission was established back in the Vander Zalm days to take the politics out of rejigging ridings. It's always composed of Neufeld, a judge and a third member appointed by the Speaker, after consulting the premier and the opposition leader.
Bill Barisoff picked Louise Burgart of Fort St. James, part owner of Apex Alpine resort and a former school superintendent. NDP leader Carole James backed the choice, knowing Burgart from her own days as head of the BC School Trustees Association.
Burgart is likely an excellent person. But she's also a partisan Liberal, as the always diligent Sean Holman of Public Eye Online has reported. Apex has donated to the party. Burgart campaigned for successful Liberal candidate John Rustad and urged people to vote Liberal in a letter to the Prince George Citizen during the last campaign.
The appointment opens the door wide for future partisan appointments by the party in power, and a graceful way out would serve the public interest.
Footnote: The legislature's finance committee met behind closed doors last week to consider funding recommendations for Elections BC, the auditor general and other independent offices. Their recommendation may include comments on the best way to handle the whole process.

Surrey plan, Alberta test offer health care models

VICTORIA - Anybody wondering about the future of their local hospital should pay close attention to the overhaul of medical services in Surrey.
The problem was crowding at the Surrey Memorial Hospital, in the emergency room and the wards.
But the solution backed by the province wasn't a bigger hospital, or even just a larger ER. Instead the services are being carved up into separate centres, with the aim of reserving acute care hospital beds and high-end emergency care for those who really need them.
So the health region has just opened a "minor treatment unit" for people who don't really need the full emergency service but show up there anyway. Instead of clogging the waiting room and sitting for hours - and creating more delays for people who really need emergency care - they get sent off to the minor treatment centre.
A massive ambulatory care centre is going to be built nearby, sort of a junior hospital. People who need outpatient care, day surgery and other activities that don't require the acute care support can be treated there. It will include a primary care clinic housing family doctors, and people to help with chronic disease management.
The idea is simply. Get every patient into the system where it makes sense. Increased specialization allows cost-efficiencies and wait time management, and you can avoid the high cost of having someone who only needs minor first aid clogging a busy emergency room.
Health Minister George Abbott is an enthusiastic backer of the approach, being tried for the first time in B.C. He expects a similar strategy any time hospitals are built or expanded. "What we're seeing is very much a model for the future," Abbott says.
Hospitals in Salmon Arm, Kamloops, Kelowna and Nanaimo are already under increasing pressure. Abbott says a similar approach will be taken in those communities, although changes will likely be incremental.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a study this month that advocated taking the concept farther. Dr. Michael Rachlis said governments should be building more specialized surgical clinics for minor procedures and low-risk surgery. A clinic that does only knee and hip replacements can deliver faster, better care at lower cost, just like a service station that does only oil changes.
Rachlis also wants governments to pay a lot more attention to "queue management," the science of moving people from start to finish smoothly and quickly. He argues people wait too long for surgery even when enough operations are being done, because the system is clunky. Patients move through a series of tests and specialists visits with little co-ordination and frequent long delays. Simply managing that process efficiently cuts waiting times.
A report on an Alberta experiment this week confirmed that the approach can work. In the first eight months of a new approach to hip and knee replacements, the wait from getting a referral to specialist to surgery was cut to three months. It had been averaging 20 months.
The project included money to keep operating rooms open. But many of the gains came from managing patients' progress through the system, and eliminating needless waits for tests or to see specialists or physiotherapists. A change as simple as scheduling all tests and consultations for each patient for one day cut out long delays.
Any increased costs were recovered. People who wait almost two years for surgery lose income and suffer, and their health deteriorates. Because patients got surgery before their health began to fail, the average hospital stay was cut from 6.2 days to 4.3 days - an enormous cost saving.
Some of the principles may be harder to apply in smaller centres, although the idea of clinics that are also "minor treatment units" may may good sense where a full emergency room can't be justified.
But the new approaches, in Surrey and across the mountains in Alberta, show that health care problems can be solved within the current system.
Footnote: B.C. needs to make improvements. The province is meeting most of the first handful of wait time standards agreed to by the provincial health ministers. But the province isn't close to providing knee and hip surgery within the required six months. More than half the patients wait longer than that. Many wait much longer.

Harper and Layton fare best in debate round one

VICTORIA - Not a bad leader's debate night in Vancouver, although I did feel a bit of a loser spending my Friday evening in front of the television.
Nobody scored a big breakthrough, nobody stumbled badly, but I'd call it a better night for Stephen Harper and Jack Layton than it was for Paul Martin.
They had much easier jobs.
For Harper, the challenge was not to look like an angry right-winger. He mostly succeeded, at least after the first few minutes. The debate relied on taped questions from Canadians. The first one came from a mother with a lesbian daughter, who wanted to know what the parties would do about same sex marriage.
The other three leaders said the issue is one of fundamental human rights and the decision has been made.
Harper offered his new position that while he would allow a free vote on same sex marriage, he would not use the charter of rights' notwithstanding clause to force a ban on same sex rights.
As Martin pointed, it's a foolish position. The charter protects the right to same sex marriage. The free vote is meaningless without a commitment to go the next step and over-rule the charter.
But aside from that, Harper did well. His plan to cut the GST came across as simple and progressive compared with Martin's less coherent defence of other tax cuts. Harper got a great break because the question on the issue came from a disabled woman whose income was so low she paid no taxes. A GST cut would help her, she said, but an income tax reduction would make any difference. It's a strong platform item.
And Harper effectively defended the idea of giving money directly to parents for child care. It's not good policy, directing hundreds of millions of dollars to affluent families whose children are already receiving excellent care. But it was much more concrete than NDP and Liberal commitments to send more money to provinces to create child care spaces.
Across most issues, Harper sounded reasonable, his most important objective. Even on health care, Martin couldn't effectively raise doubts about the Conservatives' stance on issues like the increased role of private companies.
Layton also had an easier job. He wisely made it clear the NDP has no expectation of forming even a minority government. Elect New Democrat MPs, he said in a variety of ways, to make sure the other two parties don't run amok and reward their friends and backers. He hit issues like long-term care, and made a strong pitch for a better deal for new Canadians, a position that will help in close urban races in B.C.
And he wisely focused most of his criticisms on Martin, recognizing that the NDP needs to woo away Liberal voters.
Martin didn't do terribly, especially because he was the consistent target.
But his biggest challenge was to convince voters that the Liberals had something new to offer, and had learned from their mistakes. Faced with the sponsorship scandal, the best Martin could do was to continue to insist only a few people were involved, and note that he had quickly called the Gomery inquiry. It's not likely enough to ease dissatisfaction.
And Martin couldn't isolate Harper as too cozy with the Americans.
B.C. viewers who hoped a Vancouver debate might mean more attention to the province's issues were disappointed.
The other three leaders accused Martin of being slow to raise the softwood issue, and even slower to help companies hurt by the tariffs. Layton criticized the sale of Terasen to a U.S. corporation. And there was talk of the Pacific gateway. But there was nothing to convince voters that any one party would represent B.C. voters most effectively.
Harper likely convinced voters that he's not so scarey, and Layton made the NDP seem a credible option as a third party. That makes them the winners.
Footnote: Gilles Duceppe did fine, although he is largely irrelevant in these debates. He did offer the other leaders a missed opportunity when he said issues like same sex marriage shouldn't be revisited again and again once the vote has been held. No one noted the same could be said for Quebec sovereignty after two referendums.

Business joins call for energy heritage fund

VICTORIA - I remember the bumper stickers in Alberta when oil prices fell in the early ‘80s, and the jobs went away.
‘Lord, give us another oil boom. This time I promise not to blow it all.” (They were actually ruder, but you get the idea.)
The bumper stickers acknowledged a truth. We are, as a species, not good at recognizing that today’s good times won’t last.
And that’s one of the reasons the B.C. government should be looking at a special heritage fund for a share of energy revenues.
I’ve been pitching the idea for a while, but now the Progress Board has joined the cause. The board is a useful creation of Gordon Campbell, a panel of business types that reports regularly on how things are going in the province and on specific policy issues.
Last month the board released a report on energy policies. Among its recommendations was a call for an immediate look at some sort of energy heritage fund.
We are making a tonne of money right now off oil and gas. Prices are high, thanks to war and hurricanes, the reserves are good and government has done well at luring the oil companies.
But it’s not going to last. Prices will go down, fields will run dry and companies will move on to new frontiers. That’s just the way it is.
It’s a problem for governments. Use the energy money now and voters will like you. You can pay for tax cuts, or provide better health care.
But then one day the money stops flowing, and the government is in a very bad spot. People don’t like bad news.
Back in 1995 natural gas royalties were worth less than $100 million to the province. This year, it’s going to be more than $2.5 billion. The royalties were worth $27 to each British Columbian then. Now they’re worth $625 per person.
Sadly, it won’t last.
That’s the appeal of a heritage fund. If governments grow dependent on windfall energy revenues, they face nasty crashes. If they don’t spend the money, they are criticized for excessive surpluses.
But a special fund for resource revenues solves the problem, and provides a break for future generations. Slosh a billion or so a year into a heritage fund, and you end up with a cushion to help the transition when the oil and gas trickle instead of gushing. There’s money to maintain services, or train toolpushes for a new job.
And there’s a recognition that when you cash in on a non-renewable resource, you have an obligation to cut your grandchildren in on the action.
It’s not some unproven idea. Peter Lougheed, Alberta’s popular and competent premier, launched that province’s heritage fund in 1976, with a promise of 30 per cent of energy revenues. The fund was capped in 1988, but stands at $11 billion. Alaska’s fund stands at $32 billion, despite paying dividends to every resident each year. Norway has $227 billion set aside.
There are other advantages.
The B.C. government is keen on both offshore oil and gas and coalbed methane development (although the Progess Board counsels a slow, cautious approach to methane). Both are controversial, and will be more acceptable with a promise of lasting benefits.
And a coalition of environmental groups came out in support of the idea last year. They believe that a heritage fund encourages government to manage the resource prudently. A government that’s short of cash and looking for an energy windfall may be prepared to cut regulatory corners to encourage development. If the revenue is slated for a heritage fund, there is less incentive to rush.
The Progress Board thinks the province has enough immediate financial issues that a heritage fund is still in the future. But it said the government should set up an expert panel to start looking at energy revenues, and reviewing heritage fund models from other jursidictions.
The government should take the excellent advice.
Footnote: The board’s energy report has already had a big influence. It sharply criticized BC Hydro’s energy planning efforts and urged a larger government role in power policy. This month Energy Minister Richard Neufeld scuttled Hydro’s announcement of its new long-term energy plan. The report is available at www.bcprogressboard.com

What I said, and what Jane Morley said, on children's issues

In a recent column for the Vancouver Sun I offered my thoughts on the failures of the Child and Youth Office set up to replace the Children's Commission and the Child, Youth and Family Advocate.
Child and Youth Officer Jane Morley had a different view.
Below are the column, and Morley's response. The dedicated can find her annual report at www.gov.bc.ca/cyo, under publications, and judge for themselves.


Children's needs still the same, they just don't get help now
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - Jane Morley’s annual report as the child and youth officer struck me as hopeless, on so many levels.
And it added to evidence that the decision to eliminate the Children’s Commission and Child and Family Advocate was a damaging mistake.
The report, released four months later than last year, is often incomprehensible, mostly vague and about activity, not results. I have followed these issues, and I can not for the most part figure out what the report is saying.
Consider the officer’s first objective. “Contribute to increased participation of children and youth in decision-making processes related to issues affecting them personally, and acceptance of advocacy for and by children and youth as integral to their meaningful participation.”
First, that’s not really an objective. If you could figure out what that means - and I’m betting you can’t - there’s nothing measurable there, no clear actions or results, no way of judging success. No commitment.
So how is the officer doing on this topic? Not well, according to the report.
“We recognized that some confusion existed about our role in individual cases, and were also concerned about inconsistency in the way we handled telephone calls about individual cases,” the report says. “We recently established an advocacy team to provide more focus and consistency in our approach to individual disputes and complaints.”
And, by the way, the report mentions, the child and youth office gets about 1,000 calls a year from people seeking help with individual cases. That’s one-third the number the Child and Family Advocate got before the Liberals shut that avenue down in 2002. (Alberta’s Children’s Advocate handles up to 4,000 requests for help a year.)
The issues and needs haven’t changed. People just don’t get help now.
That’s by design. The former Child and Family Advocate was charged with helping families and children navigate the system. The legislation setting up the child and youth officer position bars advocacy on behalf of individuals except in “extraordinary cicumstances.”
Morley held a press conference this week to talk about her report.
I don’t think anyone left feeling that they had got answers to some of the most important questions.
Start with the most glaring. At the press conference Morley handed out a handy guide to the eight separate investigations under way into everything from Sherry Charlie’s death to the breakdown of public reporting on how government care for children.
Not one of those investigations was launched because Morley’s office raised concerns about the issues involved. Questions from families, news reports and opposition pressure uncovered the problems and forced the government - for the most part slowly and grudgingly - to act.
That’s a massive failure. The child and youth office has been up and running for more than three years. These issues should have been recognized, and raised. They weren’t.
The result has been a crisis that dominated this session of the legislature, and chaotic and overlapping investigations to try and deal with the unanswered questions.
And confirmation that effective public oversight has been lost.
I grabbed one of the last annual reports from the Children’s Commission as I was writing this. It included 24 specific priorities for the ministry to consider for the coming year, and reported in detail on progress on priorities from previous years. The commission noted it had completed and reported publicly on 137 individual child death reviews and made 101 recommendations to prevent future deaths. (The commission followed up each recommendation and about 90 per cent were at least partially implemented.) It offered exampls in the report.
The commission was also responsible for reviewing all critical injuries to children in the government’s care. It completed 32 reviews that year, half involving suicide attempts, and offered valuable findings on ways that the ministry could respond more effectively. External injury reviews are no longer done.
And the commission reported on its audit of care plans for children, and research projects on suicide and the role of alcohol in child and youth deaths.
The report was clear and specific, celebrating successes as well as noting areas for improvement. It provided insight and accountability. It let the public know that someone was watching to make sure we do our best for the children and familes who need our help the most.
It was, in short, most everything that the child and youth officer’s report was not.



Jane Morley:  Live Kids Need More
By Jane Morley
I recently received an email from a bright and lively woman who has a difficult task working with people who want to turn around their lives, many of whom are young people, some in their teens, who fall between the cracks in the system. She is a sometime journalist and knows that game very well. She writes:
My new line of work has made me acutely aware of the tremendous lack of services out there for struggling families, and I have to admit I get tired of all the media energy for this discussion about child deaths and long for them to apply the same diligence to getting services and support to the live kids.
That is exactly how I feel. I see my job as advising...and hopefully persuading...the Government to transform the child welfare system in British Columbia so that live children and youth can be better served. The excessive, and sometimes furious, focus on death reviews could well derail a genuine child welfare system transformation.
My first thought after reading Paul Willcock's column "Children's needs still the same, they just don't get help now" was a kind of despair. If an experienced journalist and former broadsheet publisher was prepared to willfully misread my annual report in such a fashion, then how could I do what I set out to do and persuade the government to stick to their plans to transform our child welfare system.  
Perhaps my politically knowledgeable friends were right when they advised me not to take the Child and Youth Officer's post. They warned that the issues and dilemmas surrounding child protection constitute an electrified third rail of B.C. politics that has shocked an often rapid succession of ministers and their deputies in Social Credit, NDP and BC Liberal governments.  For more than 30 years, this political electricity has proven fatal to most, if not all, of the superintendents and provincial directors of child welfare in their position. All those in that post were numbered among the bright up-and-comers in the system and many of them went on to have successful careers elsewhere.
This inspired a second thought, and second thoughts are often better than first ones. My second thought was to fight back against any derailment of the system's transformation and child welfare public policy improvements caused by an agitated hunt for political advantage that combines with the tabloid media's mantra that "if it bleeds it leads."  
My reasoning is straightforward. I have a statutory mandate to independently advise the government on how to transform the child welfare system.  This transformation will not happen without harnessing the strengths and commitment of those who went into child welfare to improve the lives of children and youth.  Constant negativity undermines this. There have been far too many buyouts and burnouts.
I feel an obligation, given my mandate, to try to stop the derailment. My independence is an independence to say what I believe is right, not what others want me to say. This includes the government, but it also includes the official opposition and even, dare I say it, voices in the media. If my job, in part, is to "speak truth to power" then it is important for me to recognize that the opposition and the media also have power.
I do not intend to bow to the pressure to focus on child death reviews. Nor do I intend to make broad public statements, extrapolating from the unhappy fact of child death reviews remaining undone, to join those who declare that our child welfare system is in chaos. There is no conclusive evidence that the child welfare system in British Columbia is worse today than 10 years ago or in any way significantly inferior, or superior, to the other child welfare systems across North America.
I want it to be superior. We now have a special opportunity in British Columbia to take a quantum leap forward in addressing the intransigent realities of our failure to improve outcomes for Aboriginal children in B.C. and to make our system the best in North America. The New Relationship, and the recently signed accord with First Nations, holds the promise of meaningful partnership between Aboriginal communities in British Columbia and the provincial government - a partnership that is necessary if we are to bring about transformative change for the most vulnerable children  and youth in this province.
Of course the Government need not accept my advice. They may well not like my recommendations because transformations and transitions cost money and there are many competing demands for money, including rapidly growing amounts for health and education.  But no one in government is saying don't give that advice and that is a good thing.  
It is unfortunate that Adrian Dix, the opposition critic, in ignoring, as did Paul Willcocks, the substance of my report did not take the opportunity to use it as a means to pressure the government to implement the recommendations I made. As most people who work in the child welfare system know, his Leader, Carole James, who knows first hand the system and its problems and the likely cures, is on record favoring greater aboriginal autonomy and community authority and as supporting the move to regionalization that I advocate for in my report.
I don't have all the answers. But in my annual report, I try to raise the necessary questions and issues so that government can provide better answers to protect all our most vulnerable children and youth, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal.

Liberals flip-flop and admit child death failures

VICTORIA - Now we're getting to the truth about child death reviews.
The Liberals first denied there were any problems. Once that was clearly untrue, they denied that the failures had anything to do with chopped budgets or bad planning.
"This is not a result of anything like budget cuts," said Campbell last month as questions mounted. "The transition plan was pretty clearly laid out in the legislation."
Neither claim was true, Solicitor General John Les confirmed this week. Releasing an internal report on 713 forgotten child death files, Les said that budget cuts and mismanagement were to blame.
"There was a failure in the transition process, there was a failure to provide sufficient resources," he said. "There were failures all over the place." There was no plan.
I'm sure Campbell wasn't being intentionally misleading. He just didn't know what was going on, months after the issue had begun to create serious public concern, years after his government eliminated the Children's Commission.
That's telling. The issue wasn't important enough for anyone in government to pay attention, despite all the talk about the need to learn from children's deaths.
That's the root of the failures.
The Children's Commission used to review all child deaths in the province, and investigated about 170 a year in detail. It looked for lessons that could be learned, and reported publicly. In opposition, Campbell was a huge supporter.
But the Liberals were looking to cut costs in 2002. So they eliminated the commission, and the Child and Youth Advocate. A new Child and Youth Officer position was created, with a limited mandate. The responsibility for child death reviews was shifted to the coroner.
Or more accurately, largely abandoned. The coroner's budget was cut by 15 per cent at the same time, so there was no chance the work could be done.
So someone - Les' summary of the report didn't say who - took one look at the 713 child death reviews that had been partially completed by the Children's Commission and decided to forget about them. Too much work, too little money. Off to the warehouse.
Les released a sketchy but welcome report on what went wrong, apologized and said he's referring the whole issue to Ted Hughes, who is already doing an investigation of many issues relating to the children and families ministry. Hughes is to deliver his first report by Feb. 28.
But the whole affair shows that the government didn't consider the child death reviews, or the other work of the Children's Commission, that important.
Otherwise the coroner would have made an issue of his inability to do the work., and the government would have responded. Rich Coleman, the minister responsible for the coroner's office, would have noticed that the reviews had stopped. Gordon Hogg, Christy Clark and Stan Hagen, the three children and families ministers, would have noticed the missing reports. Child and Youth Officer Jane Morley would have raised the issue.
Nobody did.
Morley is not convinced the reports are that useful.
But the government's position, from Campbell on down, is that they are important. "It is really a learning tool to make sure that we do whatever we can to prevent these things from happening in the future," he said.
And the government gave up the chance to learn from hundreds of deaths.
The issue goes beyond that failure, and raises questions about what else has been lost.
The Children's Commission audited ministry practices and reported on successes, and problems. It reviewed critical injuries to children in care, did special reports on issues like suicide and alcohol abuse and offered its views on the ministry's progress. The Child and Youth Advocate helped thousands of children and families deal with the ministry.
Those services were valuable. And they have been lost.
And British Columbians can only wonder what else has been lost to neglect and budget cuts.
Footnote: Les, who moved quickly on the file once it was raised, rejected claims that there was too much emphasis on the issue of child death reviews by parents, the media and the opposition. "It's entirely appropriate that we pay lots of attention to all of this," he said.

'Popcorn and beer' shot a reminder of Liberal contempt

VICTORIA - I bet hundreds of candidates from all parties danced a little jig as Scott Reid swung in the wind after his ‘popcorn and beer’ comment.
Reid is Paul Martin’s communications director, a job that makes him immensely important to about 150 people in Ottawa. He’s also one of those party power guys who send candidates a big binder of official talking points and demand they stick to the script, as if winning a nomination means candidates lose their minds.
Reid stepped out of the backrooms and into the TV studios on the weekend, on one of those panels where political partisans snipe at each other.
He took aim at Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s promise of $1,200 a year in child care tax credits, a plan that Harper says would give parents a choice in child care. Maybe a day care centre, maybe a subsidy to help a mom stay at home.
But Reid didn’t pick on Harper. He picked on parents.
"Children need care that is regulated, safe and secure and that's what we're building here. Don't give people $25 to blow on beer and popcorn,” he said on TV. “Give them child-care spaces that work."
It’s been a while since my children were that age, but that’s how I remember myself - desperate for popcorn, and beer, and more popcorn, even if it meant locking Rebecca and Sam in the basement for a week or two.
Partly, Reid just sounds stupid. Lord knows, we’ve all sounded stupid.
But the comments got so much attention because they confirm something a lot of voters have suspected about the people at the top of the Liberal heap. They don’t really like us, or trust us. They believe they are much smarter, and wiser. They really think that given a choice you would spend your money on beer and popcorn, and send your toddler off to set pins in some throwback bowling alley.
That starting point - that we’re too clueless or irresponsible to do the right thing - has broader implications. Why let Canadians make other choices, or provide too much information, when the Liberal party knows best?
Perhaps that’s why Reid didn’t focus on the real problems with the Conservatives’ child care proposal.
Harper’s plan would give every family $1,200 a year for each child under six, and let them decide how to use it - for licensed child care, or a babysitter or to help a parent afford to stay home. The money would be taxed, but it could be claimed as income by the lowest earning parent in the household.
The plan fails the common sense test. A family with an annual income over $1 million would get the same grant as a single parent earning $20,000. That’s a waste of scarce tax dollars.
The aim should be to spend money where it makes a difference, and sending cheques to the affluent doesn’t. Their children have the advantages that give them a headstart in life, and their parents can afford the care that’s required.
The real payback - morally and economically - would come from spending on the children who need the help. Who without it, will start school at a disadvantage so great they may never recover. Don’t send their parents $100 a month; spend what it takes to give those children a chance.
The Liberal and NDP plans are similarly unfocused. They plan to continue spending to create licensed child care spaces, without any clear method of ensuring that children who most need support are the priority. (The NDP would increase the child tax credit to help low-income families get child care.)
The details of all three plans will probably remain bit sketchy for most busy Canadians.
But they will remember that Paul Martin’s party thinks they’re too stupid and irresponsible to handle $1,200 a year in child care funding, and would choose popcorn and beer over the future of their children.
Footnote: The popcorn and beer comment wasn’t a slip of the tongue. It reflected Liberal strategy. Reid made the comment on a CBC political show. Liberal strategist John Duffy used the same words on CTV talk show the same day, showing the party brains had considered the attack a good idea.

Olympic costs a growing worry for taxpayers

VICTORIA - It's time to get a little nervous about what the Olympics could cost you.
Olympic organizing committee head John Furlong has just warned - again - that costs are rising quickly, and he's going to be looking for more money from government.
Furlong is vague about how big the financial problem is, and what the options are. But there's not enough money in the current Olympic budget to cover rising costs, he says.
Don't panic, but check your wallet. The provincial government is solely responsible for Olympic cost over-runs, both for capital projects and the Games operations. That's a commitment made by the NDP, and maintained by the Liberals. "The B.C. government will guarantee the potential financial shortfall of the Olympic Organizing Committee," says the formal deal signed by Premier Gordon Campbell.
Campbell says everything will be fine. "Everyone is going to have  to work to make sure they do this within budget and I'm comfortable that they  will," he says. "That's why there's a big contingency in place."  But then Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau promised taxpayers that " The Olympics can  no more lose money than a man can have a baby," and those Games lost $1 billion.
That kind of disaster seems highly unlikely.  But it's hard to be sure, because of the secrecy surrounding Olympic spending.  All in, the Games are supposed to cost something like $2.3 billion to stage -  $620 million for construction, $1.5 billion for operating costs and $139 million for a contingency fund.
You're not on the hook for all the costs. The organizing committee expects $1.3  billion - about 45 per cent of the budget - to come from ticket sales and  sponsorships.
But that leaves taxpayers paying about $1 billion, with 80 per cent of that to come  from provincial taxpayers. Plus any deficit or over-run.
The immediate problem is that you have no idea how well things are going, how your money is being spent or what the risks are. The Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee - VANOC, as it’s called - isn’t accountable to the taxpayers who are paying the bills.
VANOC released its latest financial statements last week, but there's no management commentary to explain the numbers. It's unhelpful to learn $1.2 million has been spent on the figure skating venue without knowing whether it is on budget, or ahead of schedule.
The provincial government has three directors on the 20-person VANOC board, including close Campbell advisor Ken Dobell. Presumably the premier knows what’s going on.
But we don’t, so we have to guess.
Furlong said more money is needed because the Olympic's costs were all stated in 2002 dollars . B.C. construction costs are running up to 50 per cent higher than they were in 2002, Furlong says. (Revenues were also in 2002 dollars.)
Push the numbers forward on the basis of Furlong's statements, and you come up with something like a current worst-case $365-million shortfall. The budget includes a $139-million contingency fund, and Furlong says about $85 million has already been cut from venue costs. So figure $140 million to come from taxpayers, not a terrifying amount.
That's only a wild, uninformed guess, based on the sketchiest information.
And that's the problem. The public is paying the bill, but is being kept in the dark.
Things may improve in the New Year. The government refused calls to have the province's auditor general appointed as the official Games auditor, a bad decision.
But Auditor General Wayne Strelioff still plans an annual look at Olympics financial planning and progress, with the first report due in February or March. It will be a general overview; budget cuts have left the auditor general unable to monitor individual capital projects.
There's no need for panic. But there is a need to recognize that provincial taxpayers are going to pay for any Olympics deficit. They deserve much more information about how things are going.
Footnote: The cost concerns aren't new. Former finance minister Gary Collins was worried about rising costs in 2002. Strelioff gave the Games financial planning good grades in 2003, but warned that the contingency fund wasn't large enough and that there was no margin for error or bad luck. And Furlong first raised concerns about rising costs in April 2004.