Hughes confirms Liberals botched children and families

VICTORIA - Ted Hughes report on the ministry of children and families laid the facts out pretty clearly. The Liberal government has bungled for four years and bi changes are needed to get things back on track.
At 78 Hughes remains a highly respected, straight-talking problem solver.
He did not disappoint with his BC Children and Youth Review.
The Liberals cut too deep into the ministry, he found. They launched a poorly planned, underfunded re-organization, with senior managers spinning in and out through a revolving door. Child death reviews and other important efforts to ensure quality services were forgotten. Children and families lost needed supports.
"The strongest impression I have gleaned from this inquiry is one of a child welfare system that has been buffeted by an unmanageable degree of change," Hughes' report says. "Much of this has gone on against a backdrop of significant funding cuts, even though it is commonly understood that organizational change costs money."
None of that comes as a surprise. Except perhaps to Premier Gordon Campbell, who has steadfastly maintained that everything was fine, and the ministry had enough money.
Hughes wrote about the 900 child death reviews abandoned in a Victoria warehouse. "I can not agree with the premier's earlier assessment that budget cuts did not contribute to the failure of the transition process," he said.
In fact, Hughes found, budget cuts caused problems throughout the ministry. Asked about Campbell's repeated claims to the contrary, Hughes was blunt: "He was wrong."
The ministry didn't have enough money and the government's mismanagement created "a climate of instability and confusion," Hughes found.
This is not just another ministry. Failure here means children's lives can be at risk, their futures blighted, and families lost.
Hughes introduced a short, sharp dose of reality. For four years others have been warning of the same problems. Now, in the face of mounting public pressure and a determined opposition, the government should act.
Hughes has offered a clear blueprint.
For starters, he told the government to restore the important roles that were lost when it killed the Children's Commission and the Child and Family Advocate in 2002.
The replacement - the Child and Youth Officer - has not been adequate, Hughes found. Families have been denied the help they needed to navigate the system and protect their rights, and independent oversight has been lost.
He proposes a new Representative for Children and Youth, an office that would report to the legislature, not the government. It would have "the authority to advocate for individual children and families; advocate for system change; monitor the child welfare system; and review child injuries and deaths."
The representative and two deputies - one aboriginal - should have true independence, he says, and report to a new legislative committee on children and youth with representation from both parties.
Hughes wants the government to start over with its expensive and mismanaged plan to hand ministry operations over to new regional authorities - five aboriginal and five non-aboriginal. "Decentralization can not be done off the side of a desk," the report says. "It requires a dedicated team, and resources. It can not be accomplished in an environment of instability."
That shouldn't be a surprise. But four years after the government launched its effort, Hughes found it necessary to recommend it develop an actual plan.
That needs to include much more consultation with First Nations, he says, and a much larger commitment to supporting them in preparing for whatever changes are ahead.
There's not a lot of good news in the report.
But Hughes does offer 62 recommendations to help the ministry recover from four years of problems.
And he says the extra money in February's budget should be enough to address many of the issues. The budget included $100 million over three years to act on the various ministry reviews.
The four lost years are gone. But at last perhaps the government will face reality, and do the right thing.
Footnote: Hughes aid he expects the government to act on his recommendations, and won't sit quietly if it doesn't. He's been turning down invitations to speak about the review, he said. But if nothing has been done by fall, he may change his mind about those opportunities, Hughes warned.

A quick guide to the legislature raid twists and turns

VICTORIA - Things are getting weirder and weirder in the great legislature raid case, with a fresh wave of information and even new influence-peddling charges.
Claims that top Liberal political aides were flown to an NFL game by lobbyists, and that developers paid big money to get property eased out of the Agricultural Land Reserve - it all sounds like a plot for a bad movie.
So what’s happened, and what does it mean?
First - and this is important - start with the recognition that none of this new information is proven fact. It comes mostly from the affidavits that RCMP officers swore to get search warrants from the courts. They outlined their evidence and their suspicions, and the court gave them the go-ahead to seize bank records. Dave Basi, the former ministerial aide to then finance minister Gary Collins, denies any wrongdoing. The case won’t be tested the first trial starts, likely in June.
But that doesn’t mean that the information should be ignored. The questions raised are real and serious.
The RCMP allege that lobbyist Eric Bornman paid Basi about $24,000 over the course of a year for information, documents and steering clients his way. The two men knew each other well; both were active in the Paul Martin wing of the federal Liberal party.
Bornman, now starting a career as a lawyer, hasn’t been charged. He provided the police with information when they came calling and will be a prosecution witness
Police also alleged Basi and his cousin Bobby Virk - assistant to the transportation minister Judith Reid - went with their spouses to Denver in 2002 and watched an NFL game. They sat with Gary Rennick, a top exec with OmniTRAX, then a bidder for BC Rail.
And, police say, lobbyist Brian Kieran, a former political columnist and lobbyist for OmniTRAX, paid for the trip. Kieran was a partner with Bornman in Pilothouse Public Affairs. He’s also expected to testify.
Basi and Virk already face fraud and breach of trust charges.
But this week the special prosecutor laid new charges against Basi and two Victoria developers. The men - Tony Young and Jim Duncan - allegedly paid Basi $50,000 to help get property in Sooke out of the Agricultural Land Reserve for a $175-million housing development.
The good news for the government is that the charges are all limited to actions by Basi and Virk. No politicians have been involved in the investigations.
The damage done - at least in the narrowest of terms - is relatively minor. (Taxpayers lost $1 million when Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon cancelled the sale of a BC Rail spur line because the deal may have been compromised.)
But that didn’t stop the NDP from raising legitimate questions once the latest news broke.
The allegations of interference in the agricultural land reserve decision, and the other newly revealed payments, raise questions that go beyond the BC Rail deal, said Carole James. What has the government done to ensure that no other decisions were affected?
The answer seemed to be not very much. Lands Minister Pat Bell said the RCMP told him no one at the Agricultural Land Commission was under investigation. He hadn’t asked his staff to look at any other decisions to make sure things were fine.
And Attorney General Wally Oppal just kept saying that since the matter was before the courts, people should quit asking questions.
That’s not really good enough. It is important to respect the fact that no one has been proven guilty of anything.
But that doesn’t mean the government can’t account for what it and hasn’t done to ensure that the public interest wasn’t compromised. (Although some NDP questions did come close to convicting Basi before he had a chance to defend himself.)
The big questions aren’t really going to be answered until the case works its way through the courts.
Footnote: The NDP has been asking the government to refer its flawed Lobbyist Registration Act to a legislative committee for review. This case shows that should happen. The act - while a very positive step - isn’t ensuring that the public has access to the needed information about the role of lobbyists. The best way to fix that is by involving MLAs.

Union deals open door to a better government

VICTORIA - Give both the government and public sector unions top marks for finding their way to speedy contract settlements.
The deals don't just offer the pleasant prospect of four years free of labour battles. They're the first step towards important changes in the way the public sector works, changes that are important to everyone who relies on - and pays for - government services.
Finance Minister Carole Taylor acknowledged as much as she reacted to the flood of deals reached in the final hours of the month as unions raced for a share of the $1-billion signing bonus.
The negotiations were important in their own right. No rational government or union is keen on strikes and strife.
But the new approach to talks was just the start, Taylor said. "It has set the foundation for a new relationship," she said. "We're pleased that negotiators stepped up to the challenge to begin a dialogue and explore how we can improve services to British Columbians."
That's not just cheery rhetoric. The government has a problem. After four years of cuts, imposed contracts, mass firings and frequent union-bashing, public sector employees were understandably unhappy and demoralized.
A survey released last year by Auditor General Wayne Strelioff found government workers didn’t trust senior management and thought their departments were bad places to work. This wasn't the usual employee grumbling. Strelioff compared the survey results with effective organizations and warned B.C. is in trouble.
So why should you care if they're unhappy? For starters, people who feel abused do poorer work, especially when it comes to the extra effort critical to making organizations better.
But the problems go deeper. B.C. faces a significant skills shortage over the next several decades. Organizations seen as crummy places to work are going to be shunned by the best candidates. Why work somewhere grim, when you can find somewhere exciting and satisfying?
Premier Gordon Campbell says he's ready to sit down with public sector union leaders and start talking (although he's vague about what).
The agreements are a very good start, and both sides deserve credit for reaching them.
Taylor helped by promising early on that there would be money for settlements. She allocated enough money for raises of about 2.5 per cent a year for the next four years. That's enough to allow most employees to make at least a tiny real gain on inflation.
She also dangled a $1-billion carrot for unions that could settle by March 31, when almost all contracts expired. That allowed an average $3,700 signing bonus, a big boost for employees whose wages had been frozen or cut.
It was a good starting point. But unions still had to swallow some very deep anger over the last four years, when some were badly betrayed by the Liberals.
Both sides were able to bridge the gaps - the goal of negotiations in a mature bargaining relationship.
It's good news politically for the government. The public's strong support for the teachers - even after their strike was declared illegal - was a warning that people had tired of government union bashing.
Now there is likely labour peace until this time in 2010, after the Olympics and the next election. (Only likely because the BC Teachers' Federation contract doesn't expire until June. But the union is now isolated. If it demands much more than nurses or other workers, public support won't be as strong.)
That's time that can be used to build on the agreements and start overhauling labour relations in the public sector. The government needs an effective, motivated workforce, and it needs to be able to attract the best people.
Right now, it can't achieve either objective.
The good news is that the government recognizes the problem, and both sides have opened the door to a co-operative start at finding solutions.
It's a remarkable change from the first four years of confrontation.
Footnote: Critics say the new approach shows the government's use of legislation to gut contracts, fire thousands of workers and impose wages was a mistake. But the alternate argument is that the willingness to take a tough stand in the past established needed credibility for these talks. The reality is somewhere in between.

Government's computer privacy problems a warning for you

VICTORIA - Consider the B.C. government's recent problems in protecting private information and keeping its computer networks secure a wake-up call.
It's easy to let things like privacy protection slide. What's the harm if government, or business, has some information about you stashed in files? You've got nothing to hide.
And not long ago that might have even been an OK attitude. The technology of the day made it hard to gather information, and even harder to pull it all together. The sheer challenge of the task helped protect your privacy.
Not any more. Computer advances means it's technically easy to compile vast and detailed files on anyone. Where you shop, what you buy, medical treatment, personal problems, books you read, what you earn, how quickly you pay your bills.
The potential loss of privacy, and damage, has become much greater than ever before.
And the protection has not kept pace with the increased risk.
The government demonstrated that this month as it admitted to two information management failures with privacy implications.
First the Vancouver Sun was contacted by a man who gone to a provincial government surplus sale and spent a few dollars each for a big box of computer tapes.
He checked them out, and there was information on 77,000 British Columbians. Names, social insurance numbers, medical histories, contacts with the government. Information about people who were HIV positive. People who had reported their child had been sexually assaulted, or sought help for their own personal problems, all their information available.
The purchaser turned them over to the newspaper, which in turn secured them and passed them on to government.
But what if it had been someone else? Identity theft - gathering enough basic information to get credit cards and bank accounts in other peoples' names - would be simple. Blackmail possible. Simply putting the information up on the Internet for all to see an option.
Days later the NDP revealed that hackers had broken into the government computer system, and seized control of 78 computers for two months before they were detected. They loaded porn movies on to the computers, apparently using the government's network as part of a pay-for-porn business.
Sorry, says Mike de Jong, the minister responsible. We won't sell surplus tapes and hard drives any more. And at least the hackers didn't go looking for private files, he said.
There's reason to be worried about this specific case. The auditor general warned last year that the government's computer security systems were flawed.
But there will always be a risk that human error or criminal attacks will compromise security. Hackers and security experts struggle to see who stays one step ahead. Sometimes the bad guys will win.
Just as there is always a drive by organizations to want to gather information, and then to use it. Stewart Brand is credited with the observation that 'information wants to be free.' Information also wants to be used.
Users often resist privacy requirements. There's pressure within the B.C. government for legislative amendments this session that would reduce privacy protection.
So what's your defence?
For starters, your own vigilance about surrendering personal information. Canadian and B.C. privacy laws require organizations to get your consent before gathering and sharing personal information.
But application is lax, and the public inattentive. Most of us signed up for loyalty cards of one kind or another, and checked the little box that says we accept the companies privacy policy. But we don't read that policy, which gives the company the right to share our personal information with other corporations, and store it in the U.S.
We also need to be able to count the independent watchdogs that are charged with protecting our interests, like B.C.'s auditor general and the information and privacy commissioner.
But both offices have been starved of needed funds by the Liberal government, despite rising challenges and workloads.
Privacy matters. And we are placing it at risk.
Footnote: The Liberal government cut the Information and Privacy Commissioner's budget by 35 per cent in their first term. Increases have still left it office with less money in real dollars today than it had in 2001, despite a 24-per-cent increase in complaints in 2005 alone.

Government's fight to keep polluter facts secret wrong

VICTORIA - Why in the world would the B.C. government want to cover up pollution violations in the province?
The public used to get regular reports on the big polluters in the province - the companies and government organizations that violated their permits for discharging wastes.
It didn't seem a big deal. Once every six months or so the government would release a report on the major polluters over the previous period. If companies or public organizations were releasing more waste than allowed under their environmental permits, the public knew about it. The violators had to explain.
Obviously the government has to track the information. Companies and municipalities get permits setting limits on the waste they dump in the air, water and on to the land. There are penalties for going over the limits.
If government is actually enforcing the regulations, it has to gather the emissions data to be sure the rules are being obeyed.
Violations were regularly made public, just as you can walk down to your local courthouse and see who has broken other laws.
But the Campbell government quit providing the reports months after they were elected. And now they are fighting to keep the violations secret, demanding an extraordinary amount of money to provide information that used to be readily available.
The Sierra Legal Defence Fund has been trying for more than two years to get the facts from government.
But the most open and accountable government in Canada, as Gordon Campbell likes to call his administration, would prefer that the polluters' identities stays secret.
If Sierra Legal wants to get the information, the government now says, it will have to pay $173,000 to cover the costs of gathering it, and photocopying 52,000 pages. (Which suggest there is a whole of pollution violations, I suppose.)
Information Commissioner David Loukidelis is investigating, and has the power to reduce or eliminate the charges.
But it's bizarre that is is happening.
The government issues waste permits. Companies get approval to dump so many tonnes of particulate in the air, or so much waste into a river. That's part of a functioning economy, and the limits provide needed protection.
The reports simply cited those organizations that violated their permits - companies that sent too much waste into the sky, municipalities that allowed excess sewage into the rivers.
It's easy to see why keeping that information secret is in the offenders' interests.
But it's hard to see how it's in the public interest. The people who live in a community, or rely on a resource, should know if the local permits for air and water pollution are being violated.
And there's a practical argument for releasing the reports. The publicity is a proven incentive for organizations to clean up their act.
Environment Minister Barry Penner apparently doesn't agree. It wasn't always fair to report on violations, he says, and it sometimes made it harder to get people to obey the law.
That sounds a little weird. Not many companies or municipalities would want to be publicly identified as pollution violators. That threat would encourage efforts to live within their permits.
But even if Penner sees no value in issuing reports voluntarily, that's not an argument for keeping the facts secret when people try and get answers.
The public has a right to know. If a regional district is routinely dumping more sewage into rivers than its allowed, or a company is exceeding its permitted levels for air pollution, why would that be a government secret?
It's hard to see how a government can place itself in such a dumb position.
We are talking about questions of fact. Which organization, companies or government, put out more waste than allowed under their operating permits?
Keeping that secret - or charging ridiculous fees for the information - hurts the public interest, and aligns the government with polluters.
And that's a very strange and wrong choice for a government that hopes to be re-elected in three years.
Footnote: The Liberals were great fans of Freedom of Information requests in opposition, filing about 15 requests a week searching - legitimately - for NDP failures. "Government information belongs to the people, not to government," Gordon Campbell wrote. "All citizens must have timely, effective and affordable access to the documents government keeps." But access has steadily been eroded since the 2001 election.

HEU deal a milestone in public sector talks

VICTORIA - Things are looking good for the government's bid to reach quick labour settlements.
Reaching agreements with teachers and nurses will still be tough. And more bumps like the one created this week by the generous deal with doctors are still ahead.
But the progress so far, especially in reaching deals with the Hospital Employees' Union and the BC Medical Association, has set the stage for more settlements.
It's a change from the wretched labour-management relations of the Liberals' first term, and a vindication of Finance Minister Carole Taylor's plan for a $1-billion fund to encourage quick deals.
The count is up to 11 tentative agreements as I write this, covering about 75,000 workers. The latest is a contract for about 38,000 health sector workers.
That's a big deal. The workers, mostly represented by the Hospital Employees' Union, were battered and betrayed by the Liberals. (Gordon Campbell specifically promised the union that he would respect their contracts, then gutted them, clearing the way for mass firings and wage cuts.) Talks were made more difficult by legislation barring the union from negotiating job security protection.
Despite the hurdles, the parties reached a deal. The government gets a four-year contract, allowing some needed stability (and talking the contract term past the 2010 Olympics and the next election).
And the union got a decent wage increase and some job protection. The average wage increase will be about 2.6 per cent a year, enough to keep up with inflation. The minimum will be about 8.5 per cent over four years, but some people - in high demand categories - will get up to 32 per cent.
The deal fits within the government's wage mandate, which allowed for average increases of 2.7 per cent a year, and reflects its desire to see wage increases reflect market conditions.
But it couldn't have been sold to HEU members on its own, particularly after so many had seen wages cut.
That's where the $1-billion bonus fund for unions that reach deals before their old ones expire comes into play. The money translates into about $3,800 for each of the 300,000 public sector employees.
The HEU has negotiated a $3,700 signing bonus from the fund, plus another $500 for "past skills enhancements." For an employee at the low end of wage scales, that's a one-time payment equal to 16 per cent of salary. There's also renewed limits on future job losses to contracting out.
The deal came just days after the much richer BCMA deal that some observers feared would disrupt other talks. All doctors got a 10.4-per-cent fee increase over four years. Family physicians - more than half the total - will get 19.1 per cent. It was much more than other unions were being offered, and produced some angry responses.
But the BCMA deal may have helped. It set a range for settlement. And even more usefully the deal, which won't be ratified until May, forced Taylor to back off her claim that the $1 billion would disappear March 31 unless contracts were in place. There's room for flexibility if an agreement is almost there, she has now conceded.
The next challenge is an agreement with the BCGEU. The union has walked away from talks, but the chances for settlement should still be good. The two sides appear far apart - the union apparently wants a 10-per-cent increase over three years, the employer 8.5 per cent over four years. and contracting out remains a major issue.
But given the other settlements, and the advantages for both sides in reaching an agreement within the next two weeks, there's reason for optimism.
A BCGEU deal would help the government in difficult talks with nurses and teachers. The pattern for bargaining has been set, and the government can argue the need for fairness across the board.
The government's strategy - and its recognition that the public was tired of imposed settlements - has been working, and momentum is on the side of negotiated contracts.
Footnote: The teachers' strike last fall was a turning point for the government. The public support for the BCTF shocked the government and sent the message that continued rough tactics wouldn't be tolerated. Vince Ready reports March 31 on a new way of bargaining teachers' contracts.
But the government might argue that it's reaching these deals because it has established a willingness to impose contracts on its own terma.

Why we cared for Luna, and what we can learn

VICTORIA - Poor old Luna, just wanting to play, and ending up killed by a tug's propeller.
There was something sweet about the whale's fondness for contact with people. He had a much higher opinion of us than I do most of the time.
Maybe that's one of the reasons a lot of people liked the idea of Luna so much. The whale offered a badly needed vote of approval for our species, from a creature that seemed to embody childlike innocence and physical power. He could have eaten us, but instead played.
We know how messed up we are, how much havoc we wreak and how much harm we ignore. We're know we've made life tougher for the Orcas
But the whale still thought we were good enough to hang out with, poking up beside boats and sniffing at peoples' dogs, coming close for a head rub.
Not normal for a whale, of course. They're supposed to swim with other whales. That's important for them, and for their species. The U.S. government declared Puget Sound Orcas an endangered species last month. The loss of a young male is significant.
Some groups wanted Luna captured and hauled down by truck from Gold River to southern Vancouver Island, and then re-united with his pod. They say his death shows it was a mistake not to take action much earlier, before Luna had become so used to contact with people. Springer, another wayward Orca, was successfully reunited with his pod in a similar process.
Maybe. I'm not so sure.
There was no guarantee that the plan would work, or that Luna would survive. If he was released in southern waters, and failed to start acting more like a normal whale, he would be a serious menace to the heavier boat traffic. The plan then was to capture him and send him off to an aquarium.
And who knows why Luna ended up alone in Nootka Sound. Maybe he was shunned, and for some good biological reason - a recognition by the other whales of some deficiency that made him a destructive genetic force.
Maybe he just ddn't get along with his family. (Another reason some people may have been so fond of L-98, as Luna was properly known.)
Maybe he was just strange, the way some people are. Rent Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, a documentary about a researcher who prefers the company of Alaskan grizzlies to people. He's a strange man. And he ends up eaten by the bears. Kind of a species-reversed version of Luna.
The DFO and others are calling for an investigation into how the problem of Luna was handled.
It's reasonable idea. There may be something to learn by looking back at how the strange story unfolded. Luna showed up in Nootka Sound as a one-year-old, almost five years ago, and soon began coming into contact with boats.
The process of figuring out what to do got tied up in mistrust of the DFO, scientific disagreement and the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation's belief that Luna carried the spirit of a revered chief, who died around the time the whale showed up. The delays made successful reunification less likely. So instead the First Nation was paid to try and look out for Luna.
A modest investigation, with input from everyone involved, might ensure we do better if this happens again.
But I was camping on the weekend, just south of Campbell River with a gang of kids. We went for a walk, brilliant sun off the new snow, the ocean on side and a pond on the other. Truly beautiful. And as we came through some trees, we saw a Trumpeter Swan on the thin ice of the pond, its neck broken and its head almost dragging on the ice.
Perhaps an eagle had attacked, or the swan had landed awkwardly on the unexpected ice - we didn't know. It staggered a few steps, fell. Rose again. Walked a few steps, fell and stayed down, feathers ruffling in the breeze.
Everything dies. Our fondness for them doesn't change that.
Footnote: it's faintly troubling how much we were moved by Luna, and how little we are moved by the plight of people in real suffering. About $500,000 in donations was pledged to help relocate the whale, and the government spent a great deal on top of that. Anyone who has tried to seek donations knows just how difficult it is to raise that much money to help people.

Harper and Brison, and the Ottawa common sense black hole

VICTORIA - A Conservative prime minister who thinks he's king, and a Liberal would-be prime minister who lacks common sense and judgment.
Ah, Ottawa.
First Stephen Harper. The new prime minister is continuing to show his contempt for federal Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro in a disturbingly regal way.
Shapiro has not had a successful tenure since being named the first ethics commissioner almost two years ago. He's been criticized for bumbling and censured by Parliament. NDP accountability guru Ed Broadbent has called for his resignation.
But he's in the job, representing the public and attempting to enforce ethics guidelines. As part of that job, he has opened an investigation into whether Harper broke the conflict rules by offering David Emerson an improper inducement to join the Conservatives.
Harper says he won't co-operate. The prime minister has an absolute right to name cabinet members, he says, and anyway Shapiro's a Liberal appointee and he should just go away.
Harper was equally dismissive when Shapiro attempted to investigate efforts by the Martin government to woo Gurmant Grewal. He was the only player who refused to co-operate, or even be interviewed by the commissioner. He sent his communications director.
it shows a pattern of quite blatant contempt for the ethics' rules and the accountability system that govern every other member of Parliament.
It's one thing to make the legal argument that the prime minister is above scrutiny in this area.
But it's quite another to say the prime minister can simply ignore the ethics' commissioner when he feels like it.
And Harper's position also counts as a clear broken promise. The Conservative campaign platform promised to strengthen the commissioner's role. "Stephen Harper will . . . prevent the prime minister from overruling the ethics commissioner on whether the prime minister, a minister, or an official is in violation of the conflict of interest code."
Harper can fire Shapiro, presumably paying severance since his term has three years to run. Or could launch an expensive - to taxpayers - legal challenge.
But the notion that he can simply exempt himself from reviews he doesn't like is sadly undemocratic.
Meanwhile prospective Liberal leadership candidate Scott Brison's hopes are unwinding as a result of the fallout from the income trust scandal.
Brison was a Liberal cabinet minister last November, when the government was considering what to do about income trusts. The news was hugely important to investment types, who could make big profits - at others' expense - if they could suss out the government's decision in advance.
On Nov. 22, Brison exchanged emails with an acquaintance, an investment banker at CIBC who specialized in income trusts, and asked how the banker was doing.
"Things are good except of course for the government bringing the equity markets to a standstill," the banker replied, referring to the long delayed income trust decision.
Brison replied immediately. "You will be happier very soon . . . this week probably." And the next day, then finance minister Ralph Goodale announced good news for investors.
Brison followed up with another email to his banker friend. "U happy?"
His friend was. "I can't express my joy properly."
That looks like a tip from a cabinet minister about what's going to happen, one that would allow insiders to make money at the expense of the unconnected.
The CIBC saw that, and passed the emails on to the RCMP, which had announced a probe of possible leaks The bank has checked its trading records, and says no one took advantage of the message.
Brison says he wishes he hadn't sent the email, but wasn't a leaker. He was just passing on public speculation, he says, and didn't actually know anything about the decision or the announcement.
But what would you think if a cabinet minister sent you an email promising your problems would be resolved within three days - and then followed up with the "U happy" message?
What is it about political life in Ottawa that erodes common sense and good judgment?
Footnote: Harper is risking a destructive showdown the Parliament. He's promised strengthened accountability legislation - which is badly needed - as soon as MPs return April 3. While the opposition doesn't want to force an election, its combined majority will give the other parties a free hand to bash Harper around for considering himself above the ethics rules that bind all other MPs.

Harper wrong to dodge debate on Afghan role

VICTORIA - I don’t know if Canadian Forces are playing an appropriate role in in Afghanistan.
But I am sure the Harper government has it dead wrong when it claims Canadians should blindly accept an open-ended, vague mission
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper want you to do that. Both rejected calls this week for a House of Commons debate on the military mission.
A debate would be bad for forces serving there, MacKay said. "We do not want to, in any way, suggest that we are questioning Canadians' presence there, that we are doing anything except showing our forceful commitment to the mission and to the men and women who are wearing the uniform,” he said. Talking about the mission is bad for morale, and may encourage attacks by those who would drive foreign forces from Afghanistan, he says.
MacKay and Harper have it backwards. We owe the 2,300 men and women in Afghanistan our closest scrutiny of their involvement. We sent them there. Some have already died, and more will. Every Canadian has an obligation to make sure the mission makes sense, that the goals are clear and achievable.
If the answers aren’t satisfactory, then we should make changes, right up to bringing our forces home.
The notion that Canadians should give up their rights and responsibilities because talking about the mission might embolden Afghan fighters is wrong, practically and in principle. There’s no mystery to Western nations’ reluctance to see their troops die overseas. We are not revealing any deep secrets by acknowledging our concern.
Canada has drifted into a military role in Afghanistan with little debate or planning.
The first 850 troops were sent four years ago. They were to help bring stability to the ravaged country, restore some services and fight the Taliban regime that had been supporting terrorists.
And they were a gesture to the U.S., a signal that although Canada would not join the war in Iraq it would join the effort to stamp out terrorists and their support networks.
They have made a contribution. Afghanistan held democratic elections last year, and rebuilding efforts have made progress. But it remains a dangerous, often lawless country, with warring factions, a smashed economy and a violent drug trade.
Last month Canadian troops moved into a more dangerous role, taking command of the multinational brigade in southern Afghanistan. They have taken on a more direct combat role against an aggressive foe, and a complicated balancing act. Our soldiers are supposed to be at once helping Afghanis rebuild and waging war.
The risks in that balancing act became clear when Canadian troops laid down their weapons for a relationship-building meeting with tribal elders, and Lt. Trevor Greene of Vancouver was smashed in the head with an axe.
Canadians need to know what the goals for this mission are, and how long the government expects to have troops there. Harper says their role will be assessed after a year. Canadian generals say that the commitment could be for a decade.
Canadians need to know how success will be measured, and that our troops have the support and equipment they need.
We need to know that all the other support that will help Afghanistan recover - and allow our troops to come home - is being provided. Economic aid and help with rebuilding Afghan society will allow our troops to come home sooner.
We leave lots of our decision to bureaucrats and politicians. We’re busy, they’re generally competent and it’s easier to sit back.
But this is too important. There’s a moral obligation on Canadians to be informed, to pay close attention to the arguments for and against sending our troops into danger.
No one can seriously suggest that has yet happened.
The best way to fix that is a debate in Parliament, in which the government sets out its case and outlines and defends its plans for this military effort.
Footnote: The government has not yet made the case for this military mission. An Ipsos poll has found Canadians fairly evenly divided on whether our forces should be there. An earlier Strategic Counsel poll found 62 per cent of Canadians were opposed to sending troops to Afghanistan. Three-quarters wanted a Parliamentary debate.

Seniors' care problem simple - not enough beds

VICTORIA - There’s nothing complicated or mysterious about what happened to Al and Fanny Albo, the couple so cruelly separated days before her death.
There aren’t enough hospital beds and long-term care spaces to meet the need. That means people suffer.
It’s time for an independent look - across all five health authorities - at how bad the problems are, and what we can do to fix them.
It’s fine that the Interior Health Authority has finally acknowledged procedural problems, and promised changes.
But ultimately this is a capacity problem, one the government acknowledged before taking office. They have chosen not to fix it. Other priorities - tax cuts, spending, paying down the debt - came first.
Take Trail. Since 2001 about 120 long-term care beds have been closed, and 30 new ones opened. That’s a loss of 90 places for frail seniors in in a community with many old people whose children have moved away and a high rate of heart disease.
The Albos - in part because their story was so terrible - have captured political and public attention. But anyone who kept an eye on the Trail Times and papers across B.C. has read similar sad stories. (Which makes the IHA’s sudden discovery of the problems bizarre.)
At the same time home support in Trail has been cut. The Albos were promised adequate home care but didn’t get it, the likely reason they both ended up in the Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital.
The hospital is also struggling. Health authority statistics for October show the hospital was at more than 100-per-cent capacity almost every day. At times it was trying to deal with 20-per-cent more patients than it was supposed to house.
No wonder hospital administrators are desperate to get seniors out, when patients are stacked in the halls waiting for those beds. The average wait for long-term care in the Interior is 88 days, up almost 50 per cent from a year ago. A senior in acute care is seen as a big problem.
Al Albo watched Health Minister George Abbott respond to his wife’s death only hours before he too died. His son Jerome said they appreciated Abbott’s apology, but were disappointed at much of what he said. "It seemed the government was trying to limit this to being a problem unique to Trail," he said. "It's a province-wide problem.”
He’s right. Back in 2002 the Liberals released their long-term care plan. The province was short 4,200 beds at that moment, the government said. By 2006, it would add 5,000 beds, in line with the 2001 campaign promise - about 1,000 a year.
Since then the population over 75 has increased by about 15 per cent. So today the province should have added about 6,500 beds to meet the need.
Instead, the government has added 607 beds in four years.
There are reasons. The government says the existing beds were in worse shape than they expected, and many had to be closed or fixed. But they knew that in 2002 when they announced a “plan” for 5,000 beds.
People in communities across B.C. pleaded with the government. Keep the old care homes open - even with their flaws - until replacements were ready. The government didn’t, just as it didn’t accelerate the building process once it fell behind.
The government says about 2,300 beds will open this year. But meeting the actual need is still years away.
Abbott has been resisting opposition calls for an independent look at the issue.
But it’s time. We need to know how serious the shortage is, where it’s worst and what we can do. Seniors deserve that.
So do taxpayers . The costs of coping - warehousing seniors in acute care beds, admitting people who might have still been at home with proper support - are likely greater than the costs of fixing the problem.
There’s no benefit in hiding from the problem. Let’s get the facts, and decide what we’e prepared to do to fix it.
Footnote: The Liberals should leap at a review. Families who were suffering in silence have seen the Albo case as a all to action. Abbott is going to spend this entire legislative session dealing with a string of sad cases raised by the opposition if he isn’t willing to announce a proper review.

Turin shows how easy it is to blow Olympic business opportunities

VICTORIA - So have you booked your holiday to Turin yet? Made plans to invest there, or buy a villa and start a new life?
Those are important questions for B.C. The 2010 Olympics are supposed to make people flock here, and companies open businesses.
So the Turin Games should have stirred some of the same interest from you.
After all, the justification for spending some $1.5 billion in taxpayers’ money to put on the 2010 Olympics is that there will be a lasting economic benefits. They should make people want to visit, or choose Vancouver as their next corporate office.
The Games themselves will likely be a wonderful experience for people in Vancouver and Whistler, and leave a legacy of sports facilities and Lower Mainland transportation improvements.
But they are ultimately money-losers.
Vancouver organizers point to indirect benefits - from increased tourism to investment - that they say will be worth $6 billion to $10 billion. A government study predicted that the Olympics could bring an increase of $2 billion to $3.3 billion in tourism revenues over seven years. That’s an average four-per-cent increase over current levels, large but consistent with Calgary’s experience.
Auditor General Wayne Strelioff looked at all those projections, and said they seemed reasonable. But he added a warning, quoting consultants who did the review.
"These benefits will not materialize automatically," they said. "They must be earned by a focused, adequately funded and skillfully executed marketing program."
The Turin Games reinforce that warning. Everything went well. But there was little evidence - at least from here - that Italy, or the region, was seizing on the marketing opportunity.
Economic Development Minister Colin Hansen agrees. “I don’t believe Italy is going to benefit as much as they could,” he says. One of the jobs of the Olympics Secretariat, part of his ministry, is to make sure B.C. gets the maximum long-term value from the Games.
But it’s not easy. The effort will take co-ordination, a clear strategy and money.
And time is already getting tight, given the size of the task.
Start with the most basic questions. What message does B.C. want to send, and who are the main target audiences?
The controversy over Vancouver’s share of the closing ceremonies in Turin shows how tricky this can be. The classic - or cliched - images of ice-fishing and snowmobiles sent a message. But they reinforced existing stereotypes, rather than reaching out to new markets.
Hansen says the government is looking at a brand statement for B.C. for the Games. The existing tourism brand - Super, Natural BC - remains a starting point. But Hansen says the province’s cosmopolitan, modern cities and the diverse population need to be part of the message.
Those are the values - along with the Pacific location - that can attract not just tourists, but European investors or Asian companies looking for a new North American branch office.
Crafting the message is only the first part of the challenge. The second is finding ways to get it out.
Some will be narrowly targeted. “The Olympic Games have become a bit of a meeting place for the world’s business community,” Hansen says, not just the sponsors but other companies who see a chance to reward customers or do business.
And B.C. learned in Turin, with its log house and Mounties, that thousands of journalists all looking for easy, interesting stories are a great opportunity.
There’s still a lot to be done, and not a lot of money to do it with. The government doubled Tourism BC’s budget in 2004, to $50 million, but isn’t planning any extra money to seize the opportunities the Games provide. The Olympics’ Secretariat has a relatively modest budget, and is focused on immediate issues.
Hansen says the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity won’t be missed. “In 2011, I don’t want to be saying to myself if only we had done ‘X,’” he says.
But Turin shows how easily the chance for long-term gains can be lost.
Footnote: The other major - and very difficult challenge - is ensuring the Games benefits flow beyond the Lower Mainland. The government can’t afford to blur its main message, but there needs to be a clear strategy to ensure communities from Terrace to Trail share in the benefits of Games that they are paying for. And a scoreboard, or new seats at a playing field, aren’t enough.

Tough talk on IHA brass softens overnight

What happened in the last 24 hours?

On Wednesday deputy health minister Penny Ballem released her review of the death of Fanny Albo, cruelly separated from her husband of 70 years without the chance for a proper goodbye and moved to a care home 105 kms away. She died two days later.

Ballem noted two senior Interior Health Authority medical leaders had failed to participate in the review, a fact she found "remarkable," and not in a good way. Health Minister George Abbott was there, and said he wasn't happy at their lack of participation.

But when NDP leader Carole James raised the problem in the legislature Thursday, Abbot downplayed the concern.

"Hon. G. Abbott: To be clear, the deputy — and I was there — referenced one or two officials who she would have liked to have spoken to, but she wasn't able to. One should not make more of that than what the deputy actually said. Again, the officials that I am meeting with later today worked very hard to ensure that the deputy had all of the information and all of the cooperation that was necessary in putting together a very constructive report."

Here's what the deputy actually said in her report:

”There is insufficient support and involvement of senior medical leaders from the Kootenay Boundary Health Service Delivery Area and corporate Interior Health in the area of quality of care and critical incident investigation.”

So why was Abbott ducking?

Albo's tragic case entirely predictable, and avoidable

VICTORIA - Almost seventy years they were married, Al and Fanny Albo.
But they died apart. Fanny was 91, and her heart was failing fast. Her sons knew she didn't have long to live. They wanted her to die with peace and dignity, and the couple to stay together for their last days.
Government policy and bad judgment by Interior Health Authority staff made that impossible.
There aren't enough acute care beds in hospitals, or long-term care beds in communities. If someone - like a dying old woman - is an acute care bed, she's blocking other patients.
So she gets moved, even if it's to a care home in a town 105 kms away over mountain roads, where she knows no one.
The government's "first available bed" policy says the priority is to clear the acute care bed. Someone who should be in long-term care has to take the first available bed, even if it's in a distant community, and wait for an opening closer to home.
Patents can pay for private care. But if they're counting on the government, they should be prepared to be moved.
In Fanny's case, that happened over the objection of her family and doctor. She was shuffled into an ambulance so quickly her husband had no time to hug her or kiss her goodbye.
And two days later she died.
Health Minister George Abbott dispatched his deputy to investigate, and this week she reported. It's a useful effort. But some of the biggest questions aren't answered, and the language is fuzzy.
Start with how both Albos ended up in hospital. Mrs. Albos was admitted in December because of her failing heart. But she rallied, and was sent home to be with her 96-year-old husband. They were supposed to get home care support to help him cope.
But it didn't happen. "The home support was insufficient in quality and time commitment," Ballem says. Within weeks her condition worsened, and Al suffered painful compression fractures of his vertebrae from trying to care for her.
They were both admitted to hospital. Ballem couldn't say why, but noted fewer home support services are available in Trail than in the rest of the province.
Why was Mrs. Albo moved? The main reason, Ballem says, is that no one took the time to think about what was best for her. They didn't consider a palliative care bed (though since Trail has only one, that's not surprising). They didn't question whether the first available bed policy made sense in this case.
The Interior Health Authority comes in for a slagging in the report. No one - nurses, family doctors, community - trusts the authority, or feels involved and consulted. (I'm offering a more direct paraphrase of the report.)
But the report doesn't really talk about the pressures. "There is a need for better alignment of home and community care and primary care resources with the health needs of the community," Ballem writes.
What that means, I think, is that it was mistake to close obsolete long-term care beds before replacements were ready. The Trail region has 90 fewer beds now than it did in 2001, according to local health care groups. They have been also been warning for three years about cuts to home care.
The Liberals promised 5,000 additional long-term care beds by 2006. In 2002, they said 4,200 beds were needed immediately to meet demand.
But the promise has been broken, and so far, they have added only 607 beds since 2001 - a record worse than the NDP's poor performance.
So health authorities juggle impossible demands. Leave someone in acute care while they wait for a local care placement, and they do badly and the bed is lost. Surgeries are cancelled, ER hallways fill up.
Push them into a distant long-term care home, and families are shattered.
Things may be worse in the Kootenays, but this is a problem across B.C.
Footnote: The government's apparent surprise at this case is could have been avoided by a subscription to the Trail Times. The newspaper has been reporting since 2002 on concerns about cuts to home care and long-term care, and the increasing risk to seniors and their families. Their dissatisfaction with the Interior Health Authority was also chronicled repeatedly.

Budget cuts, not child’s death, preoccupied ministry

VICTORIA - Read Jane Morley’s report on the death of Sherry Charlie, and you’ll be left scratching your head at the fumbling in the children and families’ ministry.
You’ll see that the government’s claim that budget cuts had not hurt the ministry’s ability to protect children is not true.
And you’ll have confirmation that the Liberals betrayed their 2001 campaign promise to stop “the endless bureaucratic restructuring” of the ministry.
Faced with an important task - learning from the death of a toddler - the ministry proved incapable of getting the job done, dragging the process out for more than two years.
Everyone knew it was taking too long. Periodically there would be brief bursts of activity, followed by long stretches where not much happened. About 18 months were lost to “periods of minimal productive work,” reported Morley, the province’s child and youth officer.
"But during the lapses, no one was monitoring and systematically asking the question - what is happening,” she reports.
Morley concludes there was no cover-up, or interference by politicians.
But the decisions politicians made - including the decision to cut the ministry budget - helped ensure the process dragged on. And the ministry fought to prevent scrutiny of its policies.
Sherry Charlie was beaten to death in September, 2002, weeks after being placed in the care of relatives under a new, poorly introduced ministry “Kith and Kin” policy. The placement decision was made by Usma, a First Nations agency operating under the ministry’s authority.
It was a bad decision. The father in the home - the man who killed her - had along and violent criminal history. The ministry had investigated other alleged problems. Systems to protect Sherry weren’t in place, or broke down.
The director’s review, an internal investigation, was supposed to look at the lessons that could be learned. (The Liberals had eliminated the Children’s Commission, which provided effective oversight when a child died. The Coroners’ Service is supposed to investigate child deaths, but has failed. An inquest into Sherry’s death was only held this month.)
The ministry’s internal review was plagued with problems. It hired Nicholas Simons to do the review. Simons, now a New Democrat MLA, was then executive director of child and family services for the Sechelt Nation then.
Simons hadn’t done a review like this before, and the ministry never clearly conveyed its expectations. The review went through 25 drafts and ended up pretty much as Simons submitted it in September, 2003, Morley reports.
But not entirely. Recommendations on ways the ministry could improve were gradually eased out of the report.
The ministry view was that the report should only look at whether people followed existing policy, not whether those policies were adequate to protect children. (Simons’ initial draft said that homes where children were to be placed under the new “Kith and Kin” agreements should be evaluated as thoroughly as any other placement; the ministry resisted including the recommendation.)
It’s an unreasonably narrow mandate, one more likely to find individual scapegoats than systemic problems. That’s especially worrying in the light of the lack of any other timely, effective review.
Through this long process the ministry had other priorities than learning from a child’s death. The government had launched a massive shift to regionalization, then pulled back. It had announced a 23-per-cent budget cut, then reduced that to 11 per cent. Coping with budget cuts consumed managers.
“The issue of how to manage the budget cuts took priority for senior managers, particularly starting in the summer of 2003,” Morley reports. “The regular monitoring information received by the executive was focused on this issue, not on such issues as whether the director’s cases were reviews were being completed.”
Managers failed. They let things slide, communicated badly and didn’t do their jobs. The people in charge didn’t get the review done.
But they failed in part because the government’s policies - including a damaging budget cut - left them unable to do the job.
Footnote: Minister Stan Hagen’s written response tried to shift the blame on to Simons. But he did not address the impact of budget cuts, or the management failures. Morley didn’t address the role of her office in not responding to the fact that the report was so long overdue.

Abbott needs to start giving real answers to health questions

VICTORIA - Health Minister George Abbott could land the government in trouble.
Abbott is seen as hard-working and knowledgeable.
But his standard response to questions in the legislature is a mix of partisan bluster and smart-alecky jokes. Actual answers are rare.
It didn't matter much in past cabinet posts, but it could be disastrous in health.
Even as the government hoped attention would be on the budget, the NDP raised legitimate questions about health care, and their effectiveness was boosted by Abbott's responses.
On budget day Question Period is usually irrelevant.
First up, NDP MLA Norm McDonald. The Interior Health Authority promised to keep Moberly Manor, a seniors home in Revelstoke, open until replacement beds were ready, McDonald said. Now they're closing it before there is anywhere in the community for people to go. Will the government keep its promise?.
Abbott's response was tiresome. The Interior Health Authority and the Liberal government has done a great job, he said, and anyway the NDP didn't invest in long-term care when it was in power. Not a word in response to the actual question.
McDonald appeared genuinely angry by the brushoff. He pointed out the obvious to Abbott: "If the people of Revelstoke were happy with Interior Health, (defeated Liberal) Wendy McMahon would be here, not me."
McDonald got a slightly clearer answer on the second attempt, but Abbott fell on the tired charge that the questions were somehow "fear-mongering." They weren't.
NDP MLA Chuck Puchmayr asked about the closing of 150 seniors'' beds in his riding. Abbot didn't answer, and suggested the question somehow insulted health care workers. It didn't.
And then North Coast MLA Gerry Coons asked about a Prince Rupert man who waited three days in a hospital hallway with a broken wrist and fractured jaw. When a chance for treatment became available in Prince George, his family drove him there - 1,800 kms - for treatment.
Abbott tried harder, but chided Coons for not asking for his help privately before raising the issue.
Except Coons had, and read from Abbott's letter in response that said it was the health authority's problem, not the government's.
The next day the first questions were about the terrible treatment of a Rossland couple, both in their '90s, wrenched apart by the Interior Health Authority days before the woman died. They were to celebrate their 70th anniversary in June. "After that long marriage she didn't even get a kiss or a hug goodbye," said NDP MLA Katrine Conroy.
Abbott apologized, and announced an investigation. But he couldn't resist partisan sniping as well, and a barely relevant reference to how bad things were under the NDP.
But the New Democrats weren't done.
Why is it, asked health critic David Cubberly, that the only non-government person going on a European health fact-finding tour with Gordon Campbell and Abbot is Les Vertesi - the premier's brother-in-law and, according to Cubberly, an advocate of two-tier care.
Fair question. The government only announced that Vertesi would be going along on the four-country tour the day before the premier was to leave. Why him, and not the head of one of the health authorities, or the legislature's health committee, or a New Democrat? (Vertesi is paying his own way.)
Abbott noted Vertesi is a respected ER doctor who has spoken widely on health care issues and is B.C.'s representative on the Canada Health Council. Then he blustered about the NDP being afraid of new ideas and wanting the tour to include Cuba. Blah, blah, blah, as the young people say.
Outside the legislature, Abbott could do little better. He hadn't read Vertesi's book, which Cubberly cited. But even without knowing anything, he was convinced the NDP was wrong. And he didn't know who invited Vertesi.
Health matters to people, and they don't expect partisan attacks and jokes to replace real answers. If Abbott doesn't do better, it will be a long session for the Liberals.
Footnote: Vertesi is not quite the two-tier advocate the NDP claimed. He argues competition is needed to produce health efficiencies, and that until that is built into the public system private two-tier care should be allowed. He's an interesting and thoughtful analysts. But he is also a mysterious choice as the tour's sole expert advisor.

Sherry's legacy shows up in boost for children's ministry budget

VICTORIA - Call it the Sherry Charlie budget.
Sherry Charlie was beaten to death days after being placed in care under a new ministry policy. The failures in her case - by the ministry, and the First Nations agency responsible for her protection - forced the government to admit the facts.
And the response was evident in the budget.
For years the government has maintained that everything was fine in the ministry of children and families. Even earlier this month a senior ministry official briefing reporters was maintaining that the ministry had enough people, and enough front-line social workers, to do the job.
Now the government has acknowledged the obvious. Things were not fine. The ministry was starved of funds and short of staff. And children and families suffered as a result.
The budget confirms that. The ministry will get a 12-per-cent increase, another $200 million. A large chunk of the money will be set aside to respond to recommendations for change expected in Ted Hughes' report on the ministry. About 180 new staff will be hired.
It's a welcome step, but perhaps still not enough. Even with the increase, the ministry will have less money in real dollars this year than it did in 2001.
Overall, the 50-odd journalists (insert your joke here) in the budget lockup complained this was a boring document.
That's not a bad thing. It reflects the fact that for the most part the government is executing its three-year plan. There is no merit in budgets that constantly lurch off in new directions. This one appeared to balance spending and modest targeted tax cuts.
Health gets a 3.9-per-cent increase, enough to fund improvements, and education spending will rise 2.4 per cent.
Both those are on top of wage increases, which will be covered from a separate fund. That means there should be enough money to hire additional staff to deal with issues like class size and composition.
The wage issues remains a problem. Finance Minister Carole Taylor has set aside $420 million for increases this year, enough for an average 2.7-per-cent increase.
But contracts with some 300,000 government employees are expiring in the next few months. Many - teachers, doctors, health sector workers - are looking for much larger settlements. Their demands will test the government's commitment, especially given increasing public dissatisfaction with the Liberals quickness to substitute legislation and imposed contracts for negotiation.
There are other areas of concern. Despite a growing economy and population, Taylor is forecasting that government revenue will fall next year.
The finance types point to sound reasons, and risks like falling natural gas prices. And it is better to err on the side of caution.
But only up to a point. The government's budget for this year under-estimated actual revenue by $2.7 billion. That money that could have funded a tax cut, or increased services; now it will mostly go to debt repayment without a real public debate on the options.
What was missing from the budget?
An increase in welfare rates for starters, and a recognition that those left on the welfare rolls at this point will be hard to move into the workforce. It is time to reduce the desperation in their lives.
There was also little in this budget clearly earmarked for B.C.'s regions.
Even the pine beetle crisis continues to get insufficient attention. The province's funding is increased to $46 million, but the emphasis remains on harvesting the damaged wood and replanting. Little money is going to help communities prepare for decades of reduced timber supply one the beetle wood is harvested.
The Heartland, flavour of the month a few years ago, is now a forgotten concept.
Overall, give the budget a B.
A few tax cuts, split between business and individuals fairly even. Spending increases that will address some of the biggest problem areas.
And - thankfully - a recognition that the government's decisions had played a part in the death of a little girl.
Footnote: The budget forecasts that the province's debt will increase by $5 billion over the next three years. Taylor says the infrastructure spending is needed, and the debt is still manageable. Given the low revenue forecasts, larger surpluses will also likely reduce the real debt increase.

Campbell just can’t admit Children’s Commission error

VICTORIA - Why is it so hard for the government to accept the obvious - that it made a serious, damaging mistake in eliminating the Children’s Commission in 2002?
The inquest into the death of toddler Sherry Charlie has wrapped up, a two-week review that outlined a string of failures.
No one - not the government, the RCMP or the First Nations agency involved - emerged from the inquest with reputation intact.
All made serious errors, either in placing Sherry in the home where she was beaten to death or investigating her death.
Human error, systemic problems, shabby investigations, botched communications, sloppiness - it was a dismal, depressing two weeks.
Sherry, only 19 months old when she was battered to death, never really had much of a chance. The agencies and people that were supposed to support her and keep her safe failed. Their failures weren’t the result of bad luck, or a rare confluence of events. The system didn’t work.
Sherry was placed in the care of relatives, even though the father in the home had a long criminal record, including convictions for spousal assault. Even though the children and families’ ministry had investigated previous reports about the safety of other children in the home.
And even after Sherry’s death and an autopsy that found evidence of repeated abuse, her brother was left in the home for five months.
The jury’s 19 recommendations make a start at addressing the problems.
Sherry’s life was in the hands of Usma, a First Nations’ agency that operated under delegated authority from the ministry of children and families. That’s a sound approach, ensuring workers are more knowledgeable about local issues and more trusted. But the jury urged that social workers at those kind of agencies should not have lower levels of training than ministry staff.
Sherry’s placement was one of the first under a new ministry ”Kith and Kin” policy, which stressed the value of finding a family member to care for a child as an alternative to foster care.
Again, a positive policy. But it was introduced in haste, with inadequate training. Proper criminal record checks weren’t required. (That problem wasn’t fixed until the last few weeks.) Rules around home and reference reviews were inadequate. The ministry guidelines were incomplete.
Fix it, the jury said.
The jury made 19 recommendations in all, to police, coroner, the health care system, the ministry and Usma.
The last recommendation was sent specifically to Premier Gordon Campbell. Bring back the Children’s Commission, eliminated by the Liberals in September 2002 - the month Sherry was kicked and beaten to death.
The commission would not have kept Sherry alive and safe.
But it would have examiner her death. It would have reviewed the Kith and Kin policy when it was introduced, and warned of problems. The public would have known some one was watching. Just as the public would have known that 713 child death files were abandoned incomplete in a warehouse.
And all those things would have happened automatically.
Premier Gordon Campbell rejected the jury’s calls for an immediate restoration of the commission. He wants to wait, he said, until other reviews of the ministry by Child and Officer Jane Morley and Ted Hughes are complete before making a decision. The final report from Morley is due at the end of June.
Campbell could plead for time to determine the best way to restore what was lost when the commission was eliminated, and a chance to incorporate Hughes’ recommendations.
But almost everyone involved in child protection and supporting families has called for the restoration of effective independent oversight.
Campbell could easily have acknowledged the error in eliminating the commission, and promised to accept the spirit of the jury’s recommendations. The details could await the various reports still to come.
Getting rid of the Children’s Commission was a mistake. It weakened protection for children, and removed an important independent voice that celebrated ministry successes, and warned of problems.
It’s time to face the facts, and fix the problem.
Footnote: The NDP pretty much called for minister Stan Hagen’s resignation this week. That’s the last thing the ministry needs after a decade of instability. But Hagen has to begin dealing publicly with the wide concerns about the issues facing the ministry, something he has been unwilling to do.

Denials, confusion continue as children and families back in news

VICTORIA - There is something weirdly self-destructive about the Liberals' handling of the children and families' ministry.
The legislature has been back for three days, and already the government is looking evasive and disorganized. And its wounds are mostly self-inflicted.
The latest controversy is over ministry management changes, why they were made and how they affect its ability to deliver services. Deputy minister Alison MacPhail - the equivalent to the CEO - was shuffled out first, moved into a newly created post in another ministry. Days later director of child protection Jeremy Berland was moved. The government agreed to keep him as an assistant deputy minister and pay him $115,000 a year while he does research at the University of Victoria.
The timing raises obvious and legitimate questions. The inquest into the death of Sherry Charlie, the toddler beaten to death weeks after being placed in care under a new ministry policy, is just being completed. Child and Youth Officer Jane Morley has handed in her report on the ministry's internal review into Sherry's death. And in April Ted Hughes will present his much more sweeping report into the ministry's performance and the effect of eliminating the Children's Commission and the Child and Family Advocate.
And the ministry still has clear problems. Its own internal statistics show that only one in five reports of child abuse or neglect is being completed within the 30-day standard set by the ministry. Thousands are still open more than three months after they were filed. Major questions remain about salvaging a botched regionalization effort that was at the centre of Liberal plans.
So why add instability by removing top managers at such a critical time?
The question is reasonable. And I'd expect it could be readily answered by a candid government. The people in the jobs may be burned out, and need a change. Their new positions recognize their contributions and effort, and will still prove value, the government could say.
Or it could laud their past work, but say the premier's office, or Children and Families Minister Stan Hagen, felt it was time for new managers with different skills. And again, the soft landings could be justified.
Instead, there's been dodging and evasions.
Who, for example, decided that it was a good idea for child protection director Jeremy Berland to move to the UVic research job?
The government isn't saying. Hagen says he had no idea the idea was being discussed until the deal was done, and doesn't think he should have known. It was a personnel matter, and it would be political interference if he had any role, Hagen said.
The Liberal spin types deny that the premier's office was involved, though they won't say who was. (The acting deputy minister signed of on the deal, but he had been in the job only days.)
Two former deputy ministers with long experience think both claims ludicrous. The premier's office is involved in all such decisions, they say. And ministers have every right to know about and block such moves if they fear problems will be created in the ministry. If Hagen really returned from holidays to learn two of his most critical managers had been moved in his absence something has gone seriously wrong with the system, they say.
The result of all this is more confusion and uncertainty - exactly what the ministry does not need.
And it follows a terrible tradition of denial.
As the ministry's regionalization plan fell years behind schedule, the government kept claiming everything was fine. As questions mounted about Sherry Charlie's death, it refused to acknowledge problems or the need for an independent review until political pressure was overwhelming. When critics complained the Coroner's Service wasn't reviewing child deaths properly, the government denied any problems - until 713 abandoned child death files were found abandoned in a warehouse.
By now they should have learned that some clear answers, and willingness to acknowledge mistakes, would be a start to restoring public confidence.
Footnote: Morley has delivered her report on the ministry's handling of its review into Sherry Charlie's death to Attorney General Wally Oppal. Its public release is being delayed while the ministry cuts any information that violates the province's privacy rules. If Morley reported to the legislature, not the attorney general, her office would make those cuts independently.

Health care Throne Speech shows Liberals' agenda skimpy

VICTORIA - That was an odd Throne Speech from the Liberals.
It's bold to make a look at the basic principles of health care the centrepiece, including a plan to "update" the Canada Health Act.
Gordon Campbell is right in arguing that it's time to decide what the act really means, especially when it promises things like "reasonable access" to medically necessary procedures.
The Quebec Supreme Court has already ruled that the words have to mean something. The court supported a man who argued that he had the right to seek private care - paid for by the government - because he had waited unreasonably long for surgery.
Unless politicians begin to come clean on what the act really means, the courts will take on the task of providing definitions.
But there are obvious problems with the initiative.
For starters, the Canada Health Act is federal law. B.C., like other provinces can have a debate, but Ottawa decides whether to listen, and balances the concerns of all the provinces.
This is also a fuzzy exercise to make the centre of the Throne Speech. Campbell isn't promising fast action on the issues, only some provincial version of the Canada Health Act by 2009. It's hardly a galvanizing agenda item in the near term.
And it's a potentially big political problem, depending on where this review takes the government.
Campbell says that B.C.'s legislation will ultimately set out the province's position on the Canada Health Act's five key promises. The act isn't complex. It says provinces must have a publicly administered health care system that provides needed medical care in a reasonably timely way, fair payment to doctors and equal access for all Canadians. No user fees on top of government payment, or special charges for speedier, better care.
Defining those terms is challenging.
But Campbell proposes to add a fifth principle - sustainability.
And that may be the most challenging of all. Campbell argues that an aging population and rising costs of care mean we just can't keep on doing what we're doing now. "We all know that it's not sustainable," he says.
That's not really true. Cost increases are worrying, but Canadian health care spending as a percentage of GDP was unchanged between 1991 and 2001. A federal finance department review in 2004 that even without changes health spending would remain easily manageable until 2040 and beyond.
But if you do accept Campbell's premise, then the government is looking at some very rough decisions.
This isn't - or shouldn't be - about whether care is delivered by a public hospital or a private clinic. If the health care plan pays the bills, and there is no preferential treatment, then the principles of the Canada Health Act aren't compromised. The public-private debate can be settled on the basis of cost and effectiveness.
The notion that health care spending is not sustainable, and must be capped, carries big implications. Letting people pay directly for special care doesn't decrease health care spending, it increases it.
Capping spending in the name of sustainability can involve finding ways of reducing demand, such as keeping people healthy longer, and cutting costs.
But it also means saying some treatments will simply no longer be done, ebcause we don't want to spend the money. Period. And that is a tough sell.
Once you're past the health care discussion, the Throne Speech was pretty thin - a nod to children and families' ministry problems, more money for the Coroners' Service, some smallish education items and the Spirit Bearfor provincial animal.
The speech highlights a problem for the Liberals. Their first-term agenda was based on reducing government and cutting costs, reflecting a suspicion about government services.
.Now that work is done, it's tougher to come up with an agenda for the second term.
But without a government agenda, the opposition take control.
It's a big problem for the Liberals, and the Throne Speech suggest they have yet to solve it.
Footnote: Short shrift for the regions in this Throne Speech, and no mention of the late unlamented "Heartlands Strategy." Not one word on the softwood dispute. Also mostly silence on the New Relationship with First Nations, which was the dominant theme in last fall's Throne Speech. The challenges of turning the good intentions into specific agreements have proved tough.

Olympic overruns a warning we need more control

VICTORIA - I used to be a manager, and probably that shapes my response to the Vancouver Olympic financial problems.
If someone who worked for me came back soon after a project started, confessed they had got the numbers wrong and asked for a lot more money, I might come up with the cash. But I would be unhappy, and trust them less.
That's roughly where the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee is today.
VANOC, as it is called, has been warning vaguely about cost overruns for a couple of months. Now management says the cost of building the Olympic venues and housing was going to be way more than they had told the public. The $470-million budget was going to be overspent by $110 million.
The explanations get a little vague. The IOC demanded the Olympic bid be prepared based on 2002 costs, the organizing committee said. Now, four years later, things cost more, especially because construction costs in the province have been rising sharply.
But IOC requirements don't explain why VANOC didn't provide more accurate numbers to government when it asked for financial commitments. If it had, the committee wouldn't be looking for more money now.
And it doesn't explan why the public wasn't told about the real construction costs.
There's no need to panic. The venue overrun is 23 per cent, bad but still manageable. If the operating costs - about $1.5 billion - can be controlled, and revenues reach the target levels, then there will be no nasty shocks. (The idea that a two-week sports event can cost $1.5 billion to run is in itself alarming.)
But there is every reason to be watchful. The Games organizers have already broken trust. They said they would need $470 million from you to build the venues. Now they want much more.
VANOC says you're not to worry. "We are determined never to go back to the taxpayers," says CEO John Furlong.
Except they already promised no more money would be needed, when they asked for support for the Olympic bid. Once you have broken trust, you better expect to be watched much more closely.
Provincial taxpayers are on the hook for any Olympic overruns or losses.
We are the owners, the guarantors, but are kept mostly in the dark. VANOC's published financial statements provide no useful information to allow assessment of progress, costs or coming problems. Shareholders in a tiny business get better information. (That may improve next month, when provincial Auditor General Wayne Strelioff provides an independent update.)
It's our show. We put up a big chunk of the money - about $1.3 billion if you count the Sea-to-Sky Highway project. We've taken all the risk. But we're ignored. If any company treated shareholders like VANOC treats us, the directors would be dumped.
The province has three directors on the 20-person VANOC board, including close Campbell advisor Ken Dobell and Rusty Goepel and Richard Turner, both at the top of the business heap and finance experts. (Whistler gets two board seats.)
None of the province's directors are accountable to you. If Olympics minister Colin Hansen is too busy to sit on VANOC, why not a Liberal MLA to bring accountability?
It's not simply a question of looking out for your money. The economic justification for the Olympics is the spinoff benefits - the tourism, and investment that follow. But as former auditor general George Morfitt noted, that will only happen with planning and investment. A keen MLA on the VANOC board could help ensure all opportunities were seized, and that benefits came to to the entire Lower Mainland and the rest of the province.
This is the critical time for the Olympics. Decisions made now will be irrevocable.
And while VANOC neds to get on with the job, it shouldn't shy from greater openness and accountability. Especially when it comes to the people who wll pay the bills.
Footnote: Turin's Olympic committee went back to government last month for another $110 million, pushing the operating costs to $1.6 billion - more than VANOC has budgeted for Games still four years away. The late request is a reminder that governments are captives of the Olympic committee as the Games near. Saying no - and risking a global embarrassment - is not an option.