VICTORIA - Imagine two poor families living side-by-side, both with incomes of $18,000 a year and two young children.
That's not enough money to allow adequate housing in B.C. today, Forest Minister Rich Coleman said this month. Parents are forced to cut back on essentials, including adequate food for their children, to pay the rent. So the government launched a housing subsidy program to help poor families cope and ensure that their children get a fair start in life.
Everyone with children under 19 and an income under $20,000 is eligible for help.
Unless they are on social assistance. Those people are specifically excluded.
It's a bizarre decision. The program is supposed to be about children. Coleman said children from poor families are falling behind in life and in school because of inadequate nutritrition and other problems. The government launched the housing subsidy to to help them, he said.
But not if the children's parents are on welfare.
Coleman couldn't explain the decision. His best effort so far has been notably lame. People on social assistance already get a housing allowance, he said.
It's a non-answer. The issue, as Coleman acknowledged, is the income the family has available to provide for their family and the shelter allowance is part of that income. And housing allowances for people on social assistance haven't been increased in 12 years and are totally inadequate.
None of this is to knock the subsidy program, which is a small, useful initiative. Families with income below $20,000 can apply for a rent subsidy of up to $260 in the Lower Mainland and $182 in the rest of the province. The $40-million program could help up to 15,000 really poor families.
People on welfare qualify as a really poor. A single mom with two little children and "multiple barriers to employment" has an income of $18,200 a year. If the government hadn't barred her from the program, she would be eligible for a housing subsidy of about $90 a month. A single parent with one child on social assistance has an income of $14,060, enough to qualify for a subsidy worth about $140 a month.
It's enough money to make a difference in a poor family's life.
So what does the government have against those children?
Perhaps the government believes that life on social assistance should be miserable so people are motivated to find jobs or move away.
But that goal has been achieved long ago. In real dollars, welfare rates are 15 per cent lower than they were a decade ago. A parent with two children is allowed a maximum of $550 a month for housing, the same level as 1994, a. A pregnant woman is allowed - at most - $580 a month for housing, food, clothes, utilities, transportation and everything else. Figure a realistic $450 for housing and she is left to live on $30 a week for everything else.
It's a wretched existence and people are highly motivated to escape. About 100,000 people are on social assistance today, down from a high of 360,000 a decade ago. Many have moved into jobs, a good news story; a minority ended up on the streets. More than two-thirds of those left are on disability benefits or have what the ministry calls "persistent multiple barriers to employment." They are not quickly going to move into the workplace.
Or perhaps the government just doesn't like people on welfare and doesn't believe they - or their children - are worthy of help.
It's an alarming thought. But how else to explain a policy that offers aid to one family getting by on $15,000 a year, in the interests of their children, and denies it to the family next door with the same or a lower income?
Children are children. They all deserve compassion, help and a decent chance at life.
But the government has decided that some children in B.C. just don't matter as much.
Footnote: There is a myth that people on social assistance receive a wide range of benefits that might justify denying them the housing subsidy. The reality is that - rightly - government has done much to ensure that the working poor receive similar help with prescription drugs, MSP premiums and other costs.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Government dragging feet on problems in disabled services
The B.C. government is being remarkably laid back about problems in its big experiment to change the way services are delivered to some 20,000 disabled people in the province.
This is hugely important to the people who need the services - adults and children with mental disabilities and their families. They’re counting on Community Living BC, the new Crown corporation taking on the responsibility.
The government has already made a mess of the changeover once, pulling the plug once on the whole thing amid scandal and mismanagement in 2004.
Now the agency is in its first full year of operation and serious new problems are emerging. Thousands of people are piling up on waiting lists. Exhausted parents - some in their 70s - are being told there’s no help available for their mentally disabled children. A leading advocacy group warns fears people are being pushed from group homes into the community without adequate support in a bid to cut costs.
And the board of Community Living BC - appointed by the government - says it doesn’t have enough money to provide the services that people need. More than 3,000 adults are on waiting lists. (The agency doesn’t yet keep track of the number of children not getting needed services.) The agency figures it is short $45 million this year and another $27 million over the next two years.
It sounds bad. These are children and adults who need help, people with significant mental disabilities. They can not fend for themselves and need support ranging from intensive, semi-institutional care to help living in the community. Families are looking for assistance in coping with the challenge of caring for a 50-year-old son with a five-year-old’s mental abilities.
About 10,000 adults and 8,000 children are counting on Community Living BC. The real need is probably greater. It’s important to get this right.
But Children and Families Minister Tom Christensen is not talking like a man in a big hurry to sort out the problems, which the Community Living board raised more than two months ago. Christensen has questioned whether the board has managed the money it receives from government properly.
But he hasn’t got answers to the question and is in no hurry to address the current $45-million shortfall. The agency’s money problems will be considered over the next few months, he says, as part of preparations for next year’s budget.
This is what many people feared would happen.
The theory was that Community Living BC would offer families and the mentally disabled a bigger role in figuring out how services should be delivered. The main advocates were families whose wanted to be be able to develop individualized care plans for their children, with the agency signing off and providing funding.
It’s a good vision in many ways. But there are risks, especially for disabled people who don’t have family members to advocate for them and may be squeezed out of the picture.
The biggest fear was that the government would use the change to avoid responsibility for providing adequate care. That was a special concern because demand and costs are likely to increase.
Community Living BC’s service plan - approved by the government - notes that population growth and increased awareness will drive demand. "Another significant factor is the aging of individuals with disabilities and their families that care for them, which leads to more complex needs," the authority warns.
And Christensen says demand is increasing at about three per cent a year. But funding for services disabled adults is slated to increase by less than two per cent a year in each of the next two years. (It did go up by five per cent annually in the last two years.)
The government’s response to the latest problems suggest the fears are justified. Whether the difficulties in delivering services stem from in an inadequate budget or management missteps, they need to be addressed now.
Footnote: Advocacy groups say funding has lagged far behind demand. The BC Association for Community Living says ministry documents report the 2002/3 budget for adult community living was $554 million. Christensen says the current budget is $550 million. That leaves the agency coping with many more families with less money than it had four years ago.[
This is hugely important to the people who need the services - adults and children with mental disabilities and their families. They’re counting on Community Living BC, the new Crown corporation taking on the responsibility.
The government has already made a mess of the changeover once, pulling the plug once on the whole thing amid scandal and mismanagement in 2004.
Now the agency is in its first full year of operation and serious new problems are emerging. Thousands of people are piling up on waiting lists. Exhausted parents - some in their 70s - are being told there’s no help available for their mentally disabled children. A leading advocacy group warns fears people are being pushed from group homes into the community without adequate support in a bid to cut costs.
And the board of Community Living BC - appointed by the government - says it doesn’t have enough money to provide the services that people need. More than 3,000 adults are on waiting lists. (The agency doesn’t yet keep track of the number of children not getting needed services.) The agency figures it is short $45 million this year and another $27 million over the next two years.
It sounds bad. These are children and adults who need help, people with significant mental disabilities. They can not fend for themselves and need support ranging from intensive, semi-institutional care to help living in the community. Families are looking for assistance in coping with the challenge of caring for a 50-year-old son with a five-year-old’s mental abilities.
About 10,000 adults and 8,000 children are counting on Community Living BC. The real need is probably greater. It’s important to get this right.
But Children and Families Minister Tom Christensen is not talking like a man in a big hurry to sort out the problems, which the Community Living board raised more than two months ago. Christensen has questioned whether the board has managed the money it receives from government properly.
But he hasn’t got answers to the question and is in no hurry to address the current $45-million shortfall. The agency’s money problems will be considered over the next few months, he says, as part of preparations for next year’s budget.
This is what many people feared would happen.
The theory was that Community Living BC would offer families and the mentally disabled a bigger role in figuring out how services should be delivered. The main advocates were families whose wanted to be be able to develop individualized care plans for their children, with the agency signing off and providing funding.
It’s a good vision in many ways. But there are risks, especially for disabled people who don’t have family members to advocate for them and may be squeezed out of the picture.
The biggest fear was that the government would use the change to avoid responsibility for providing adequate care. That was a special concern because demand and costs are likely to increase.
Community Living BC’s service plan - approved by the government - notes that population growth and increased awareness will drive demand. "Another significant factor is the aging of individuals with disabilities and their families that care for them, which leads to more complex needs," the authority warns.
And Christensen says demand is increasing at about three per cent a year. But funding for services disabled adults is slated to increase by less than two per cent a year in each of the next two years. (It did go up by five per cent annually in the last two years.)
The government’s response to the latest problems suggest the fears are justified. Whether the difficulties in delivering services stem from in an inadequate budget or management missteps, they need to be addressed now.
Footnote: Advocacy groups say funding has lagged far behind demand. The BC Association for Community Living says ministry documents report the 2002/3 budget for adult community living was $554 million. Christensen says the current budget is $550 million. That leaves the agency coping with many more families with less money than it had four years ago.[
Friday, October 13, 2006
Health gag orders hurt the public interest
VICTORIA - It’s happening again. Another health authority is trying to gag doctors and nurses and front-line workers.
If a reporter - or MLA or mayor - calls a hospital in the Vancouver Island Health Authority and asks how wait times are in the emergency room today, the ER doctor is supposed to refuse to answer. Hang up, and call the communications department, says the edict from CEO Howard Waldner. They’ll tell you how to answer.
Or if a physician or cleaner becomes gravely concerned about conditions in a long-term care home - and gets no response internally - she’s supposed to stay quiet. The organization comes before the patients.
VIHA says the memo was just a reminder of existing policy and many organizations have similar rules.
And that’s true. In a past life I ran newspapers and sometimes, when controversy came along, said no one else could do media interviews.
But there were a few critical differences in circumstances. The newspapers weren’t monopoly providers; if people weren’t happy with us they could go elsewhere. That’s not true for the health-care system.
I was accountable to elected directors, put in place by the people who were paying for the whole operation. That’s not true for the health-care system.
And despite our airs, what newspapers do isn’t a matter of life and death, not remotely. That’s not true of the health-care system.
It gets stranger. Some reports suggest the memo was aimed at VIHA’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Richard Stanwick. His job is supposed to be talking about risks to health, based on his professional judgment. He hardly needs to clear his health warnings with communications types or authority executives.
But more likely it’s belated fallout from a devastating letter to the Victoria Times Colonist this summer by Dr. Anthony Barale, then VIHA's director of psychiatric emergency services. Barale went public with his concerns about the authority's substandard services for the addicted and mentally ill. The authority had failed in its responsibility, he said. Resources were pitiful and VIHA’s response was inadequate, "even by so-called ‘Third World standards.’"
Barale’s comments, backed up by colleagues, sparked a needed critical examination of VIHA’s efforts. The health authority never denied the issues were real A gag order, if followed, could have kept the serious problems from public view.
It’s not the first effort to silence health workers. Last year a veteran emergency room doctor at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver told a CBC reporter that ER conditions were the worst she had seen in 14 years. The adminstration’s response wasn’t to address the problems; it sent a memo to staff warning that talking to reporters could be grounds for discipline. (The comments might have displeased the health minister, a senior administrator complained, who would as a result turn down funding requests from the region.)
Nurses and other employees in the Interior Health Authority have reported the same fear of reprisals for speaking publicly about problems in the system.
And Fraser Health employees say they have been told that all newsletters, internal and external, must now be approved by the health minister’s office before they are released - if not a gag, at least a micromanaging muzzle.
It’s natural enough for managers to want to hush up problems. And it’s true that complaints sometimes come from disgruntled or misinformed employees.
But health authorities and other organizations have the ability to deal with those issues. Employees who knowingly level false charges, for example, can be subject to discipline.
More importantly, the health authorities why employees don’t trust that there is the will or ability to deal with their concerns.
But a gag order - no matter how its characterized - is not the answer.
We are the owners and customers of the health-care system. We want and need to hear directly from people on the frontlines when there are problems that the health authorities aren’t fixing.
Footnote: The problem could best be addressed by provincial whistleblower legislation providing protection for health employees raising concerns about issues that affect patient care and safety. At the same time, the legislation could make it clear that people who make unfounded or malicious complaints would not be protected. The government has rejected past requests for such laws.
If a reporter - or MLA or mayor - calls a hospital in the Vancouver Island Health Authority and asks how wait times are in the emergency room today, the ER doctor is supposed to refuse to answer. Hang up, and call the communications department, says the edict from CEO Howard Waldner. They’ll tell you how to answer.
Or if a physician or cleaner becomes gravely concerned about conditions in a long-term care home - and gets no response internally - she’s supposed to stay quiet. The organization comes before the patients.
VIHA says the memo was just a reminder of existing policy and many organizations have similar rules.
And that’s true. In a past life I ran newspapers and sometimes, when controversy came along, said no one else could do media interviews.
But there were a few critical differences in circumstances. The newspapers weren’t monopoly providers; if people weren’t happy with us they could go elsewhere. That’s not true for the health-care system.
I was accountable to elected directors, put in place by the people who were paying for the whole operation. That’s not true for the health-care system.
And despite our airs, what newspapers do isn’t a matter of life and death, not remotely. That’s not true of the health-care system.
It gets stranger. Some reports suggest the memo was aimed at VIHA’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Richard Stanwick. His job is supposed to be talking about risks to health, based on his professional judgment. He hardly needs to clear his health warnings with communications types or authority executives.
But more likely it’s belated fallout from a devastating letter to the Victoria Times Colonist this summer by Dr. Anthony Barale, then VIHA's director of psychiatric emergency services. Barale went public with his concerns about the authority's substandard services for the addicted and mentally ill. The authority had failed in its responsibility, he said. Resources were pitiful and VIHA’s response was inadequate, "even by so-called ‘Third World standards.’"
Barale’s comments, backed up by colleagues, sparked a needed critical examination of VIHA’s efforts. The health authority never denied the issues were real A gag order, if followed, could have kept the serious problems from public view.
It’s not the first effort to silence health workers. Last year a veteran emergency room doctor at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver told a CBC reporter that ER conditions were the worst she had seen in 14 years. The adminstration’s response wasn’t to address the problems; it sent a memo to staff warning that talking to reporters could be grounds for discipline. (The comments might have displeased the health minister, a senior administrator complained, who would as a result turn down funding requests from the region.)
Nurses and other employees in the Interior Health Authority have reported the same fear of reprisals for speaking publicly about problems in the system.
And Fraser Health employees say they have been told that all newsletters, internal and external, must now be approved by the health minister’s office before they are released - if not a gag, at least a micromanaging muzzle.
It’s natural enough for managers to want to hush up problems. And it’s true that complaints sometimes come from disgruntled or misinformed employees.
But health authorities and other organizations have the ability to deal with those issues. Employees who knowingly level false charges, for example, can be subject to discipline.
More importantly, the health authorities why employees don’t trust that there is the will or ability to deal with their concerns.
But a gag order - no matter how its characterized - is not the answer.
We are the owners and customers of the health-care system. We want and need to hear directly from people on the frontlines when there are problems that the health authorities aren’t fixing.
Footnote: The problem could best be addressed by provincial whistleblower legislation providing protection for health employees raising concerns about issues that affect patient care and safety. At the same time, the legislation could make it clear that people who make unfounded or malicious complaints would not be protected. The government has rejected past requests for such laws.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
We've decide to deny some children healthy food
VICTORIA - It's alarming to think that we're spending $1.8 billion a year in B.C. on avoidable health-care costs.
But that's one of the findings in the latest annual report from provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall, which this year looks at "Food, Health and Well-Being in B.C."
As the conversation on health care starts it's worth noting that we'd spend up to 15 per cent less on health - enough for an annual $1,800 tax cut for a family of four - if we ate smarter, exercised a little more and didn't smoke.
It raises, among other things, some obvious questions about how serious we are about the costs of health care, or our health in general. The study reports that 24 per cent of Canadians were overweight or obese in 2004, up from 14 per cent in 1979. The percentage of children and youth who are obese or overweight has taken the same leap. (Don't take this as preachy. My diet and exercise habits are mediocre to wretched.)
Our bad habits are harmful for us and costly for society. People know about the risk of diabetes and heart disease. But the report notes that research shows that diet plays a role in about 30 per cent of cancer cases. Eat more fruits and vegetables and your risk falls.
Which all points to the value of the government's effort to promote healthier choices.
My poor choices are just that - choices.
But the report included an alarming reminder of how many British Columbians, especially children, have no option. It's impossible for their parents to feed them adequately, because they don't have enough money.
Forest Minister Rich Coleman put the problem bluntly this month when he announced the government's new housing subsidies for up to 15,000 working poor families. Children in B.C. are suffering from malnutrition because their parents can't afford food, he said. They are falling behind in school and failing to gain needed literacy skills. Inadequate nutrition is condemning them to a life of disadvantage and ill health, while creating avoidable future costs. Leaving aside the morality of letting kids go hungry, it simply makes business sense to look after them now and avoid all the future costs that will be consequences of their malnutrition.
The health officer's report found that in 2001 about 15 per cent of British Columbians worried about not being able to afford adequate food. “In B.C. child poverty diminished in the late 1990s and then rose from 2002 to 2005,” the report notes. About 25 per cent of children lived in poverty in 2005.
Many of those children were in homes where parents were working, but not earning enough to provide adequate food.
Many others lived with parents on welfare. Their poverty was based on decisions government made on your behalf.
The health report noted B.C.’s welfare rates were the second lowest in Canada in 2004. Once inflation is stripped out, people on welfare are getting 15 per cent less than they did 10 years ago.
That's not enough to feed their children properly, the health officer's report found. A single parent with two children on welfare gets about $1,450 a month, counting federal credits and all the rest. Look around your community and figure what they would have to pay in rent.
By my count, they would have about $650 left each month for everything else - food, bus passes, a phone, clothes, school fees.
But the report sets the basic cost of feeding a family of three at $477 a month. That would leave $40 a week for everything other than food and rent for three people.
Impossible, of course, so - as Coleman observed - children suffer.
For some, the deprivation is brief. Their parent finds work, the ideal outcome, and life changes.
But for disabled parents or families with very young children or "barriers to employment," the inadequate nutrition can last through childhood.
As the health officer's report reminds us, that will cost us all, for decades to come.
Footnote: Food matters. The report notes that children in "food insufficient households" are more than twice as likely to have asthma and that inadequate childhood nutritition can cause permanent cognitive damage, limiting the child's ability to learn. Inadequate nutrition for teens is linked to depression and suicidal tendencies. The full report can be found at www.health.gov.bc.ca/pho/annual.
But that's one of the findings in the latest annual report from provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall, which this year looks at "Food, Health and Well-Being in B.C."
As the conversation on health care starts it's worth noting that we'd spend up to 15 per cent less on health - enough for an annual $1,800 tax cut for a family of four - if we ate smarter, exercised a little more and didn't smoke.
It raises, among other things, some obvious questions about how serious we are about the costs of health care, or our health in general. The study reports that 24 per cent of Canadians were overweight or obese in 2004, up from 14 per cent in 1979. The percentage of children and youth who are obese or overweight has taken the same leap. (Don't take this as preachy. My diet and exercise habits are mediocre to wretched.)
Our bad habits are harmful for us and costly for society. People know about the risk of diabetes and heart disease. But the report notes that research shows that diet plays a role in about 30 per cent of cancer cases. Eat more fruits and vegetables and your risk falls.
Which all points to the value of the government's effort to promote healthier choices.
My poor choices are just that - choices.
But the report included an alarming reminder of how many British Columbians, especially children, have no option. It's impossible for their parents to feed them adequately, because they don't have enough money.
Forest Minister Rich Coleman put the problem bluntly this month when he announced the government's new housing subsidies for up to 15,000 working poor families. Children in B.C. are suffering from malnutrition because their parents can't afford food, he said. They are falling behind in school and failing to gain needed literacy skills. Inadequate nutrition is condemning them to a life of disadvantage and ill health, while creating avoidable future costs. Leaving aside the morality of letting kids go hungry, it simply makes business sense to look after them now and avoid all the future costs that will be consequences of their malnutrition.
The health officer's report found that in 2001 about 15 per cent of British Columbians worried about not being able to afford adequate food. “In B.C. child poverty diminished in the late 1990s and then rose from 2002 to 2005,” the report notes. About 25 per cent of children lived in poverty in 2005.
Many of those children were in homes where parents were working, but not earning enough to provide adequate food.
Many others lived with parents on welfare. Their poverty was based on decisions government made on your behalf.
The health report noted B.C.’s welfare rates were the second lowest in Canada in 2004. Once inflation is stripped out, people on welfare are getting 15 per cent less than they did 10 years ago.
That's not enough to feed their children properly, the health officer's report found. A single parent with two children on welfare gets about $1,450 a month, counting federal credits and all the rest. Look around your community and figure what they would have to pay in rent.
By my count, they would have about $650 left each month for everything else - food, bus passes, a phone, clothes, school fees.
But the report sets the basic cost of feeding a family of three at $477 a month. That would leave $40 a week for everything other than food and rent for three people.
Impossible, of course, so - as Coleman observed - children suffer.
For some, the deprivation is brief. Their parent finds work, the ideal outcome, and life changes.
But for disabled parents or families with very young children or "barriers to employment," the inadequate nutrition can last through childhood.
As the health officer's report reminds us, that will cost us all, for decades to come.
Footnote: Food matters. The report notes that children in "food insufficient households" are more than twice as likely to have asthma and that inadequate childhood nutritition can cause permanent cognitive damage, limiting the child's ability to learn. Inadequate nutrition for teens is linked to depression and suicidal tendencies. The full report can be found at www.health.gov.bc.ca/pho/annual.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Almost 600,000 reasons Harper’s pot policy doomed
VICTORIA - It wasn’t exactly a newsflash that British Columbians are fond of marijuana. All those jokes about BC Bud have to be based on something.
But last week’s report on marijuana use in B.C. from the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addiction Research should be a reminder of the need to overhaul our policies on pot.
And it should be a special warning to the Harper government that tougher enforcement, longer sentences and hardline rhetoric are doomed to be costly failures. In B.C. especially, an effort to wipe out marijuana use - and by extension production and sale - has about the same chance of success as banning alcohol.
Governments concerned about the negative effects of marijuana use need to come up with a smarter approach.
The problem for the get-tough crowd is that the B.C. public doesn’t buy the idea that marijuana use should be a crime.
A majority of British Columbia adults have used marijuana, the study found, about 1.8 million people.
More significantly, almost 600,000 used pot in the last 12 months. That’s more people than voted for either the NDP or the Liberals in B.C. in the last federal election and almost equal to the number who voted Conservative.
That reality has at least three significant public policy implications.
First, a get-tough approached based on the argument that marijuana is an imminent threat is doomed. Marijuana still trails far behind alcohol as a drug of choice - about 2.7 million of us reported drinking in the last year. But by the time almost 600,000 people are using marijuana occasionally the chances of winning public support for a big criminal crackdown have vanished.
It doesn’t matter if politicians think that’s good or bad. It’s reality. Arrests for cannabis-related offences have doubled in the last decade, with 75 per cent of them for possession. There’s been no effect on use.
Second, that traditional efforts to attack the supply side - more police, longer sentences and all the rest - won’t work. When demand for a product is strong and there’s widespread public acceptance of it, than the laws of the market take effect. Suppliers will emerge to meet the demand. Shut down one, and another will step forward. That’s the lesson of Prohibition in the U.S. and of virtually every drug strategy since.
And third, that the risks marijuana - and other drugs - pose in terms of public health and safety will not be addressed as long as governments pursue a doomed strategy.
And there are risks, contrary to the claims of some marijuana advocates. The centre’s study found that about 10 per cent of users were at moderate risk of problems related to their marijuana use. No one could imagine that daily marijuana use is a good thing for an already unmotivated 15-year-old. And production and sales are fattening the bank accounts of organized criminals.
But as long as the emphasis is on talking tough, then there’s little time or money left for education about risks, smart use or recognizing and dealing with problems.
There’s no targeted effort to restrict access to youth, as there is for alcohol and tobacco. (The report notes daily use of marijuana is now more common among young Canadians than tobacco.)
And criminals still profit from sales.
At the same time, the resources going toward marijuana enforcement could be better spent. About half of drug arrests in Canada in 2004 were for cannabis offences, the study notes. Most Canadians would likely welcome broader efforts to curb meth, heroin and cocaine use, the drugs driving crime in most cities.
The former Liberal government appeared to be heading toward decriminalization for possession of pot and up to three plants. (That alone would likely make a big dent in the profits of from criminal grow-ops)
But the Harper government has so far talked about enforcement and tougher penalties, the old language of prohibition.
It’s not going to work. The study makes that obvious.
Footnote: When a drug reaches a certain level of use, enforcement becomes impossible. A University of the Fraser Valley study on grow ops found that in 1997 police across B.C. investigated more than 90 per cent of grow-op reports within one month. By 2003, that had fallen to 50 per cent. Up to 25 per cent of reports were never followed up.
But last week’s report on marijuana use in B.C. from the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addiction Research should be a reminder of the need to overhaul our policies on pot.
And it should be a special warning to the Harper government that tougher enforcement, longer sentences and hardline rhetoric are doomed to be costly failures. In B.C. especially, an effort to wipe out marijuana use - and by extension production and sale - has about the same chance of success as banning alcohol.
Governments concerned about the negative effects of marijuana use need to come up with a smarter approach.
The problem for the get-tough crowd is that the B.C. public doesn’t buy the idea that marijuana use should be a crime.
A majority of British Columbia adults have used marijuana, the study found, about 1.8 million people.
More significantly, almost 600,000 used pot in the last 12 months. That’s more people than voted for either the NDP or the Liberals in B.C. in the last federal election and almost equal to the number who voted Conservative.
That reality has at least three significant public policy implications.
First, a get-tough approached based on the argument that marijuana is an imminent threat is doomed. Marijuana still trails far behind alcohol as a drug of choice - about 2.7 million of us reported drinking in the last year. But by the time almost 600,000 people are using marijuana occasionally the chances of winning public support for a big criminal crackdown have vanished.
It doesn’t matter if politicians think that’s good or bad. It’s reality. Arrests for cannabis-related offences have doubled in the last decade, with 75 per cent of them for possession. There’s been no effect on use.
Second, that traditional efforts to attack the supply side - more police, longer sentences and all the rest - won’t work. When demand for a product is strong and there’s widespread public acceptance of it, than the laws of the market take effect. Suppliers will emerge to meet the demand. Shut down one, and another will step forward. That’s the lesson of Prohibition in the U.S. and of virtually every drug strategy since.
And third, that the risks marijuana - and other drugs - pose in terms of public health and safety will not be addressed as long as governments pursue a doomed strategy.
And there are risks, contrary to the claims of some marijuana advocates. The centre’s study found that about 10 per cent of users were at moderate risk of problems related to their marijuana use. No one could imagine that daily marijuana use is a good thing for an already unmotivated 15-year-old. And production and sales are fattening the bank accounts of organized criminals.
But as long as the emphasis is on talking tough, then there’s little time or money left for education about risks, smart use or recognizing and dealing with problems.
There’s no targeted effort to restrict access to youth, as there is for alcohol and tobacco. (The report notes daily use of marijuana is now more common among young Canadians than tobacco.)
And criminals still profit from sales.
At the same time, the resources going toward marijuana enforcement could be better spent. About half of drug arrests in Canada in 2004 were for cannabis offences, the study notes. Most Canadians would likely welcome broader efforts to curb meth, heroin and cocaine use, the drugs driving crime in most cities.
The former Liberal government appeared to be heading toward decriminalization for possession of pot and up to three plants. (That alone would likely make a big dent in the profits of from criminal grow-ops)
But the Harper government has so far talked about enforcement and tougher penalties, the old language of prohibition.
It’s not going to work. The study makes that obvious.
Footnote: When a drug reaches a certain level of use, enforcement becomes impossible. A University of the Fraser Valley study on grow ops found that in 1997 police across B.C. investigated more than 90 per cent of grow-op reports within one month. By 2003, that had fallen to 50 per cent. Up to 25 per cent of reports were never followed up.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Health 'conversation' too good to miss
VICTORIA - You can come up with a long list of reasons to shun Premier Gordon Campbell’s “conversation” on health care.
Maybe you’re irked at a $5-million budget for lightweight ads, wishing that money had gone to fix your knee.
And maybe you’re put off by the premier’s bogus claim that they within the next 10 years health care costs will somehow suddenly become this all-consuming monster. The facts contradict the spin. Health care costs represented about one-third of government revenue in 1985, and 1995, and 2005. Cost pressures are a concern, but there’s no crisis.
But the wise move is to leap into the debate and sign up for the chance to be one of the 100 citizens chosen for each of 16 regional forums.
For starters, give Campbell credit. He handed the question of electoral reform over to a random assembly of citizens even though it was not in his political interests. When their STV proposal was narrowly defeated in a referendum, despite majority support, Campbell decided on a second vote.
No Canadian politician has ever showed so much confidence in the good judgment of average citizens.
The health-care conversation owes a lot to the citizens’ assembly on electoral reform. There are opportunities to participate through web forums but the main element, so far, looks to be the regional forums on care.
The expectation is that a lot of people will want to talk about the future of heath care, knowing their deliberations might matter. So if 2,000 people apply to take part in one of the forums, a random draw will be used to select the 100 participants.
You can have a lot of confidence in the wisdom of 100 citizens, if they are genuinely representative. The group would then include some hard-nosed numbers types, a doctor and nurse or two, patients and people on waiting lists, perhaps an engineer and a therapist, strident lefties and archconservatives. You would have a vast amount of life experience, a broad range of skills and perspectives, With time and competent facilitation you can expect some very useful ideas.
But it only works if everybody is represented at the table. If unions or politicos of whatever stripe or any other interest group dominates the process, the results will be inevitably be second-rate. Too much experience and wisdom will be missing.
You can fix that problem by going to bcconversationonhealth.ca and signing up.
In the meantime, there are a lot of issues to consider and research to be done to help make for an intelligent debate.
It’s disappointing that the government’s ads promoting the health-care conversation have so been short on useful content. The PR flyer mailed to every household could easily have included some useful background material on budgets and wait lists and an explanation of the Canada Health Act and a directory of web sites. Instead it was devoid of useful content.
But there’s time for a full debate and a lot of exchanges of facts and ideas before things really get going.
For instance, what do we mean when we talk about controlling health-care spending? Some people seem to think allowing patients to pay for private care reduces health-care costs, when in fact it drives up total health spending significantly. The way the bills are paid changes, shifting from taxes to direct payments. But the money going out the door for health increases.
And what sort of changes are we prepared to make? About 25 per cent of health spending goes towards people in the last 12 months of their lives. In B.C. about $2.8 billion will be spent on 28,000 people who will die within 12 months, or $100,000 each. The average expense for the rest of us will be $2,100. Is that money well-spent, or are we committing large amounts for little benefit. (And perhaps prolonged suffering.)
These are big questions. You should take the chance to help answer them.
Footnote: This is the first time patients or consumers get a real voice in the health-care debate. Doctors, unions, business groups, big pharmaceutical companies, they all have clout. And politicians don’t really speak for patients, because they’re worried about cutting taxes and other pressures as well as health care. Finally, we get a real voice. The first regional forums are planned for Burnaby, Campbell River, Castlegar, Chilliwack, Cranbrook, Fort St. John, Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo, North Vancouver, Prince George, Richmond, Smithers, Surrey, Vancouver and Victoria.
Maybe you’re irked at a $5-million budget for lightweight ads, wishing that money had gone to fix your knee.
And maybe you’re put off by the premier’s bogus claim that they within the next 10 years health care costs will somehow suddenly become this all-consuming monster. The facts contradict the spin. Health care costs represented about one-third of government revenue in 1985, and 1995, and 2005. Cost pressures are a concern, but there’s no crisis.
But the wise move is to leap into the debate and sign up for the chance to be one of the 100 citizens chosen for each of 16 regional forums.
For starters, give Campbell credit. He handed the question of electoral reform over to a random assembly of citizens even though it was not in his political interests. When their STV proposal was narrowly defeated in a referendum, despite majority support, Campbell decided on a second vote.
No Canadian politician has ever showed so much confidence in the good judgment of average citizens.
The health-care conversation owes a lot to the citizens’ assembly on electoral reform. There are opportunities to participate through web forums but the main element, so far, looks to be the regional forums on care.
The expectation is that a lot of people will want to talk about the future of heath care, knowing their deliberations might matter. So if 2,000 people apply to take part in one of the forums, a random draw will be used to select the 100 participants.
You can have a lot of confidence in the wisdom of 100 citizens, if they are genuinely representative. The group would then include some hard-nosed numbers types, a doctor and nurse or two, patients and people on waiting lists, perhaps an engineer and a therapist, strident lefties and archconservatives. You would have a vast amount of life experience, a broad range of skills and perspectives, With time and competent facilitation you can expect some very useful ideas.
But it only works if everybody is represented at the table. If unions or politicos of whatever stripe or any other interest group dominates the process, the results will be inevitably be second-rate. Too much experience and wisdom will be missing.
You can fix that problem by going to bcconversationonhealth.ca and signing up.
In the meantime, there are a lot of issues to consider and research to be done to help make for an intelligent debate.
It’s disappointing that the government’s ads promoting the health-care conversation have so been short on useful content. The PR flyer mailed to every household could easily have included some useful background material on budgets and wait lists and an explanation of the Canada Health Act and a directory of web sites. Instead it was devoid of useful content.
But there’s time for a full debate and a lot of exchanges of facts and ideas before things really get going.
For instance, what do we mean when we talk about controlling health-care spending? Some people seem to think allowing patients to pay for private care reduces health-care costs, when in fact it drives up total health spending significantly. The way the bills are paid changes, shifting from taxes to direct payments. But the money going out the door for health increases.
And what sort of changes are we prepared to make? About 25 per cent of health spending goes towards people in the last 12 months of their lives. In B.C. about $2.8 billion will be spent on 28,000 people who will die within 12 months, or $100,000 each. The average expense for the rest of us will be $2,100. Is that money well-spent, or are we committing large amounts for little benefit. (And perhaps prolonged suffering.)
These are big questions. You should take the chance to help answer them.
Footnote: This is the first time patients or consumers get a real voice in the health-care debate. Doctors, unions, business groups, big pharmaceutical companies, they all have clout. And politicians don’t really speak for patients, because they’re worried about cutting taxes and other pressures as well as health care. Finally, we get a real voice. The first regional forums are planned for Burnaby, Campbell River, Castlegar, Chilliwack, Cranbrook, Fort St. John, Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo, North Vancouver, Prince George, Richmond, Smithers, Surrey, Vancouver and Victoria.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Not a housing strategy, but a small step
It's a fine idea to bring in a rent-subsidy program for about 15,000 poor families in B.C., but it doesn't qualify as the cornerstone of a housing policy.
Forest Minister Rich Coleman, who is also responsible for housing, unveiled what he called a housing strategy this week.
The general direction seemed fine, but there wasn't a lot of meat - or in this case money - on the bones of the plan, dubbed Housing Matters BC.
The most significant news was the $40-million available in rent subsidies for up to 15,000 of the province's poorest families.
People with children who are trying to live on less than $20,000 a year can apply for the subsidy. If they're successful, they will get a cheque every month to help them pay the rent.
That's obviously needed help. There is a 15,000-family waiting list for affordable housing in the province. In the meantime, families are struggling desperately to pay the rent and put food on the table, clothes on their kids and hope in their lives.
But the program is only a small start. The subsidy will be based mainly on the family's income and and number of children. Across most of the province, a family of four getting by on $18,000 a year would get a rent subsidy of $76.50 a month.
Coleman said the theory is that the program will help families keep their housing costs to 30 per cent of their income, a widely used benchmark for acceptable levels.
There's a catch. The government assumes that a family of four anywhere outside Greater Vancouver should be able to find housing for $705 a month. (Vancouver residents are allowed rents of up to $875 and a correspondingly higher subsidy.)
But in many communities acceptable rental accommodation for a family in that price range has become hard to find.
Coleman observed, rightly, that without the subsidies families are suffering and children's futures are at risk. Soaring rents have left families with so little money that children are malnourished and their education suffers, he said.
Which makes it both inexplicable and outrageous that the subsidy program is closed to people on welfare. The same family of four on welfare is allowed a maximum of $590 a month for housing. Anything more has to come from their already inadequate support. The notion that those children's suffering is less significant or that they are less worthy of help is appalling.
The subsidy program signalled a big shift from past policies. The government had focused on building - either directly or in partnership with non-profits - affordable housing units to increase the supply.
Coleman, a former developer, isn't keen on that approach. It takes too long to get affordable housing built, especially given NIMBYism and municipal zoning problems, and costs too much. More people can be helped more quickly with subsidies.
Which is partly true. The problems come when rental housing simply isn't available,a reality in many communities as developers choose condo projects over rental units.
The announcement included other measures - modest amounts of new money for shelters and seniors' housing and a small outreach program to support the homeless.
The theory behind all this makes sense. There is no one magic solution to homelessness and housing affordability. Subsidies will help some families. Government-supported housing is also needed to ensure there is an adequate supply of affordable rental units. Homeless people need shelters and places to live where they get the support needed to keep them from sliding back to the streets.
All the elements have to be in place. Outreach programs fail when there is no housing available for people ready to get off the streets.
The housing crisis in B.C., is real, and not just for the homeless or the extremely poor. More than 60,000 families are spending more than half their income on rent.
The government took a very small step toward dealing with a very large problem.
Footnote: There is more to come. Coleman wants tax breaks for developers willing to build rental units and municipal policies that don't slow development and push up costs. He's also keen on seeing existing affordable housing projects cash in on the value of their land holdings and use the proceeds to construct higher density projects.
Forest Minister Rich Coleman, who is also responsible for housing, unveiled what he called a housing strategy this week.
The general direction seemed fine, but there wasn't a lot of meat - or in this case money - on the bones of the plan, dubbed Housing Matters BC.
The most significant news was the $40-million available in rent subsidies for up to 15,000 of the province's poorest families.
People with children who are trying to live on less than $20,000 a year can apply for the subsidy. If they're successful, they will get a cheque every month to help them pay the rent.
That's obviously needed help. There is a 15,000-family waiting list for affordable housing in the province. In the meantime, families are struggling desperately to pay the rent and put food on the table, clothes on their kids and hope in their lives.
But the program is only a small start. The subsidy will be based mainly on the family's income and and number of children. Across most of the province, a family of four getting by on $18,000 a year would get a rent subsidy of $76.50 a month.
Coleman said the theory is that the program will help families keep their housing costs to 30 per cent of their income, a widely used benchmark for acceptable levels.
There's a catch. The government assumes that a family of four anywhere outside Greater Vancouver should be able to find housing for $705 a month. (Vancouver residents are allowed rents of up to $875 and a correspondingly higher subsidy.)
But in many communities acceptable rental accommodation for a family in that price range has become hard to find.
Coleman observed, rightly, that without the subsidies families are suffering and children's futures are at risk. Soaring rents have left families with so little money that children are malnourished and their education suffers, he said.
Which makes it both inexplicable and outrageous that the subsidy program is closed to people on welfare. The same family of four on welfare is allowed a maximum of $590 a month for housing. Anything more has to come from their already inadequate support. The notion that those children's suffering is less significant or that they are less worthy of help is appalling.
The subsidy program signalled a big shift from past policies. The government had focused on building - either directly or in partnership with non-profits - affordable housing units to increase the supply.
Coleman, a former developer, isn't keen on that approach. It takes too long to get affordable housing built, especially given NIMBYism and municipal zoning problems, and costs too much. More people can be helped more quickly with subsidies.
Which is partly true. The problems come when rental housing simply isn't available,a reality in many communities as developers choose condo projects over rental units.
The announcement included other measures - modest amounts of new money for shelters and seniors' housing and a small outreach program to support the homeless.
The theory behind all this makes sense. There is no one magic solution to homelessness and housing affordability. Subsidies will help some families. Government-supported housing is also needed to ensure there is an adequate supply of affordable rental units. Homeless people need shelters and places to live where they get the support needed to keep them from sliding back to the streets.
All the elements have to be in place. Outreach programs fail when there is no housing available for people ready to get off the streets.
The housing crisis in B.C., is real, and not just for the homeless or the extremely poor. More than 60,000 families are spending more than half their income on rent.
The government took a very small step toward dealing with a very large problem.
Footnote: There is more to come. Coleman wants tax breaks for developers willing to build rental units and municipal policies that don't slow development and push up costs. He's also keen on seeing existing affordable housing projects cash in on the value of their land holdings and use the proceeds to construct higher density projects.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Liberal MLAs stall search for child and youth representative
VICTORIA - I can't recall any MLAs behaving quite as irresponsibly or arrogantly as the three Liberals on the legislative committee charged with finding a new representative for children and youth.
The new office was a central recommendation in Ted Hughes' scathing report on the government's many failures in the children and families ministry.
Hughes said the representative should be appointed "as soon as possible" to restore effective, independent oversight. Among other things the new representative would advocate for children in care, investigate trends in child deaths and monitor and report on the effectiveness of the support and care government provides.
The overall report was sharply critical of the role budget cuts and mismanagement had played in hurting services for children and families.
Right, said Premier Gordon Campbell back in the spring. We're on it. The government would work "around the clock" to get the representative's office up and running, he vowed.
But now, in the most blatant way, the three Liberals on the selection committee are stalling the process. Their indifference to Hughes' report, their lack of urgency, are outrageous.
The three are John Rustad of Prince George-Omineca, the chair, and Ron Cantelon of Nanaimo-Parksville and Mary Polak of Langley.
The committee is already far behind schedule. Now the three Liberals say they can't find a single time to meet and work toward finding a representative in the entire month of October.
It's just impossible for the Liberal members to attend a meeting, says Rustad.
"We went through everybody's calendars and October is a zoo," he told Times Colonist reporter Lindsay Kines. "There are so many committees and so many issues that are out there that everyone is booked solid." (The more important meetings include the annual five-day convention for municipal politicians.)
What a pathetic excuse for inaction. This is supposed to be a government priority, according to the premier. It's a rare chance for backbench MLAs to take on a specific, important task.The two NDP committe members, Diane Thorne of Coquitlam and Maurine Karagianis of Esquimalt, say they are available any time for meetings.
But the Liberal MLAs are treating this responsibility like an unwanted intrusion on their time.
The application deadline for the representatives' position closed six weeks ago. The committee's original work schedule called for interviews to be completed in September and a candidate to be selected by now. The legislature would then quickly meet for a day or two to approve the committee's recommendation.
Then the new representative would get on with the important job and begin setting up the office.
Now Rustad and the Liberals propose to finish the interviews in November.
The new representative might not be in place until spring, almost a year after Hughes made his report.
It's hard to accept that the MLAs' behaviour is just a result of indifference. Rustad claims he understands the urgency of the work. "It's very important to have this position in place as soon as possible for the children of the province," he says. "The Ted Hughes report was very clear in terms of that."
Which leaves observers searching for some other explanation for the Liberals' failure.
Do they want to stall the return of an independent officer who would report publicly on the children and families ministry performance? Is the idea of the representative still something the Liberals don't really accept?
Or is the Campbell government worried about having the legislature sit this fall, even for the day or two required to approve the committee's choice for the representative's post? After all, the Liberals did cancel the fall session, eliminating the chance for MLAs to raise issues from health care problems to the softwood agreement to forest safety.
The reasons don't matter. The Liberal MLAs' negligence does. The Hughes' report indicated that the government really didn't care much about its responsibilities to children and families.
Rustad, Polak and Cantelon are showing that not much has changed.
Footnote: When asked about the delays, Rustad initially told Kines that the process was still on track and a representative would be named by mid-October. But 24 hours later he revealed the long delay in the search. It's alarming that the committee chair has such a poor sense of what's going on.
The new office was a central recommendation in Ted Hughes' scathing report on the government's many failures in the children and families ministry.
Hughes said the representative should be appointed "as soon as possible" to restore effective, independent oversight. Among other things the new representative would advocate for children in care, investigate trends in child deaths and monitor and report on the effectiveness of the support and care government provides.
The overall report was sharply critical of the role budget cuts and mismanagement had played in hurting services for children and families.
Right, said Premier Gordon Campbell back in the spring. We're on it. The government would work "around the clock" to get the representative's office up and running, he vowed.
But now, in the most blatant way, the three Liberals on the selection committee are stalling the process. Their indifference to Hughes' report, their lack of urgency, are outrageous.
The three are John Rustad of Prince George-Omineca, the chair, and Ron Cantelon of Nanaimo-Parksville and Mary Polak of Langley.
The committee is already far behind schedule. Now the three Liberals say they can't find a single time to meet and work toward finding a representative in the entire month of October.
It's just impossible for the Liberal members to attend a meeting, says Rustad.
"We went through everybody's calendars and October is a zoo," he told Times Colonist reporter Lindsay Kines. "There are so many committees and so many issues that are out there that everyone is booked solid." (The more important meetings include the annual five-day convention for municipal politicians.)
What a pathetic excuse for inaction. This is supposed to be a government priority, according to the premier. It's a rare chance for backbench MLAs to take on a specific, important task.The two NDP committe members, Diane Thorne of Coquitlam and Maurine Karagianis of Esquimalt, say they are available any time for meetings.
But the Liberal MLAs are treating this responsibility like an unwanted intrusion on their time.
The application deadline for the representatives' position closed six weeks ago. The committee's original work schedule called for interviews to be completed in September and a candidate to be selected by now. The legislature would then quickly meet for a day or two to approve the committee's recommendation.
Then the new representative would get on with the important job and begin setting up the office.
Now Rustad and the Liberals propose to finish the interviews in November.
The new representative might not be in place until spring, almost a year after Hughes made his report.
It's hard to accept that the MLAs' behaviour is just a result of indifference. Rustad claims he understands the urgency of the work. "It's very important to have this position in place as soon as possible for the children of the province," he says. "The Ted Hughes report was very clear in terms of that."
Which leaves observers searching for some other explanation for the Liberals' failure.
Do they want to stall the return of an independent officer who would report publicly on the children and families ministry performance? Is the idea of the representative still something the Liberals don't really accept?
Or is the Campbell government worried about having the legislature sit this fall, even for the day or two required to approve the committee's choice for the representative's post? After all, the Liberals did cancel the fall session, eliminating the chance for MLAs to raise issues from health care problems to the softwood agreement to forest safety.
The reasons don't matter. The Liberal MLAs' negligence does. The Hughes' report indicated that the government really didn't care much about its responsibilities to children and families.
Rustad, Polak and Cantelon are showing that not much has changed.
Footnote: When asked about the delays, Rustad initially told Kines that the process was still on track and a representative would be named by mid-October. But 24 hours later he revealed the long delay in the search. It's alarming that the committee chair has such a poor sense of what's going on.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
This time, maybe we will see treaties
VICTORIA - Treaty commissioners are optimists. It’s practically part of the job description to be able to look ahead - year after year - and predict that finally, the long, expensive process is going to produce an agreement.
Every fall, the commission holds a news conference in a hotel here to release its annual report and offer an update on treaty talks. There’s been a couple of gloomy ones. Back in 2002 - in the wake of Gordon Campbell’s destructive and now ignored treaty referendum - the commission warned that unless things changed there was little chance of reaching settlements.
But mostly the message is hopeful. Treaties are just around the corner, the commissioners have regularly said, even as the corner seemed to be moving farther away.
That was the message again this week. Two final agreements have been initialled. The commission expects another three by the end of the year.
This time, the commissioners may be right.
It’s been a long, expensive road to get this far. The treaty process started back in 1992. So far the commission has advanced First Nations $362 million to support negotiations, with $289 million of that loans that at least theoretically to be repaid. The federal and provincial government have spent something similar on their role in the talks, so figure about $600 million total.
It’s money well-spent, if we can reach treaties.
Chief commissioner Steven Point and commissioners Jack Weisgerber and Mike Harcourt made a pretty good case this week that agreements are near. (Even though they have been wrong before.)
All three attended the press conference. (Commissioners Jody Wilson and Wilf Adam, both elected as representatives by the First Nations Summit, didn’t attend. They were attending the First Nations Summit meeting in Kamloops, which was looking at ways to push the treaty process along.)
Weisgerber, the province’s appointment to the commission, is a former Socred MLA and the province’s first aboriginal affairs minister. He was a leader - maybe the leader - in arguing B.C. needed to negotiate treaties.. Harcourt is the former NDP premier who launched the commission and the current process. He’s the federal appointment. And Point, a provincial court judge and former chair of the Sto:lo Nation, was the joint selection of the First Nations Summit and provincial and federal governments. The commission has an impressive roster.
The most encouraging development is that the commission is now looking beyond the immediate challenge of negotiating treaties. It urged provincial and federal governments to be prepared to ratify any final treaties quickly, to build momentum.
That’s a reasonable request. Negotiators for the province and Ottawa have mandates from their masters. Unless they make some terrible blunder, political approval fort he deal they negotiate should be routine.
That wasn’t the case in 1998 when the NIsga’a agreement, reached outside the treaty process, was signed. The provincial Liberals, then in opposition, opposed the treaty. Ottawa delayed its ratification. The process took two years.
A lot of things have changed, starting with the political climate. Campbell was prepared to go to court to kill the Nisga’a deal; now he’s committed to a “New Relationship” that recognizes broad First Nations’ rights. The federal Conservative government may have killed the Kelowna Accord, but Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice says he wants treaties. First Nations, despite lots of frustrations, see a chance for a reasonable deal.
None of this means you should get wildly hopeful that you still won’t be reading columns like this in a decade. There are 57 First Nations involved in talks at 47 tables. Some are going nowhere, as governments focus on negotiations that might produce a quick deal. Some are going backwards.
But there is reason to be hopeful. If three or four treaties can be negotiated - and if they’re approved by the First Nations’ members, another big question mark - then an important pattern will be set.
Every First Nation will still want specific issues addressed. But a basic approach to compensation and rights and self-government will emerge. Things will get easier and progress will be faster.
If the commission is right.
Footnote: Why is this all so important? There’s a moral element. You can’t actually just take peoples’ land and not reach some agreement with them. That didn’t happen. And there’s a practical element. Harcourt noted that business and First Nations should be preparing for the opportunities that land-use certainty will bring once treaties are reached.
Every fall, the commission holds a news conference in a hotel here to release its annual report and offer an update on treaty talks. There’s been a couple of gloomy ones. Back in 2002 - in the wake of Gordon Campbell’s destructive and now ignored treaty referendum - the commission warned that unless things changed there was little chance of reaching settlements.
But mostly the message is hopeful. Treaties are just around the corner, the commissioners have regularly said, even as the corner seemed to be moving farther away.
That was the message again this week. Two final agreements have been initialled. The commission expects another three by the end of the year.
This time, the commissioners may be right.
It’s been a long, expensive road to get this far. The treaty process started back in 1992. So far the commission has advanced First Nations $362 million to support negotiations, with $289 million of that loans that at least theoretically to be repaid. The federal and provincial government have spent something similar on their role in the talks, so figure about $600 million total.
It’s money well-spent, if we can reach treaties.
Chief commissioner Steven Point and commissioners Jack Weisgerber and Mike Harcourt made a pretty good case this week that agreements are near. (Even though they have been wrong before.)
All three attended the press conference. (Commissioners Jody Wilson and Wilf Adam, both elected as representatives by the First Nations Summit, didn’t attend. They were attending the First Nations Summit meeting in Kamloops, which was looking at ways to push the treaty process along.)
Weisgerber, the province’s appointment to the commission, is a former Socred MLA and the province’s first aboriginal affairs minister. He was a leader - maybe the leader - in arguing B.C. needed to negotiate treaties.. Harcourt is the former NDP premier who launched the commission and the current process. He’s the federal appointment. And Point, a provincial court judge and former chair of the Sto:lo Nation, was the joint selection of the First Nations Summit and provincial and federal governments. The commission has an impressive roster.
The most encouraging development is that the commission is now looking beyond the immediate challenge of negotiating treaties. It urged provincial and federal governments to be prepared to ratify any final treaties quickly, to build momentum.
That’s a reasonable request. Negotiators for the province and Ottawa have mandates from their masters. Unless they make some terrible blunder, political approval fort he deal they negotiate should be routine.
That wasn’t the case in 1998 when the NIsga’a agreement, reached outside the treaty process, was signed. The provincial Liberals, then in opposition, opposed the treaty. Ottawa delayed its ratification. The process took two years.
A lot of things have changed, starting with the political climate. Campbell was prepared to go to court to kill the Nisga’a deal; now he’s committed to a “New Relationship” that recognizes broad First Nations’ rights. The federal Conservative government may have killed the Kelowna Accord, but Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice says he wants treaties. First Nations, despite lots of frustrations, see a chance for a reasonable deal.
None of this means you should get wildly hopeful that you still won’t be reading columns like this in a decade. There are 57 First Nations involved in talks at 47 tables. Some are going nowhere, as governments focus on negotiations that might produce a quick deal. Some are going backwards.
But there is reason to be hopeful. If three or four treaties can be negotiated - and if they’re approved by the First Nations’ members, another big question mark - then an important pattern will be set.
Every First Nation will still want specific issues addressed. But a basic approach to compensation and rights and self-government will emerge. Things will get easier and progress will be faster.
If the commission is right.
Footnote: Why is this all so important? There’s a moral element. You can’t actually just take peoples’ land and not reach some agreement with them. That didn’t happen. And there’s a practical element. Harcourt noted that business and First Nations should be preparing for the opportunities that land-use certainty will bring once treaties are reached.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Health-care spending scare tactics unfair to public
VICTORIA - Carole Taylor created a pretty big splash with a single PowerPoint slide suggesting that within 11 years health and education could take every penny of government spending.
Too bad it was such a bogus claim. Worse that so many people bought it.
Taylor, the finance minister, tucked the slide into her first quarter financial update this month.
Do you realize, she asked as the slide popped up in the Press Theatre, that by 2017 health care could consume 71 per cent of all government spending? Education would take the rest and everything else would just vanish. It was a pretty dramatic scene setter for the "conversation" on health care that's to kick off this week.
Except it was a fraud. By 2017 my dog Jack could learn to talk. But it's not likely, based on everything I've seen from him so far.
And neither is the health crisis projected by Taylor.
Here's what the finance ministry assumed to reach her worrisome projection. Health ministry costs would increase by eight per cent year after year. Government revenues by three per cent. Education spending by three per cent.
Here's reality. From 1995 to 2005 health ministry spending increased an average 5.5 per cent, not eight per cent.
Education spending over the last five years has increased at 1.3 per cent a year, less than half the rate Taylor projects.
And between 1995 and 2005 government revenues increased by about six per cent a year, not the three per cent the finance minister assumes.
So. Taylor's forecast assumed a 50-per-cent reduction in the growth of government revenue. (That assumes big tax cuts, or a weakening economy.) Education funding would suddenly grow more than twice as fast it has in recent years. And health spending would reach new heights.
Plug in numbers based on reality - the real record from the last decade - and everything changes. The health ministry would then count for about 40 per cent of the total budget by 2017. Just as it does now. The slide looks dramatic; the reality not so much.
The finance ministry now says the graphs were just something worked up in 2004, interesting but not a real projection, they say.
But there were fewer than 20 slides in Taylor's presentation. If one of them shows a crisis barely a decade away, people will pay attention.
Especially as Premier Gordon Campbell kicks off his conversation on health care with British Columbians.
The conversation is a good idea, if done properly. Almost every interest in the health-care world has an advocate - unions, the BC Medical Association, the pharmaceutical companies, the government.
But not the patients or customers or whatever you want to call us.
Taylor's slide - if people took it seriously - would shut down any real conversation. Too many options are eliminated if you think disaster is looming.
It's not. Back in 1985, about one in every three dollars the government took in went to pay for health care. In 1995, the same. And this year, based on the latest financial reports, health will consume less than one-third of provincial revenues.
Look at it another way. In 1985, health spending was about five percent of GDP. By 1995, it was 6.6 per cent. This year it will be about 7.3 per cent. The increase is an issue, but the notion that we can't afford health care - that it's not sustainable - is simply not supported by the facts.
And while we fret about $12 billion in health care costs, we pump $7 billion into slot machines, lotteries and other legalized gambling without any significant public concern.
There are good reasons to manage health-care costs. It's government's biggest budget item and the cost pressures are significant. New technology and drugs are increasingly expensive and as out average age rises we place more demands on the system.
But there's no reason to panic. And a a real health conversation should start with facts, not phony fear-mongering.
Footnote: Taylor also cited warnings from the health authorities that the budget left them without enough money for the coming two years as a sign of pressures in the system In fact, it's a sign of unrealistic budgeting by the province. The current fiscal plan actually calls for a small cut in real per-capita health ministry spending in 2007/8.
Too bad it was such a bogus claim. Worse that so many people bought it.
Taylor, the finance minister, tucked the slide into her first quarter financial update this month.
Do you realize, she asked as the slide popped up in the Press Theatre, that by 2017 health care could consume 71 per cent of all government spending? Education would take the rest and everything else would just vanish. It was a pretty dramatic scene setter for the "conversation" on health care that's to kick off this week.
Except it was a fraud. By 2017 my dog Jack could learn to talk. But it's not likely, based on everything I've seen from him so far.
And neither is the health crisis projected by Taylor.
Here's what the finance ministry assumed to reach her worrisome projection. Health ministry costs would increase by eight per cent year after year. Government revenues by three per cent. Education spending by three per cent.
Here's reality. From 1995 to 2005 health ministry spending increased an average 5.5 per cent, not eight per cent.
Education spending over the last five years has increased at 1.3 per cent a year, less than half the rate Taylor projects.
And between 1995 and 2005 government revenues increased by about six per cent a year, not the three per cent the finance minister assumes.
So. Taylor's forecast assumed a 50-per-cent reduction in the growth of government revenue. (That assumes big tax cuts, or a weakening economy.) Education funding would suddenly grow more than twice as fast it has in recent years. And health spending would reach new heights.
Plug in numbers based on reality - the real record from the last decade - and everything changes. The health ministry would then count for about 40 per cent of the total budget by 2017. Just as it does now. The slide looks dramatic; the reality not so much.
The finance ministry now says the graphs were just something worked up in 2004, interesting but not a real projection, they say.
But there were fewer than 20 slides in Taylor's presentation. If one of them shows a crisis barely a decade away, people will pay attention.
Especially as Premier Gordon Campbell kicks off his conversation on health care with British Columbians.
The conversation is a good idea, if done properly. Almost every interest in the health-care world has an advocate - unions, the BC Medical Association, the pharmaceutical companies, the government.
But not the patients or customers or whatever you want to call us.
Taylor's slide - if people took it seriously - would shut down any real conversation. Too many options are eliminated if you think disaster is looming.
It's not. Back in 1985, about one in every three dollars the government took in went to pay for health care. In 1995, the same. And this year, based on the latest financial reports, health will consume less than one-third of provincial revenues.
Look at it another way. In 1985, health spending was about five percent of GDP. By 1995, it was 6.6 per cent. This year it will be about 7.3 per cent. The increase is an issue, but the notion that we can't afford health care - that it's not sustainable - is simply not supported by the facts.
And while we fret about $12 billion in health care costs, we pump $7 billion into slot machines, lotteries and other legalized gambling without any significant public concern.
There are good reasons to manage health-care costs. It's government's biggest budget item and the cost pressures are significant. New technology and drugs are increasingly expensive and as out average age rises we place more demands on the system.
But there's no reason to panic. And a a real health conversation should start with facts, not phony fear-mongering.
Footnote: Taylor also cited warnings from the health authorities that the budget left them without enough money for the coming two years as a sign of pressures in the system In fact, it's a sign of unrealistic budgeting by the province. The current fiscal plan actually calls for a small cut in real per-capita health ministry spending in 2007/8.
Friday, September 22, 2006
A better way for klds in care
VICTORIA - Life is tough for children in the care of the government.
That’s not a slag on them, foster parents, social workers or the Liberals or New Democrats. It’s reality. Children in care have a tough time. Their lives - in care and after - are typically a struggle.
A new report from provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall and child youth officer Jane Morley confirms the problems and suggests useful areas for more research.
Most importantly, it suggests things that we can do now to start fixing the problems.
The report is groundbreaking, which should give you satisfaction that it was done and frustration that it’s taken so long. The study looked at the lives of more than 12,000 children in care between 1997 and 2005 and tracked their health-care records.
It was grim. Children in continuing care were five times as likely to commit suicide. They were 10 times as likely to end up in hospital as an assault victim. They were four times as likely to die.
Girls were four times as likely to become pregnant. Ten-year-old boys were 10 times as likely to be on Ritalin or other behaviour modification drugs.
Stop and reread those last two paragraphs and consider the odds for a little five-year-old boy starting his school years in the government’s care, toting his possessions in a cardboard bos as he starts his life with strangers.
This all shouldn’t be surprising. Children don’t just suddenly end up in the government’s care. They tend to come from troubled backgrounds. They suffer from malnutrition, fetal alcohol issues, neglect and all the illnesses and disadvantages that poverty brings. Messed-up parents have messed-up kids.
But so what?
If our own kids have problems, we don’t write them off. We work harder to do whatever it takes to give them the best chance.
These children and youths, whether we like it or not, are our responsibility too. They don’t have anyone else; that’s why they are in care. We, as a society, said we’d look after them.
And we do a bad job. We’re cheap, inattentive and callous. The Children’s Commission final annual report, in 2002, found that half the 9,700 children in the government’s care didn’t have the required care plans to provide direction and stability to their lives. At the same time, we watched as the government cut the ministry budget to save money. A tax increase worth 50 cents a week per British Columbian would change everything for these children, but the goverment has calculated that we don't think it's worth spending the money.
So what do we do? For starters, press the government to accept all 13 recommendations from the report. Children and Families Minister Tom Christensen seemed supportive, but ministers almost always do. Action does not necessarily follow.
For a specific test, watch to see what Christensen does about the report’s recommendation that the government come up with new funding for a cross-ministry plan for “post-majority supports for youth leaving care.”
Right now, children who have spent their lives in foster care and considered fully capable adults as soon as they turn 19. They get $700 and are sent out into the world to find a job and an apartment and make a life. "There's really no post-majority programs in place with the ministry of children and families," Morley said as she and KEndall released the report. Basic support, like counselling and help with budgeting or looking for work or considering school options doesn’t exist.
That’s cruel and stupid. The study followed who had been in care until they were 25. Unsurprisingly their problems continued and their risks of suicide, injury and mental health issues remained high. So did their pregancy rate. Young women barely able to care for themselves were much more likely to end up trying to care for bay.
Shamefully, the government is now appealing a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that it couldn’t arbitrarily cut needed support the day someone turns 19.
Christensen is new in the job. If, in the next 60 days, he can announce new funding to provide the needed support for children in care - as the report recommends - you can be optimistic that perhaps things will begin to get better for these children.
The first steps forward have been set out. Now we’ll see if the government is interested in improving the lives of these children and youth.
Footnote: There was good news in the report. While things may be bleak, in a number of areas - including mortality rates - there has been a steady improvement over the last two decades and a narrowing gap between the prospects for children in care and their peers in the rest of the population. It's important to celebrate successes.
That’s not a slag on them, foster parents, social workers or the Liberals or New Democrats. It’s reality. Children in care have a tough time. Their lives - in care and after - are typically a struggle.
A new report from provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall and child youth officer Jane Morley confirms the problems and suggests useful areas for more research.
Most importantly, it suggests things that we can do now to start fixing the problems.
The report is groundbreaking, which should give you satisfaction that it was done and frustration that it’s taken so long. The study looked at the lives of more than 12,000 children in care between 1997 and 2005 and tracked their health-care records.
It was grim. Children in continuing care were five times as likely to commit suicide. They were 10 times as likely to end up in hospital as an assault victim. They were four times as likely to die.
Girls were four times as likely to become pregnant. Ten-year-old boys were 10 times as likely to be on Ritalin or other behaviour modification drugs.
Stop and reread those last two paragraphs and consider the odds for a little five-year-old boy starting his school years in the government’s care, toting his possessions in a cardboard bos as he starts his life with strangers.
This all shouldn’t be surprising. Children don’t just suddenly end up in the government’s care. They tend to come from troubled backgrounds. They suffer from malnutrition, fetal alcohol issues, neglect and all the illnesses and disadvantages that poverty brings. Messed-up parents have messed-up kids.
But so what?
If our own kids have problems, we don’t write them off. We work harder to do whatever it takes to give them the best chance.
These children and youths, whether we like it or not, are our responsibility too. They don’t have anyone else; that’s why they are in care. We, as a society, said we’d look after them.
And we do a bad job. We’re cheap, inattentive and callous. The Children’s Commission final annual report, in 2002, found that half the 9,700 children in the government’s care didn’t have the required care plans to provide direction and stability to their lives. At the same time, we watched as the government cut the ministry budget to save money. A tax increase worth 50 cents a week per British Columbian would change everything for these children, but the goverment has calculated that we don't think it's worth spending the money.
So what do we do? For starters, press the government to accept all 13 recommendations from the report. Children and Families Minister Tom Christensen seemed supportive, but ministers almost always do. Action does not necessarily follow.
For a specific test, watch to see what Christensen does about the report’s recommendation that the government come up with new funding for a cross-ministry plan for “post-majority supports for youth leaving care.”
Right now, children who have spent their lives in foster care and considered fully capable adults as soon as they turn 19. They get $700 and are sent out into the world to find a job and an apartment and make a life. "There's really no post-majority programs in place with the ministry of children and families," Morley said as she and KEndall released the report. Basic support, like counselling and help with budgeting or looking for work or considering school options doesn’t exist.
That’s cruel and stupid. The study followed who had been in care until they were 25. Unsurprisingly their problems continued and their risks of suicide, injury and mental health issues remained high. So did their pregancy rate. Young women barely able to care for themselves were much more likely to end up trying to care for bay.
Shamefully, the government is now appealing a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that it couldn’t arbitrarily cut needed support the day someone turns 19.
Christensen is new in the job. If, in the next 60 days, he can announce new funding to provide the needed support for children in care - as the report recommends - you can be optimistic that perhaps things will begin to get better for these children.
The first steps forward have been set out. Now we’ll see if the government is interested in improving the lives of these children and youth.
Footnote: There was good news in the report. While things may be bleak, in a number of areas - including mortality rates - there has been a steady improvement over the last two decades and a narrowing gap between the prospects for children in care and their peers in the rest of the population. It's important to celebrate successes.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
NDP’s patronage charge falls short
VICTORIA - The agency that produced the Liberals' election campaign ads was pretty steamed when the government decided to hold an open competition for a $150,000 contract to prepare anti-smoking ads.
Wait a minute, the people at TBWA/Vancouver said. No fair. We won the right to be the health ministry's ad agency. That's supposed to be our work.
Managers in the health ministry and the government's purchasing branch disagreed, pointing to government policies that they said called for open competition for all contracts worth more than $100,000.
TBWA/Vancouver started complaining to the health ministry as soon as the call for proposals was listed on the BC Bid website in late August 2004.
And eventually, after much confusion, internal panic and considerable wasted time and money - on behalf of taxpayers and the companies competing in good faith for the work - the bid was pulled.
TBWA was awarded the contract, over the spirited objections of some of the people involved in directing the anti-smoking campaign.
The NDP, brandishing almost 300 pages of documents obtained through a freedom of information request, this week accused the Liberals of political favouritism in awarding the contract. TBWA hadn’t hadn't just prepared the Liberal ads in the last two elections, the NDP noted. President Andrea Southcott was part of a small group of senior campaign advisors. The company had also prepared the “Best Place” government campaigns run in the lead-up to the election that looked much like Liberal campaign ads.
The government broke its own purchasing rules and over-ruled staff to reward its favoured ad agency, charged NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston.
Nope, said Finance Minister Carole Taylor. It was a mistake to call for competing bids and the government fixed it. Case closed.
So who to believe?
It’s confusing. Government policy, driven in part by a Canada-wide agreement on trade, does call for competitions for all contracts worth more than $100,000.
But the policy also allows for exceptions when there is a “corporate supply agreement.” If a government has signed a multi-year agreement to buy all its vehicles from one supplier, it doesn’t have to seek bids when it’s time to buy a batch of new heavy duty trucks worth more than $100,000.
Or, as in this case, when it wants to spend more than $100,000 on an ad campaign.
The concept of an agency of record is fading, but still convenient and popular in government. The idea is that you hold one contest and pick an ad agency that will get the ministry’s work for the next two years. The theory is the agency develops some expertise and the ministry is saved the time and trouble of seeking bids every time it wants to run some ads.
And there’s no suggestion that the selection process for agencies of record was faulty; it was endorsed by an internal audit.
On balance, the government did a pretty good job of rebutting the NDP charges.
But it didn’t emerge unscathed. If the policy of not seeking bids was in place, a lot of fairly senior people in the health ministry and the government’s purchasing department didn’t know about it.
And if the case was so clearcut as Taylor maintains, the government’s response to TBWA’s complaint was baffling.
The call for bids wasn’t cancelled for six weeks, until until after it had closed. During that time staff were involved in answering questions from bidders and setting up the assessment process. (And in trying to get clear answers about the pressure to cancel the whole thing.) Two other ad agencies were shortlisted for the work. The process finally stopped the day before they were to be interviewed by the selection committee.
The confusion and disorganization wasted a lot of time. The government’s public affairs bureau said it would take responsibility for compensating the two agencies for their wasted efforts, though it’s unclear if they actually got money.
The favouritism charge wasn’t proved. A charge of bungling would have stuck.
Footnote: In a strange twist, the NDP revealed the freedom of information request was made by NOW Communications, which was snarled in its own scandal over its dealings with the Harcourt government.
Wait a minute, the people at TBWA/Vancouver said. No fair. We won the right to be the health ministry's ad agency. That's supposed to be our work.
Managers in the health ministry and the government's purchasing branch disagreed, pointing to government policies that they said called for open competition for all contracts worth more than $100,000.
TBWA/Vancouver started complaining to the health ministry as soon as the call for proposals was listed on the BC Bid website in late August 2004.
And eventually, after much confusion, internal panic and considerable wasted time and money - on behalf of taxpayers and the companies competing in good faith for the work - the bid was pulled.
TBWA was awarded the contract, over the spirited objections of some of the people involved in directing the anti-smoking campaign.
The NDP, brandishing almost 300 pages of documents obtained through a freedom of information request, this week accused the Liberals of political favouritism in awarding the contract. TBWA hadn’t hadn't just prepared the Liberal ads in the last two elections, the NDP noted. President Andrea Southcott was part of a small group of senior campaign advisors. The company had also prepared the “Best Place” government campaigns run in the lead-up to the election that looked much like Liberal campaign ads.
The government broke its own purchasing rules and over-ruled staff to reward its favoured ad agency, charged NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston.
Nope, said Finance Minister Carole Taylor. It was a mistake to call for competing bids and the government fixed it. Case closed.
So who to believe?
It’s confusing. Government policy, driven in part by a Canada-wide agreement on trade, does call for competitions for all contracts worth more than $100,000.
But the policy also allows for exceptions when there is a “corporate supply agreement.” If a government has signed a multi-year agreement to buy all its vehicles from one supplier, it doesn’t have to seek bids when it’s time to buy a batch of new heavy duty trucks worth more than $100,000.
Or, as in this case, when it wants to spend more than $100,000 on an ad campaign.
The concept of an agency of record is fading, but still convenient and popular in government. The idea is that you hold one contest and pick an ad agency that will get the ministry’s work for the next two years. The theory is the agency develops some expertise and the ministry is saved the time and trouble of seeking bids every time it wants to run some ads.
And there’s no suggestion that the selection process for agencies of record was faulty; it was endorsed by an internal audit.
On balance, the government did a pretty good job of rebutting the NDP charges.
But it didn’t emerge unscathed. If the policy of not seeking bids was in place, a lot of fairly senior people in the health ministry and the government’s purchasing department didn’t know about it.
And if the case was so clearcut as Taylor maintains, the government’s response to TBWA’s complaint was baffling.
The call for bids wasn’t cancelled for six weeks, until until after it had closed. During that time staff were involved in answering questions from bidders and setting up the assessment process. (And in trying to get clear answers about the pressure to cancel the whole thing.) Two other ad agencies were shortlisted for the work. The process finally stopped the day before they were to be interviewed by the selection committee.
The confusion and disorganization wasted a lot of time. The government’s public affairs bureau said it would take responsibility for compensating the two agencies for their wasted efforts, though it’s unclear if they actually got money.
The favouritism charge wasn’t proved. A charge of bungling would have stuck.
Footnote: In a strange twist, the NDP revealed the freedom of information request was made by NOW Communications, which was snarled in its own scandal over its dealings with the Harcourt government.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Minister's MRI answers just create more questions
VICTORIA - It started to feel like a "Yes Minister" episode as Health Minister George Abbott attempted to explain just what he's doing - and not doing - about paid queue-jumping in B.C.
Reporters caught up with Abbott on his way into a Liberal caucus meeting Tuesday, looking for an update on the latest case of a public hospital selling special access for people who didn't want to wait in line.
The issue has kept Abbott off balance for almost two weeks, since NDP health critic Adrian Dix revealed that patients were paying to jump the waiting list for MRIs. A private company, Timely Medical Alternatives, cut a deal with St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver. Pay the company up to $1,400 and you could avoid the average four-month wait for a non-urgent MRI.
Abbott first doubted the reports. But once a patient came forward and described making the payment, he denounced the practice, which violates the Canada Health Act, provincial law and government policy. He asked his deputy minister to investigate and then offered assurances that St. Paul's was alone in violating the policy.
Until this week, when news broke that Mount St. Joseph Hospital, also in the Lower Mainland, was cutting the same deal for CT scans and other diagnostic tests.
So how come, Abbott was asked, he didn't know about this second infraction? Did the hospital or health authority not know about the provincial policy, or were they concealing the information?
No, no, said Abbott, nothing like that. But the deputy minister likely just asked the health authorities if they were selling access to MRI machines - not CT scans or other equipment. And they didn't volunteer the information.
So the deputy minister wasn't asking the right questions then?
"I think that one always builds on one's understanding of these issues and one is able to ask more, further questions that further illuminate the situation," said Abbott.
Yes, minister.
One of the themes of the British political sitcom was the usefulness of keeping the minister out of the loop about unpleasant issues. That seems much like what has happened in this case.
And it sounded much like ministry officials and the health authorities have been playing some strange game, a combination of 20 Questions and Catch Me If You Can. The deputy ministry asked if patients were paying to jump the waiting lists for MRIs. The health authority said yes, or no, without feeling it necessary to add that they were paying for speedier access to CT scans or other tests.
Which led, naturally, to another question for Abbott. How do you know that health authorities aren't also cutting deals with private companies to let people jump the queue for surgery? Is the deputy asking the health authorities that question?
"I don't believe he is pursuing the issue of surgeries at this point in time," said Abbott. "What we do is that where issues are raised or complaints are made then we pursue, through either the ministry or through the Medical Services Commission or through the College of Physicians and Surgeons, whether in fact the complaint exposes something being done outside of policy."
"I don't believe that either I or my deputy or his team have unfilled days to go and look for issues that we don't know exist," Abbott added.
But how would the ministry know if the Canada Health Act or its own policies were being violated? The health authority making money by selling access wouldn't raise the issue. Neither would the private broker. And most patients who could afford the prompt treatment would likely pay and keep quiet.
"Are we sure that there are no surgeries that are going on," Abbot asked himself. "I don't believe that in as large a health-care system, as we have in British Columbia that we can be 100-per-cent certain of that."
Just don't expect much of an effort to find out if the practice is happening, or how widespread it has become. Footnote: Abbott also said the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority hasn't explained why it was violating the policy, which was set out in 2002. As well as barring two-tier care, the policy requires the health authorities to check with the health ministry if there's any doubt about a planned practice or charges. The authority won't say how much it charged the private company for the service.
Reporters caught up with Abbott on his way into a Liberal caucus meeting Tuesday, looking for an update on the latest case of a public hospital selling special access for people who didn't want to wait in line.
The issue has kept Abbott off balance for almost two weeks, since NDP health critic Adrian Dix revealed that patients were paying to jump the waiting list for MRIs. A private company, Timely Medical Alternatives, cut a deal with St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver. Pay the company up to $1,400 and you could avoid the average four-month wait for a non-urgent MRI.
Abbott first doubted the reports. But once a patient came forward and described making the payment, he denounced the practice, which violates the Canada Health Act, provincial law and government policy. He asked his deputy minister to investigate and then offered assurances that St. Paul's was alone in violating the policy.
Until this week, when news broke that Mount St. Joseph Hospital, also in the Lower Mainland, was cutting the same deal for CT scans and other diagnostic tests.
So how come, Abbott was asked, he didn't know about this second infraction? Did the hospital or health authority not know about the provincial policy, or were they concealing the information?
No, no, said Abbott, nothing like that. But the deputy minister likely just asked the health authorities if they were selling access to MRI machines - not CT scans or other equipment. And they didn't volunteer the information.
So the deputy minister wasn't asking the right questions then?
"I think that one always builds on one's understanding of these issues and one is able to ask more, further questions that further illuminate the situation," said Abbott.
Yes, minister.
One of the themes of the British political sitcom was the usefulness of keeping the minister out of the loop about unpleasant issues. That seems much like what has happened in this case.
And it sounded much like ministry officials and the health authorities have been playing some strange game, a combination of 20 Questions and Catch Me If You Can. The deputy ministry asked if patients were paying to jump the waiting lists for MRIs. The health authority said yes, or no, without feeling it necessary to add that they were paying for speedier access to CT scans or other tests.
Which led, naturally, to another question for Abbott. How do you know that health authorities aren't also cutting deals with private companies to let people jump the queue for surgery? Is the deputy asking the health authorities that question?
"I don't believe he is pursuing the issue of surgeries at this point in time," said Abbott. "What we do is that where issues are raised or complaints are made then we pursue, through either the ministry or through the Medical Services Commission or through the College of Physicians and Surgeons, whether in fact the complaint exposes something being done outside of policy."
"I don't believe that either I or my deputy or his team have unfilled days to go and look for issues that we don't know exist," Abbott added.
But how would the ministry know if the Canada Health Act or its own policies were being violated? The health authority making money by selling access wouldn't raise the issue. Neither would the private broker. And most patients who could afford the prompt treatment would likely pay and keep quiet.
"Are we sure that there are no surgeries that are going on," Abbot asked himself. "I don't believe that in as large a health-care system, as we have in British Columbia that we can be 100-per-cent certain of that."
Just don't expect much of an effort to find out if the practice is happening, or how widespread it has become. Footnote: Abbott also said the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority hasn't explained why it was violating the policy, which was set out in 2002. As well as barring two-tier care, the policy requires the health authorities to check with the health ministry if there's any doubt about a planned practice or charges. The authority won't say how much it charged the private company for the service.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Bigger surplus good news, but not for you
VICTORIA - It should be good news for British Columbians. The government looked at the books after the fiscal year’s first three months and found the surpluse will be $600 million more than expected.
That’s thanks to a good economy and you. Income taxes and sales taxes will bring in $542 million more than budgeted. BC Hydro’s rate increase will mean an extra $377 million in profits. The good news is more than enough to offset a $775-million shortfall because natural gas prices are lower than expected.
So instead of a $600-million surplus for this year, Finance Minister Carole Taylor says B.C. is on track to finish at least $1.2 billion in the black.
When most families get good news like that, they think about what to do with the extra money. They consider paying down debt. But they also look at what they need today. Maybe some money should pay for tutoring for a child having trouble in school, or extra help for an aged parent. It’s a question of smart choices.
But not for the government. I asked Taylor if this was a chance for ministries to make another pitch for programs that didn’t make the cut at budget time.
No, said Taylor. There’s a contingency fund for emergency expense requirements, but no plan to look at what could be done with the unexpected surplus.
That’s a shame. And it’s a position that ignores the advice British Columbians have offered the government in prebudget consultations.
You can’t be reckless with this kind of windfall. It would be irresponsible to start some multi-year program only to find there wasn’t enough money to keep it going.
But there are many opportunities for one-off improvements. Maybe health authorities could buy time in private MRI clinics and reduce the long wait for needed tests. Tourism BC could get extra money to launch a pre-Olympic ad marketing campaign. The government could offer tax cuts - perhaps an extra deduction for any company’s research spending that could lead to economic diversification in the province’s struggling northwest.
But those options aren’t on the table.
Paying down debt is important. But the province is already committed to devoting 100 per cent of its budgeted surplus to debt repayment. That, remember, is $600 million this year.
The other $600 million, which was not included in the budget, should be available to meet the public’s needs and expectations.
As Taylor was releasing the quarterly report, she also unveiled the budget consultation flyer that’s to be mailed to every home in the province. It’s a slight document - half the front and back pages are taken up with two big pictures. But it does seek input on budget priorities.
Based on Taylor’s comments on the use of this surplus, there’s not much point in filling it out.
After all, two years ago the budget consultation process produced clear results. British Columbians believed about 15 per cent of any surplus should go to debt repayment. The priority should be improving services, especially health and education.
Last year, the budget consultation committee report was muddled, but the results were much the same. The public wanted a balanced approach to using surpluses, with improved services a priority.
British Columbians recognize the cost of debt. But they also know from their own experience the importance of balance. The mortgage has to be paid down, but the family’s needs today have to be looked after too.
And they know that B.C. does not have a debt problem. The province has the second lowest debt burden in Canada, after Alberta, which no longer has any real debt to repay.
The public’s view so far hasn’t much mattered. The government’s choice is to use all of the surplus to pay down debt, no matter what British Columbians say.
Which leads to obvious questions about how seriously British Columbians should take the coming “conversations” on health care Premier Gordon Campbell has promised. A conversation requires people listening, as well as talking.
For now, British Columbians should be wondering about the point of a budget consultation, given the government’s demonstrated willingness to ignore their clearly expressed views.
Footnote: Fill out the budget consultation flyer, by all means, when it hits your mailbox. But be aware that two years ago - before the election - the government mailed a similar piece to every home. About 26,000 people filled it out. But 23,500 of those forms never really got looked at. Time was tight, so the finance ministry picked a regionally representative 2,550 and tallied the results. The rest were dumped, unread. It was an awfully expensive way to conduct a very rough opinion poll.
That’s thanks to a good economy and you. Income taxes and sales taxes will bring in $542 million more than budgeted. BC Hydro’s rate increase will mean an extra $377 million in profits. The good news is more than enough to offset a $775-million shortfall because natural gas prices are lower than expected.
So instead of a $600-million surplus for this year, Finance Minister Carole Taylor says B.C. is on track to finish at least $1.2 billion in the black.
When most families get good news like that, they think about what to do with the extra money. They consider paying down debt. But they also look at what they need today. Maybe some money should pay for tutoring for a child having trouble in school, or extra help for an aged parent. It’s a question of smart choices.
But not for the government. I asked Taylor if this was a chance for ministries to make another pitch for programs that didn’t make the cut at budget time.
No, said Taylor. There’s a contingency fund for emergency expense requirements, but no plan to look at what could be done with the unexpected surplus.
That’s a shame. And it’s a position that ignores the advice British Columbians have offered the government in prebudget consultations.
You can’t be reckless with this kind of windfall. It would be irresponsible to start some multi-year program only to find there wasn’t enough money to keep it going.
But there are many opportunities for one-off improvements. Maybe health authorities could buy time in private MRI clinics and reduce the long wait for needed tests. Tourism BC could get extra money to launch a pre-Olympic ad marketing campaign. The government could offer tax cuts - perhaps an extra deduction for any company’s research spending that could lead to economic diversification in the province’s struggling northwest.
But those options aren’t on the table.
Paying down debt is important. But the province is already committed to devoting 100 per cent of its budgeted surplus to debt repayment. That, remember, is $600 million this year.
The other $600 million, which was not included in the budget, should be available to meet the public’s needs and expectations.
As Taylor was releasing the quarterly report, she also unveiled the budget consultation flyer that’s to be mailed to every home in the province. It’s a slight document - half the front and back pages are taken up with two big pictures. But it does seek input on budget priorities.
Based on Taylor’s comments on the use of this surplus, there’s not much point in filling it out.
After all, two years ago the budget consultation process produced clear results. British Columbians believed about 15 per cent of any surplus should go to debt repayment. The priority should be improving services, especially health and education.
Last year, the budget consultation committee report was muddled, but the results were much the same. The public wanted a balanced approach to using surpluses, with improved services a priority.
British Columbians recognize the cost of debt. But they also know from their own experience the importance of balance. The mortgage has to be paid down, but the family’s needs today have to be looked after too.
And they know that B.C. does not have a debt problem. The province has the second lowest debt burden in Canada, after Alberta, which no longer has any real debt to repay.
The public’s view so far hasn’t much mattered. The government’s choice is to use all of the surplus to pay down debt, no matter what British Columbians say.
Which leads to obvious questions about how seriously British Columbians should take the coming “conversations” on health care Premier Gordon Campbell has promised. A conversation requires people listening, as well as talking.
For now, British Columbians should be wondering about the point of a budget consultation, given the government’s demonstrated willingness to ignore their clearly expressed views.
Footnote: Fill out the budget consultation flyer, by all means, when it hits your mailbox. But be aware that two years ago - before the election - the government mailed a similar piece to every home. About 26,000 people filled it out. But 23,500 of those forms never really got looked at. Time was tight, so the finance ministry picked a regionally representative 2,550 and tallied the results. The rest were dumped, unread. It was an awfully expensive way to conduct a very rough opinion poll.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Auditor sounds alarm about Olympic costs, stumbles
VICTORIA - It's time to get worried about the 2010 Olympics.
Not just about what the Games are going to cost you, although that's a big concern in the light of three sharply critical reports released this week.
But also about whether the government is fumbling the chance to ensure that B.C. gets some lasting benefits from the two-week event.
Acting auditor general Arn van Iersel released the office's second review of the province's Olympic activities this week. It was alarming reading.
A lot of the talk was around what the Olympics are really costing British Columbians. Premier Gordon Campbell insists the tab is just $600 million - the direct cost of narrowly defined Games spending.
But the auditor general, like almost everyone else, has again dismissed that claim. he Sea-to-Sky Highway improvements were part of the bid and should be included, he found. And it's foolish to claim that the government's Olympic Secretariat isn't part of the Games cost.
All in, the auditor general says, and provincial taxpayers are on the hook for at least $1.5 billion.
Municipalities are putting up another $400 million and the federal government $607 million.
The total tab from taxpayers will be at least $2.5 billion.
The government can stick to its story; the public will decide whether they believe the politicians or the auditor general.
But by not including all the costs, van Iersel says, the government is making it difficult to properly manage the programs. The budget for the Olympic Secretariat, for example, has increased from $24 million to $41million.
"For the province to manage its costs for the Games, the costs must first be defined and measured," he says. "The province, however, has not yet developed a comprehensive definition of Olympic costs."
The report raises bigger questions about what lies ahead.
The province has only $76 million left in its contingency fund for Games overruns, having already handed the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee $55 million to cover rising venue costs.
That's not likely going to be enough, says van Iersel.
For starters, there could be more cost overruns on Games construction. (A federal report released at the same time offers the same warning.)
And three years after B.C. was awarded the Games, organizers still don't have a handle on the costs of security or medical care. Ottawa and the province have agreed to split security costs, but they are still using the bid book estimate of $175 million in 2002 dollars. Inflation, increased security threats and other issues could easily double or triple that cost.
The problems aren't just on the cost side. If the Games are going to be more than an expensive party, the auditor general warned in 2003, the province needed a well-funded, well-planned marketing plan to seize the benefits. A government report in 2002 urged an immediate start on marketing efforts to ensure potential indirect economic benefits of $4 billion.
It hasn't happened. "The marketing effort to date has been delayed and unco-ordinated, with no central agency taking the lead," the new report found.
And the province apparently didn't realize that the International Olympic Committee restricts international marketing until the previous Games have concluded. B.C.'s hands are largely tied until after the Beijing Games, leaving just 18 months to woo the world.
That should be a special concern for communities outside the Vancouver-Whistler corridor. People who live in the rest of the B.C. are paying for the Games, but are at risk of seeing few benefits.
Finally, the report raises concerns about the secrecy around Games spending and plans.
"We are also concerned that the province has not done more to make the Games budget a public document," the auditor general's office says. The province has agreed to cover all cost overruns, he report notes, and the public is entitled to better information.
The alarm bells are sounding. It's far from clear that Campbell and company are listening.
Footnote: The province's marketing plan is also being hobbled by VANOC, the auditor general reports. Even though the province is by far the largest contributor, the Games organizers want to keep the best marketing tools for corporate donors. It won't even let the government use the Olympic rings or the word Olympic in ads.
Not just about what the Games are going to cost you, although that's a big concern in the light of three sharply critical reports released this week.
But also about whether the government is fumbling the chance to ensure that B.C. gets some lasting benefits from the two-week event.
Acting auditor general Arn van Iersel released the office's second review of the province's Olympic activities this week. It was alarming reading.
A lot of the talk was around what the Olympics are really costing British Columbians. Premier Gordon Campbell insists the tab is just $600 million - the direct cost of narrowly defined Games spending.
But the auditor general, like almost everyone else, has again dismissed that claim. he Sea-to-Sky Highway improvements were part of the bid and should be included, he found. And it's foolish to claim that the government's Olympic Secretariat isn't part of the Games cost.
All in, the auditor general says, and provincial taxpayers are on the hook for at least $1.5 billion.
Municipalities are putting up another $400 million and the federal government $607 million.
The total tab from taxpayers will be at least $2.5 billion.
The government can stick to its story; the public will decide whether they believe the politicians or the auditor general.
But by not including all the costs, van Iersel says, the government is making it difficult to properly manage the programs. The budget for the Olympic Secretariat, for example, has increased from $24 million to $41million.
"For the province to manage its costs for the Games, the costs must first be defined and measured," he says. "The province, however, has not yet developed a comprehensive definition of Olympic costs."
The report raises bigger questions about what lies ahead.
The province has only $76 million left in its contingency fund for Games overruns, having already handed the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee $55 million to cover rising venue costs.
That's not likely going to be enough, says van Iersel.
For starters, there could be more cost overruns on Games construction. (A federal report released at the same time offers the same warning.)
And three years after B.C. was awarded the Games, organizers still don't have a handle on the costs of security or medical care. Ottawa and the province have agreed to split security costs, but they are still using the bid book estimate of $175 million in 2002 dollars. Inflation, increased security threats and other issues could easily double or triple that cost.
The problems aren't just on the cost side. If the Games are going to be more than an expensive party, the auditor general warned in 2003, the province needed a well-funded, well-planned marketing plan to seize the benefits. A government report in 2002 urged an immediate start on marketing efforts to ensure potential indirect economic benefits of $4 billion.
It hasn't happened. "The marketing effort to date has been delayed and unco-ordinated, with no central agency taking the lead," the new report found.
And the province apparently didn't realize that the International Olympic Committee restricts international marketing until the previous Games have concluded. B.C.'s hands are largely tied until after the Beijing Games, leaving just 18 months to woo the world.
That should be a special concern for communities outside the Vancouver-Whistler corridor. People who live in the rest of the B.C. are paying for the Games, but are at risk of seeing few benefits.
Finally, the report raises concerns about the secrecy around Games spending and plans.
"We are also concerned that the province has not done more to make the Games budget a public document," the auditor general's office says. The province has agreed to cover all cost overruns, he report notes, and the public is entitled to better information.
The alarm bells are sounding. It's far from clear that Campbell and company are listening.
Footnote: The province's marketing plan is also being hobbled by VANOC, the auditor general reports. Even though the province is by far the largest contributor, the Games organizers want to keep the best marketing tools for corporate donors. It won't even let the government use the Olympic rings or the word Olympic in ads.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
MRI queue-jumping symptom of sick health care
VICTORIA - The controversy about patients paying $1,400 to jump the waiting lists for MRIs - and having the tests done in a public hospital - shows how far B.C. has allowed the basic principle of public health care to be eroded.
At the heart of our system is a commitment that health care will be provided based on need. That’s why the Canada Health Act bars extra billing for any medically necessary treatment covered under the public plan.
The MRI scandal shows that principle was abandoned.
St. Paul’s Hospital allowed a private broker, Timely Medical Alternatives, to buy time on its machine and use its technicians to help people jump the waiting list. For $1,400 you could buy your way to speedier, better treatment than your neighbour. Two children might be diagnosed with an illness that required an MRI and placed on a waiting list together. A family with money could buy an immediate MRI scan, while the other child waited and perhaps suffered.
Canadians have so far decided that’s wrong. It is, in fact, illegal.
But B.C. governments, NDP and Liberal, have allowed the expansion of private clinics and companies that facilitate queue-jumping for people who can pay. There are about two dozen clinics in the province that offer faster treatment for people with money. They can operate mainly because the government chooses to turn a blind eye to the Canada Health Act violations.
The Liberal government can’t claim ignorance. Less than three years ago former health minister Colin Hansen introduced a bill aimed at upholding the Canada Health Act and ending two-tier care in the province. It was important to plug the loopholes and make it clear that B.C. wouldn’t tolerate extra-billing, Hansen said.
The bill was debated and passed by the legislature. MLAs decided it was necessary to protect medicare.
But then Premier Gordon Campbell said the government wouldn’t put the law into effect. It remains in limbo; Campbell has never explained why the government passed a bill to protect medicare one month and abandoned the next.
The government has known two-tier health care was increasing, but chose not to act.
That’s allowed companies like Timely Medical Alternatives to expand. The business started in 2003 to sell better health care to people who could pay for it. Some activities are clearly within the Canada Health Act. The company arranges surgery in Washington State, for example, for people who don’t want to wait for a knee replacement.
Others, like the MRI deal with St. Paul’s Hospital, aren’t.
Timely Medical Alternatives gives the B.C. government great marks for its “acceptance of private alternatives.” The business rates provinces based on their willingness to tolerate deals like the MRI arrangement. B.C. gets a six out of 10; Alberta gets three. The rest of the provinces get a one rating.
And the company is unabashed in crediting government for its success.
People are driven outside the public health-care system because it is performing poorly, the company says. ”Many Canadians wait unreasonably long for treatment of life-threatening conditions,” the company says. “Every year, scores of Canadians die while on long waiting lists for needed surgery.”
Timely Medical Alternatives is brutal in assessing government’s failure to pay for needed MRI scans. The real purpose is to make surgical wait times appear shorter than they are, the company says on its website. Patients aren’t added to surgical waiting lists until after they have the necessary MRI scans. If government provided the test promptly, then there would be more people “officially” waiting and wait lists would look worse.
Patient care is sacrificed so the truth about wait times can be concealed, the company explains.
Health Minister George Abbott says he’s investigating the queue-jumping at St. Paul’s.
But based on past practice, don’t hold you breath waiting for any real action. If the Campbell government was concerned about two-tier care, it would have acted long ago.
Footnote: NDP health critic Adrian Dix effectively raised the issue, producing a patient who has paid $1,400 and walked into St. Paul’s for an almost immediate MRI, while people in the public system were waiting for months for access to the same machine.
At the heart of our system is a commitment that health care will be provided based on need. That’s why the Canada Health Act bars extra billing for any medically necessary treatment covered under the public plan.
The MRI scandal shows that principle was abandoned.
St. Paul’s Hospital allowed a private broker, Timely Medical Alternatives, to buy time on its machine and use its technicians to help people jump the waiting list. For $1,400 you could buy your way to speedier, better treatment than your neighbour. Two children might be diagnosed with an illness that required an MRI and placed on a waiting list together. A family with money could buy an immediate MRI scan, while the other child waited and perhaps suffered.
Canadians have so far decided that’s wrong. It is, in fact, illegal.
But B.C. governments, NDP and Liberal, have allowed the expansion of private clinics and companies that facilitate queue-jumping for people who can pay. There are about two dozen clinics in the province that offer faster treatment for people with money. They can operate mainly because the government chooses to turn a blind eye to the Canada Health Act violations.
The Liberal government can’t claim ignorance. Less than three years ago former health minister Colin Hansen introduced a bill aimed at upholding the Canada Health Act and ending two-tier care in the province. It was important to plug the loopholes and make it clear that B.C. wouldn’t tolerate extra-billing, Hansen said.
The bill was debated and passed by the legislature. MLAs decided it was necessary to protect medicare.
But then Premier Gordon Campbell said the government wouldn’t put the law into effect. It remains in limbo; Campbell has never explained why the government passed a bill to protect medicare one month and abandoned the next.
The government has known two-tier health care was increasing, but chose not to act.
That’s allowed companies like Timely Medical Alternatives to expand. The business started in 2003 to sell better health care to people who could pay for it. Some activities are clearly within the Canada Health Act. The company arranges surgery in Washington State, for example, for people who don’t want to wait for a knee replacement.
Others, like the MRI deal with St. Paul’s Hospital, aren’t.
Timely Medical Alternatives gives the B.C. government great marks for its “acceptance of private alternatives.” The business rates provinces based on their willingness to tolerate deals like the MRI arrangement. B.C. gets a six out of 10; Alberta gets three. The rest of the provinces get a one rating.
And the company is unabashed in crediting government for its success.
People are driven outside the public health-care system because it is performing poorly, the company says. ”Many Canadians wait unreasonably long for treatment of life-threatening conditions,” the company says. “Every year, scores of Canadians die while on long waiting lists for needed surgery.”
Timely Medical Alternatives is brutal in assessing government’s failure to pay for needed MRI scans. The real purpose is to make surgical wait times appear shorter than they are, the company says on its website. Patients aren’t added to surgical waiting lists until after they have the necessary MRI scans. If government provided the test promptly, then there would be more people “officially” waiting and wait lists would look worse.
Patient care is sacrificed so the truth about wait times can be concealed, the company explains.
Health Minister George Abbott says he’s investigating the queue-jumping at St. Paul’s.
But based on past practice, don’t hold you breath waiting for any real action. If the Campbell government was concerned about two-tier care, it would have acted long ago.
Footnote: NDP health critic Adrian Dix effectively raised the issue, producing a patient who has paid $1,400 and walked into St. Paul’s for an almost immediate MRI, while people in the public system were waiting for months for access to the same machine.
'Rest of B.C.' faces electoral squeeze play
VICTORIA - Get ready for some anguished howls from rural B.C. as the Electoral Boundaries Commission starts overhauling the province's ridings.
The commission is heading out on the road this month, the first steps towards an overhaul of riding boundaries for the 2009 election. It's going to be a painful process for people in much of the province.
We're supposed to have a fair system of electing MLAs, with all voters having roughly equal influence and representation.
But we don't. The three ridings in the northwest - North Coast, Skeena, Bulkley Valley-Stikine - have 92,000 people and send three MLAs to Victoria.
In Vancouver, three ridings - Burrard, Hastings and Point Grey - have twice as many people, but also send three MLAs to Victoria. The votes of people in those ridings are worth half as much - at least in terms of electing a government - as people in the northwest.
There are reasons for the inequity. Liberal Lorne Mayencourt represents some 75,000 people in his Vancouver-Burrard riding; New Democrat Gary Coons about 28,000 in the North Coast riding.
But Mayencourt's riding is nine square kilometres; he can cover it with a $7 cab ride. North Coast is 66,000 square kilometres. It's hard to represent people spread out over such an area.
There's an argument for slacking off on the principle of rep by pop. The question is how far do you go? In a close election, should voters in the north have twice as much weight in deciding which party forms government?
Those are the questions the boundaries commission will struggle with over the next 18 months. The commission - Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen, chief electoral officer Harry Neufeld and retired school administrator Stewart Ladyman of Penticton - has to come up with recommended changes to the current electoral boundaries.
They have a big task. In an attempt to head off legal challenges, the province has established principles. True representation by population would mean all ridings would have the same population. The legislature has decided that it will allow riding size to vary by plus or minus 25 per cent. The commission can recommend ridings larger or smaller than those guidelines "In very special circumstances."
The last commission, which reported in 1999, recommended six ridings be granted special consideration. That was mostly based on the vast geographic distances in remote ridings, but also on the effect of stripping representation away from northern voters.
Since then the population shift has continued. My count indicates three Lower Mainland ridings are too large, given the 25-per--cent rule. Ten ridings have too few people.
Fortunately, the commission isn't forced to cut the number of ridings in the North and Interior to add MLAs in the Lower Mainland. It's mandate includes the right to propose adding up to six seats, taking the legislature from 79 to 85 MLAs. That provides the opportunity to reduce the size of some of the Lower Mainland ridings without cutting back on representation from the rest of the province.
There will still be power shift. The regions' influence will be reduced by the new urban seats. (What ever happened to all that Heartland talk, anyway?)
But the principle of representation by population will be preserved.
This particular commission has another huge challenge. It has been asked to come up with proposed electoral boundaries that could be used if British Columbians decide they would prefer proportional representation to the current system. Another referendum on the single-transferable-vote system will be held along with the provincial election in 2009.
It's a wise move by Premier Gordon Campbell. The change was approved by 58 per cent of voters in 2005, just short of the required 60-per-cent. Campbell decided to put the question to the people again, this time with more information.
But it means much more work for the commission.
The commission is on its way to communities around the province over the next two months. It's well worth paying attention to its work.
Footnote: Questions around representation quickly become complex. A political party in B.C., once this redistribution is complete, may be able to form government without a single seat outside the Lower Mainland and Victoria. But party which has its support concentrated in the rest of the province will be doomed to outsider status. That's a profound change in the political landscape over the course of a few decades.
The commission is heading out on the road this month, the first steps towards an overhaul of riding boundaries for the 2009 election. It's going to be a painful process for people in much of the province.
We're supposed to have a fair system of electing MLAs, with all voters having roughly equal influence and representation.
But we don't. The three ridings in the northwest - North Coast, Skeena, Bulkley Valley-Stikine - have 92,000 people and send three MLAs to Victoria.
In Vancouver, three ridings - Burrard, Hastings and Point Grey - have twice as many people, but also send three MLAs to Victoria. The votes of people in those ridings are worth half as much - at least in terms of electing a government - as people in the northwest.
There are reasons for the inequity. Liberal Lorne Mayencourt represents some 75,000 people in his Vancouver-Burrard riding; New Democrat Gary Coons about 28,000 in the North Coast riding.
But Mayencourt's riding is nine square kilometres; he can cover it with a $7 cab ride. North Coast is 66,000 square kilometres. It's hard to represent people spread out over such an area.
There's an argument for slacking off on the principle of rep by pop. The question is how far do you go? In a close election, should voters in the north have twice as much weight in deciding which party forms government?
Those are the questions the boundaries commission will struggle with over the next 18 months. The commission - Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen, chief electoral officer Harry Neufeld and retired school administrator Stewart Ladyman of Penticton - has to come up with recommended changes to the current electoral boundaries.
They have a big task. In an attempt to head off legal challenges, the province has established principles. True representation by population would mean all ridings would have the same population. The legislature has decided that it will allow riding size to vary by plus or minus 25 per cent. The commission can recommend ridings larger or smaller than those guidelines "In very special circumstances."
The last commission, which reported in 1999, recommended six ridings be granted special consideration. That was mostly based on the vast geographic distances in remote ridings, but also on the effect of stripping representation away from northern voters.
Since then the population shift has continued. My count indicates three Lower Mainland ridings are too large, given the 25-per--cent rule. Ten ridings have too few people.
Fortunately, the commission isn't forced to cut the number of ridings in the North and Interior to add MLAs in the Lower Mainland. It's mandate includes the right to propose adding up to six seats, taking the legislature from 79 to 85 MLAs. That provides the opportunity to reduce the size of some of the Lower Mainland ridings without cutting back on representation from the rest of the province.
There will still be power shift. The regions' influence will be reduced by the new urban seats. (What ever happened to all that Heartland talk, anyway?)
But the principle of representation by population will be preserved.
This particular commission has another huge challenge. It has been asked to come up with proposed electoral boundaries that could be used if British Columbians decide they would prefer proportional representation to the current system. Another referendum on the single-transferable-vote system will be held along with the provincial election in 2009.
It's a wise move by Premier Gordon Campbell. The change was approved by 58 per cent of voters in 2005, just short of the required 60-per-cent. Campbell decided to put the question to the people again, this time with more information.
But it means much more work for the commission.
The commission is on its way to communities around the province over the next two months. It's well worth paying attention to its work.
Footnote: Questions around representation quickly become complex. A political party in B.C., once this redistribution is complete, may be able to form government without a single seat outside the Lower Mainland and Victoria. But party which has its support concentrated in the rest of the province will be doomed to outsider status. That's a profound change in the political landscape over the course of a few decades.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Five years of errors since 9/11
VICTORIA - Five years on from the World Trade Centre, and it looks we have got it mostly wrong since then, starting with the fiction that as a result of the 9/11 terror attacks "everything had changed."
That just wasn't true. Terror had taken a shocking new form, deadly on a mass scale and symbolically powerful.
But the world hadn't changed. People still worried about their jobs and their children. Countries still struggled with a host of problems. Bad states still oppressed their people and threatened their neighbours. None of that was different.
That was the terrorists' big victory. A relatively small gang of them staged one spectacular attack and convinced us that we had to change everything. We let them decide our future.
We could have said no. That would not have meant ignoring the attacks. We could have gone after the terrorists who were responsible and looked at what we needed to do improve basic security. Modest, pragmatic responses.
Instead, we accepted the fiction that everything had changed.
In the last five years, that belief has been expensive. Thousands of people have died as a result, and hundreds of thousands have suffered terribly. Canadians have accepted the loss of some basic civil liberties through anti-terror legislation. America has sacrificed its position as champion of democracy and the rule of law, joining those states which sanction kidnapping and secret prisons.
We've spent billions on security and made travelling and trade much more difficult.
We - that is Canada and the rest of the West - have spent something like $1 trillion in total in responding to the 9/11 attacks. That's an astonishing amount of money that could have done quite a lot of good.
And we've gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You could make an argument that those things were all necessary for our safety.
Except for a large problem. They haven't worked. The aim of all these efforts - the laws that eroded our rights, the airport security, the wars - was to make us safer by punishing the bad guys, deterring other terrorists and reducing the risk of attack.
At best, they have been unsuccessful. They may have made things worse.
The U.S. State Department reports there were 11,111 terror attacks in 2005, up from 3,192 the year before. The increase may be misleading, it warns, because it's tough to count accurately. But the trend since 2001 and has been steadily upward. The greater our efforts to increase safety, the more terror attacks.
New terrorists have emerged, organized in autonomous cells, like the people who blew up bombs in London's subway. Perhaps that would have happened anyway. But perhaps the response has fuelled the fire.
Everyone in the world must have expected the West to hunt attack Osama bin Laden and the people responsible for the attacks. The 2001 Afghanistan campaign, which saw the Taliban removed and some 3,000 Al Qaeda operatives killed or captured, was even quietly welcomed by some in the Muslim world.
But the war in Iraq, the confrontation with Iran and the rest have left too many people convinced this a war with Islam.
It's time to rethink our assumptions, in light of the failure so far. You can speculate that things might be worse if we had not responded as we did, but the evidence indicates our efforts have been ineffective.
We can't turn back the clock. We can take a different approach going forward. Canada's commitment to fighting in Afghanistan, for example, rests on the belief that the war reduces the risk of a terror attack in our country. (Humanitarian work and regime stabilization are part of the mission, but no one could seriously argue that Canadians would be fighting based on those issues alone.)
If that belief is wrong and if we are not reducing the terror threat, then we need to rethink the mission.
We've given up a lot in the last five years, for too little.
Footnote: Canadians have given up more than the right to take toothpaste on airplanes. Anti-terror laws passed after 9/11 allow people to be held indefinitely without a charges, a trial or appeal if they are deemed a threat. Police can arrest people who have broken no laws on the suspicion that they are involved in terrorist activities. The prime minister can outlaw groups based on secret evidence. You can be jailed for refusing to answer police questions.
That just wasn't true. Terror had taken a shocking new form, deadly on a mass scale and symbolically powerful.
But the world hadn't changed. People still worried about their jobs and their children. Countries still struggled with a host of problems. Bad states still oppressed their people and threatened their neighbours. None of that was different.
That was the terrorists' big victory. A relatively small gang of them staged one spectacular attack and convinced us that we had to change everything. We let them decide our future.
We could have said no. That would not have meant ignoring the attacks. We could have gone after the terrorists who were responsible and looked at what we needed to do improve basic security. Modest, pragmatic responses.
Instead, we accepted the fiction that everything had changed.
In the last five years, that belief has been expensive. Thousands of people have died as a result, and hundreds of thousands have suffered terribly. Canadians have accepted the loss of some basic civil liberties through anti-terror legislation. America has sacrificed its position as champion of democracy and the rule of law, joining those states which sanction kidnapping and secret prisons.
We've spent billions on security and made travelling and trade much more difficult.
We - that is Canada and the rest of the West - have spent something like $1 trillion in total in responding to the 9/11 attacks. That's an astonishing amount of money that could have done quite a lot of good.
And we've gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You could make an argument that those things were all necessary for our safety.
Except for a large problem. They haven't worked. The aim of all these efforts - the laws that eroded our rights, the airport security, the wars - was to make us safer by punishing the bad guys, deterring other terrorists and reducing the risk of attack.
At best, they have been unsuccessful. They may have made things worse.
The U.S. State Department reports there were 11,111 terror attacks in 2005, up from 3,192 the year before. The increase may be misleading, it warns, because it's tough to count accurately. But the trend since 2001 and has been steadily upward. The greater our efforts to increase safety, the more terror attacks.
New terrorists have emerged, organized in autonomous cells, like the people who blew up bombs in London's subway. Perhaps that would have happened anyway. But perhaps the response has fuelled the fire.
Everyone in the world must have expected the West to hunt attack Osama bin Laden and the people responsible for the attacks. The 2001 Afghanistan campaign, which saw the Taliban removed and some 3,000 Al Qaeda operatives killed or captured, was even quietly welcomed by some in the Muslim world.
But the war in Iraq, the confrontation with Iran and the rest have left too many people convinced this a war with Islam.
It's time to rethink our assumptions, in light of the failure so far. You can speculate that things might be worse if we had not responded as we did, but the evidence indicates our efforts have been ineffective.
We can't turn back the clock. We can take a different approach going forward. Canada's commitment to fighting in Afghanistan, for example, rests on the belief that the war reduces the risk of a terror attack in our country. (Humanitarian work and regime stabilization are part of the mission, but no one could seriously argue that Canadians would be fighting based on those issues alone.)
If that belief is wrong and if we are not reducing the terror threat, then we need to rethink the mission.
We've given up a lot in the last five years, for too little.
Footnote: Canadians have given up more than the right to take toothpaste on airplanes. Anti-terror laws passed after 9/11 allow people to be held indefinitely without a charges, a trial or appeal if they are deemed a threat. Police can arrest people who have broken no laws on the suspicion that they are involved in terrorist activities. The prime minister can outlaw groups based on secret evidence. You can be jailed for refusing to answer police questions.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Cancelled fall legislature a disservice to public
VICTORIA - You’re getting short-changed by the Liberals’ decision to cancel the fall session of the legislature.
House leader Mike de Jong confirmed the government is pulling the plug on the session, which was to start Oct. 2 and run until the end of November.
The government has no legislation to pass, he said, so there’s no need. "We're not sitting just for the sake of sitting or passing laws just for the sake of passing laws," he said. "That's not how I measure a successful government."
Fair enough. More laws does not equal better government. In fact, sometimes the public would be well-served by fewer big new ideas from government.
But a successful government can be measured by its willingness to account for its actions and policies. And any government can be improved when MLAs - from all parties - have a chance to raise questions and concerns on behalf of their communities.
The Liberals are shutting down an opportunity for those kind of useful debates.
Gordon Campbell introduced fixed fall and spring legislative sessions in 2001. That was a useful improvement. In the past sessions had been called and ended at the whim of the party in power. When the heat got too much - either summer heat or political heat - the government could shut the legislature down. The legislature only sat for 40 days in 1996, when the newly elected NDP government was taking a kicking over its false campaign claim of a balanced budget.
The Liberals hinted this might happen in last year’s Throne Speech, which said fall sessions were intended to deal with unfinished business from the spring.
Politically, the move probably makes sense. There’s a sharper focus on the government when the legislature is in session. The opposition uses Question Period each day to grill ministers about policies and problems, and reporters and columnists are watching closely. The government faces a daily risk of bad-news stories. (The Liberals deserve full credit for doubling the length of Question Period to 30 minutes, a major improvement.)
But cancelling the session brings another set of political problems. NDP leader Carole James was quick to accuse the Liberals of “running away from the public" and trying to avoid accountability. Anytime an issue emerges over the next few months James will be reminding people that the legislature could have worked at finding solutions if the sitting hadn’t been cancelled.
Leaving politics aside, the cancellation is a loss for the public. The accountability that the legislature provides is important. Without it, issues can be ignored and problems can fester.
Until last fall’s legislative session, for example, the government had insisted that everything was fine in the ministry of children and families, despite evidence of mounting problems that were leaving children at risk.
It took daily hammering by the NDP to force the government to admit that the system, battered by budget cuts and mismanagement, was in fact failing. Without the session, and the forum it provided, the Hughes inquiry and badly needed improvements might have been stalled. Children and families would have suffered as a result.
And while the focus is on Question Period, the legislature provides a forum for all MLAs - Liberals and New Democrats - to raise issues important to their communities.
There’s no shortage of issues. Communities across B.C. are struggling with homelessness, addictions and mental illness. Health care remains an issue. Forest-dependent communities are waiting for information on how the softwood lumber agreement will affect them. De Jong said that even with the cancelled session, the legislature will sit for a fairly typical number of days this year.
That’s not true. The legislature sat for 42 days in the spring. That will be the third fewest days sine 1991. The average for the last decade is about 63 days.
A much shortened session might have made sense. But the public, and MLAs, are poorly served by the decision to cancel the entire sitting.
Footnote: The legislature may be recalled for one day in the fall. A special committee is seeking a candidate to become the child and youth officer, a new advocacy and oversight position recommended by Ted Hughes in his report on child protection problems. If the committee comes up with a recommendation, the legislature would have to approve the choice.
House leader Mike de Jong confirmed the government is pulling the plug on the session, which was to start Oct. 2 and run until the end of November.
The government has no legislation to pass, he said, so there’s no need. "We're not sitting just for the sake of sitting or passing laws just for the sake of passing laws," he said. "That's not how I measure a successful government."
Fair enough. More laws does not equal better government. In fact, sometimes the public would be well-served by fewer big new ideas from government.
But a successful government can be measured by its willingness to account for its actions and policies. And any government can be improved when MLAs - from all parties - have a chance to raise questions and concerns on behalf of their communities.
The Liberals are shutting down an opportunity for those kind of useful debates.
Gordon Campbell introduced fixed fall and spring legislative sessions in 2001. That was a useful improvement. In the past sessions had been called and ended at the whim of the party in power. When the heat got too much - either summer heat or political heat - the government could shut the legislature down. The legislature only sat for 40 days in 1996, when the newly elected NDP government was taking a kicking over its false campaign claim of a balanced budget.
The Liberals hinted this might happen in last year’s Throne Speech, which said fall sessions were intended to deal with unfinished business from the spring.
Politically, the move probably makes sense. There’s a sharper focus on the government when the legislature is in session. The opposition uses Question Period each day to grill ministers about policies and problems, and reporters and columnists are watching closely. The government faces a daily risk of bad-news stories. (The Liberals deserve full credit for doubling the length of Question Period to 30 minutes, a major improvement.)
But cancelling the session brings another set of political problems. NDP leader Carole James was quick to accuse the Liberals of “running away from the public" and trying to avoid accountability. Anytime an issue emerges over the next few months James will be reminding people that the legislature could have worked at finding solutions if the sitting hadn’t been cancelled.
Leaving politics aside, the cancellation is a loss for the public. The accountability that the legislature provides is important. Without it, issues can be ignored and problems can fester.
Until last fall’s legislative session, for example, the government had insisted that everything was fine in the ministry of children and families, despite evidence of mounting problems that were leaving children at risk.
It took daily hammering by the NDP to force the government to admit that the system, battered by budget cuts and mismanagement, was in fact failing. Without the session, and the forum it provided, the Hughes inquiry and badly needed improvements might have been stalled. Children and families would have suffered as a result.
And while the focus is on Question Period, the legislature provides a forum for all MLAs - Liberals and New Democrats - to raise issues important to their communities.
There’s no shortage of issues. Communities across B.C. are struggling with homelessness, addictions and mental illness. Health care remains an issue. Forest-dependent communities are waiting for information on how the softwood lumber agreement will affect them. De Jong said that even with the cancelled session, the legislature will sit for a fairly typical number of days this year.
That’s not true. The legislature sat for 42 days in the spring. That will be the third fewest days sine 1991. The average for the last decade is about 63 days.
A much shortened session might have made sense. But the public, and MLAs, are poorly served by the decision to cancel the entire sitting.
Footnote: The legislature may be recalled for one day in the fall. A special committee is seeking a candidate to become the child and youth officer, a new advocacy and oversight position recommended by Ted Hughes in his report on child protection problems. If the committee comes up with a recommendation, the legislature would have to approve the choice.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Clement’s non-decision on safe-injection ignores the facts
VICTORIA - It’s frustrating to watch the Harper government fumble and stumble over the future of Vancouver’s safe-injection site.
After months of waffling - and with less than two weeks before the site’s licence expired - Health Minister Tony Clement said he still couldn’t make up his mind. Instead of granting the three-year licence extension sought for the Insite centre, Clement stalled. The centre can keep going until he makes a decision by end of next year, he said.
It was a blatantly political move. Clement’s non-decision was announced on the Friday before the long weekend, at 7 p.m. Ottawa time. He refused to answer any questions. His handling of the issue suggests the Conservatives want to kill the site, but are afraid it would hurt them politically. By stalling they can keep their intentions secret until after the next election.
Every shred of evidence suggests the safe-injection site has achieved its relatively modest goals without any documented negative effects. The Insite project offers a clean, safe place for people to inject their drugs.
A nurse is there to deal with problems, help people avoid infection or other medical complications and refer addicts to treatment or services. Clean needles are available.
The alternative is to have addicts injecting in a flophouse or alley.
The site, the first in North America, has been intensively studied by health researchers. Last month, in Harm Reduction Journal, a report found that it saves taxpayers up to $8 million a year.
Without Insite, there would have been 2,000 additional emergency room visits for abscesses, infections and overdoses, the study found. About 100 of those visits would have resulted in hospitalization, using a desperately needed acute-care bed for an average two weeks.
There were 453 overdoses at Insite. None resulted in death and few required hospital care. Without the centre, 18 to 20 people would have died and and about 100 would have required hospital care.
About 100 people were referred to methadone programs, for many a first step toward dealing with their addiction. At the least, those people will not be scrambling, panhandling and stealing to get money for drugs.
The centre, by cutting down on shared needles and other unsafe practices, also reduced the spread of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C, serious public health problems.
Other reviews done for the RCMP found there was no increase in crime in the area. The centre did not create new drug users.
Health care costs reduced. Lives saved. People leaving illegal drug use behind. No increase in crime or drug use. Support from the B.C. government, he City of Vancouver and public health officials.
Surely continuing the program - and extending it to other centres across B.C. and Canada where there is support - is a no-brainer.
Clement doesn’t think so. He wants more studies. In the news release announcing the decision, he offered these crafted quotes.
“We believe the best form of harm reduction is to help addicts to break the cycle of dependency,” Clements is quoted. “We also need better education and prevention to ensure Canadians don’t get addicted to drugs in the first place.” Of course. There is likely not a sane person in Canada - including the operators of the safe-injection site - who would not agree with those words. (And wonder why Clement wasn’t doing more in those areas.)
Safe-injection sites aren’t some miracle solution that makes the problem go away. People using the site are still struggling with their addictions and the pain or emptiness or genetic bad luck that brought them there. Their lives are still terrible, dangerous messes. But the site works, by the most pragmatic measures. It saves lives, prevents the spread of deadly diseases, frees up millions in health care costs for other uses and helps some people get clean. All without one real, demonstrated negative effect.
It’s shameful that a government would, apparently, place politics ahead of both sound health policy and peoples’ lives.
Footnote: Clement has never visited the Vancouver safe-injection site to see how it works. He did travel to Sweden and Denmark this summer to look at drug policies in those two countries, including a meeting with a Swedish lobby group promoting tougher drug policies. Vancouver’s experiment has attracted world attention; Clement should have visited before making his decision.
After months of waffling - and with less than two weeks before the site’s licence expired - Health Minister Tony Clement said he still couldn’t make up his mind. Instead of granting the three-year licence extension sought for the Insite centre, Clement stalled. The centre can keep going until he makes a decision by end of next year, he said.
It was a blatantly political move. Clement’s non-decision was announced on the Friday before the long weekend, at 7 p.m. Ottawa time. He refused to answer any questions. His handling of the issue suggests the Conservatives want to kill the site, but are afraid it would hurt them politically. By stalling they can keep their intentions secret until after the next election.
Every shred of evidence suggests the safe-injection site has achieved its relatively modest goals without any documented negative effects. The Insite project offers a clean, safe place for people to inject their drugs.
A nurse is there to deal with problems, help people avoid infection or other medical complications and refer addicts to treatment or services. Clean needles are available.
The alternative is to have addicts injecting in a flophouse or alley.
The site, the first in North America, has been intensively studied by health researchers. Last month, in Harm Reduction Journal, a report found that it saves taxpayers up to $8 million a year.
Without Insite, there would have been 2,000 additional emergency room visits for abscesses, infections and overdoses, the study found. About 100 of those visits would have resulted in hospitalization, using a desperately needed acute-care bed for an average two weeks.
There were 453 overdoses at Insite. None resulted in death and few required hospital care. Without the centre, 18 to 20 people would have died and and about 100 would have required hospital care.
About 100 people were referred to methadone programs, for many a first step toward dealing with their addiction. At the least, those people will not be scrambling, panhandling and stealing to get money for drugs.
The centre, by cutting down on shared needles and other unsafe practices, also reduced the spread of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C, serious public health problems.
Other reviews done for the RCMP found there was no increase in crime in the area. The centre did not create new drug users.
Health care costs reduced. Lives saved. People leaving illegal drug use behind. No increase in crime or drug use. Support from the B.C. government, he City of Vancouver and public health officials.
Surely continuing the program - and extending it to other centres across B.C. and Canada where there is support - is a no-brainer.
Clement doesn’t think so. He wants more studies. In the news release announcing the decision, he offered these crafted quotes.
“We believe the best form of harm reduction is to help addicts to break the cycle of dependency,” Clements is quoted. “We also need better education and prevention to ensure Canadians don’t get addicted to drugs in the first place.” Of course. There is likely not a sane person in Canada - including the operators of the safe-injection site - who would not agree with those words. (And wonder why Clement wasn’t doing more in those areas.)
Safe-injection sites aren’t some miracle solution that makes the problem go away. People using the site are still struggling with their addictions and the pain or emptiness or genetic bad luck that brought them there. Their lives are still terrible, dangerous messes. But the site works, by the most pragmatic measures. It saves lives, prevents the spread of deadly diseases, frees up millions in health care costs for other uses and helps some people get clean. All without one real, demonstrated negative effect.
It’s shameful that a government would, apparently, place politics ahead of both sound health policy and peoples’ lives.
Footnote: Clement has never visited the Vancouver safe-injection site to see how it works. He did travel to Sweden and Denmark this summer to look at drug policies in those two countries, including a meeting with a Swedish lobby group promoting tougher drug policies. Vancouver’s experiment has attracted world attention; Clement should have visited before making his decision.
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