This Remembrance Day is different

VICTORIA - This feels like a different kind of Remembrance Day.
It has always been an important day, a time to honour ordinary men and women who suffered and died because they accepted the call of their government or their conscience. A time to remember, so it doesn’t have to happen again.
We remember teachers and accountants and farmers prepared to kill and be killed for a cause — to fight evil, or defend the helpless or just to do their duty. Their neighbours were dying. They didn’t feel right staying home.
But Remembrance Day was always a look back. It was about something we hoped was behind us. That always been part of the point - a war to end all wars.
We stood silently beside our school desks for two minutes at 11 a.m., the weight of the moment heavy enough that no one fooled around. From the moment we first consider death - say at four or five - Remembrance Day has power.
But the day was always about past, increasingly distant, sacrifices. At its centre were men and women who moved a little more slowly each year on their way to the Cenotaph, their numbers always smaller.
And in a way, that was. It meant a whole generation, now two, has been freed from the need to fight. That’s partly why it felt important to keep the memories alive. Remembering the people who had faced the horror of war reminded us all how desperately we should be working for peace.
This year everything is different. When the wreaths are laid they are not just for people who died at Dieppe, or Vimy, so long ago.
They are for people like Pte. Blake Williamson, killed last month in Afghanistan.
The numbers are still tiny. Only 42 deaths in Afghanistan. That would be a few minutes’ casualties at Passchendaele, where Canadians died by the thousands to claim a few hundred muddy yards.
But that was 90 years ago. Those men died in black and white photos. They were our great-grandfathers and beyond. We didn’t know them. We can’t comprehend their lives.
We didn’t send them there.
Even the Second World War veterans’ experiences are far removed from us. For 80 per cent of British Columbians, the war is something they read about. When this generation’s parents came home from war, they were looking ahead, not back. It was something to be put away, hard work that had to be done.
This year is different. Canadians have been in danger - and died - in missions around the world since the Second World War, including Korea.
But this is the first Remembrance Day in half a century at a time when we have sent Canadians overseas on a combat mission, with a main goal of fighting and killing an enemy. A mission that inevitably will mean that some of our troops will die and be maimed.
That changes this day. We’re not just honouring long-ago sacrifices. There are men and women - our neighbours and relatives - killing people on our behalf today, and being shot or shattered by shrapnel.
This Remembrance Day should be about those people too. We haven’t done right by them. Canada edged into a military role in Afghanistan, with little public or political debate. We’ve sent our forces into parts of Afghanistan where no other country will venture. We haven’t demanded answers about what a successful outcome will be, how long that could take and how high a price we are prepared to pay. We’re even split on whether it’s a good idea to have our forces there at all.
None of that is right. If we’re asking people to do this, we need to be a lot more careful and diligent in protecting and valuing their lives.
So this Remembrance Day, think about the men and women who died long ago, the extraordinary courage and sacrifices or ordinary people.
But remember too the people fighting right now. We owe them our attention, now and every day.
Footnote: Americans today are looking back on the Iraq war and all those deaths and wondering if things could have been different if only they had paid closer attention to what was going on, if only they had asked more questions, demanded more answers. Canadians should fear that some day, we will be wondering the same things about Afghanistan.

Campbell's $1,000 baby gift weird policy

VICTORIA - I can't think of a more curious recent policy idea than Gordon Campbell's plan to give every baby born after this year $1,000 towards post-secondary education.
The government will hang on to the money, the premier told the enthusiastic Liberal party convention crowd in Penticton.
When the babies make it out of diapers and through high school, they'll get the money with interest. Figure something like $2,000.
The $41-million-a-year plan sounds great, but it's a very odd bit of public policy.
Campbell has decided, inexplicably, that a tuition subsidy for students starting their post-secondary education in 2025 is a spending priority today. Not fixing more knees this year or homelessness or cutting taxes, but aid for individual students 18 years from now.
Think about that - a government that believes it can predict needs decades into the future. Better yet, cast your mind back the same distance in time to 1987. Could then premier Bill Vander Zalm have made a sensible spending commitment aimed at the needs of British Columbians today?
The world is changing. What if post-secondary education is free in 2025? That's not really such a far-fetched notion as we shift to a knowledge-based economy. The forest industry will still be in the fallow years following the pine beetle disaster. Other resource industries will be substituting technology for labour and expecting higher skill levels from employees. Manufacturing and service jobs will have shifted to Asia and other emerging economies.
It may well be that it makes economic sense to provide free post-secondary education.
But leaving that kind of problem aside, how can Campbell possibly decide that students' needs will be greater in 2025 than they are today?
That is what he's saying. The government could take the money it's tying up and invest it in help for students right now - bursaries or education credits or tax breaks. It could expand apprenticeship opportunities or college spaces. It could pour the $41 million into improving First Nations' dismal high-school completion rates.
Instead, it's decided the educational affordability problem will be greater in 2025.
_That's odd. The Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation released its annual study on student debt last week. About 60 per cent of students graduate from _university owing some money.
The debt burden for B.C. grads is the second highest in the country. They owe an average $27,675 by the time they get their degrees.
That is, even today, a painful debt burden for a 22-year-old. A beginning teacher, or social worker, or nurse starts out life paying the government $360 a month for nine years.
The average debt for B.C. students has increased 39 per cent in the last three years. The cost of housing, soaring tuition and cuts to grant programs have all played a role.
But the premier figures things will be even tougher in 2025.
It gets stranger. Campbell promised the future money to every child. If the children's parents are billionaires, they'll still get the $2,000.
Which seems a poor use of public funds. A smart program would target bright kids who couldn't afford an education and worry less about the students who are already guaranteed one. It would look for merit and need in an effort to provide the greatest payback.
It is, in short, a strange idea, and an expensive one. The program will only cost $41 million next year, but what government is going to stop it? By 2025 we will be over the $1 billion in mark in money held in trust.
What's really worrying in all this is more fundamental. The $41-million cost isn't a big deal in the context of the provincial budget.
But it's real money. Our money. We expect the government to use good judgment and sound analysis in spending it to meet real needs.
And there's no evidence that happened in this case.
Footnote: There are a whole of questions unanswered about this notion, further evidence that it's more ploy than policy. What if a child moves out of province months before graduation - does he get the money? Or if most of her life is spent somewhere else? What happens if a student decides to wait several years before starting college or university?

Botched income trust policy hurt taxpayers, economy

VICTORIA - You can be angry at the Conservatives for breaking their promise not to plug the income trust tax loophole - especially if you lost money because you believed them.
But it’s a good move that will help average taxpayers and encourage a stronger Canadian economy.
And if you’re looking for the real bad guys in all this, turn your gaze to the former Liberal government, which chose to ignore the destructive effects of a flawed tax rules.
People tend to turn the page when they hit a column about tax policy. But this one is pretty straightforward, and important.
Corporations spotted a great tax loophole in income trusts about six years ago and proceeded to jump through it in ever-increasing numbers. The less they paid in taxes, the more the rest of us had to cough up. Eventually - way too late - the government decided to act.
It’s a simple enough proposition. Corporations pay taxes on their profits, including the money they send out to shareholders as dividends.
But their clever tax lawyers realized companies could avoid paying most of those taxes. All they had to do was create income trusts and register them. Profits paid to the trust, and then distributed to taxpayers, weren’t taxable. The company had more money left to hand out, so its value rose.
Nothing actually changed for the better in the business - it doesn’t make more widgets or improve in any way. But it was worth a lot more.
A few companies made the switch. The Liberal government did nothing. So more jumped at the chance to cut taxes and boost their value.
The Conservatives promised they would leave the loophole open, so some of Canada’s biggest companies decided to become income trusts. The trickle of trust conversions became a wave. One estimate put the net lost revenue to government - recognizing that individuals would pay taxes on their gains - at $1.1 billion a year and growing.
So Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivered his Halloween scare for investors. The tax loophole is closed immediately for companies that haven’t converted, bad news for corporations like Telus that were expected to make the change. Its share price fell 13 per cent on the first day after the announcement. Companies that have already made the shift will keep the tax break until 2011. Their values fell too.
Flaherty did the right thing.
It isn’t just that the corporate efforts to avoid taxes shifted the burden on to the rest of us. Regular corporations can take a look at their financial statements and decide what to with profits - pay dividends, reduce debt or invest in new technology or expansion. But income trusts commit to sending a fixed amount to unit holders each year. There’s a risk that investment in the future suffers.
The big lesson here is that government dithering can be expensive.
The income trust issue didn’t catch government by surprise. Australia and the U.S. went through similar experiences almost two decades ago and decided to close the tax loopholes.
And six years ago, as companies started looking at the income trust option, Canada could have taken the same step with little negative impact.
The Liberal government didn’t. Big corporations liked the chance to pay less tax. With each passing month of government inaction, more people had a stake in the trusts and would be angry at any change. The Liberals and the Conservatives let it slide, until now.
Investors aren’t the only losers as a result. Companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars converting to income trusts and developing new business plans. They developed new long-range business plans.
And then government changed the rules and made their investment worthless.
It’s a sorry tale. A responsible, effective government would have never let the whole trust spree get this far. The result has been lost government revenue, scary times for some investors and wasted time and money in the corporate sector.
Footnote: Trusts, with their regular payment schedules, were popular with seniors. The change hurt them. Flaherty offered an offsetting benefit. Couples can now split one person’s pension income for tax purposes, shifting them into a lower tax bracket. The change will be most significant for those with a high pension income.

First treaty offers big hope for progress

VICTORIA - The Leheidli T'enneh is only a small First Nation, with barely 300 members in the Prince George area.
But the treaty deal just reached with the federal and provincial governments and could mark some very big progress in the long effort to resolve First Nations land claims in B.C.
After 13 years and hundreds of millions of dollars this is the first final agreement reached under the B.C. treaty process. That's important in itself. One of the problems in any set of multiple linked negotiations - like the treaty talks with more than 50 bands around the province - is that no one wants to sign that first agreement.
All the parties know that the first deal will inevitably set some benchmarks for every agreement to follow. As the people at one negotiating table get closer to a deal they grow increasingly worried about the long-term implications of the concessions and compromises they are making.
First Nations negotiators have another concern. They worry about getting yelled at by members if they sign a treaty agreement now and some other band manages to do better down the road. It's safer to wait.
The Leheidli T'enneh and governments worked through those barriers to reach the agreement signed in Prince George last weekend.
There's more reason for optimism. The treaty doesn't involve a huge amount of money or land. The Leheidli T'enneh have about 677 hectares in their current reserves. They will get another 3,650 hectares, including land within the City of Prince George. Even with the additional land, their holdings will still only be about 10 times the size of Stanley Park. The band will also get about $20 million in one-time payments and $400,000 a year for 50 years in guaranteed revenue-sharing money.
Those will undoubtedly be useful benchmarks for the parties at other negotiating tables.
But much more importantly, the deal tackles some of the critical non-monetary issues and comes up with pragmatic solutions that could be applied in other talks.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for example, has made much of his opposition to "race-based fisheries." But the federal government has accepted this deal, which guarantees the Lheidli T'enneh - subject to conservation concerns - a share of the Fraser River sockeye run for a commercial fishery. At other treaty tables the question of whether First Nations will be required to accept Agricultural Land Reserve restrictions on development has been a concern for neighbouring municipalities. This proposed treaty deals with the problem, setting out a negotiated agreement on which lands will continue to be considered within the reserve.
Another issue, particularly in the Lower Mainland, has been how - or whether - First Nations would work with neighbouring communities. Municipalities fear uncontrolled development or extreme tax policies that would threaten their management efforts. The settlement commits the Lheidli T'enneh to work with Prince George and the district to develop a harmonized tax structure and regional plan.
And the treaty resolves the issue of certainty, one of the big stumbling blocks in negotiations. First Nations fear the impact of signing away all future claims; governments want treaties to end uncertainty about land ownership and use. The agreement includes language that both sides accept as a reasonable solution, defining the treaty as a final resolution of land claims while allowing for an arbitration process if new issues rise.
First Nations have been insistent that there can be no province-wide template. The issues and solutions are different at treaty tables around the province, they have maintained, and agreements must reflect those differences.
But the reality is that negotiators will be able to build on this agreement, particularly in resolving issues like fisheries and certainty.
A lot could still go wrong. The provincial and federal governments now have to ratify the deal, a formality. But Lheidli T'enneh members also must vote on it and the band has set a 70-per-cent approval threshold.
But this deal remains the most promising road on the long path to treaties.
Footnote: The deal is timely. The weekend saw another meeting of representatives of more than 40 native communities who warned of mounting frustration and the risk of protest over the governments' position on key treaty issues. The Lheidli T'enneh agreement shows progress is possible.

Campbell drops money and bombshells on UBCM

VICTORIA - It's a lot more fun being premier once there's money to hand out.
Premier Gordon Campbell hit the stage to deliver the closing speech to the Union of BC Municipalities with a bag of goodies and a couple of major policy changes.
At least of one of those policies, which will make municipalities switch to public-private partnerships for all major projects, is likely to create some future sparks.
In the meantime all the good news had the 800 UBCM delegates - councillors and mayors - on their feet a few times.
There will be $20 million for Spirit Squares, which sound like one of those tasty treats served at community dinners, but in fact is a program to develop outdoor meeting places for B.C.'s 150th anniversary in 2008. The province will match municipal spending up to a maximum $500,000 for new or improved parks or meeting places.
Another $21 million will be available over three years for infrastructure projects in towns under 5,000. Instead of the usual 50-50 cost-sharing, the province will cover 80 per cent of the costs for projects worth up to $800,000. The program will be a big boost for communities that can't come up with the larger share of spending required under existing programs.
There's $10 million a year over four years for the cutely named LocalMotion Fund, which will cover half the costs for bike paths, trails and greenways.
All fine and dandy and much appreciated by the municipal reps.
But they got less hearty fare when it came to one of the major issues that dominated the convention, the big increase in homelessness and public poverty.
Campbell talked a lot about providing more affordable housing. He made a pitch for greater density - smaller lots, smaller houses, more tall buildings - as a way of keeping housing costs down and creating more livable communities. He urged councils to approve low-income or supported housing projects more quickly.
And he promised that the next budget would include some increase in the welfare shelter allowance - the maximum amount people on social assistance have to devote to housing. The allowances, like welfare rates generally, are ridiculously low, unchanged in 12 years except for Liberal cuts to some categories in 2002.
A parent with two children is allowed up to $555 a month for housing, an impossibility in much of the province. A single person is allowed $325, not even enough for a campsite in Kelowna. A pregnant woman gets $580 a month for food, housing and everything else.
But Campbell wouldn't say how much the rates would increase, or why nothing is being done to deal with the problem now.
Campbell also casually dropped a bombshell towards the end of his comments on homelessness. The effort to move the mentally ill and others out of institutions over the last 30 years has been "a failed experiment," he said. The people were supposed to receive support to let them live in the community. Instead they have been largely abandoned, adding to homelessness and other urban problems.
But Campbell couldn't say what solutions he had planned - whether health authorities, for example, which still continue to close homes for people with mental illness to save money, would get a budget increase. "We're going to have to find ways to do a much better job," was the best he could offer.
The other bombshell is a new requirement that will make it almost mandatory for municipalities to use public-private partnerships for any infrastructure project worth more than $20 million.
Campbell says it's cheaper and less risky to turn the projects over to a private company. But some municipalities - especially on sensitive projects like water systems - are likely to balk at provincial interference.
All in all, the speech was a success. But it's still unclear whether all those "Spirit Squares" are just going to be new places for the homeless, addicted and mentally ill to hang out.
Footnote: Campbell devoted a large portion of the speech to urban planning, urging smaller lots and houses, more high-density development and fewer rules that push up costs for developers and consumers. The benefits aren't just in reducing housing costs, he said, but in creating healthier communities where people can walk to work.

Gambling expansion brings new crime wave

VICTORIA - It’s all unfolding just as Liberal MLA Kevin Krueger predicted when he warned government about the risks of gambling expansion.
Addictions. Suicides. Families destroyed.
Crime - especially organized crime - on the increase.
The latest bad news comes in the annual report of the province’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, which reveals a crime explosion at casinos and “community gaming centres.”
Investigations into serious offences like loan sharking and money laundering more than doubled last year. Overall, the branch launched 3,414 investigations - a 36-per-cent increase.
It’s no surprise. Krueger warned government about expanding gambling:  "There is a huge increase in crime, right from breaking into vending machines in order to have money for slot machines, on up to white-collar crime and into really heinous crimes as well."
Criminals like casinos. They’re a good place to move counterfeit money. The branch investigated 1,155 reports of counterfeit offences, up about 3.6 per cent from the previous year.
And casinos are a great place for big-time drug dealers and gangs to launder the proceeds of crime. It’s simple to buy $5,000 worth of chips, make a few safe bets and then cash in and leave with a casino cheque. Criminals can even declare the income. (The federal government does require casinos to report unusual transactions. But it’s hard to track every gambler and, as an Alberta RCMP report noted, casinos are reluctant to risk alienating good customers.)
Then there are the crimes with individual victims.
Problem gamblers and addicts make wonderful customers for loan sharks. They’re desperate and ashamed, but can’t quit. They have jobs and cars and homes - at least for a while - so the lender can usually collect.
The gambling enforcement branch investigated 192 reports of loan sharking last year - almost four new files opened every week. In Richmond, home to he province’s largest casino, RCMP are seeking extra officers to deal with the crime. They report at least five kidnappings in the last 18 months linked to gambling debts.
It’s all unfolding as the Krueger and the Liberals predicted when they were in opposition. That’s why they promised to stop the expansion of gambling.
Instead they went wild, tripling the number of slots, launching Internet betting and pushing mini-casinos into small towns, part of a plan to recruit more gamblers and increase their average loss. (That’s another reason Gordon Campbell said he opposed gambling. Its purpose is to create losers, Campbell said, and he didn’t want a province of losers.)
Meanwhile the Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch budget has been cut for three consecutive years. The government is spending six per cent less now on enforcement than it did in 2003-4.
In that time the number of slot machines in the province has doubled. The number of casinos and mini-casinos has increased by more than 50 per cent, taking slots into small communities in every corner of the province.
Naturally, enforcement efforts can’t keep up. Last year the gaming branch launched more than 2,000 investigations into criminal activity. The result was 11 Criminal Code charges. It started 650 investigations into Gaming Control Act violations. For the second year, not a single charge was laid under the act.
The branch says its enforcement efforts are relatively new, explaining both the increasing activity and the lack of charges.
But the crime wave is exactly what the Liberals said would result from a gambling expansion.
Krueger, Campbell and the rest also warned about social problems. And the branch’s annual report shows they were right again. Problem-gambling calls to its help line jumped to 5,830 last year - an 86-per-cent increase over the previous year. More slots, more promotion, more gamblers means more addicts and people whose lives are messed up.
The amount committed to responding to gambling problems remained frozen for the fourth consecutive year.
More crime, new opportunities for gangs, more addicted and problem gamblers and addictions and more damaged families.
It’s all unfolding just the way the Liberals predicted.
Footnote: Public concern about gambling expansion seems to be increasing. BC Lotteries tracks public approval and has been forced to downgrade its targets. And Terrace has just become the first community to reject a bid to install slots in a new “community gaming centre,” deciding the social and policing costs outweigh any short-term benefits.

Column odds and ends, from Afghanistan to Cranbrook

VICTORIA - Cleaning up the backlog of "almost" column topics.
First, to Afghanistan. Six Canadians have now been killed patrolling a road construction project only a few kilometres long. My impression was that this was part of the improvements NATO forces were making to improve life for Afghanis. But the road - while perhaps useful for transportation - is being designed for the security of troops, with a 100-metre-wide cleared right-of-way. And it is being pushed through farmers’ fields and buildings, in an a country where a typical farm is two to five acres. It doesn't seem like an exercise that will win the hearts and minds of the locals.
Second, to Ottawa, where the Harper government - acting on an initiative started by the Liberals - pushed up health-care costs by handing big pharmaceutical companies a three-year extension on drug patents, preventing low-cost competition. The new rules affect about 25 per cent of prescription drugs and extend patent protection from five to eight years. Federal NDP health critic Penny Priddy - a former B.C. health minister - called the change a “gift” to big pharmaceutical companies. Generic drug companies say the change will cost the public - and provincial Pharmacare plans - about $120 million a year.
Third, to Toronto, where an Ontario Superior Court judge has tossed out a federal Elections Act rule that denied public political funding to smaller parties. Since 2004, when political donation rules were tightened, federal parties have been entitled to funding of $1.76 per year for each vote they got in the most recent election. But the money was denied to any party that got less than two per cent of the vote nationally or five per cent in the ridings where they ran candidates. Justice Ted Matlow said small parties play an important role and have a right to the same funding. The money will be worth about $60,000 a year to the Marijuana Party, which - along with the Christian Heritage Party and others challenged the law. I am now considering launching the Paul Willcocks Voice of Reason Party, with the aim of capturing 1,000 votes in each of B.C.’s 36 ridings - and as a result $63,000 a year in funding. Unless, as expected, the federal government appeals the decision.
Fourth, to Cranbrook, where provincial Liberal MLA Bill Bennett, also junior mines minister, got cranky about health-care criticism. Bennett lashed out at the NDP, telling Cranbrook Daily Townsman reporter Gerry Warner that he believed the New Democrats have hired an American firm specializing in political dirty tricks to advise them in the health-care conversation. He wasn’t just suspicious about the U.S. connection: “We’re certain they have,” Bennett said.
A serious allegation. How did Bennett know? Turned out it, despite the certainty claim, Bennett had not a shred of evidence, except that he though the New Democrats were being dishonest. (Bennett noted that the NDP had sent staff to a conference on campaigning in Washington in the spring, but since the Liberals had sent chief of staff Martyn Brown to a similar event, that didn’t seem too sinister.) The whole affair looked left Bennett - usually a very solid MLA - looking bad, the kind of person who hurls nasty accusations without a shred of evidence.
Fifth, back to Victoria, where Health Minister George Abbott continued to show a remarkably laid-back attitude to possible violations of the Canada Heath Act this week. When two Vancouver public hospitals admitted selling time on MRIs and other diagnostic machines to private clinics, which in turn offered faster access to care for people who could pay, Abbott said the queue-jumping looked illegal. he ordered a halt and promised an investigation.
So what did the investigation reveal? Too soon to say, says Abbott, which is surprising since this all happened almost two months ago. The obvious conclusion is that the government doesn't much care about the Canada Health Act.
Footnote: And sixth, the great Peter MacKay-Belinda Stronach question: Did MacKay, the jilted Conservative lover, call Stronach a dog in Parliament? He says no; the Liberals say yes and he should apologize; the truth will never be clear. It should make all MPs rethink their frequent descent into the kind of mindless, sneering abuse that would be unacceptable anywhere - except in Parliament. (And a note of congratulations to B.C. MLAs, for setting a higher standard of behaviour since 2005.)

A plug for the CBC TV show Intelligence

The blog is pretty much exclusively my columns, but I want to give a plug to the new CBC series Intelligence, on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. It would be a shame if the program died for lack of viewers.
It's smart crime/police/politics drama, proudly set in Vancouver. The lead bad guy - Reardon - is a pretty successful mid-level organized criminal, running grow ops, money laundering and related criminal activities, worrying about the rival bikers and the police and his own people. And worrying, also, about an addict ex-wife and an idiot brother who works for him.
On the other side is an ambitious detective who sees an informant relationship with Reardon as her ticket to advancing from criminal policing to a bigger role with CSIS. But she has to deal with the fierce internal politics of the police-CSIS world (including a sexist, ambitious conniving subordinate played brilliantly by Matt Frewer).
Vancouver looks great, the writing is excellent, the characters are interesting and believable and the similarities between the worlds of cops and crooks - and the corporate world for that matter - is striking.
And there is a Canadian look and feel, particularly in the realistic - at least by TV standards - look at the complexity of the lives of all involved.
I hardly ever make an effort to watch specific shows - 24, My Name is Earl, The Office - but I'd stay home for Intelligence.
Give it a try.

Chaos, confusion and coroners' secrecy put boy at risk

VICTORIA - There's some new appalling detail on almost every page of the report into why a little boy was left for months in the care of the man who beat his 19-month-old sister to death.
The government finally released Child and Youth Officer Jane Morley's report Friday, after sitting on it for three weeks. The report paints a terrible picture of failure, of a system snarled in rigid bureaucracy and plagued by paralysing secrecy, suspicion and indecision.
Ministry of children and families staff were keeping secrets from Usma, the First Nations' agency delivering child protection services to the family. Usma workers were keeping, it turned out, the same secrets from ministry staff.
Pleas for help and direction from front-line workers were ignored by senior ministry staff.
Even as chaos and confusion mounted, no one at the top levels of the ministry stepped in, called people together and sorted things out,
And all the while the Coroners Service, responsible for child death reviews, was refusing to provide critical information - including the details of the terrible injuries that killed Sherry Charlie - to the people charged with protecting her three-year-old brother Jamie and the other children in the Port Alberni home.
It's a grim recitation, made bearable only because the children weren't physically harmed.
Sherry Charlie, who had been placed in the care of family members by Usma on behalf of the ministry, was beaten to death Sept. 4. Within five days preliminary autopsy results made it clear to the coroner and police that she hadn't died from a fall down a few stairs, as the family claimed. She had head and abdominal trauma, a lacerated liver, internal bleeding and other injuries.
But neither coroner nor police shared that information with the ministry or Usma for almost two months.
Some scenes in the report stand out, moments that can convey the bizarre way this case was handled. By late October, eight weeks after the killing, the coroner had told ministry staff - vaguely - that Sherry's death hadn't been caused by a fall down stairs. But the coroner had insisted the information be kept secret.
Usma was about to extend Jamie's placement in the home. A senior ministry official was concerned enough to call the Usma supervisor and ask if she was sure that was the right decision. The puzzled Usma worker asked if the ministry knew something that she didn't.
Instead of answering, the ministry manager allowed a silent pause. She thought that was a good way to hint at problems; the Usma worker thought she was acknowledging there were no concerns. It was a ludicrous way to deal with a child in danger.
What also stands out is the failure of the Coroners Service to discharge - or even grasp - its responsibilities. It took four months for the coroner's service to produce an autopsy report on Sherry's death, which confirmed the original findings. It took another two months of effort to get the coroner to provide the report to the ministry.
This despite a legal requirement that coroners, like others, immediately report to the ministry any facts that raise questions about a child's safety.
It's grim. The Coroners Service priority appeared to be the police case, not children's safety.
Worse, Morley notes that the coroner involved and the Coroners Service both tried to argue that she shouldn't be allowed to comment or report on the possibility that the service had made mistake, broken laws or make any comments that "reflect adversely on the Coroner's competence." It's an incredible attempt to deny public accountability and hide from independent scrutiny.
The other alarming element to all this is that the facts are only coming out now, more than four years after all this happened.
And for much of that time the government has insisted that there was no need for an investigation, that the case had been properly handled and the Coroners Service was handling its responsibilities effectively.
Morley's report shows that none of those claims were true.
Footnote: The report includes on recommendation which urges the government to create a "system of multi-agency child death teams" to investigate when a child dies unexpectedly in the home of a caregiver and other children remain in the home. If the system had been in place, Morley says, police, coroner, the ministry and Usma could have worked together quickly and effectively.

Government leaves welfare children out in cold

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.

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.[

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.

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.

Almost 600,000 reasons Harper’s pot policy doomed

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

Health 'conversation' too good to miss

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

Not a housing strategy, but a small step

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

Liberal MLAs stall search for child and youth representative

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

This time, maybe we will see treaties

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

Health-care spending scare tactics unfair to public

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

A better way for klds in care

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