Province, CLBC failing the disabled

Here’s how bad it has become for mentally handicapped people in B.C.
Barely five months into the fiscal year, the agency that’s supposed to be providing the supports they need has had to beg government for more money to meet “urgent health and safety needs.”
The planning and funding were so inadequate that these people’s health and safety were at risk. Not their quality of life, or their parents’ ability to sleep at night knowing their children had a shot at happiness.
Their health and safety.
We are talking about people with developmental disabilities — mental handicaps like Down syndrome or other limits. Many have other serious conditions, physical, mental and emotional. Their parents are often aging themselves and facing limitations.
In a caring society, these people can have rich lives. Families can often provide support, until parents grow too old and needs too great. Day programs, group homes, supported workplaces and other options offer a way for people to share in the joys and sorrows of life.
But in this province, we’re not even meeting urgent health and safety needs, let alone providing needed support.
Community Living B.C., the Crown corporation providing services, called a press conference to announce it had found an extra $8.9 million to meet “urgent health and safety needs” of its clients. The provincial government had contributed an extra $6 million. Another $2.9 million, allocated for helping people with FASD and other problems, was redirected, because, CLBC says, the money wasn’t needed to assist those people.
The corporation actually seemed to think this was a good news story.
It wasn’t. The corporation was acknowledging that it did such a bad job in planning — or the government cut its budget proposals so significantly — that five months into the year clients had “urgent” health and safety needs it couldn’t meet.
That means serious needs that fall short of the urgent threat to life and limb are still not being met.
Even with the $8.9 million, the provincial funding for CLBC is up just 1.8 per cent. The number of clients needing services is increasing 5.1 per cent, and many costs are also rising with inflation.
The money is obviously inadequate. Advocates, including the B.C. Association for Community Living, said a $70-million increase is needed to provide proper support.
CLBC per-client funding has been cut every year since the Liberal government created the agency six years ago. In 2006/7, the first full year of operation, funding provided an average $51,154 per client. This year, funding will be $46,000. Just returning to the original level would require an extra $85 million.
CLBC has been looking, appropriately, at ways to meet people’s needs more cheaply. Clients who have been in group homes, for example, a relatively cost form of housing and support, might be able to do as well or better in other arrangements. Supported workplace programs could be chopped and developmentally disabled clients encouraged to compete in the job market.
But families and advocates have complained —with convincing evidence — that the corporation is putting the priority on cutting costs, not client needs.
This has been particularly brutal for the 550 young people who will turn 19 this year. That’s the magic age when support through the children’s ministry ends and CLBC takes over. Supports are slashed, or disappear. Even when there are serious risk of harm, people are told there is no money to deliver the services that CLBC’s case planners agree are needed. CLBC can’t, or won’t, say how many people are on waitlists.
The underlying problem is that the agency — and Harry Bloy, the hapless minister responsible — have little credibility. Both claimed repeatedly that clients were not being forced from group homes. They acknowledge now that was not true.
This is a dismal failure, at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in the province.
Footnote: The problems are only to going to get worse. Despite an increasing number of clients in each of the next two years, the Liberal budget calls for funding to be effectively frozen and Finance Minister Kevin Falcon has been warning that even deeper cuts in government could lie ahead.

Liberals have seen the enemy, and he is John Cummins

Note: Saturday updates at end of post.

I don't know anything about professional politics, although I have some experience in the corporate kind.

Maybe the Liberals' sleazy attacks on John Cummins are just the way you win.

After all, the federal Conservatives' attacks on Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff seemed to work. American politicians and their handlers have great success with attack ads.

So Christy Clark has adopted the same approach. Find a way to portray other leaders as creepy, amoral, sinister figures, buy some ads and stick up some grisly photos to show them in their worst light. Make them not just people with bad policies, but evil, perhaps deranged or stupid, princes of darkness.

Use the attacks to solidify your base, as they say, and raise money.

The smear campaigns don't seem to make voters think you're desperate or fearful, or at least not often. Though it does seem odd that the Liberal party is buying radio commercials to attack a politician most British Columbians haven't likely heard of.

But couldn't parties win by arguing their opponents' policies were dumb or destructive, without vilifying them on a personal level or making up motivations for their actions and policies?

That would be a lot less damaging for democracy and public life.

If this kind of stuff works, it says something sad about us as voters.

Saturday updates:

Les Leyne has a good column in the Times Colonist on just how wretched and fake these attack ads are.
And the Gazetteer calls for a much stronger denunciation of a style of sleazy, destructive politics that threatens democracy itself. You should read him here.

CLBC funding boost inadequate, and an admission of bungling

From today's Times Colonist editorial on the announcement of additional money for CLBC:

"The government's grudging commitment of extra money for services for mentally handicapped adults falls far short of what's needed and shows inept handling of an important responsibility.

The government provided an extra $8.9 million for Community Living B.C. Wednesday in response to a public outcry over sharp cuts to services for some of the most vulnerable people in our province.

Obviously, any increase is welcome. But the increase is barely one per cent of the Crown corporation's budget, and far short of the $85 million needed to restore perclient funding to the level in 2005, when CLBC was created. Even with the increase, the province's contribution this year will increase 1.8 per cent, despite a 5.1 per cent increase in the number of people with developmental disabilities who require services.

CLBC executives said the money is needed to cover "urgent health and safety needs" of the Crown corporation's clients.

That is an admission of failure. It is not difficult to forecast the need for services. The government knows how many young people with developmental disabilities, currently supported by the children's ministry, will turn 19 and rely on CLBC. It can predict current clients' needs.

Yet barely five months into the fiscal year, the agency does not have enough money to cover urgent health and safety needs...."

You can read the rest here.

And reporter Lindsay Kines news coverage is here.

Lessons from Kienan's abduction and return

First, cheers and gratitude for the safe return of three-year-old Kienan Hebert, a remarkable happy ending to a nightmarish story.
The fact that stranger abductions are extraordinarily rare doesn’t lessen the heart-stopping impact of his abduction.
That celebration and the prosecution of the now-arrested suspect, Randall Hopley, will take some time. And it's important to remember there has not been a single piece of evidence offered to support the theory that Hopley did this.
But we need answers to broader questions.
Kienan’s father, Paul Hebert, has shown calm dignity throughout the ordeal. He has forgiven Hopley, he says, citing his own Christian faith and its requirement for forgiveness.
But on Monday, he set out his frustration with the justice system. Hebert didn’t offer an emotional response — no demands that such people be locked up forever, for example.
He wanted to know why Hopley didn’t get help that would change his behaviour despite his repeated contacts with the police and courts that stretched back almost to the 46-year-old man’s own childhood. And why, given that, he was free.
They are good questions. And the implications go far beyond this case.
Hopley is, based on media reports, an archetype. Our courts are full of people like him; they occupy a large amount of police officers’ time. They lead a life of petty crime, with occasional forays into something more serious.
Hopley fits the profile. He is neither smart nor educated; one of his defence lawyers told the court he was mentally handicapped. Hopley’s father died in a mine accident when he was about Kienan’s age. His stepfather, Doug Fink, said was out of control as a child, running away and constantly in trouble. “I didn't want nothing to do with him, he'd only stay so long and he couldn't help himself, he'd be in trouble again,” Fink said.
Dale Fedoruk, who lived in Sparwood, where Hopley has lived for about 16 years, said he was “a dirty, creepy guy.”
Hopley was a thief, breaking into businesses in an industrial park, stealing from cars. He wasn’t particularly good at it, and would sometimes confess to police when caught. Hopley had kept police busy since moving to Sparwood in 1995, an officer told a judge in 2003.
He pleaded guilty to stealing $795 from a business in that case, and got four months of house arrest, a year’s probation and an order to repay the money. He was to abstain from drugs and alcohol as well.
Those kinds of orders are common too. But Hopley, like many offenders, had a poor record in actually following the orders, frequently ending up back in court for breaches of various orders.
These people, often with addictions as well, are the frequent flyers in the criminal justice system. And the system does a poor job of dealing with them, undermining the sense of security in communities.
There were more serious charges as well. Hopley was sentenced to two years for a sex assault in the 1980s and faced charges — later dropped — of attempting to abduct a boy in 2007. Those should have been warnings, Paul Hebert says.
“The judges and the system failed us,” he said. “Hopley needs help and the system didn’t give him the help he needed and because of that, we have been affected. Our rights have been taken away and our family got hurt.”
The justice system - judges, prosecutors, police - are notoriously reluctant to accept scrutiny.
But it’s reasonable to make an effort to look at Hopley’s life of involvement with the courts and police and see if Hebert is right in believing that a better job cold have been done in protecting the public.
A Crown prosecutor sought a psychiatric examination for Hopley before sentencing in 2008, for example, but the defence objected and the court didn’t order one. Perhaps that might have been useful.
And, in fact, the issues might have less to do with the court system than with the lack of early childhood intervention to deal with people before they become criminals.
There’s a lot to learn from this case.
But first, there’s a lot to be thankful for.
Footnote: The RCMP also needs to provide answers, especially about the way in which Kienan was dropped off at his families’ empty home at 3 a.m., with police apparently unaware that someone had entered the crime scene. Police have said they “facilitated” the return, but need to explain what arrangements, if any, they made and how they managed the risk to Kienan and others.

CLBC cuts and the invisible minister

Times Colonist reporter Lindsay Kines has another report on the devastating cuts to services for people with developmental disabilities, this time focusing on the total lack of support when people turn 19 and Community Living BC takes over responsibility from the children's ministry.

Recommended reading here.

The problem, as I note here, is reduced per-client funding for CLBC every year since the agency was created by the Liberal government. The result has been worsening wait lists, clients forced out of group homes they have lived in for years and a dramatic reduction in the quality of life for people with disabilities.

So what does Social Development Minister Harry Bloy say about the service cuts, and the demand by advocacy groups for a $70-million funding increase to deal with what they call a crisis?

No one knows. Bloy has hidden from questions from reporters and the public, and since the legislature rarely sits he isn't held accountable there. Any day I expect to see his picture on the side of a milk carton.

Kines asked to talk to the minister for the story, as he and other reports have tried for many articles, and was refused.

Instead, communications staff write meaningless emails allegedly from Bloy.

Read the response below, which is typical, and judge for yourself whether this represents an open and accountable government able to explain and defend its decisions. If you were the parent of a disabled adult who was losing day support, or being forced from a group home, would your concerns and questions about the actions and future service reductions be addressed?

Or whether a $150,000-a-year cabinet minister simply won't even try to defend the indefensible.

"Lindsay:

"Minister Bloy sends his apologizes as he’s not available to speak to you in person. However, he has provided the following statement.
"As a parent, I understand and share the concerns of families whose loved ones have unique developmental challenges. As Minister responsible for Community Living BC, I am committed to finding solutions that best address the needs of our province’s most vulnerable citizens.
"This is not to suggest there aren’t challenges. CLBC serves over 13,600 developmentally disabled adults - 3,300 more than they did in 2007. Despite annual budget increases and an investment to date of more than $3.5 billion, the number of requests for CLBC services and supports from both new and existing individuals continues to grow. CLBC provided services for 766 new people last year, and over a thousand people already in the system got additional services.
"We are living in difficult financial times and we continue to investigate and adopt innovative solutions that will support any many families as possible. "We have always funded CLBC and will continue to fund them in the future. The care, comfort and well-being of developmentally disabled individuals and their families are, and always will be, government’s priority and my priority as Minister."

After 10 years, time to rethink 9/11 response

We’re coming at the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the wrong way.
It’s as if we want to relive those terrible moments, and forget what has happened in the decade since.
That Tuesday was a stunning day. Most of us had grown up believing that war and terrorism happened somewhere else. The images — a plane striking the twin towers, people jumping to certain death, the stunned faces of New Yorkers — had great impact.
So governments rushed to find ways to prevent new attacks. And, for the most part, we supported them in the first few months.
But 10 years later, it’s time to step back, consider what we have wrought and choose a new path forward.
The reality is that America, the target of the vicious attack, is worse off in virtually every way than it was a decade ago.
Not because of al Qaeda’s efforts. Americans are a resilient people; they have surmounted much greater difficulties.
The wounds have been self-inflicted. America, now in financial trouble, spent more than $3 trillion on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a result of the attacks, and hundreds of billions in security measures. The indirect costs were also enormous, as other priorities — like regulating a financial system that had become a giant con game — were ignored.
Its global stature, and the credibility of its government inside and outside the country, were greatly diminished as freedoms were eroded, rights compromised and torture condoned. The American public has developed a profound mistrust of those in power and destructive political divisions.
Nor has Canada been immune. We joined the Afghan war at a military cost of $18.5 billion, and the sacrifice of 162 lives. Our Parliament passed new anti-terror laws that limited rights once considered fundamental. Security measures touched most Canadians’ lives at some point, even if only in the form of delays and searches at airports.
A Rideau Institute report this week estimated that Canada has spent an extra $90 billion as a result of 9/11, creating new measures and agencies and expanding the roles of others — almost $2,600 for every Canadian.
It’s time, after a decade, to come to a more realistic assessment of the risks of terror attacks, and the best ways of responding.
The 9/11 attacks did change things. The threat of terrorism always existed — the World Trade Centre had already been targeted, in 1993. But the attacks in New York and Washington showed the scale of possible damage and demonstrated to would-be attackers the impact of a major successful blow.
But the decade since has not brought a wave of attacks. The threat of an organized global terror effort never materialized; al Qaeda while dangerous, never grew in strength or effectiveness; Canadians continue to be affected much more by security efforts than by terrorism.
Some will argue that our continued security shows the effectiveness of the measures and that we should spend more, and sacrifice more liberties, to increase safety.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper took that position this week. When Parliament rushed to pass the Antiterrorism Act in the aftermath of 9/11, it included provisions that some of the extraordinary measures infringing on individual liberty would expire in 2007. Canada has been safe without them since then, but Harper plans to bring them back this fall.
In a column on the first anniversary of the attack, I noted that “the state — Canada or Afghanistan, America or Iraq — always wants to increase its power over the people. It’s not sinister; if you are in charge of keeping order, then you will want to make that task easier — surveillance cameras on every corner, fewer legal right for citizens. But it’s an imperative that means citizens must always be prepared to push back.”
It’s time to push back, in a sensible and informed way. It’s time to question the scale and scope of security spending, in a prudent way. Canada spends $40 million a year to have armed RCMP air marshalls on flights, for example. Perhaps that can end. Perhaps we can spend focus less on extraordinary laws and more on effective intelligence.
That was a terrible day 10 years ago. But it did not change everything. It’s time we regained our balance, and confidence, as a people.


Postscript

Here's my 2002 first anniversary column on 9/11. It stands up well.

A licence to extend the state's power

There's something at once wrong and frightening about the fervent celebration of the attacks on the United States one year ago.

Wrong, because it rests on the false pretence that Sept. 11 was a defining moment that changed everything, for everyone.

And frightening because it is being used to justify mindless conformity, an erosion of individual rights in favour of the state -- and even war.

It was a terrible day. But most people have placed that devastating event into some appropriate place among the other terrible and joyous moments that define a life. About 40,000 children were born in B.C. last year. For those families, 2001 won't be the year the World Trade Center was destroyed; that pales beside the wonder of a new life beginning. About 315 British Columbians killed themselves last year. For those families, it will be the year that someone was lost, and something in them died, too.

The attacks were terrible. But they were not different in purpose or effect than the decades of horrors that the current generation has witnessed.

Even their scale is not beyond comparison. Some 3,000 people died last Sept. 11. Twenty times as many died when the second bomb fell on Nagasaki; twice as many died in Bhopal after the 1994 Union Carbide disaster; about the same number of Africans will die of AIDS while you are at work today.

Last Sept. 11 was an awful day, but everything didn't change because of it. We still go to work, look for happiness, slide into despair. We raise our children. Just like always. And one year later, I am much less frightened of a terror attack than I am of the governments supposedly on my side.

The state -- Canada or Afghanistan, America or Iraq -- always wants to increase its power over the people. It's not sinister; if you are in charge of keeping order, then you will want to make that task easier -- surveillance cameras on every corner, fewer legal right for citizens. But it's an imperative that means citizens must always be prepared to push back.

For a year governments have been using Sept. 11 as a licence to extend the state's power. And an uncertain public has failed to push back.

Airport security may have needed upgrading, perhaps through improved training. But a $24-per-ticket surcharge is taking $400 million a year from travellers' pockets and has wounded regional airlines and the communities they serve. The take from Vancouver alone is enough to hire more than 600 extra security staff; the need has never been demonstrated.

The federal government likewise made no effective case for $8 billion in increased security spending over the next five years, money it could never find to help Canada's poorest children or reduce the tax burden.

And now the U.S. is pressuring Canada to spend more on defence, even after a 10-per-cent increase this year. (The Americans spend $400 billion a year on their military, more than the next 25 countries combined. To match their level of per-capita spending, Canada would have to more than triple its defence budget.)

Sadly, it's not just about money. The Bush administration quickly passed the "USA Patriot Act" (the name, commanding mindless acquiescence, should sound alarm bells.) Americans lost rights they had treasured for 200 years. The right to legal representation, to a speedy and public trial, to protection from unjustified searches -- all gone. Americans can now be jailed indefinitely and secretly, without a trial.

Canada didn't go as far. But the prime minister can now outlaw groups based on secret evidence. Police gained the right to arrest someone who has broken no law on the suspicion that person is involved in terrorist activities. You can now be jailed for refusing to answer police questions.

And then there is war. Canada fought in Afghanistan, to little obvious effect. And now we are being asked to fight in Iraq, not because of anything that nation has done, but because the U.S. believes Saddam Hussein may some day do something. This is not a war on terrorism; it's a beating for a nation the U.S. simply wishes had a different leader.

Enough. Everything did not change in a few terrible hours one year ago. We have rights and freedoms and values worth defending, and a commitment to the rule of law that should not be abandoned when a government finds it convenient.

We will betray our past and our future if we allow ourselves to be defined by a single day of terror.

Campbell's order, no fall election and the slow HST repeal

On Gordon Campbell’s Order of B.C., Christy Clark’s belated rejection of a fall election and more.

First, Campbell’s selection for the Order of B.C. The decision is bad by any measure. The order was created in 1989 to recognize achievement and service. Candidates are nominated, and then selected by a seven-person panel. It’s supposed to be an honour and a celebration.

Campbell was forced out of office by public anger. It’s far too early to judge his impact as premier. He has been a divisive figure over the last decade.

There were no grounds to award the honour. Especially as only one premier - Bill Bennett - has been inducted into the order. And it came 21 years after he left office.

Campbell’s prize was so rushed it probably broke the rules. Elected representatives aren’t eligible. The nomination deadline was March 10. Campbell didn’t resign until March 15 and so shouldn’t have been considered.

The selection panel includes a university president, the province’s chief justice, a deputy minister, a Union of B.C. Municipalities rep, the Speaker and two members of the order.

A mostly elite group, and one closely tied to Campbell and the Liberals. Speaker Bill Barisoff is a Liberal MLA and a loyalist. The deputy minister, Pierette Miranda, worked in the premier’s office. The UBCM rep, Barbara Steele, was a Liberal candidate. The universities’ representative, Ralph Nilson, has donated to the Liberals. One of the order members, John Furlong, was backed by Campbell as the 2010 Olympic top boss.

Which all makes Campbell’s selection look like a handful of establishment people looking after one of their own, without even thinking how other British Columbians might see the choice. (A perception reinforced by the simultaneous induction of Ken Dobell, Campbell’s long-time managerial sidekick, and David Emerson, the federal politician who ran as a Liberal and immediately crossed over to the Conservatives and a cabinet job.)

It’s surprising the panel didn’t think this might be seen as thumbing their noses at British Columbians, whose disdain forced Campbell from office.

Second, Clark’s announcement that a fall election is no longer an option and she’ll wait for the fixed election date of May 14, 2013.

It’s the right decision. The province has been damaged by two years of chaotic tax policy and political uncertainty. It’s time to try for stable government.

And Clark hasn’t given any clear indication of her vision and agenda for the province in the six months since she won the leadership. It’s too soon for an election.

But her refusal to rule out a fall election until now still looks irresponsible.

And Clark’s comments in announcing that she wouldn’t call an election reinforce the perception, right or wrong, that she isn’t serious enough about the premier’s job.

Clark said she had listened to the public, and people didn’t want an election. And she said she recognized that an election would be harmful, given global financial instability.

But that was Wednesday. Just five days earlier, Clark had refused to rule out a fall election. Surely she knew about the global financial crisis then.

Third, the HST reversal. The government took about 11 months to impose the tax from they announced it, having done no studies or analysis of its impact.

But Finance Minister Kevin Falcon says it will take 19 months to rescind it, even though the government has had months to prepare for the likely result of the referendum.

That’s a damaging delay. Why do a major home reno, for example, if the tax hit will be much lower once the HST is repealed? Or start a restaurant?

Falcon and company were once critics of the creeping pace of government. Now he seems comfortable with what he once considered outrageous.

All of which suggests Clark is wise to put off an election for a while.

Footnote: The other HST question is why the government has been so quick to roll over and promise to repay the federal government the full $1.6 billion incentive payment to adopt the tax. The HST will have been in place for half the required five-year term. The province spent money to implement the tax, in good faith. At the least, some hard bargaining was in order, not a quick agreement to repay all the money.

HST result shows a new class-based voter division

The HST referendum result might signal a greater political shift, something beyond a tax revolt or anger over an arrogant, untrusted government.
The idea of class-based politics, for want of a better term, after being considered largely irrelevant for the last 60 years, could matter once again.
The HST went down to a significant defeat, with 55 per cent of those who voted rejecting the tax and 45 per cent backing it. A majority of voters in 60 ridings voted to dump the tax; in 25, they supported the HST.
The new tax won the strongest support in three ritzy Vancouver ridings. West Vancouver-Capilano, average household income more than $140,000, topped the list.
The vote to reject was strongest in three lower-income Mainland ridings. Voters in Surrey-Green Timbers, where the average household income is about $70,000, were keenest on dumping the HST.
Broadly, the higher the income in the riding, the more people supported the HST. The lower, the more likely they were to oppose the tax. The trend was consistent across the province.
No matter how you analyze those results, there is a significant division between the way people perceive their interests, based on their income levels.
Canadian elections haven’t reflected that divide for a long time, perhaps since the Second World War. Certainly lower-income voters, particularly with union jobs, have been more likely to support the NDP. But voters from all income levels have found homes in different parties at different times.
Voters, broadly, have considered themselves middle class and voted accordingly. Even if they were, objectively, earning much less than others, people expected their lot in life to improve, and their children’s lives to be better still.
They voted to advance the interests of the people they expected to be. Aspirational voting, you might say.
Until the referendum. People now seem, once again, to be picking sides — by class or income, or simply based on the divide between those who are doing well and those who are being left behind.
Which suggests that more people are losing hope that they, or their children, will cross over into the solidly middle class.
That’s not surprising. My grandparents, British immigrants with limited skills and education, bought a house in Toronto for $500 after they had been in the country for a few years and he was working for General Electric. When I was five, my parents bought a house in the new Toronto suburbs, sprawling out to accommodate the post-war baby boom. I bought a house in Alberta for $67,500 after a relatively short stint in the workforce. We all expected home ownership, opportunity and a better life for our children.
Now the average price of a detached home in Vancouver is more than $1 million. The jobs that once provided steady, good incomes for people in mills and manufacturing are gone.
And with them, the expectations of a better life have vanished for many British Columbians. They can no longer see themselves as middle class.
It’s a significant shift. Canadians have shared the expectation that they would do well. Vote Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Socred — they offered different approaches to a common, better future. Now, many have lost the hope that underpinned those votes.
An Ipsos Reid poll released Tuesday supports that view. It found that 49 per cent of those surveyed thought scrapping the HST would have a negative impact on the B.C. economy, while only 17 per cent thought it would be positive.
But 43 per cent thought axing the tax would be good for their families, while only 25 per cent thought it would be bad for them.
Voters have rated the economy highly as an issue for the last few decades. Parties judged to be good at improving the economy won support across all income groups, because people believed they and their families would benefit.
But not this time.
That’s a significant development, especially for the provincial Liberals. Their message in the next election campaign, whenever it comes, will be that an NDP government would be bad for business.
The HST result suggests voters might be less convinced about putting the economy first, and more concerned with whether the next government would be good for them.

After the HST, government needs a clear plan

OK, the HST is gone. Now it’s time to get things back on track.

For more than two years, things have been a mess in B.C.

Politically, we’ve had a citizens’ revolt, the resurrection of Bill Vander Zalm and the ouster of Gordon Campbell.

Economically, we’ve been a mess. Tax policy has been made up on the fly. Campbell promised a 15-per-cent income tax cut, then the government reneged once he quit. The government cut corporate taxes, then Premier Christy Clark said she would increase them again if the HST survived. The Liberals said the HST was not in the plans during the 2009 campaign, introduced it, then watched as it grew increasingly doomed.

All at a time when the economy was already fragile.

Businesses, and individuals, adapt to different tax regimes. But they like certainty. If a corporation is going to invest $100 million in a mill, it wants to know that the taxes won’t suddenly change once the doors are open. If a family is going to spend $10,000 on a new roof, they want to know that waiting for the result of the HST referendum wouldn’t save them $400.

That’s been missing.

And, despite the referendum result, certainty is still missing.

No one knows what happens next.

Finance Minister Kevin Falcon has said the government doesn’t have to bring back the old provincial sales tax, with all the exemptions were in place in 2009. He said the tax could be more like the HST, applied to more goods and services, to increase revenue.

Health Minister MIke de Jong has taken the opposite view. He told Mike Smyth of the Vancouver Province that the petition and referendum questions were clear.

“The choice is the HST as it exists today, or the PST as it existed previously,” he said. “If people opt to get rid of the HST and go back to the PST as it existed in 2009, that’s what the government is going to do.”

De Jong is right. But until the government is clear, the tax uncertainty continues. And so does the risk of another taxpayer revolt, if the government tries to weasel on the referendum result.

Falcon appears, in the aftermath of the vote, to accepted that reality.

That’s just one issue in the post-referendum world.

Falcon has said that rejecting the HST would mean big changes for B.C.’s budget.

It’s time for the government to lay those out for British Columbians.

The defeat of the HST means about $360 million less in annual revenue, according to the analysis by the government’s independent panel. The federal government’s $1.6 billion incentive payment to encourage the province to adopt the tax has to be repaid over time. The PST tax office has to be restored.

So what’s the plan? Will taxes rise, and if so, who will pay more? Will spending be cut, and who will lose out? Or will the government borrow more to repay the federal government, and accept the interest costs?

They are all legitimate responses. What’s needed is a clear, multi-year government plan, so everyone, businesses and investors particularly, know the rules.

And so voters can decide whether it makes sense.

A serious government would be setting out its plan, accepting the public’ verdict.

Instead, it seems the Clark government is still considering a quick election.

That’s just irresponsible. There is no clear election issue. The Clark government hasn’t set out an agenda, or a prudent budget based on the HST referendum results.

Clark has a chance to set out her government’s plans and priorities, supported by a new budget in February. That would let voters make an informed choice.

It’s been a more than two years of stumbling government and slapdash fiscal policy in British Columbia.

Clark needs to show what alternative her government has to offer before Britisn Columbians go to the polls.

Four lessons from Barry Penner's departure

Four thoughts on Barry Penner's resignation as attorney general and retirement from politics.

First, there's something wrong with any system that expects politicians - or anyone - to work constantly.

Penner said he's leaving politics because he wants to spend time with his wife and six-month-old daughter, and a cabinet post makes that impossible. "I was supposed to be on holiday the last two weeks," he said. "And I think I got maybe one-and-a-half days . because of urgent issues in the ministry that had to be attended to."

BlackBerries are always buzzing and crises emerging.

Really, a cabinet minister should be able to go away for two weeks, and even take most weekends off. Real emergencies are rare. Most decisions don't have to be made instantly, and perhaps shouldn't be. Not every political issue demands immediate action.

But organizations can easily slip into phony crisis mode, where people compete to be busiest.

For example, if an article troubling to the government appears in the Times Colonist on a Saturday, the offended ministry often springs into action and fires off an email letter to the editor, supposedly from the minister, the same day or on Sunday. At least a few people's weekends are ruined.

But it's pointless. No one at the newspaper looks at emailed letters to the editor until Monday morning.

There isn't a newspaper until Tuesday.

There is no reason for the panic or the weekend work, except a desire to look busy or important.

Worse, it's unlikely we get good decisions from ministers constantly frazzled and overloaded and rushing from meeting to meeting, half-listening to staff while they scroll through emails. It's tough to think, or read, or pause for a thoughtful response when you're crushed in busy work.

It's also unlikely that we get the diversity we need in cabinet, and government. Anyone not prepared to put up with being on call 18 hours a day, seven days a week, has less chance of advancing to the top jobs.

Surely, among the driven workaholics, we want people at the cabinet table who value time with their children, or to read or make music. People who think reflection or going to a friend's house for dinner - without checking a BlackBerry surreptitiously under the table throughout the meal - are important. (I write as a reformed workaholic.)

Some politicians do maintain balance. But Penner's resignation suggests the pressures, self-imposed and external, to keep on working.

Second, while Penner certainly did not criticize Premier Christy Clark, neither did he show much support.

He resigned as attorney general now, Penner said, because Clark and the party are pushing MLAs to set up campaign teams in case she decides on a fall election. Penner felt it would be wrong to recruit campaign staff if he wasn't going to run in the next election (which, legally, is to be in 2013) and wrong to stay in cabinet if he's not running. Without the pressure to declare, he might have stayed in cabinet, he said.

And Penner made his own announcement; the premier's office didn't get the chance to manage the news.

The third point is a little complicated. I think well of Penner. I don't believe he's lied to me. He's not a jerk in the legislature. He always seems to enjoy representing the people in his riding, seeing it as a serious job and an honour. He doesn't run from issues. Sometimes, his sincerity seemed like it might be a liability in his party. I rate him highly.

But when you think about it, rating a politician highly for those reasons alone seems a little sad.

And fourth and finally, Penner's departure shows Clark is still seriously considering a fall election. The HST referendum results will be released in the next few days - Thursday is the target. Clark and the Liberal strategists have a narrow window to decide whether to call a vote, likely in October in advance of municipal elections.

Footnote: Clark's continued interest in a fall election might not be wellreceived in caucus. MLAs would have almost two years left in their terms under the fixed election date law, but face tough battles - and possibly defeats - if the vote is held this year.

Others fear the practical problems of raising money and recruiting volunteers when many political activists are already looking to the November municipal elections.

Riots, rubbish and the decline of Britain

A remarkable amount of rubbish has been spoken and written about Britain’s riots.
Start with Prime Minister David Cameron. “These riots were not about poverty,” he said this week. “That insults the millions of people who, whatever the hardship, would never dream of making others suffer like this.”
The beleaguered prime minister might wish poverty was not a factor, but he can’t possibly know it wasn’t.
In fact, The Guardian, in a fine piece of journalism, gathered the addresses of 1,100 people charged in the riots and plotted them against a map showing neighbourhoods’ official measures of “multiple deprivation.”
The majority of areas where suspects lived were deprived, and two-thirds of them had got poorer between 2007 and 2010. More than 40 per cent of the suspects lived in the bottom 10 per cent of communities on the deprivation index.
That does not justify rioting or theft or any other crime. But it does suggest it is stupid, if the goal is understanding and prevention, to pretend poverty, joblessness and deprivation are not factors.
Then move on to consider the moral outrage of politicians of all stripes, who spoke as if the rioters were aliens who had emerged, to everyone’s shock, on British streets.
Peter Oborne, the chief political commentator for the Daily Telegraph, a staunchly conservative newspaper, laid that to rest brilliantly.
There was something “very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in Parliament,” he wrote. “MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.”
“I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society,” he wrote. “The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.”
Sir Richard Branson, he wrote, was considering moving his Virgin operations to Switzerland to avoid taxes. A report said that might be a blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer — the finance minister — because it would mean less government revenue.
“In a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor,” Oborne wrote. “People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted.” People who have become rich in part because of the structures of British society — schools, roads, police — no longer wish to pay their share.
MPs stood in Parliament to deplore the looters’ theft of TVs and designer clothes, Oborne wrote. But the same politicians greedily grabbed whatever they could under their lax expense provisions until they were exposed. Can a Labour MP who made taxpayers pay for a $14,000 Bang & Olufsen television really claim to be much different from a looter lugging a flat-screen TV out of a shop?
“The prime minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate,” Oborne wrote. “He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor ... He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.”
I visited England four years ago, for the first time in years.
The greatest shock was the drunken louts, obnoxious and threatening. They weren’t all young, and it wasn’t a matter of being in the bar zone at night. They were in Exeter, a quiet university town, at night, and on trains at midday. They seemed a symptom of a decaying society.
As do the riots.
I don’t want to add to the rubbish. But any society that restricts upward mobility, cuts supports to those on the bottom who have become dependent on them over generations and not only accepts a perpetually uneducated, unemployed underclass, but tolerates lawless acts by some of its members, is going to face big problems.
If it increasingly celebrates the gap between the rich and the rest — winners and losers under the system set up by the winners — those problems will be more dramatic.
And no amount of politicians’ pronouncements, policing or moralizing are going to change the reality.
Canada is, of course, much different. But we should, perhaps, think about just how much different.

CLBC service cuts hurt most vulnerable

It's understandable that Social Development Minister Harry Bloy is ashamed of cruel cuts to services for some of B.C.'s most vulnerable citizens.

But his refusal to acknowledge the reality and his flat-out false statements are insulting to people with developmental disabilities and their often exhausted and frightened families.

"Developmental disabilities" is a clunky term. Many of the adults supported by Bloy's ministry are what we once called mentally handicapped. Some have severe autism or fetal alcohol syndrome; many have major physical and mental health problems as well. Some need round-the-clock medical care and constant supervision for their own safety, and the safety of others.

Much of that care has been provided through group homes. To save money, the government has been closing group homes and pushing people into cheaper arrangements.

And, based on the evidence, the government and Community Living B.C. know this is wrong. Bloy has insisted no people have been forced to move against their will and families have been consulted. Families say both claims are false.

Connie and Ken Greenway told Times Colonist reporter Lindsay Kines they were given little warning and no say in a decision to close the group home where their 46-year-old disabled son Darrin has lived for 15 years.

CLBC, the Crown corporation created by the government to provide services to the developmentally disabled, wanted the company operating the group home to sign a new contract with a deep funding cut. The company refused.

So the home will close and residents will be forced to move.

Remember, we are talking about fragile, vulnerable people with serious problems and great difficulty in dealing with change. Many, like Darrin, have spent years in the same home. It is, for them, like being ripped from family and sent into the unknown.

For their families, the changes bring a whole new set of fears. All parents fret about their children's future. But the fears are much more real as aging parents confront the reality that their vulnerable children will continue to be at risk after they die or are incapable of providing support and advocacy.

The closures aren't isolated. Community Living B.C. closed more than 40 group homes last year, forcing the residents to move and - often - reducing they support they received.

And the closures are not driven by revelations of waste, or innovations in support.

This is about cutting costs. The government has chosen not to put these families first.

According to CLBC, the amount of funding per client has fallen every year since it was created by the Liberals six years ago, under Christy Clark's watch as children's minister.

In 2006-07, the first full year of operation, funding provided an average $51,154 per client. This year, funding will be $45,306. And by 2013, according to the government projections, it will be cut to $41,225 per client.

If you factor in inflation, by 2013 the funding available for each client will be 30 per cent less than it was in 2006.

The effect of the cost-cutting goes far beyond group home closures. People who have, with extensive support, lived full and rich lives are seeing that ripped away, condemned to spend their days alone in a room.

And parents whose children are turning 19 face a special nightmare. Services for developmentally disabled youth are provided by the Ministry of Children and Families. Strong school programs offer opportunities.

On the day clients turn 19, those supports are ripped away. CLBC assumes responsibility, and parents find their children's lives are dramatically worse. Programs are unavailable, waiting lists are long and growing. Even when CLBC's own assessments say supports are needed for safety reasons, help is not provided.

This is not a case of families or interest groups demanding more, or better, support and care.

They just want the levels that have been in place for years to be maintained.

They want assurances that an adult child, unable to fend for herself, will not be put in danger, or forced to live a needlessly diminished life.

But the government, on your behalf, has decided it costs too much to continue helping vulnerable people live life fully.

Hydro report raps corporation, government

The government’s review of B.C. Hydro and power rates was grim reading.
The initial attention was focused on inefficiency within the Crown corporation.
The review panel — John Dyble, Premier Christy Clark’s deputy minister, Peter Milbrun, deputy minister of finance, and Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland, acting deputy minister of advanced education — found B.C. Hydro paid too little attention to controlling expenses.
Hydro has an admirable commitment to quality, reliability and safety. But it has been paying a high premium to achieve those goals, and passing the cost on to its customers.
The result, the panel said, has included overstaffing. It suggested about 20 per cent of the 6,000-person workforce could be eliminated. Compensation had not been properly managed — 99 per cent of eligible employees received performance bonuses — and the corporation had missed opportunities for savings in dealing with suppliers.
The frank, independent look was welcome, though it raises questions about the attentiveness of B.C. Hydro directors — five of the 10 have been on the board for more than two years — and past energy ministers.
The report also suggested the government’s policy orders to B.C. Hydro have resulted in large and unnecessary rate increases.
Gordon Campbell, for example, said B.C. Hydro must make the province self-sufficient in electrical by 2016. It was ordered to have enough capacity to meet the entire power needs of the province even in a year of record low water — and to build a big buffer on top of that.
That has proved an expensive, wasteful order. B.C. Hydro had to ramp up staffing to achieve the goal.
And because the power was to be acquired by contracting with private producers, the public corporation had to commit to costly, long-term contracts for electricity that might never be needed.
B.C. Hydro estimates its current round of power from private producers will cost $124 MWh, for example. That’s more than twice as much as the market price, and one-third more than power from a Site C dam would be.
Because of the government’s order, B.C. Hydro faces the real risk of buying expensive power from private producers and selling it at a loss on the open market.
There is little risk in adopting a more conservative approach in adding capacity; in a crunch, B.C. can buy power from U.S. or Alberta producers, as it has in the past.
There’s another major policy issue. The report indicates that the government has been, effectively, using B.C. Hydro to bring in hidden tax revenue.
B.C. Hydro pays government for water rights — the use of rivers and streams across the province. It charges twice as much as other Canadian governments charge power companies, the report found.
If B.C. charged rates in line with Manitoba and Quebec, then B.C. Hydro’s costs would fall by $150 million a year, the panel noted. That would result in an immediate rate cut of at least four per cent.
And the government also claims a larger share of B.C. Hydro’s revenue as a dividend than comparable utilities — more than $600 million this year.
Energy Minister Rich Coleman said that’s not likely to change. The government is running a deficit; it needs the revenue from water rights.
But it’s an inefficient and unfair way to collect revenue. Taxes, generally, are imposed based on some principles, with a primary one being that they are progressive — the amount paid rises with income or wealth.
Raising revenue through electricity bills doesn’t work that way. A low-income family with an older house — perhaps heating with electricity — would pay a larger share than an wealthy couple in an expensive condo.
And this approach to taxation also imposes larger costs on energy-dependent industries, reducing what should be a competitive advantage on attracting investment.
B.C. Hydro has some work ahead in improving its efficiency and cutting costs. But the government has an even larger role in fixing flawed policies.
Footnote: The review panel looked at the smart meter program and concluded it was justified based on future savings, although it urged B.C. Hydro to seek ways of cutting the $930 million cost. The panel also notes that unless the corporation introduces differential rates to discourage power use at peak periods, some potential savings under the smart meter program won’t be achieved. Government policy has rejected differential rates; that too should be reviewed.

The first five thoughts on the BC Hydro review

Five early thoughts on the BC Hydro review.

1) Where were the board, ministers responsible and government as BC Hydro, apparently, was mismanaged and staff soared 20 per cent over the levels needed over a period of years?

2) The government now should explain the huge amounts of money wasted by its discredited policy directives that BC Hydro use IPP purchases in pursuit of a foolish goal of electricity self-sufficiency.

3) The government has to explain its decision to use BC Hydro rates as a vehicle for tax increases. The review found, for example, that the government charges Hydro excessive rates for water rights, which are passed on to customers in the former of higher electricity bills. That's a regressive tax, and potentially destructive to industry in the province, encouraging investment elsewhere.

4) The review read much like something that would be done after a new party was elected to government and set out about fixing - and highlighting - the errors of the previous administration. Christy Clark deserves credit for the hard look (although there are political advantages to distancing herself from Gordon Campbell). But not all Liberals might agree - Bill Bennett and Blair Lekstrom, for example, were briefly energy ministers during the problem years. Half the B.C. Hydro board have been in place for more than two years, and the report raises serious questions about their effectiveness.

5) The report suggests failures of government policy and management. It is good to bring them into the light, but does raise questions about other areas of government.

Full post to come.

Banishment our way of treating mental illness

Donovan Seward’s banishment from Saltspring Island is a nice metaphor for the way we deal with mental illness.
Seward was ordered off the Island by a justice of the peace after a bail hearing. He faced several charges, including a dine and dash and assaulting an RCMP officer during his arrest. He was also a nuisance since joining the local homeless community.
So he was banished. Problem solved, at least for Saltspring residents.
But not really.
Seward is 31. He’s suffered from mental illness since childhood, says his mother, Myrna Seward. He’s had past brushes with the law, stints in hospitals and a suicide attempt. He’s tormented by voices in his head sometimes, she says, and if he quits taking his medication, he lives in a fantasy world. “He’s completely delusional,” she told the Times Colonist. “He thinks he’s John Lennon half the time.”
The bail conditions didn’t include a requirement that he get medical help or supervision. The officers didn’t take him to emergency for assessment, a possibility under the Mental Health Act.
Really, the problem has just been pushed along from Saltspring to wherever Seward lands next.
Don’t criticize the justice of the peace, the police or the people of Saltspring. Our whole approach to mental illness is based on pushing people away so they become someone else’s problem if things go wrong. (It’s important to note that most people with mental illness manage quite well, as do most people with diabetes or any other disease.)
The health care system shortchanges people with mental illness. There are always other priorities, usually with more skilful advocates. Boomers demanding timely hip replacements are more likely to be heard than someone struggling with unmanaged schizophrenia.
Alan Campbell, who retired last year as director of mental health and addictions for the Vancouver Island Health Authority, said B.C. and Canada lag. “For every one of the five years I’ve been doing this job, we’ve put forward strong, well-reasoned cases for more funding,” he said. “My understanding is that our requests are given real consideration, but they just don’t fare well in the end.”
The health system manages its costs by denying or rationing treatment. But it’s actually banishing troubled patients, just as Saltspring did.
Sometimes families or social service agencies are forced to pick up the pieces. Communities deal with the fallout, as people who are not treated fall to the streets.
And often, the police, courts and jails take on the responsibility the health care system shunned - as they did in Seward’s case.
Police spend their days dealing with people who are addicted, intoxicated or mentally ill. They face challenges, and sometimes danger, acting as social workers and counsellors.
Officers know that because the root problems aren’t being addressed, they’ll deal with the same people and the same behaviors the next day.
When the problems become serious enough, or annoying enough to the community, then people with unmanaged mental illness end up in court and, far too often, in prison.
Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers, who oversees the federal correctional system’s operations, estimates that 36 per cent of men in federal prisons, and 50 per cent of women, have some form of mental illness. The figures are similar for provincial jails.
There is a cruel irony in all that. Governments closed down large residential mental health facilities, partly to save money and partly because they were considered inhumane. But they failed to deliver the promised health care, housing and community support, with the result that people with mental illness ended up in prisons, which are far more inhumane, and offer no effective treatment.
There is no universal, simple solution. People with mental illness have rights, including the right to refuse treatment. Seward had been living in subsidized housing, with support, in Victoria, but decided to move to Vancouver.
But the current approach is a shambles. And rather than dealing with the issue and providing the health care and community support needed to allow people to deal with their illnesses, we are, like Saltspring, just pushing them along to become someone else’s problem.

Cuts to B.C. human trafficking office

The B.C. government has cut funding for an office dedicated to dealing with human trafficking.

Which does not displease Jody Paterson, who argues the money could be spent much more effectively on more pressing issues.

"We spent $2.25 million on this office in the last four years, apparently to help 100 people. It kills me to think how that money could have been used for real needs rather than for chasing ghosts.
You'd think that with all the sex workers I'd met over the years in B.C., I might have met one who'd been trafficked at some point in her life. Nope."

You can read the rest here.

More on solving America's debt crisis

I wrote last week that the U.S. could go a long way toward solving its debt crisis simply by being a bit more like Canada and raising taxes to our level.

"The U.S. collects taxes equal to 24 per cent of its GDP. If the take was increased to 31 per cent - the amount collected in Canada - the current year's deficit would fall from $1.5 trillion to $500 billion....

In fact, if the Americans increased overall tax revenue as a share of GDP to the average for OECD countries - 34.8 per cent - they could have a balanced budget immediately, without cutting anything from spending."

(You can read the post here.)

The New York Times makes the same point in an editorial today.

Lessons from a swim in the Gorge

We went for a swim Monday, about two blocks from home, in the Gorge waterway. We swam in the salt water as the tidal currents swept under the Tillicum Bridge toward Portage Inlet.

It was just a swim. And it was more. Because even 15 years ago, I wouldn't have ventured into the questionable Gorge waters.

The swim was a reminder that even when things are truly wrecked, we can fix them.

All it takes is one person with the will to start.

The Gorge is an urban waterway that extends inland from Victoria's harbour until it widens into Portage Inlet.

There are a few creeks feeding into the inlet and the Gorge, but the big influence is tidal. Water surges in, and out. The rapids under the Tillicum bridge run one way, then the other.

In the last 120 years, the Gorge has gone full circle. Its heyday was the late 19th and early 20th century, although First Nations had fished for herring and salmon and used it as a gathering place for centuries.

Victorians travelled in boats and by wagon and streetcar to the Gorge narrows to picnic, enjoy the natural setting and listen to concerts.

In 1911, as Dennis Minaker noted in his book, The Gorge of Summers Gone, the British Columbia Railway Company built its own version of Coney Island at the narrows to encourage more people to use the streetcar line. There was a roller-coaster and an early version of Splash Mountain that sent terrified customers down a steep ramp in small boats that plunged into the Gorge.

The water was always central to the activities. People swam and boated and gathered clams. There were races and exhibitions and bathhouses. Promoters built towers and staged diving shows - until, in 1922, 19-year-old Billy Muir was paralysed in a 110-foot dive. He died three years later.

But a few decades into the 20th century, the Gorge waterway was too polluted for anyone but the foolhardy to go swimming.

Residential development all along its length and around Portage Inlet meant increasing runoff, often with storm water and sewage spilling into the waters. Industry along the harbour and Gorge had added its own toxic legacies over Victoria's early years. And the Gorge had become a dumping ground for unwanted items large and small.

It was fine for boaters, but its attractiveness for swimmers - and its once-rich environment - seemed to be lost forever.

But John Roe didn't think so. In 1994, he and his nine-year-old son started spending their days hauling stuff out of the water - shopping carts, rusted metal, car tires.

It seemed, frankly, nutty - a classicly quixotic exercise in the impossible. The Gorge seemed too far gone for any effort to succeed, let alone one driven by one man and a boy in their spare time.

But individual efforts can have a powerful effect.

Other people started helping haul stuff from the water or contributed money. Scuba divers volunteered to pull up the junk Roe couldn't reach.

Business and governments offered support.

Roe, who had covered all the initial expenses, led the formation of the Veins of Life Watershed Society.

Grants and donations paid for equipment and bigger workforces. The cleanup efforts moved beyond pulling junk from the water and started focusing on stopping the flow of pollutants.

And at some point, there was a transformation. It was no longer accepted as an inevitable that the Gorge would remain unusable.

Instead, its recovery was seen as the imperative.

By 2000, a symbolic milestone Roe had set was reached. The Gorge was the site, for the first time in 65 years, of a swimming race.

Today, the transformation is remarkable. Salmon have returned, cormorants and eagles perch in trees along the waterway and herons and kingfishers haunt the shoreline. Emerald green eelgrass beds wave in the tides and otters and seals fish in the water.

And all because one man and a boy took a look at the state of the Gorge and decided to do something about it.

It's worth remembering, in these days of problems that seem too large or complex to yield to our efforts.

And pondering - perhaps as you enjoy a swim in the Gorge on a sunny afternoon.

U.S. could fix debt crisis by being more like us

Americans could fix their giant deficit/debt crisis relatively painlessly. All they have to do is become more like Canadians.

Specifically, they just have to pay the same level of taxes that Canadians do.

U.S. politicians have spent the last few weeks in a destructive exercise in brinkmanship over raising the country's debt limit. Republicans said they wouldn't allow more debt without a plan to reduce the deficit, and the plan couldn't include any tax increases.

Democrats didn't want the deep spending cuts that would be required. Failing to raise the limit could mean the U.S. couldn't borrow the money to pay its bills, causing all sorts of international economic problems.

A last-minute deal appears to have put off the crisis for a while.

Basically, the problem is simple. The U.S. spends much more than it takes in. The Tea Party politicians pretend it's feasible to cut spending by 40 per cent to deal with the gap. It's not.

But there is a solution. The U.S. collects taxes equal to 24 per cent of its GDP. If the take was increased to 31 per cent - the amount collected in Canada - the current year's deficit would fall from $1.5 trillion to $500 billion. (Instead, the compromise deal imagines spending cuts that would reduce the deficit by about $200 billion.)

Canada manages with that level of taxation. Our economy is stronger than the U.S. economy. Our society, arguably, functions better. Creativity and entrepreneurship aren't strangled. We grumble, but the tax burden isn't really onerous - people aren't fleeing for tax havens so they can pay less.

But a large chunk of Americans have bought into the dual notions that they are heavily taxed, and that all taxes are bad.

Neither is true. In fact, if the Americans increased overall tax revenue as a share of GDP to the average for OECD countries - 34.8 per cent - they could have a balanced budget immediately, without cutting anything from spending. No more mounting debt for future generations to repay, no risks of default or massive interest costs on rising borrowing.

Most of us grumble about paying taxes, especially when governments do goofy things with our money - like spending on fast ferries or stadium roofs or submarines that don't work.

But the current level of taxation in Canada isn't obviously punitive. We share the costs of services like schools and health care and police and get obvious value for much of the money we send off to government.

OECD countries function well, for the most part, with their levels of taxation. Even Germany, with tax revenue at 39 per cent of GDP, seems to manage.

It's not like the money disappears. Seniors get pensions and spend the money in their communities. The navy employs a few thousand people in Victoria, and buys services from scores of companies. We drive on the roads that our tax dollars pay for, and call the police when we need them. And the police, in turn, spend their salaries in the community.

It irks some that the payments are compulsory. I can boycott stores I don't like, but I have to send a cheque off to Revenue Canada. People without kids pay for schools, and those who oppose the war in Afghanistan pay for bigger military budgets.

But that's the price of living in a democratic society. It's pretty good value.

We can and should go wild when governments waste our money. We shouldn't pretend that paying for the things we need and use is somehow a bad thing.

Many Americans, and their politicians, seem trapped in a dangerous fantasyland.

And there is a real risk that the blind anti-tax fervour, fed by some elements of the media, will catch hold in Canada. To some extent, it already has. The Campbell Liberals treated taxes as inherently bad. And at least some of the anti-HST sentiment comes from people who oppose all taxes.

The consequences of the American tax delusion are on display. Let's hope we learn from them.

Footnote: There are still serious questions about how taxes should be collected. The initial HST opposition, for example, came in large part because it was supposed to shift $1.9 billion in taxes from companies to families. That's been a trend in B.C.

Since 2001, the share of government revenues derived from direct corporate taxes and royalties of various kinds has fallen by more than 50 per cent.

Americans could learn from us on deficit

Americans could fix their big deficit/debt crisis relatively painlessly.

All they have to do is pay the same level of taxes as Canadians do.

U.S. politicians are playing brinkmanship over raising the debt limit. Posturing and ideology have replaced any hint of intelligence or common sense. The risks to the U.S. and world economies are serious.

Basically, the problem is simple

The U.S. spends much more than it takes in. The Tea Party politicians pretend that it's feasible to cut spending by 40 per cent as a solution. It's not.

But there is a solution. The U.S. collects taxes equal to 24 per cent of its GDP. If the take was increased to 31 per cent - the amount collected in Canada - the current year's deficit would fall from $1.5 trillion to $500 billion.

We manage with that level of taxation. Our economy is stronger than the U.S. economy. Our society, arguably, functions better. Creativity and entrepreneurship aren't strangled.

If the U.S. tax revenue was increased to the OECD average of 34.8 per cent of GDP, Americans have a balanced budget without cutting anything from spending.

Most of us grumble about paying taxes, especially when governments do goofy things with our money - like spending on fast ferries or stadium roofs or mismanaged convention centres.

But the current level of taxation in Canada isn't obviously punitive. We share the costs of services like schools and health care and police and get obvious value for much of the money we send off to government. OECD countries function well, for the most part, with their levels of taxation.

It's not like the money disappears. Seniors get pensions and spend the money in their communities. The navy employees a few thousand people in Victoria, and buys services from scores of companies. We drive on the roads that our tax dollars pay for, and call the police when we need them.

It irks some that the payments are compulsory. I can boycott stores I don't like or decide not to eat out, but I have to send a cheque off to Revenue Canada. People without kids pay for schools. People who oppose the war in Afghanistan pay for bigger military budgets.

But that's the price of living in a democratic society. It's pretty good value.

Taxes pay for services we need. We can and should go wild when governments waste our money. We shouldn't pretend that paying for the things we need and use is somehow a bad thing.

American politicians seem trapped in fantasyland.

Let's hope we learn from their delusion.