Best referendum bet is a careful no vote
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - I hadn't really thought how I'd respond to the treaty referendum until last week, sitting in a Victoria courtroom. The details don't really matter. There will be other attempts by First Nations to challenge the referendum.
But the ballots are landing in peoples' homes right now, and it's time to start trying to figure out what to do.
I'm a pragmatist, with experience in labour negotiations. That wasn't always fun, but it was educational.
One lesson was that a clear, simple mandate for negotiators worked best. If my masters said get a contract that allows work flexibility and doesn't add more than $2 million to costs, then I had room to meet the union's concerns. If they tried to define every detail of a contract, then things would likely go badly. And as a pragmatist, that's one of the reasons I think the referendum is a bad, destructive exercise.
Attorney General Geoff Plant says the referendum will be binding on government, sort of, maybe, not really. The referendum asks for support for principles, he said this week. A commitment to being guided by those principles would be binding on the government. But actually acting in accord with them isn't required, Plant said.
And I can't help but think like a negotiator. Right now, if a First Nation wants a couple of acres carved from a park, negotiators can offer that at the table.
But the Liberals' referendum asks for support for the principle that "Parks and protected areas should be maintained for the use and benefit of all British Columbians." If that becomes binding, then negotiators would lose the ability to offer even a tiny plot of land from a park, sort of, maybe.
And for what purpose? Is there anyone who really thinks that negotiators don't know that handing over Pacific Rim National Park to the Nuu-chah-nulth would be cause problems?
Other questions are less benign.
After last week's court hearing Hupacasath Chief Judith Sayers said the referendum could end negotiations. If voters support the principle that "Aboriginal self-government should have the characteristics of local government, with powers delegated from Canada and British Columbia," then First Nations will walk, she says.
First Nations believe their legal right to self-government is clear. If the province, guided by the referendum, refuses to acknowledge that, some First Nations will end the talks, leading to more economic uncertainty and court cases.
There are limits to the governmental powers that can be ceded to First Nations, and a need to ensure equality of all citizens. But negotiators were able to resolve those issues while giving the Nisga'a powers that go beyond any municipal government. Plant confirmed that if the public vote yes, the government would be bound - sort of, maybe - to reject future treaties based on the Nisga'a model.
First Nations are boycotting the referendum. Some opponents have proposed bundling up ballots and sending them off to First Nations. Others plan to spoil their ballots as a protest against the whole process. Details of those plans will become clear.
But there's a strong argument for voting no to all eight propositions, sending the message that the principles that have governed negotiations so far - and the freedom to find creative solutions at the bargaining table - should be maintained.
The treaty process hasn't worked well.
But a yes vote to the propositions put forward by the government will make things worse, ending negotiations and leading First Nations to try to exert economic and legal pressure.
It's tempting to boycott the referendum, or send in a spoiled ballot. (That process takes care - only signed, properly spoiled ballots will be counted.)
But what's needed is strong no votes as a message to government that British Columbians don't want arbitrary, vague questions to lead to a deadlock.
Paul Willcocks can be reached at willcocks@ultranet.ca

Uneasy truce with doctors, but no peace
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - It's mixed news for the Liberals.
Premier Gordon Campbell deserves credit for reaching the deal with the B.C. Medical Association, using his personal credibility and powers of persuasion to convince doctors that the government understands and is sympathetic to their concerns.
But it should chagrin Liberals to recognize that the doctors don't think much of the government's integrity. A key element in the temporary truce with doctors was a personal pledge from Campbell that the government wouldn't keep on breaking its written agreements.
The last thing the Liberals needed was a full-scale job protest by doctors. The flashback to the last years of the NDP, as they struggled to deal with protests by northern and rural doctors, would be too vivid.
The specialists who were heading the protest - surgeons, anesthetists and others - have decided to halt the action for 30 days, giving the BCMA and the government a chance to negotiate a lasting peace based on the memorandum of agreement.
There's little new in that agreement. It confirms the extra $392 million for doctors' fees will remain in the budget for the next three years. Doctors had received mixed signals over that issue, but it always seemed to be the government's intention. It also protects extra funding for rural doctors.
And it commits the government to attempt to negotiate some kind of dispute resolution to replace the binding arbitration that the Liberals took away from the doctors with Bill 9. That tough job will be critical for long-term peace.
Campbell says there's no chance the solution will be binding arbitration. That doesn't work, he said again, again blasting former chief justice Allan McEachern for ignoring his mandate. McEachern's award was often murky, but it's inaccurate to say he ignored the question of affordability. He simply came up with an analysis the Liberals didn't like, so the government reneged on its commitment.
It's not going to be easy to ease the deeper anger of doctors.
The province's position is that adding $392 million to the budget for doctors fees is an 11-per-cent increase, about $50,000 for each of the province's 7,800 doctors. That's an increase greater than the earnings of the forestry workers facing layoffs because of the softwood lumber dispute. The government was also prepared to start reminding the public that doctors were big beneficiaries of the tax cuts, to the tune of some $15,000 to $20,000. It hasn't been a bad year for their take-home pay, and if the government took that message to the public it would likely be well-received.
But some doctors are going to argue that they haven't had a real increase in years, and that the $392 million means an increase of about 3.5 per cent a year when averaged over three years, with much of that taken up by increasing use of the system. (Some doctors wrongly believe that the amount will be increased to cover growing demand for service. That's not the government's intention, and once that becomes clear it will be a major issue.)
And based on the ones who were speaking out in Victoria this week, many aren't much concerned about the public's view.
The battle could continue for some time, both inside the BCMA and with the government.
It's still a timely victory for the Liberals, who very much need doctors onside as they move ahead with cuts to health care services across the province. Managing the kind of major change the Liberals hope for, including hospital closings and service cuts, will require planning help and support from doctors. That's at least somewhat more likely now.
And given the inevitable protests, the last thing the Liberals needed was a fight with doctors and growing waiting lists.
Consider it a lull though, not a peace. The hard work of reaching a real truce with doctors still lies ahead.

Paul Willcocks can be reached at willcocks@ultranet.ca

Little hope for forest communities in Campbell's words
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - Premier Gordon Campbell offered up all the right sentiments this week, responding to the U.S. duty on softwood lumber.
It was a brutal decision, he said. An assault on families who reached out to help the Americans after Sept. 11. The most serious threat to Canada-U.S. relations in our time.
But families looking for hope had to pick through the words carefully to get more than reassurance that the government feels their pain. There's no quick cure to the problem, no assurance of victory now or in the future.
The effects of the U.S. actions will be devastating. The new duties will average 29 per cent on any softwood sold into the U.S. That's supposed to reflect the unfair advantage Canadian producers gain from subsidies.
B.C. exports about $5 billion a year worth of lumber to the U.S. in normal times, about half the Canadian total. Companies will now have to pay about $1.5 billion in duties if they export the same amount of wood.
They can't afford that. Last year total industry profits were about $200 million. That means that many companies can't export the wood without losing money on every shipment.
Since preliminary duties were introduced, the industry has lost about 15,000 jobs. That toll is likely to double now. And it will felt most sharply by communities already reeling from other economic problems - including government cuts.
Campbell acknowledged that. But the government so far has little concrete to offer.
Canada will press on with appeals to the World Trade Organization and under NAFTA, a process that could take years. Campbell promised that Canada would win those appeals, but families should think carefully before sinking deeper into debt, waiting for those victories to bring their jobs back. This change may be permanent.
The province will hold an emergency summit on softwood, bringing together companies, unions and provincial and federal governments. They'll come up with a "comprehensive and co-ordinated strategy." That's a useful exercise, but it won't much alter today's reality.
B.C. and Ottawa are talking about ways of helping families hurt by the decision. But it's disappointing that five months after Campbell started talking about the need to help families, there's no plan in place.
Those families do deserve aid, to allow them to survive until the victory is won - or to move on to new work in new places.
But B.C. won't support aid to industry, in part because the U.S. would just point to it as another unfair subsidy. While the governments' caution is reasonable, it's too soon to rule out loan guarantees that would let companies hang on until the dispute is resolved.
And the government is finally going to launch a public relations campaign in the U.S., arguing that the duty allows American companies to charge more for lumber, pushing up housing costs.
That's a huge challenge, but it's a measure that should have been under way a year ago. Campbell defended B.C.'s decision to postpone any campaign after the Sept. 11 attacks. That looks now like a bad decision.
And B.C. will continue forest sector reform and looking for new markets.
Not a bad list. But quite a vague one, especially given how long the government has to prepare for this day.
Sadly, Canada and B.C. don't have a lot of options. We need trade with the U.S. much more than they do. And most forms of economic retaliation - like taxing energy exports - would mainly hurt the Canadian industry. Even banning raw log exports would cost needed jobs in the woods.
The only real hope is for a lumber price increase which would allow companies to sell into the U.S. and make at least a small profit.
In the meantime, the government should unveil real plans to help families facing unemployment as a result of a trade dispute that their governments assured them would be resolved.

Paul Willcocks can be reached at willcocks@ultranet.ca

Liberals flip-flop on urgent need to rescue children
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - What can you do if your 14-year-old daughter skips school, starts using heroin and living in a cheap motel twice her age? What can you do if she refuses all help and takes off for downtown Vancouver?
Just about nothing, right now. And the Liberals have broken their commitment to change the law to allow children in imminent danger to be held for treatment, whether they like it or not.
It's not an abstract issue. Parents confront similar problems every day. And what they find is that under B.C. law no one can help them; a parent who drags a child home could be the one who ends up in court.
That's outrageous, that we can let a child choose to die through reckless and dangerous behaviour and do nothing.
The Liberal used to think so too. They repeatedly demanded the NDP enact a secure care law, one that would allow children at risk, perhaps working as prostitutes or living in crack houses, to be plucked from danger. The New Democrats dragged their feet, finally passing a poor law that they never implemented.
The Liberals were clear: secure care was urgently needed and should be a priority for the New Democrats.
Only one year before the election Gordon Campbell rose in the legislature and demanded the NDP act on a 1998 task force report outlining a sound plan for secure care.
"This is a problem that has been identified for years in this province," Campbell said them. "We know that there are countless families in the province of British Columbia who understand the urgency and the necessity for providing secure care for our children and youth in this province. Again my question to the minister is: what is the holdup? Why is the minister stalling on this matter, which has been so clearly identified as a matter of true risk to the children in the province?"
That was then. Now the Liberals are in power and what once was an urgent matter of life and death has become a low priority.
Childrens Minister Gordon Hogg says the government won't introduce a safe care bill this spring. The Liberals have too many bills to pass, and secure care won't be introduced before the 2003-4 sitting.
Even then, the bill will be much narrower in its focus than the legislation the Liberals supported in opposition.
The Liberals deserve credit for abandoning the NDP's effort. Any such legislation has to balance the rights of the child with the need for protection. The NDP bill, by allowing detention for up to 100 days, went too far.
But their failure to act is shameful.
Hogg offers some justifications, including the cold reality that even if children were plucked from danger, they couldn't get treatment. There's not enough space for seriously troubled youth voluntarily seeking treatment. "We don't have a lot of resources in place," Hogg said. "That's partly why I'm not uncomfortable with not getting on the legislative agenda."
That's not an explanation the Liberals accepted in opposition. Then, they argued the government had a duty to provide services for children at risk. The NDP expected about 10 children at a time would be held under the act - hardly an impossible burden.
Hogg also said the Liberal bill will narrow the focus of secure care to sexually exploited children.
That's not enough. The task force recommendations, accepted by the Liberals, stressed that the plan must include children at risk of serious harm from drug addiction or physical danger, not just sexual exploitation.
Hogg says parents of 13-year-old drug addicts should call the police, have them arrested and hope they'll get help through the courts.
But parents have tried that, and found the courts and over-burdened police are set up to deal with criminals, not lost children.
The Liberals are offering too little, too late.

Paul Willcocks can be reached at willcocks@ultranet.ca

B.C. politics look better from 6,000 kms away
By Paul Willcocks
ATHENS - Where are you from, asks the waiter, as we settle into the open air restaurant beside a small square in Athen's old Turkish Quarter.
Canada, British Columbia, we offer, not sure how much detail to provide.
Ah, says the waiter. Fast ferries. You had a very bad government you had to throw out.
So much for escaping B.C. politics.
To be fair the waiter had worked in Vancouver, about 25 years ago. And he had received a news update from another diner a few days earlier.
But the encounter was a reminder that when your work involves thinking about B.C. politics every day, it's hard to turn things off.
The next day we climbed up winding lanes to the Acropolis, where work crews and mobile cranes struggled to preserve the Parthenon from the ravages of time and pollution, it being too late to save it from the damage caused by the explosion of a Turkish munitions store some 400 years ago or the raids of Lord Elgin in the 19th Century. (Which raises the question of whether it isn't time for a boycott of British products until their government agrees to a responsible plan to return the Elgin Marbles - the finest part of the Parthenon existing - from the British Musem to an appropriate home in Athens?)
What I wondered, slightly pathetically, was whether the Campbell Liberals would have privatized the Acropolis, handing management over to whomever can come up with the best business plan. After all, that's apparently the approach to be taken to heritage sites in B.C.
It would be cheaper, but I'm not sure having an amiminatronic Aprhodite greeting visitors in Disney fashion would really add to the experience.
These troublesome thoughts of B.C. politics won't go away. How do private ferry operators in Greece cover greater distances at a much lower cost than BC Ferries? (Though it's only fair to note that this week the former chairman of one company appeared in court in connection with a sinking 18 months ago that killed 80 people.) Why is local wine available in plastic bottles for less than $2 a litre. How can a stay in a hotel room with a kitchen, two bedrooms and a view over a stunning beach cost less than $40?
There are some obvious answers. Greeks have the second lowest per capita income in the European Union. Education is free - including university - but the system is starved for funds and most parents scrap together money for private tutoring to help children win scarce university places. Hospitals are so short of money that families are expected to bring in the meals. And 2,000 Greeks die each year on the roads, about 15 times the Canadian rate, as highway construction and maintenance lags growing pressure.
Are poor schools, health care and sinking ferries the price paid for cheap wine, low taxes, and low costs?
It's not a question can a brief visit can answer.
But in Sparta the man who runs a small restaurant on the main street offers his view. He spent 21 years in Toronto before coming home a decade ago.
He's not sure about that decision now. Health care is so much better in Canada, he says, and things so much more efficient.
Maybe I should have stayed, he says a little sadly.
On a small island the man who runs the waterfront grocery store has a similar story. He went to Montreal as a teenager and worked hard for 20 years before coming home.
It was a mistake, he says. He's working harder now, for less, and sees a tough time ahead.
Canada offered more, he says, looking out at the beach.
Greece has sun, low costs, a thriving culture.
But for the people who live there, Canada seems a very fine place indeed.

Paul Willcocks can be reached at willcocks@ultranet.ca

"These ones, I was thinking of."

She holds a plate in front of him, heavy china, shiny under the store's halogen lights, cream with little rust flecks and a band of dark red around the outside.

"It looks fine," he says. It looks like dried blood, he thinks.

She looks at his face, wonders if the china is wrong, feels something stir inside, hears a dry breeze that's not there. She writes down the name of the china pattern in tight square letters in a little notebook, thin paper and brown leather binding. "Come look at some sheets they have."

He limps a little, glad to hang back a step, tasting the pain where he can imagine his bones grinding, watching her back, wondering if he will recognize her in two years, wondering when she started to dress like someone he didn't know.

The sheets are cotton, as fine and smooth as ice. The clerk - young, thin, tall, smooth-skinned - approves, pulls out cream and ivory and ecru, drapes them across the display bed where they shine expensively. He tries to imagine the sheets spread across their bed, but it feels like he's watching a movie.

Across the floor a woman steps from a dressing room. It is as large as a bedroom, a pair of jeans twisted on the floor, one black boot lying on its side. She wears a dark dress, lost between red and black, and stops in front of the mirror to study herself, pulling it down off her shoulders, then sudenly twirling, once, twice, three times, the dress spinning out and her legs flashing, one knee scraped and red. She laughs, starts to shrug off the dress before she is back in the dressing room.

The coat was right. Carson saw it hanging from the ceiling, above the racks, shining blue-black , like the hair of beautiful and dark women.
He edged past a woman with purple hair holding a beaded dress draped in front of her, stretched up to look at the coat. Small neat handwriting on the tag said it was made from monkey skins, in the ‘40s.
But it was $700.
He’d bought her a fur coat three years before, when the company had handed him a surprising $1,100 bonus at the end of the year.
“Good for a fur coat,” the card said, 11 $100 bills in the envelope, propped in the branches of their artificial Christmas tree. That turned out to be not much money in a fur store. The coat was coyote faces, long, to her knees and her tall brown leather boats. When they left the store he lagged a step or two behind on the street. staring at her back., trying to find the features in the patterns of light and dark brown, the sun bright white off the snow.
She had stopped wearing it about a year later.
“Is it because of the fur thing?” he’d finally asked her, pretending to have just noticed.
Liz had switched from wine to vodka then, kept icy in the freezer. She took a sip, licked her upper lip, slid off the counter to move into the living room, so he could half see her through the opening to the kitchen.
“No, it’s not that. I just don’t want to wear it right now.”
Carson had been chopping a yellow pepper into thin strips, the pieces leaving the knife like small twisting animals.
“It looked good, I thought.”
But she didn’t answer and hadn't worn the coat.
He reached high, touched the monkey skin coat, soft, not what he expected, like a child’s hair.
They put the coat in a box for him, folded in a tissue paper nest. He was lighter, the box under his arm, a little bounce in his step when he crossed the street. Standing on the bus he leaned back against the pole with both hands in his pockets, the box tucked under his arm, bending his knees and balancing when the bus stopped or went around corners.
The air even smelled different when he got off outside the condo. Raw earth, like someone had been pawing at the muddy ground, and a softness that came from the ocean, even though they were almost four miles inland.
She was in the kitchen. They had laughed when they bought the place at even calling the narrow space a kitchen, a counter and gas stove on one side, fridge and sink on the other, barely enough room for two people to pass. In the first weeks, Liz had sat on the counter, drinking wine, while he played cook, pasta and rice and seafood, bread from the breadmaker.
Now she was eating an apple cut into small sections. He held the box behind him, watched her dip the apple into the vodka, hold it submerged as if the thick liquid could freeze it.
“I got you something,” he said, and before she could think what to say slide the box towards her.
“What is it?” Liz didn’t move. She was just home from the office.
“A surprise, that’s all. It seemed right.”
Carson set it on the counter beside her, called to her from the next room as he hung his coat up.
“Open it. It won’t hurt you.”
Liz was staring at him when he came around the corner. She hadn’t touched the box.
“It’s a gift.” She kept watching, and he edged past, careful not to touch her, poured a large glass of her vodka.
He leaned against the counter, waited until she pulled the box open.
“It’s a coat. I saw it at Second Chance, and thought of you.”
She touched it, pulled a sleeve loose from the box and held it lightly in her hand, white fingers on blue-black.
“It’s monkey skins.” He took a drink, watched her as she just stared at the coat. “It’s vintage.”
He couldn’t see her eyes. Her head was tilted forward and her hair, a dark brown, hung in front of her face.
“You really shouldn’t have.”
“Try it on. See if it fits.”
“You really shouldn't have,” she said, quietly.
“Please,” he said. “Just try it on.”
Liz walked across the kitchen and touched the switch, making the lights brighter. She got the vodka, poured the glass half full, it coming out like heavy syrup, turning the outside of the glass white with frost. She took a drink, and her eyes shone.
“You don’t want to do this, do you?”
“I just want to see if it fits, if it’s you. Just try it on.”
“And it’s monkey skins?”
He nodded.
Liz pulled the sweater over her head, got it tangled in her hair, threw it over his head into the eating area. She had on a cream bra, and took it off too, then undid the skirt and let it fall to the floor, kicked off her underwear. Her feet were bare.
The coat looked even blacker in the bright light and against her white skin. It came to halfway to her knees. Her thighs were white, with a thin blue vein running under the skin inside her left leg.
“All right?” She brushed her hair back and looked at him, held her arms out from her side, the coat, unbuttoned, stretching open. “All right?”
She turned slowly, all the way around. Her arms were still out, brushed against the wall. He saw the monkey skins, hundreds it must have taken, draped over her, white and black, soft and shiny.
“All right?”
She dropped the coat from her shoulders, let it slide to the floor behind her, and stared at him.
“I’ll be back for my things,” she said, and turned and walked into the bedroom to dress. He folded the coat carefully before he put it back in the box.