Letter to the Auditor General from a Citizen

Dear Sir:

I would to like to offer my sincere apologies for the verbal tirade directed
at yourself and your office by one member of the legislative assembly, the
less-than-Honourable Pat Bell.

This member's juvenile behaviour was directed personally at yourself based
on the Office of the Auditor General's recent report, "Removing Private Land
from Tree Farm Licences 6, 19 & 25: Protecting the Public Interest?"

As a citizen of this great province, I felt ashamed at the behaviour
exhibited by an elected official who appears not to understand the role of
the Auditor-General's Office. I suggest that Mr. Bell inform himself of the
Auditor General Act. It is important that government, even in a democracy,
contain avenues where the people's business is conducted in a transparent
manner and that it be accountable. Systems of checks and balances are
important especially in an era where more government decisions are being
made by fewer elected officials, mainly its Cabinet, and more by unelected
government appointed officers residing in the Office of the Premier.

From my understanding the Auditor General reports to the Legislative
Assembly, which is comprised of 79 elected members, and although being part
of government, the work undertaken by the Office of the Auditor General
should be independent and not influenced by government.

I have watched with interest how the current government, first elected in
2001, with their majority, drastically reduced the budgets of two of the
government's oversight departments, The Office of the Auditor General and
the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. These offices are
an essential part of modern democratic governance and they should monitor
the actions of government to ensure accountability and transparency. I am
hoping your office's report does not cause the government to take punitive
measures by reducing your office's future budgets.

I would like you to know that the current government promised the citizens
of BC both improved accountability and transparency as well as a commitment
to consult with the citizens when it campaigned in 2001.

I would think that the Honourable Pat Bell should commend your office for
doing the work that ensures that his government's promises are being
met.

Unfortunately, the reaction your office received in the matter of the above
mentioned report may be a response to information not favourable to the
current government and possibly the reaction was in fact a response to
information not first vetted through the Office of the Premier's Public
Affairs Division.

Although in the past, I have not always agreed with the conclusions made by
your office, I still respect its role in government.

I am encouraged that your office undertook its investigation into the
removal of private lands from tree farm licences in response to the many
requests of concerned citizens. I would hope the government would carefully
study the report and specifically address the issues in your comments,
namely:

-the decision was not adequately informed - it was based upon incomplete
information that focused primarily on forest and range matters and the
interests of the licensee, with too little consideration given to the
potential impacts on other key stakeholders;

-consultation was not effective and communication with key stakeholders and
the public about the decision was not transparent;

-and the impacts of previous land removal decisions were not monitored to
help inform future decisions.

Please take the time to commend your staff for the work they are doing not
only on behalf of the Legislature but on behalf of the citizens of BC.

Sincerely,

Phil Le Good
1507 Vidal Street
White Rock, BC

Confession

Somedays, there is little or nothing in the news about which a fella should get up-worked.

Try to make this your own personal Long Weekend.

Stay off the cell, walk or ride the bike, play cards, read...

Alex T. on Women in Politics

As the great Sigmund Freud himself said more than once, "Vomen! Vat ze hell do zey vant???"

GREAT WOMEN DON'T GRATE US

I am always amused by the notion that there aren’t enough women in politics. Since the fairer of us comprise more than half our population, you’d have thought that we would not need, for example, the provincial NDP’s, now in play, policy nonsense where clear quotaism may kill otherwise winnable ridings for them.

No, I laugh, heartily, because the word ‘qualified’ is seldom used to describe the lasses who bravely take the political plunge. Frankly, there are few qualified to govern, past or present. And don’t shoot the messenger, it’s not because they’re women…

Leaving ‘Teflon’ Carole Taylor and Amazing Grace McCarthy and their one in one hundred million super-qualifications in a class by themselves (although closely followed in competence by Surrey Mayor and future Premier–if-she-wants-it Dianne Watts), how many other women can you name who are (were) worthy of being called ‘qualified’ to be in government or represent us at all?

The NDP’s Margaret Mitchell springs to mind. She was always one of my favourties, Margaret made me feel that there were actually some brains and integrity on the NDP side in the House and I loved Barbara MacDougall (who wouldn’t?) as a counter-balance to the inanities of the dunce, Shrilla Copps, in the good old days.

In Victoria, the provincial Liberals Olga Ilich, I always admired. Her, sometimes, rough ride as a provincial Minister was largely due to her frustration with the snail’s pace of the workings of government. She rode her own development company into stratospheric success and while ‘Overdrive Olga’ was never a slouch in making a good decision, the slothfulness of the bureaucracy must have driven her mad..

The women on the Surrey First slate running in November are all very bright lights, too, and I was always fond of Clr. Mary Anderson in White Rock, who is as knowledgeable as she is impervious to stupidity, all at an age (she’ll tell you herself) “where most gals might be found well retired and sunning themselves somewhere”. Only Catherine Ferguson might live up to that legacy in the same city. And Lois Jackson in Delta leaves me with hope that the GVRD, excuse me, Metro Vancouver, will remain in goods hands—for now.

But where do we look for inspirational women in politics in Vancouver? Gone are the greats: May Brown, Lynne Kennedy and Marguerite Ford. School Trustee Eleanor Gregory and Parks Commissioner Heather Holden are, unfortunately, retiring--leaving us with the likes of Suzanne Anton, Elizabeth Ball and Kim Capri. ‘The Three Amigas’ are only now, incredibly, starting to recognize that their blind (read: mindless) support of Sam Sullivan may have cost them, dearly. Clr. Capripants informs recently that she has decided not to seek the Liberal nomination in the fall provincial by-election of Vancouver Fairview where she would have been trounced by almost any NDP candidate, in a constituency freshly vacated by the Juice King, likely to be Mayor (current polling has Peter the Great and the NPA trailing woefully).

Clr. Capri can’t help herself. In a recent email to “supporters” (all of three…) she managed only a mere handful of words of begrudging acknowledgement of Peter Ladner, who still hasn’t found the intestinal fortitude to, appropriately, throw her under the NPA train (reduced to two cars and a caboose, thanks to the Sullivan train wreck) since she is so very disrespectful of the NPA membership’s decision.

And then, for the NPA, there are also the candidacies for Parks Board of victim-player, gossip blogger and innuendo peddler Jamie Lee Hamilton and DivaNova progeny Melissa DeGenova to be proud of…

The uber qualified: COPE’s Loretta Woodcock, NPA's Laura McDiarmid, Vision’s Sharon Gregson Andrea Reimer, Heather Harrison and Heather Deal, must be laughing all the way to the political bank…

Women...

The Dark Summer

I don't want to ruin your weekend, but...

IT'S A BATMAN MOVIE!!!

Get over it...have a life...

It's an expensive cartoon.

Hello?

Every Country Needs a Senator Larry

Do you remember Senator Larry Craig?

He was the U.S. legislator who was caught playing footsie in a washroom and then called a press conference to declare, "I am not gay."

Well, this is terribly cruel and terribly funny.

Here he is commenting in public on oil policy: "Don't let foreigners "jerk us around by the gas nozzle.""

Nice metaphor, Senator.

Watch.

Margaret Wente's Third Column on Drugs - Perfect

Europe's approach to drugs is more enlightened ... it's tougher

MARGARET WENTE

From Thursday's Globe and Ma

July 17, 2008

In 2006, Governor-General Michaëlle Jean was hosting Queen Silvia of Sweden during the Swedish royal family's visit to Canada when the topic of illegal drug use came up. The GG told the Queen that Canada is taking an enlightened approach. Instead of punishing users, she said, society needs to be understanding of drug use and assist in reducing harm until the addict is ready to quit.

Alas, the Queen was not impressed. She briskly informed the GG that Sweden takes a hard-line approach, that users are given a choice between treatment and jail, and that Sweden's addiction rates are much lower than Canada's. After that, they changed the subject.

Advocates of harm-reduction measures, such as needle exchanges, methadone programs and Vancouver's supervised-injection site, often point to Europe's more enlightened approach to drugs as proof of how far behind we are in Canada. But parts of Europe are having second thoughts. Socially progressive Sweden had a brief but disastrous fling with prescription heroin back in the 1960s. After that, it embraced the hard-line approach. Today its policy is to make drugs very difficult to get, but treatment very easy - and sometimes compulsory. "The vision is that of a society free from narcotic drugs," says Maria Larsson, the Minister for Public Health.

As a consequence of grassroots support for this policy, drug use in Sweden is a third of the European average. "The lessons of Sweden's drug control history should be learned by others," said Antonio Maria Costa, who heads the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime.

Scotland took a different tack. Drug use is widely tolerated, as you know if you saw Trainspotting. Rehabilitation programs are scarce, but the national methadone program has become a vast and ineffective money-pit. Scotland has more than 50,000 heroin addicts. Drug deaths have soared, drug-related crime is high, and tens of thousands of children are growing up with addicted parents. "Methadone has quite literally become the opiate of the masses," warned Neil McKeganey, one of Scotland's foremost drug policy experts.

Two months ago, the Scottish government announced a change in direction. From now on its primary focus will be on "recovery," not just harm reduction. "Harm reduction ideas have failed in Scotland," says Prof. McKeganey. "They have failed to protect injectors from hepatitis C, failed to reduce the scale of the drug problem, failed to reduce many of the harms inflicted on others."

The Netherlands is famous for its permissive drug culture, but even it is not as permissive as it used to be. Although you can still toke up in marijuana coffee shops, pot remains illegal. A parliamentary proposal to allow regulated, large-scale marijuana production was voted down, and the government moved vigorously against the psychedelic drug ecstasy. Switzerland (which runs supervised-injection sites but also has thousands of treatment beds) voted against decriminalizing marijuana. The UK made marijuana possession semi-legal a few years ago, but experienced an explosion of pot use among minors, as well as a sharp rise in harmful effects attributed to more potent strains of weed. It has now reversed course and reclassified marijuana as a harmful drug.

Like Canada, Australia is experimenting with a supervised-injection site, in Sydney. The passionate debate over whether it reduces harm is virtually identical to the one in Canada.

I asked Scotland's Neil McKeganey if he had witnessed the drug scene in Vancouver, a city that is famous for its harm-reduction approach. He had. "I was utterly shocked," he said. "I could hardly believe that in a culturally developed, sophisticated city there could be a drug problem of such magnitude." In his view, too much emphasis on harm reduction invariably undermines prevention efforts. "To provide a setting where someone can inject street drugs is doomed. The next step is saying, maybe we should be providing them with drugs as well."

The provision of "clean" drugs is, in fact, what many advocates of Insite want next. "Many individuals who promote harm reduction believe there's fundamentally nothing wrong with drug use, except the fact that it's illegal," says Prof. McKeganey.

Every nation is different, and drug policies that work in one place may not work in another. But to him, Vancouver is a clear case study in what not to do. "It's a harbinger of what other cities could experience if they do not develop effective prevention methods."

This is Rich

"No process, no consultation, no process."

This is how BC's Auditor-General, John Doyle, has described the Campbell government's way of handling land deals.

Of course, the government's response is the old "shoot the messenger" gag. Forest Minister Pat Bell starts calling the AG names. Sweet.

What makes this latest case so tasty is that Rich Coleman was the Minister when this questionable done-deal was rammed through in favor of Western Forest Products. Coleman's brother, Stan, is a senior exec at the company.

So my old question, asked always in these situations - Whose cousin is he? - must be updated to - Whose immediate sibling is he?

Driving into Seoul from Inchon airport a few years ago, along many kilometres of perfect highway, I asked, "Whose cousin had the cement contract?

The next morning I read in the English language newspaper about the scandal of the cement contract going to some government official's near relative.

Hahahahahaha...

One thing about government corruption is that it is always so laughably predictable.

Non Compismentis

Compensation from BC Hydro?

What are you smoking, Girl?

Rogers has refunded me a considerable amount of money on an error for I am admittedly largely responsible.

Shaw has refunded me for an almost 24-hour outage of my TV and internet service a few weeks ago.

But asking BC Hydro to pony up would be like asking the Old and New Testaments to be re-written.

Cover Me

Alan Ferguson has written an excellent editorial in this morning's Province about the Obama New Yorker cartoon.

The cover cartoon was an obvious satire of the lunacy coming from the extreme right regarding Obama's history and sympathies.

But unless you stop and think about it, at first glance the cartoon seems to be saying that Obama is a flag-burning Islamic terrorist.

Of course, it is a typically outrageous New Yorker cartoon.

I agree with Ferguson's analysis in large measure, but I don't agree completely with his conclusions.

I don't think the cover is "brilliant" and I don't think it was a wise choice, precisely because so many people are so stupid and see only what appears to be the obvious.

This week, I received 3 pieces of mail scolding me for a poster I created in which I deliberately used the wrong spelling of a word to create a jokey pun. None of the letter writers got the joke.

Of course, that doesn't mean I should have resisted the joke, and there is no question the New Yorker should not be attacked for this cover.

Still, my sense of this is that it was a good laugh in the news room, but maybe it shouldn't have gone any further.

Natalie Cole

Darkness

The Downtown power failure brings to light (ouch! sorry...) a number of issues.

There were dire warnings of exactly this occurrence as recently as last year. Was anyone listening? Was any preventative action taken?

Has either the Province or the City taken stock in infrastructure lately? Do we have an inventory hidden in some vault somewhere?

And, how reassuring to hear BC Hydro rush to the podium to confirm that they never promised anybody a rose garden, or even regular delivery of service.

We balance precariously on a deck of (stacked) cards...hang onto those candles.

Hole in One

The plans for the Rossland Golf Course have been scrapped.

We Need Doctors, But We won't let them Work

It is good to see a foreign trained doctor fighting for her right to practice in B.C. It is high time that this happened.

Unfortunately, she is using the BC HUman Rights Tribunal as her forum. It may be that she no other recourse.

We would have hoped to see this kind of case in the Supreme Court. The BC College of Physicians and Surgeons has much to answer for in this matter.

Quote of the Day

Vancouver NPA city councilor Kim Capri said said she would "never characterize Vancouver as an uncivil city."

Hahahahaha...

This quote from a Province news story on the incivility of Canadian cities, Vancouver ranking right up there at the top.

My Friday Province column began with this sentence: The loss of manners is a shame; the loss of civility is a tragedy.

I received the largest response ever to that column. Apparently I touched some communal nerve.

Today's report is on the money and Kim Capripant's reaction is, as always, totally out of synch with the world in which she purports to live.

Margaret Wente Exposes the Invested Pseudo-Science that Supports Insite...A MUST READ

We still await the scientific proof of harm reduction's success

MARGARET WENTE

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Ten months before Vancouver's supervised-injection site opened in 2003, two young researchers gave a stirring presentation. They argued that such a facility was vital in order to reduce public-health problems and disorder in the city's notorious drug scene. The evidence from elsewhere was overwhelming, they insisted, and it was time to act. “I'm all for it,” said Evan Wood, one of the presenters. “Get one open. Enough's enough already.”

Neither Mr. Wood nor his colleague, Thomas Kerr, had a background in addictions medicine or public policy. Mr. Kerr was a PhD candidate in educational psychology, and Mr. Wood was a PhD candidate in health and epidemiology. Yet today, they and a small group of associates have made their reputation in the world of drug policy as the authors of nearly two dozen research papers – every one of which reports remarkably positive results for Insite, the controversial supervised-injection facility for which they themselves had lobbied hard.

It is this research – all produced under the umbrella of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS – that is repeatedly cited as scientific proof of Insite's success. It is this research that has persuaded politicians, policy-makers, editorial writers and much of the general public that Insite is a compassionate and progressive tool for harm reduction that saves lives and reduces suffering. After all, at least 22 peer-reviewed papers say so.

In fact, Mr. Wood, Mr. Kerr and their associates often act more like advocates than impartial researchers. They aggressively denounce anyone who even suggests that the value of Insite might still be a matter for legitimate study or debate. They accuse Insite's critics of being blinded by ideology and of willfully ignoring mountains of “peer-reviewed,” “evidence-based” studies.

Yet even experts who think Insite is a worthwhile experiment say the case has not yet been made. Dr. Brian Conway, one of Canada's top experts on AIDS policy, is one of them. “How much has it done in terms of reducing the HIV-Hep-C infection rate, the rate of serious illness that results from drug use, in terms of saving lives? That hasn't been demonstrated.” Nor is quantity the same as quality. The sheer volume of published research “is more of a tribute to the efficiency of the people who are writing the papers than anything else.” And in public, the researchers “have tended not to present the limitations” of their findings.

Some people are not so diplomatic. “You can churn out all the research you like if you've got a vested interest,” says addictions doctor Milan Khara. The B.C. Centre for Excellence receives millions of dollars worth of government contracts for research on drug issues. The tab for the Insite studies is well over $2-million. Yet none of these studies addresses the central issue in the public mind: Does Insite reduce overall drug use?

Garth Davies teaches research methodology at Simon Fraser University's school of criminology. He recently published an evaluation of all the research literature on safe-injection facilities, including Insite. He wasn't impressed. “[They] are too often credited with generating positive effects that are not borne out by solid empirical evidence,” he wrote. “As a result of methodological and analytical problems … all claims remain open to question.”

Despite this fatal weakness, “there are very few other substantive areas of research where the debate is this one-sided,” Prof. Davies said in an interview. The same small set of people peer-review each other's work, and even the drug journals are politicized. “It's very difficult to get a contrarian opinion published. If you're not on the side of supervised injection, you get marginalized.”

In any event, researchers who want to analyze the data for themselves are out of luck, because the researchers refuse to share it. Steven Lehrer, who studies health economics at Queen's University, says it's frustrating. “They were reporting unbelievably large effects,” he says. And that makes it especially important for independent researchers to validate the results. “They don't seem interested,” he says.

Could it be that the fix is in? When researchers behave like advocates, it's hard to believe otherwise. “They act as if it's a done deal,” says Prof. Davies. “It has become a professional mission for them.”

Sh-Boom

Victor Scours the Streets, Searching in Vain for a Politician with Character and Substance

We have 2 high profile politicians in BC who gained elected office on the guilt vote. Both are hopelessly over their heads. I'm sorry, we have to confront this.

The first is outgoing Vancouver Mayor, Sam Sullivan. Let's face it. Sam was elected because Vancouverites, under the illusion that the entire world monitors Vancouver politics, wanted to make a statement to the world by electing a silly man in a wheelchair. The world doesn't care.

The other, is of course, Wally Oppal. This is a man who was born here, who was favoured with a wonderful education all the way to law school, but still pimps himself out as an Indo-Canadian, as though he arrived from the Punjab and picked cranberries. The man is as dumb as a sack of hammers. I know a number of real Indo-Canadian people who don't rely on ethnic leverage to succeed.

We have a Merritt Festival in Merritt BC.We need a merit festival in politics.

Simple Pleasures

Cappuccino. A good book. An outside table.

Serious happiness.

Not a disease

A commentor has asked me to explain how drug addiction is a disease.

Let's be clear.

Drug addiction and alcoholism are not diseases.

To call addictons diseases is a comforting convenience for liberal do-gooders, whp don't really understand or want to understand the issues and the mechanics of addictions. They feel that the stigma is thus removed and that doctors can help.

Drug addiction is a condition brought on by repeatedly bad choices. The reasons for these consistently bad choices are complex and, in time, need to be addressed and understood if the addict has any hope of living dope-free.

But it is the addict and other recovering addicts who can help. Medical science has the smallest possible role in recovery.

Dope fiends are stupid and they make lousy choices.

Work with them to help them begin making better choices.

Doctors and nurses will just give them stuff - pills, substitutes, needles, places to shoot up or drink sips.

Addictions are not diseases. They are self-imposed behavior choices.

Par for the Course

It will be interesting to see how the good elected offcials of Rossland, BC handle the situation.

Someone wants to build a gold course on Red Mountain. Good.

Right next to the water resevoir. Not so good.

Three thousand citizens have petitioned against it. Interesting.

Stay tuned.