A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Read this and weep.

Inside the B.C. 2010 budget lockup For those of you who have never been in a provincial budget lockup, this is how it is: You spend six hours flipping through page after page of financial information, scribbling asterisks in the margins here and there to signal “Important!” and folding down corners to remind yourself to go back and figure something out late. And then you leave thinking, hey, did I learn anything new at all? Do I really have a clue about how the next year in B.C. is shaping up? It has always been thus, ever since my first lockup in 1996 or so. I go every time thinking that maybe this once, I’m going to find the nugget, experience the “Aha!”, make somebody squirm in government by ferreting out The Thing, the one they really didn’t want to talk about. Not so far. In my experience, it’s more like a shell game. I go up to the nice people in suits with my budget in hand and ask some variation of “Where’d the money go?” They always have a prompt and clear answer, but it’s al...

Longer hours, less pay - welcome to a new era Ever feel like you’re working longer hours than you used to, but still not getting ahead? Maybe that’s because you are. The average Canadian now puts in more hours on the job than ever (or at least since 1976, when the federal government started tracking such things). Paid work takes up more than 10 per cent of a typical Canadian’s total year these days, compared to eight or nine per cent in days past. Worse news still: We’re putting in longer hours but bringing home the same old paycheque. In B.C., the average weekly earnings in 2008 were $780.85. Adjusted for inflation, that’s just $7 more a week compared to a decade earlier. If you’re the type who likes to ruminate on what trends say about where the world is going, you’ll want to bookmark an intriguing federal Web site, The Indicators of Well-Being in Canada. It tracks statistics in 10 different “areas of well-being” - from work life to family life, from educational status to community ...

Is this really how the premier wants us to remember him? By the time you’re premier of B.C., you’re probably wrapped pretty tight in people who tell you what you want to hear. So I got to thinking a while back about Gordon Campbell, and how he might not even know how small and mean his government is looking these days out here in the larger world. It’s not like he gets much opportunity to check in with the common folk and see what’s up. But if I were him, I’d be making that happen very soon. Once the Olympics party wraps, I hope he takes some time to touch base with the people whose lives he governs. Campbell will be B.C.’s premier for at least 12 years, possibly longer if he and his government hang in for another term after the 2013 election. What legacy does he want to leave from his time in office? I’m sure the Olympics are a major piece, as is the sprucing up of B.C.’s economy (well, up until the economy tanked). Campbell can also take credit for making B.C. a friendlier place t...

Poor government policy feeds social problems, municipalities pay the price Like it or not, it’s our municipal governments who are being left to figure out real solutions to the problems and miseries on our streets. It’s not right that things have turned out that way. But so it goes sometimes. Kudos to the City of Victoria, the Capital Regional District and the City of Vancouver for recognizing that, even though it must be infuriating to be put in that position. I take heart from the news this week that the City of Victoria is bidding on three Traveller’s Inn hotels for social-housing use, and funding Our Place street drop-in so it can open two hours longer every day. It’s great that the CRD has stepped in with money to spare the barely-out-of-the-box Coalition to End Homelessness an untimely demise. I like that the City of Vancouver launched new shelters in warehouse space that it owns, instantly housing hundreds of people. But while I don’t want to be a wet blanket, there’s just one ...

Visit me at lifeasahuman.com I'm now doing some writing for a new on-line site, lifeasahuman. Here's my first post .

Disgrace can't erase Fonyo's accomplishments Poor Steve Fonyo. Something about that guy just breaks my heart. Few things are more painful to watch than a long and very public fall from grace. Fonyo’s fall has been more painful than most, because he really was just an ordinary teen trying to do something positive when he set out to run across the country in 1984. He accomplished something quite miraculous. Not only did he run all the way from St. John’s, Nfld. to Victoria - 7,294 kilometres in all - but he raised $13 million for the Canadian Cancer Society along the way. And it all took place just five years after Fonyo lost his leg to cancer at age 12. Canadians loved Fonyo, at least for a little while. But he soon began to try our affections, starting with a drunk-driving conviction in 1987 and then a seemingly endless series of criminal convictions over the next 22 years for things like shoplifting, driving without a licence, and fraud. The latest humiliation came this week...

A new study out of Simon Fraser University concludes that people who buy sex are no more prone to violence than anyone else. Fewer than two per cent of the 1,000 respondents who took part in SFU sociologist Chris Atchison’s study reported ever having hit, hurt, raped or robbed the person who they’d bought sex from. Granted, that’s just them saying so. But Atchison noted in a Vancouver Sun story this week about his research that there was little reason for the respondents to lie, given that the survey was anonymous. That his findings are provocative is an understatement. "It's an outrageous study and it really works towards normalizing sexual assault," said Aurea Flynn of the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, which is the go-to organization in B.C. when media are looking for a quote from someone vehemently opposed to prostitution. "I'm really angry about the emphasis on the compassion for johns that the study provides,” added Flynn, “and I...

Major rent increases coming for people in B.C. residential care It isn’t often that a landlord can quietly order up a 30 per cent rent increase for more than 2,000 people without anybody making a public fuss about it. But maybe that’s what happens when your tenants are elderly, frail seniors living in B.C.’s long-term care facilities. As of Jan. 31, “rents” will go up for most of the 26,000 people living in government-subsidized residential-care facilities, in some cases jumping as much as $672 a month. That barely a word of it has made it into the major B.C. media says one of two things: Either the people in residential care think it’s a fair deal and aren’t complaining; or the reality hasn’t sunk in yet. I guess we’ll know soon enough which one it is. The rent increase is far beyond what any private landlord could dream of imposing on an existing tenant. The allowable rent increase for B.C. landlords in 2009 was 3.7 per cent. Alas, residential-care facilities aren’t governed by the s...

Bridge too fast scares up thousands of resisters OK, I get Victoria councillor Lynn Hunter’s concern about deciding things by referendum. Direct democracy can be an unpredictable and potentially harmful form of governance, as the state of California can attest. But when it comes to the Johnson Street bridge, I understand completely why more than 9,000 Victoria citizens have signed petitions demanding that city council’s decision to replace the bridge be put to referendum. For one thing, the idea of replacing the bridge came out of nowhere nine months ago. City council (with the exception of Geoff Young) was such an enthusiastic booster from the start that no one with a wrong word to say about the project was given any chance to air their concerns. And it was council who created the “alternate approval process” that brought us to this point. Usually the city lets its citizens participate in the decision-making process, but this time council took the position that the answer was “yes” ...