A licence to extend the state's power 11 Sep 2021 2:56 PM (3 years ago)

This seems like a good day to share my Sept. 11, 2002, column from the Vancouver Sun.

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 people in Africa 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.

The dangerous Mr. Scheer 15 Oct 2019 8:42 AM (5 years ago)

[The Run is The Tyee's election newsletter - you can subscribe here. I wrote this for a recent edition.]

Andrew Scheer’s harmless schtick has worked for 15 years as he’s avoided doing doing anything notable while climbing the political ladder. Now he wants to be prime minister. And his policies would be dangerous.

My long career has included stints writing newspaper editorials, a form with its own clichés. A favourite is the anguished cry “How many more must die before…” followed by whatever the writer wants to see happen, from a neighbourhood stop sign to global disarmament.

It works because politicians do make life-and-death decisions, from sending troops to war to raising speed limits. It’s part of the job.

But Scheer’s campaign promises, despite his genial blandness, seems particularly deadly.

Consider Scheer's response to the opioid crisis, which killed 4,588 people last year. It ignores evidence, and apes the Harper government’s wilful blindness to reality. Scheer promises to invest in treatment and recovery, yet another education campaign “highlighting the benefits to young Canadians of staying drug free” and promises money to cities to pick up needles.

All good. But not a word about keeping people alive, from safe consumption sites to expanded access to poison-free drugs to wide distribution of naxolone kits to reverse the effects of overdoses.

Which means more people will die as a result of government policy. In B.C., research has shown that without those measures more than twice as many would be dying of overdoses.

Overdoses killed 4,588 Canadians last year. Scheer’s policies would condemn more people to preventable deaths. (The other parties’ positions have their own huge flaws, but none are quite so indifferent to the human toll of the opioid crisis.)

Scheer has pledged to cut Canada’s foreign aid budget by 25 per cent, claiming falsely that he could find the $1.5-billion savings by ending aid toward relatively well-off countries “like Italy, Brazil, Turkey and hostile governments like Iran.” That’s not true, as John D. Cameron and Robert Huish pointed out. Aid to those four countries totals just $13 million. Cutting $1.5 billion would require ending development aid for desperately poor countries, which means deaths, decline and deteriorating world security. (After three years in Honduras, I left impressed by our contribution and convinced most Canadians would be proud of the work being done on their behalf.)

Do we even need to talk about the climate crisis? Scheer’s phoney climate plan was, I wrote in The Tyee, an attempt to pretend to care about the issue, with no goals, no commitments, no real actions. It’s a climate plan for people who don’t believe climate change is an issue.

Which again means more preventable deaths in Canada and around the world.

Finally, a brief warning about Scheer and women. He claims access to abortion would not change if the Conservatives take over. Anti-abortion groups don’t believe him — they helped Scheer win the leadership and are staging a national campaign to elect Conservatives in swing ridings. Scheer, one major group says, is “arguably the most pro-life leader the Conservative Party of Canada has seen since John Diefenbaker.”

But even if you accept Scheer’s claims, you should be worried that he’s the choice of people who want to limit women’s rights. An August poll in the U.S. dug into attitudes around abortion. It included 10 questions on attitudes on various aspects of women’s equality. Things like “are women too easily offended,” “does access to birth control affect women’s equality,” “is the way women are treated in society an important issue”

And across the board, people who favoured limiting access to abortion also rejected the idea that gender equality is an issue that needs to be addressed. And those people — or their Canadian counterparts — are cheering for a Scheer victory.

I’ve been involved in covering about a dozen federal elections. Often, the differences between parties aren’t really that great.

Not this time.

My Tyee piece: Budget’s inequality measures a start, but more progress depends on us 21 Feb 2019 4:22 AM (6 years ago)

Governments don’t talk about inequality much these days. The B.C. government’s Throne Speech didn’t even include the word.

And while the provincial budget took useful steps to address growing inequality, it also showed how decades of anti-tax rhetoric have limited governments’ options — at least if they hope to get re-elected.

Take the BC Child Opportunity Benefit, the initiative most clearly targeted at inequality.

It’s an important step. The benefit — up to $1,600 for a family’s first child, $1,000 for a second and $800 per additional child — will make a huge difference for poor families, and society when it’s launched in October 2020. The single greatest determinant of life outcomes is childhood poverty. A small amount of extra income can mean sufficient food, needed medicine, a trip to the library or better child care and a lifetime of savings for society.

And the government’s approach is more sensible than the 2015 BC Liberal program that it replaces. That provided less money — a maximum of $660 a year — and only for children under six, while the new program extends support to 17.

More importantly, the Liberals’ program wasn’t aimed at the children and families who needed it most. A single parent working full-time at minimum wage got the same benefit as a family with an income of more than $100,000.

Which is simply stupid based on any pragmatic cost-benefit analysis of the program.

The budget offers a more sensible, effective and progressive approach.

If you're interested enough to read the rest, head here to The Tyee.

Six things to know about the legislature scandaL 10 Dec 2018 3:56 PM (6 years ago)

Congratulations if you’ve mostly skipped the flood of news reports on the legislature scandal.

It’s been entertaining, if you’re the kind of person who stops to look at car crashes. But despite all the noise, we know very little.

Here’s the Quick Notes version, and six things you need to know in order to understand what’s happening.

To start with, the facts. On Nov. 19, Speaker Darryl Plecas called a meeting with the three house leaders — Liberal Mary Polak, New Democrat Mike Farnworth and Green Sonia Furstenau. He told them the RCMP were investigating possible wrongdoing by Clerk Craig James, who is effectively the CEO of the $80-million legislative apparatus, and Sergeant-at-Arms Gary Lenz, the chief of security. Two special prosecutors had been appointed on Oct. 1, he said…

You can read the rest — and I hope you will — at The Tyee here.

Will Ottawa’s news fund be wasted keeping Postmedia afloat? 30 Nov 2018 3:41 PM (6 years ago)

I wrote about the federal government's plan to support news media in The Tyee today.

"I can swallow my scruples and accept direct government funding for journalism. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.

But the federal government’s new plan looks like it could easily do more harm than good.

The government’s recent economic update announced it would spend about $120 million a year for five years to support “a strong and independent news media.” That’s on top of a $10-million-a-year announcement last year.

Details are to come in the budget early next year, so it’s tough to judge the plan.

But it’s a bad sign that Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey was among the first to praise the agreement, saying the failing corporation was looking forward to government funding. Unifor, which represents about 12,000 media workers, was also enthusiastic... "

You can read the whole column here. (And find lots of other great reporting and commentary.)

Why I voted for proportional representation 28 Nov 2018 5:40 PM (6 years ago)

I spent 10 years in the legislative press gallery, a front-row seat for the spectacle of B.C. politics.

It was mostly — not always — horrifying. Cynical, dishonest and hyper-partisan, an unending election campaign. Collaboration was not impossible, but the system made it really difficult. MLAs, mostly good people, behaved badly. It was sad and infuriating, and demeaning for everyone involved.

That’s first-past-the-post.

So why keep a failed system when we have a chance to try a different, probably better, way of electing MLAs and governments? And with the option to change back after two elections?

The campaigns advocating for the status quo mostly attack proportional representation, rather than presenting the benefits of the current system.

The most repeated positive claim is that the current system produces stable governments. And if stability is all that matters to you, then you should probably vote against change in the referendum.

But first-past-the-post consistently delivers governments supported by a minority of voters. Yet they govern as if they have the support of a majority.

In Ontario, the Doug Ford Conservatives won power with 41-per-cent support. In Quebec, the right-leaning Coalition Avenir Québec took power with 37-per-cent support. In Alberta, the NDP formed government with 41 per cent of the vote.

In each case, the winning party — actually, the winning premier — governs with absolute power for four years, even though most voters rejected its policies.

That’s not the only, or most serious, problem with the current system.

The defenders of the status quo say it encourages moderation as parties try to construct a “big tent” to attract voters with a wide range of views.

In practice, that means a party of the centre-right, like the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, strives to draw social conservatives, hard-line right-wingers and anti-immigrant voters into its “big tent” with policies — or slogans or signals — those groups can support.

It’s a dangerous dance. At some point, those factions could take over. And the whole process is based on duplicity — signalling to those groups that the party will advance their agendas, with little intention of actually acting.

Defenders of the status quo warn vaguely about the loss of local representation.

But MLAs don’t really matter in the current system. The premier’s office tells them what to say and do.

Every BC Liberal MLA voted for the Clone Speech crafted by a few people in the premier’s office after the last election. The desperate attempt to cling to power meant MLAs were asked to betray every principle they had campaigned on.

And they did. Liberal MLAs all voted to adopt the NDP platform. Not one dissented. They followed orders from the premier’s office, and abandoned their constituents.

That wasn’t an aberration. Journalist and professor Sean Holman counted every vote between April 2001 and May 2012 in the B.C. legislature as part of the research for his documentary Whipped. (Well worth watching.)

And in 99.75 per cent of votes, MLAs followed the party line.

That’s first-past-the-post.

The campaign for the status quo has been based on fear-mongering about the rise of extremist parties in Europe. Politics and policy should be left to the leaders and backers of two strong controlling parties, they argue, or British Columbia’s government will be hijacked by racists.

I have more faith in my fellow citizens. And is it bad to have extremist parties seeking voters’ support?

Tommy Douglas was considered extremist, so much so that the RCMP spied on him for decades. Women campaigning for the right to vote and civil rights advocates were called extremists.

Racist parties are bad. So are those who would deny others their rights.

But a party that campaigned on the need to treat climate change as an existential threat might be considered extreme, yet could represent the interests of many voters. Parties that advocated measures to ensure every child in the province could grow up free from the lifelong burden of poverty, or one that committed to advance the interests of northern British Columbians, or Indigenous people might be seen as extreme. But if voters support them, they should be heard.

Defenders of the status quo also argue the referendum process has been a gong show.

They’re right.

But I’m voting for proportional representation despite all that. Because this might be the only chance to try for a better democracy — with an escape clause after two elections.

I would think many people would agree that the current system is broken. Our governments do not reflect our values or priorities.

Proportional representation is no miracle solution. But it might be better, and I’m keen to give it a try.

My Tyee column: Skip the Dishes lawsuit signals need for new employment laws 20 Aug 2018 1:26 PM (6 years ago)

If governments were doing their jobs, a Skip The Dishes food delivery driver wouldn’t have to sue for basic employment rights.

Charleen Pokornik, who started driving for the company in Winnipeg two years ago, says the company is wrongly claiming the drivers are independent contractors, not employees.

Increasingly, jobs have been changing — and generally for the worse. More part-time work, more people on short-term contracts instead of permanent jobs, and more people scrambling to earn an income through self-employment.

Skip the Dishes — like Uber and an expanding number of similar app-based businesses — is contributing to an erosion of workers’ rights and ability to bargain the terms of employment. They’ve been good at branding their business model — remember the “sharing economy” enthusiasm?

But really they’ve found a way to sell a service while avoiding employment laws and taking advantage of people who have few work options.

A decade ago, a restaurant would have employed a delivery driver. The pay would have been low, but at least minimum wage, and overtime pay and other basics would have been guaranteed under employment law.

Companies like Skip the Dishes dodge all those requirements. Delivery drivers are independent contractors, the companies claim. That means no protection under employment standards legislation or labour codes. As a result, drivers report earning less than minimum wage. (Just Eat CEO Peter Plumb receives a $1.2 million base salary, plus up to $4.2 million in bonus and stock.)

The proposed class action lawsuit would challenge the claim the workers are independent contractors.

It’s hard to predict the outcome. The rules for determining whether someone is an employee or contractor have been in place for decades, and in B.C. were last reviewed 20 years ago.

“Some of these tests include how much direction and control the worker is subject to, whether the worker operates their own business and has their own clients, whether the worker has a chance of profit or a risk of loss, whether the work they are doing is integral to the business and whether there is an ongoing relationship,” the B.C. government summarizes.

The summary also notes: “The Act is intended to protect as many workers as possible. When deciding if a worker is an employee or an independent contractor, one of the main questions to ask is ‘whose business is it?’”

And this is clearly Skip the Dishes’ business, not Charleen Pokornik’s.

Skip the Dishes has a 2,600-word courier agreement new drivers must accept, and it’s almost entirely focused on confirming the contractor relationship. It also attempts to bar drivers from organizing. “Any claim you may have must be brought individually… and not as a representative plaintiff or class member, and you will not join such claim… or participate in a class action lawsuit, collective or representative proceeding of any kind.”

“It seems that we need more clarification,” Sean MacDonald, a professor at University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business, told the CBC. “There’s a lot of curiosity how this will all go down, because it will affect a lot of the players in the gig economy.”

MacDonald is wrong. We don’t need more clarification. We need governments to change the laws to protect workers in a changing economy.

It’s not surprising that Uber, Lyft, Skip the Dishes and others have seized the opportunity. They have found a way to make money by meeting consumer needs while exploiting weaknesses in labour laws.

The industry argues it offers workers the chance to choose their own hours. Companies tout the independence of workers and argue their model allows people to work around demands of a full-time job or family responsibilities.

But the reality can be different. New York City has just decided to freeze the number of drivers for taxis and app-based ride services and set a minimum wage. That was based in part on a study that found about 60 per cent of app-based drivers were working full-time and 90 per cent were immigrants. About 85 per cent were making less than the proposed wage the city council had set, linked to the state minimum wage.

Across the U.S., a study found Uber drivers were paid about US$9.21 an hour on average after expenses, less than minimum wage in many cities where they operate.

The whole purpose of employment standard laws and labour codes is to level the playing field and balance the power of workers and employers. The rules establish minimum standards, based on social, economic and political consensus. They allow workers to organize to increase their bargaining power. They ensure the most desperate or vulnerable are protected from exploitation.

But in B.C. and across Canada, the rules are badly outdated.

The issue isn’t about whether app-based companies should exist. It’s about ensuring basic workplace rights are not undermined by their business models. Doing that might make them slightly less profitable, but it doesn’t threaten their existence.

And it would mean people like Charleen Pokornik don’t have to take on corporate giants in court to get a fair deal for workers.

A revolution looks different on the streets you once walked 29 Jun 2018 6:33 PM (6 years ago)

My latest Tyee column

People are dying on the streets I walked to work in Managua just two years ago. Masaya, a smaller town about an hour away by bus, is a battlefield. The streets of Leon, where we also lived, were filled with improvised barriers as neighbours united to keep out police and government supporters.

This is what revolutions look like, I suppose, but it is still surreal to see all this unfolding in a country that I lived in so recently, and that seemed then to be working. And it’s also surreal that despite some 285 deaths and 10 weeks of fighting, the rest of the world has paid so little attention.

After more than two years living in Honduras — perilously close to a failed state — Nicaragua looked like a model of stability. Institutions — schools, hospitals — worked. The cities weren’t plagued with the urban gangs and narcos that led Honduras to have the world’s highest murder rate when we lived there.

The Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega showed troubling signs of moving toward one-party rule, but a 2015 Cid Gallup poll found 66 per cent of Nicaraguans gave Ortega a positive rating.

That was consistent with my conversations with Nicaraguans. People grumbled about a deal to let a Chinese corporation build a rival to the Panama Canal across the country, complained that Ortega’s wife Rosario Murillo — now vice-president — was spending millions of dollars to erect hundreds of five-storey “arboles de vida” around the capital, Klimt-inspired giant metal trees, each with 17,000 lights. Some were alarmed when his government changed the constitution to let him seek a third term. Elections weren’t fair and open.

But despite that, and the second highest poverty rate in the hemisphere, they still spoke fondly of Daniel, as he was always called, the short, stocky leader who spent 24 years fighting against the Somoza dictatorship and the U.S.-backed Contras, seven years in jail, tortured, willing to accept his electoral defeat in 1990. He was on their side, most people said.

Until, in late April, they decided he wasn’t.

That’s part of what makes it surreal. The government’s legitimacy had been questioned — one newspaper always referred to him as the illegally elected president — but largely accepted. Until the mood changed.

About 285 people have been killed, mainly by police and well-armed pro-government paramilitaries. Protestors have set up tranques — road blocks mostly built out of pavement blocks ripped from the streets — to protect neighbourhoods and slow traffic throughout the country as a way to bring pressure on the government.

On May 29, Mother’s Day in Nicaragua, several hundred thousand people marched down a main road near our old house, led by mothers whose children had been killed by police and paramilitaries. The sea of blue and white flags was inspiring. The end of the march, when snipers opened fire and 11 people were killed, was horrifying.

The protests were triggered when the Ortega government announced changes to the social security plan on April 20. Pensions would be cut five per cent, and employer and individual contributions would be raised a small amount.

The changes weren’t big. But they were arbitrary, a reminder of the president’s total power. And they came after mismanagement or corruption had undermined the fund.

Students led the first protests. After five days — and 25 deaths — Ortega scrapped the changes.

But a tipping point had been reached. Protesters had discovered their power, although at a high cost. The dead could not be brought back to life as easily as the social security changes were reversed, and protests continued demanding justice and accountability.

The Catholic Church, a powerful force, attempted to facilitate a national dialogue between the government and protestors, but talks failed. The leading business organization ended its support for the government.

And the country remained a battleground.

The images and stories have been incomprehensible. Masaya, a cradle of the Sandinista revolution, was a quiet, traditional town about 45 minutes away by bus. We had licuados in the square, admired the church, went to a wild festival where costumed people followed bands through the streets and we were invited into a family’s celebration.

Now the images are of paving stone walls thrown up to resist police and para attacks, young people wielding homemade mortars, bloody bodies and police storming the cathedral. The city declared it was no longer under the authority of the government, and reprisals were swift and violent.

Armed gangs stalk the streets of Managua, a family of six was burned in their home, thousands of people have been injured and scores have disappeared.

There were warning signs when we lived there. The government took control of the courts and the electoral commission, and we learned not to walk past the commission’s office when there were protests, because Sandinista youth might attack.

But I didn’t see this coming.

That might be part of the culture. Nicaraguans talk of the Güegüense effect, a reference to a 16th-century play that mocked the Spanish invaders without directly confronting them. The play is still part of the culture; some political scientists say that the tendency for Nicaraguans to conceal their true feelings in the face of authority also remains strong.

It’s difficult to see a way out. The protesters want justice and accountability for kidnappings and killings, and fair elections next year, two years ahead of schedule. The Ortega government has shown no signs of agreeing to either demand, and blames “delinquents” for the violence.

Meanwhile, the economy has been battered, people are unable to work and the fledgling tourism industry is destroyed. International organizations and other governments offer advice, but little more. (Canada has condemned the killings and repression and urged dialogue.)

Revolutions or uprisings have been abstract for me, perhaps a failure of imagination. Now one is happening on the streets I once walked, in the towns we visited and with people we know.

It has been a terrible time, and there seems no good way for it to end. People will keep fighting, and dying, or Ortega will establish a family dynasty — like the Somozas who controlled the country for more than four decades before being ousted by Ortega and the Sandinistas in 1979.

It’s an impossible choice, but it’s the one facing Nicaraguans. My heart aches for them.

My Tyee column: Why the new health tax makes sense 19 Mar 2018 3:22 PM (7 years ago)

Winners are always champions of the status quo.

Like Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson. He was asked whether it was fair that employers had paid MSP premiums for 40 per cent of workers, while the rest had to pay the premiums out of their own pockets.

“Fairness is always a matter to be sorted out in the marketplace,” he said. “That’s what employers have to do is compete for good workers and pay them appropriately.”

So if you and your spouse are both working full-time at $15 an hour — about $29,000 each — it’s fair that you had to pay MSP premiums. And that the Liberals doubled them.

Just as Wilkinson, paid almost $159,000, thinks it’s fair that taxpayers take care of his MSP premiums as part of a lavish benefits/pension package.

It’s the market, you know.

Which is rubbish. MLAs’ pay and benefits weren’t set by the market. The government ordered a rigged review https://willcocks.blogspot.ca/2007/05/outrageous-mla-pay-plan-and-class-in-bc.html which delivered big raises and pensions the rest of us could only dream about. The review decided MLAs needed up to $19,000 a year for a second home in Victoria, while our elected representatives decided people on disability assistance should be able to find a place to live in Victoria for $4,500 a year.

Free markets bring great benefits. But the free market mantra has become a justification for the powerful to protect their own interests at the expense of other citizens.

Which leads to the new government’s health care tax, replacing MSP premiums.

Broadly, the tax ends MSP payments for individuals and shifts the cost to employers. About 40 per cent of employees, generally unionized or management, often in the public sector, have had their MSP premiums paid by the employer in the past. Most of us paid $900 a year or more. (People with net household incomes under $42,000 could apply for an exemption.)

No one could argue that MSP premiums were sound public policy. They were a tax, and people earning $50,000 paid the same as people earning $500,000.

The Liberals, recklessly https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/02/27/BC-Liberals-Time-Bomb-Budget/, promised to cut MSP premiums in half in 2017 without saying how they would cut services or raise other taxes to make up the lost revenue.

The New Democrats upped the ante by promising to eliminate MSP premiums — also without saying how they would make up the lost revenue.

And please, read the rest of the column here at The Tyee. It's pretty good.

My Tyee column: How the Chinese government took control of BC seniors’ homes 26 Feb 2018 12:26 PM (7 years ago)

Great. The lives of seniors in B.C. care homes, where they are already over-drugged and under-supported, now depend in part on the Chinese government.

On Friday, the government seized control of Anbang Insurance Group, a financial giant with investments around the world. It cited corruption, fraud and a risk the whole $390-billion company could go broke.

Last year, Anbang spent an estimated $1 billion to buy Residential Concepts, which operates 21 seniors homes in British Columbia. It’s the biggest private provider in the province, collecting $87 million from the provincial government in 2015/16.

Anbang has no experience in seniors care. Its finances were murky and ownership so tangled as to be incomprehensible. It offered no promises of additional investment in the company or increased employment. Concerns about its business practices were already widespread.

But to promote its pro-China agenda, the Trudeau government turned a blind eye to the risks — and shifted them to seniors. Ottawa quickly approved the takeover, and the provincial government offered no objections and transferred operating licences to the Chinese company.

You can read the rest at The Tyee here. It's pretty good.

NDP wins with bold BC budget 22 Feb 2018 7:11 AM (7 years ago)

Give Finance Minister Carole James full marks for a bold budget approach and the skill to sell it.

The new government was in a tough spot. It had lots of campaign promises to deliver, and no money because of the BC Liberals’ reckless decision to halve MSP premiums without any plan to replace the revenue.

Conventional wisdom has been that tax increases of any kind would bring all kinds of abuse. So far, the budget reaction is proving conventional wisdom wrong.

The big tax item is a new payroll tax to replace MSP premiums entirely by 2020 and bring in $1.9 billion a year when fully implemented. Businesses with less than $500,000 in payroll — say a half-dozen employees — will be exempt. Those with $1.5 million or more will pay tax equal to 1.95 per cent of payroll.

It’s a big new tax; corporate income tax, for example, is only expected to bring in $4.1 billion this year. But while business groups aren’t happy, they haven’t taken to the barricades. The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade still gave the balanced budget a C-plus rating.

You can read the rest of the column at The Tyee here.

Carole James’s Big Budget Problem 20 Dec 2017 8:39 AM (7 years ago)

(Belatedly posting my recent Tyee column.)

Finance Minister Carole James put a good spin on this week’s quarterly update on the province’s finances.

But the update highlights big problems the NDP government faces in crafting its first budget, due in mid-February. Without tax increases, the government won’t be able to deliver on its election promises or provide the changes supporters expect.

The September budget update — a mini-budget — didn’t include funding for some campaign promises, like $10-a-day child care, the promised $400 a year for renters or thousands of new affordable housing units. There wasn’t enough time given the delay in forming government, James said.

But there also wasn’t enough money. And the challenge will be greater next year.

This September mini-budget set out a three-year forecast of revenue and expense.

For fiscal 2018, the government is forecasting $150 million in additional revenue — less than one-third of one per cent. (The budget numbers are easier to grasp if you knock six zeros off them. Imagine a family with an income of $52,407 and big expectations with an extra $150 to spend next year.)

Population growth is forecast at 1.2 per cent, and inflation will be about two per cent. So the government would need to spend about 3.2 per cent more just to keep providing the current services. That would be about $1.7 billion, compared to the expected $150 million increase in revenue.

And that is before introducing things like the $10-a-day child care plan or addressing real problems the New Democrats identified in opposition — actions supporters are expecting.

The September update also forecast expenses for next year. The plan calls for nine of the 20 ministries to have their budgets frozen. Two — environment and labour — would see spending cuts. Five — including the ministries of children and families, housing and education — would have spending increases of one-half of one per cent or less.

I’d thought the numbers might be just placeholders, in part because BC Liberal budgets so often underestimated revenues by huge margins. Last year, for example, the Liberals budgeted for a $264-million surplus and ended up with $2.7 billion. (If they had budgeted more accurately/honestly and spent half that surplus addressing issues that rankled voters, the Liberals would probably still be in government.)

But the quarterly update killed that kind of optimism.

The numbers for the first six months of the fiscal year weren’t terrible but neither were they great. Revenue is now expected to fall short of the projections in the new government’s September budget update by $283 million, mostly because of lower income tax payments from the federal government and ICBC’s poor financial performance. Expenses are on track with the update’s projections despite a $152-million budget overrun in fighting forest fires.

Any hope that projections for this year and next were overly conservative and the new government would have more fiscal room was snuffed.

The biggest challenge is former premier Christy Clark’s reckless pre-election move to cut Medical Services Plan premiums in half for people with a household income under $120,000, announced in the Liberals’ February budget. But it doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, so revenues are only reduced for the last three months of this fiscal year, which ends March 31.

But next year, the change will cost the government more than $1.2 billion in lost revenue.

Cutting MSP premiums is sound policy. The premiums, which the Liberals had more than doubled, were a regressive way to pay for health care. A family with $40,000 in income paid the same amount as the richest British Columbians. Covering the costs through income taxes — like most provinces — would be more equitable.

But the Liberal budget didn’t introduce any tax increases to cover the lost revenue. It just pushed the problem into the next year and hoped no one would notice the ticking time bomb.

All of which leaves the NDP government facing three choices.

It could try to cut expenses to fit the projected revenues. In her briefing on the quarterly update, James noted, “A number of our promises are longer term and implemented over a number of years.” That leaves room to make a small start on promised affordable housing and child care. Premier John Horgan has also talked about the importance of federal funding. But really, after 16 years talking about the Liberals’ failure to spend in critical areas, the new government can’t manage in the same way.

It could choose to run a deficit, spending more than it took in and leaving the debt for future taxpayers. But beyond political expediency, there is no justification for deficit budgets when the economy is performing this well.

Or the budget could increase taxes. The September update included an increase in the corporate tax rate from 11 to 12 per cent and a bump in income tax for people being paid more than $150,000 a year from 14.7 per cent to 16.8 per cent. But that’s not enough to make up for the $1.2 billion in lost revenue from the MSP change.

The government has appointed a three-person panel to provide advice on ways to replace MSP revenue and allow the full elimination of premiums within four years.

Pragmatically, tax increases make sense. If you’re cutting MSP premiums, you need to find revenue to pay for critical public services somewhere else.

And the NDP platform, which promised the eventual elimination of the health care premiums, said a “non-partisan MSP elimination panel will advise on how to protect health care funding, while phasing out this unfair flat tax.”

The anti-tax lobby has been successful in turning the idea of any tax increase into anathema.

There are no easy choices for the government, and lots of political risks.

But British Columbians voted — barely — for change. Which means tax increases and investments in a better society, despite the political risks.

Why I'd kill Site C 8 Dec 2017 6:32 PM (7 years ago)

I have no idea what the government will do about Site C. (I do know that anyone who claims it’s an easy choice to kill the project or go ahead is not to be taken seriously.)

But if it was up to me, I’d opt for cancellation.

The people pushing for completion rely heavily on three flawed arguments.

First, that BC Hydro has already spent $2 billion, so despite the certainty of delays and cost overruns, the government might as well keep spending.

That’s silly. Economists call it the sunk cost fallacy. The money already spent is gone. The question is whether the money still to be spent is a good investment. Anyone who has paid too much for a new clutch for an old car because they spent money on a brake job three months earlier understands the principle.

Second, they maintain that even if forecasts show the power isn’t needed, someone will probably show up to buy it. Maybe we’ll all start driving electric cars, the dam’s backers fantasize. That’s no way to justify spending billions of dollars.

And third, they talk about jobs. About 2,000 people are at work on the site. It will be rough for them if the project is shut down. But 2.5 million people are employed in the province, and the workers on the site have skills that are in demand. They don’t need a publicly funded make-work project\.

On the other side, the government has to consider the emergence of new technologies to produce green power at ever lower costs, the BCUC’s determination that the power from Site C won’t be needed for years and the risks of soaring costs.

The latter would be the deciding factor for me.

When then-premier Gordon Campbell announced the government would build the Site C dam in 2010, it was a $6.6-billion project. The price tag jumped to $7.9 billion, then $8.3 billion and now the BC Utilities Commission says the real cost will be more — perhaps much more — than $10 billion.

That’s why I would bail, if I was the premier. (Pause for collective shudder.)

We know the costs of cancelling the project.

But continuing means signing a blank cheque. The dam could cost $10 billion, $12 billion or $15 billion. And the NDP government, having made the decision to go ahead, would own the consequences.

I’d say no.

Sadly, not the weirdest moment in my newspaper career (Spoiler alert: Charges were stayed) 29 Sep 2017 5:28 PM (7 years ago)

Newspaper pleads not guilty

RED DEER, Alta. (CP) — The Red Deer Advocate has pleaded not guilty to incitement to commit a criminal offence, a charge that resulted from a controversy over abstract metal sculptures one resident described as “piles of rusted out snowplow blades.”
The Advocate was charged last month under a rarely used section of the Criminal Code as a result of a column June 30. The trial begins Feb. 5 in provincial court.
The column, by freelance writer Ian Coleman, suggested someone load a 12-gauge shotgun with double-0 buckshot and shoot one of the sculptures.
They were built for $75,000 as part of Alberta’s 75th anniversary celebrations four years ago and have long been a source of controversy and derision in Red Deer.
In his column, Coleman said the sculptures “are an affront to the eye, an insult to common aesthetic sense” and “have been an embarrassment to the citizens of Red Deer since they arrived.”
He said the only way to deal with the worst of the sculptures, a rusty, boxy “monstrosity” visible from the city’s main north-south thoroughfare, “is to alter its form.”
“A civic-minded individual with courage, a car and a gun, could drive down 50th Avenue just before dawn, when the streets are empty, and shoot the sculpture; the shot would dent it just enough so the city would have to haul it away,” Coleman wrote.
An RCMP spokesman said no shots were ever fired at the piece.
Crown prosecutor Burt Skinner said the charge was laid after several complaints. The maximum penalty is six months in jail and/or a $500 fine.
Skinner said the charge is rare because the public does not like to see freedom of the press infringed. But, he said, newspapers have a responsibility to monitor the opinion they print.

   Publisher Paul Willcocks said the Advocate column was tongue-in-cheek. “It was meant to be funny.”

   He said the column was part “of a long tradition of making a point in an exaggerated way” and the charge will not change The Advocate’s policy on running columns.
   The best known similar case in Canadian law is the 1971 British Columbia conviction of Georgia Straight Publishing Ltd., which once encouraged people to grow marijuana.
   The Poundmaker, a now-defunct paper in Edmonton, was charged with a similar offence in 1974 when it ran several advertisements urging people to shoplift.
   Jim Robb, the defence lawyer in the Edmonton case, said The Poundmaker argued that the ads were a spoof and the argument ‘‘was accepted without ever having to call a defence.”
  While the pieces have not been shot at they have been physically and verbally abused since they were put up three years ago.
   Bill Bodnaruk, an unsuccessful aldermanic candidate last October, said the works are “piles of rusted out snow-plow blades, a terrible waste of money” and should be sold for scrap.

Six Things to Know about the BC Liberal Leadership Race 1 Sep 2017 5:34 AM (7 years ago)

Here are six things you need to know about the race to replace Christy Clark, based on the rules the BC Liberal Party released Tuesday.

First, you better have money or some rich supporters if you even want to try for the job. It will cost you $50,000, payable to the party, to become a candidate. (Plus $10,000 that you’ll get back if the party doesn’t levy any fines for bad behaviour during the campaign.)

Second, it’s going to cost a lot more to win. The spending limit for candidates — on top of the entry fees — is $600,000. That’s a 33-per-cent increase from 2011 when Christy Clark won the leadership, and 71 per cent higher than the spending limit in the 2014 NDP leadership race. Candidates who jump into the race and raise enough money will be able to spend about $120,000 a month on their leadership campaigns. (Money, of course, does not guarantee success, as the BC Liberals proved in the May election. They spent $13.6 million compared to the NDP’s $7.9 million, and got just 1,566 more votes.)

Third, and further confirming the Liberals’ blindness to the public concern about its support for Wild West political fundraising, there are no limits on donations. If a developer or union or even foreign government wants to write a $500,000 cheque to try and get a friendly candidate elected, that’s OK with the Liberal party. The donation will eventually be disclosed — but not until 90 days after party members have voted to elect their new leader.

This free-for-all comes, remember, six months after the Liberals’ deathbed repentance Throne Speech pledged to ban corporate and union political donations and limit individual donations.

You can read the rest of the column at The Tyee.

Where are those Public Accounts? Delay should worry Liberals 4 Aug 2017 9:30 AM (7 years ago)

The Liberals should be getting nervous about the long delay in releasing the Public Accounts and the Auditor General's review of government finances.

As part of the Liberals' self-destructive bid to hang on to power, then finance minister Mike de Jong broke precedent by releasing unofficial results for the fiscal year ending March 31. He claimed a $2.8 billion surplus, $1.3 billion higher than budgeted. (Showing the Liberals mean-spirited election platform was a matter of ideology, not economics.)

De Jong defended the unorthodox media event days before the government was set to lose a confidence vote, saying the real, certified numbers would be available in a matter of days. "The auditor general's office is advising they'll be in a position to issue the certificate next week," he said.

More than five weeks later, the Public Accounts still haven't been released; most years, they're public by mid-July. (Last year it was July 21.)

The province's auditor general has issued "qualified" approvals for the Liberal government's financial statements repeatedly, finding that they was not following proper Canadian accounting practices.

The delay could indicate that the Auditor General has found a more sympathetic ear in the new government or that the NDP has its own questions about Liberal financial practices and the claimed surplus.

Which would not be good news for a Liberal party that lost its way with a throne speech that abandoned any claimed principles and now may face questions about its financial competence.

Postmedia hits the wall 13 Apr 2017 6:21 PM (7 years ago)

Last week's quarterly report from Postmedia was predictably grim.

Canada's largest newspaper company reported revenues had fallen 13.4 per cent from a year earlier. Plunging revenues have been a hallmark of Postmedia's six-year existence.

The corporation has slashed costs, but not enough to keep up with revenue losses. Postmedia took in $181 million in the quarter, $28 million less than the previous year. It cut operating costs by $21 million.

Operating income - the actual performance of the business - fell from $13 million to $6 million.

There are two key lessons from these numbers.

First, expect deeper cuts. What's happened so far hasn't been enough to keep up with falling revenues. And, or course, the cuts will lead to further revenue losses.

And second, note that for the first time - even after last year's debt restructuring - Postmedia's operating income of $6 million was less than its interest payments of $8 million.

In the short term, Postmedia can free up some cash to pay the interest. But the fundamentals, as they say, are dismal.

And the end, according to one-time newspaper baron Conrad Black, is clear.

"The bond holders control the company and are content to bleed it dry with the complicity of management. Bankruptcy is next," he said on Twitter.

Which Christy Clark response on the health firings is to be believed? 7 Apr 2017 4:30 PM (8 years ago)

“I did ask a lot of questions at the time. The assurances that we all received was that these were absolutely justified and the right thing to do.”

- Premier Christy Clark, responding Friday to reporters' questions on the health firings.

"Premier Clark did not recall ever being briefed about the decision to terminate the employees."

- Ombudsperson Jay Chalke on Clark's evidence, under oath, taken as part of his inquiry.

So when, exactly, did Clark ask all these questions on firings she can't recall ever being briefed on? Who did she ask, and who provided these assurances?

And what should voters make of the conflict between her public claims and testimony under oath?

Is Vancouver the Jalisco Cartel's 'drug portal to the Pacific'? 1 Feb 2017 6:25 AM (8 years ago)

Vancouver is making its mark as a major export centre in at least one area — international drug trafficking.

‘Drug Portal to the Pacific,’ an InSight Crime report on the rise of the Jalisco Cartel called the city.

Cartel's 2015 ambush that killed 15 police officers

“The key to their rapid expansion has been the strategic presence of operations on the southeast border of the United States, next to Tijuana, and the northeast border, next to Vancouver, Canada,” the report said.

The role of Mexican Cartels in Canada isn’t new. In 2015 the Vancouver Sun’s Kim Bolan wrote about the cartels’ increasing shift to having their own people on the ground in Canada, rather than dealing with Canadian intermediaries.

But the new report by Luis Alonso Pérez (originally done for Animal Politico a Mexican online publication) sets out how important Vancouver has been allowing the once-small Jalisco Cartel become “one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in the world.”

It’s not just that Vancouver is a good place to land drugs destined for the U.S. and Canada. It’s become the transshipment point for drugs bound for the Pacific Rim, the article says.

The Jalisco ‘New Generation’ Cartel is a formidable player — combining business smarts, bribery and intimidation - it shot down a military helicopter - and over-the-top violence, including mass murders. Last month, police blamed the cartel for 12 murders in Manzanillo, including seven people found decapitated in a taxi.

I started following InSight Crime after we moved to Honduras. It was almost the equivalent of a newspaper’s business pages in shedding light on the economy and politics of that country and its neighbours. I’ve found it consistently credible and useful over the last five years.

It’s also a journalistic success story. In 2010, two journalists launched the project with foundation funding. The focus was on crime in Latin America, from drugs to urban gangs to corruption and impunity. It’s going strong, in English and Spanish, with a broad funding base — including the Canadian government.

Donald Trump's stupid wall and Central America 28 Jan 2017 1:08 PM (8 years ago)

There is no wall tall enough.

Even if you can leave aside the racism and the attempt to exploit and worsen fears and prejudices, Donald Trump's plan to build a wall along the Mexican border is remarkably stupid.

Early in our stay in in Honduras, I started hearing about the huge number of people who went to the United States. It was an incredibly difficult, dangerous and expensive effort. People set out with almost no money to make a 3,100-kilometre journey through Guatemala and Mexico and across the already difficult U.S. border. They risked robbery, kidnapping, rape, extortion and a lonely death in the desert. Many travelled on La Bestia, a Mexican freight train that carried hundreds of migrants.

I wrote about the journey here and here. The idea that a wall would deter people willing to risk death and sacrifice everything they had for a chance to spend a few years in the U.S. is idiotic.

As is Trump's failure to recognize the risk to U.S. interests created by his $15-billion wall plan.

Hondurans, for the most part, didn't want to move to the U.S. They wanted to spend three or four years working at the jobs no one wanted and sending money home, to pay for a better education for their children, a plot of land to farm or to start a small business. (In countries where employment is scarce and precarious, even a tiny business offers some security.)

Remittances - money sent back by Hondurans working in other countries - equals about 18 per cent of the GDP of Honduras, according to the World Bank. It's about 17 per cent for El Salvador, 10 per cent for Guatemala and nine per cent for Nicaragua (although much of that country's remittances come from people working in Costa Rica).

For comparison, the natural resource and sectors combined contribute 16 per cent of British Columbia's GDP.

The U.S. has fretted about security risks in Central America since the 1890s. And now Trump proposes a wall that, to the extent that it works, will destabilize economies and governments in the northern triangle — an already troubled region.

An unlikely buyer's arsenal of restricted weapons, and their journey to criminals' hands 13 Dec 2016 6:24 AM (8 years ago)

My piece from The Tyee

Canada is supposed to have tough gun laws. So how did a struggling Courtenay man with affiliations to organized crime legally accumulate 49 restricted firearms?

And how did some of his weapons end up in the hands of criminals?

Bryce McDonald was sent to jail for three years and four months in November. The sentencing decisionwas posted on the BC Supreme Court website this month.

And Justice Robin Baird was puzzled by McDonald’s ability to get permits to buy so many weapons that are supposedly tightly controlled.

Especially as McDonald had first applied for a permit to buy a restricted weapon in 2006 and the federal firearms officer repeatedly rejected his applications over the next three years.

Not too surprisingly. McDonald was 24 then. He had been hit by a car when he was 19, and badly injured — fractured skull, broken bones. When he came to in hospital he remembered nothing about his life. He had to learn everything again — how to walk, talk, eat, care for himself. He suffered from chronic pain and the effects of his head injury, and lived on a “modest disability pension.” He had a dated conviction for uttering threats. And the firearms officer was troubled that McDonald had a medical marijuana grow licence. Restricted weapons and a grow op, even a legal one, were a bad combination, he thought.

But “for reasons which I have yet to grasp,” Baird said, in late 2009 the firearms officer changed his mind. He accepted McDonald’s argument that he was keen on the challenge of learning how to shoot a variety of guns on a range. McDonald got permission to buy restricted weapons, but was required to store them somewhere other than his home.

Restricted weapons are supposed to be hard to get. But McDonald, an unlikely candidate, seemed to have no problem building a formidable arsenal.

Canada has three classes of firearms. Non-restricted are the basic rifles and shotguns used for hunting or target practice or killing sick livestock on a farm. They are easy to get — a little safety training, a background check and four-week waiting period and you’re good to go.

Prohibited are automatic weapons, sawed off shotguns and easily concealed handguns, the kind of weapons criminals want. You can’t legally acquire them, though many owners were allowed to keep them under “grandfathering” provisions that covered existing weapons when gun laws were tightened in 1998.

And restricted weapons — most handguns, semi-automatic rifles, short-barrel shotguns, assault-style weapons — fall in between. You need a special permit to own them, and a reason — target shooting, gun collecting, your job or, rarely, protection. You have to take a course and undergo a more detailed background check, and there are rules about where you can store the weapons. McDonald was barred from keeping them in his home; he had to store them at a separate location.

But McDonald somehow passed all those hurdles. In 2009, according to evidence at his trial, he bought his first restricted weapon, a Springfield Armory XD45 Tactical Semi-Auto Pistol described in ads as “meant for law enforcement, home defence, field carry and tactical deployments.”

In 2010, he added three new guns to his collection, including a , described as “ideal for law enforcement, home defence or concealed carry.” It comes with a laser sight; just tag your target with the red dot and squeeze the trigger.

He bought nine more restricted weapons in 2011 and five in 2012. And in 2013, he bought 31 — 19 in three months, five handguns in one day on Sept. 9, 2013. No one checked to see why he was stockpiling so many guns, or if he still had them. (McDonald had said he wanted the restricted weapons because he liked the challenge of mastering different guns on the shooting range. The judge noted that the purchase of 10 Glock handguns — many the same or similar — hardly seemed consistent with that claim.)

Eight days after the five-gun purchase, things started to unravel. A Lower Mainland homicide squad got a tip about a bag of guns dumped in Surrey. A rifle turned out to be one of McDonald’s restricted weapons; he had never reported it missing, as required under the law.

Three months later — a period in which McDonald bought 13 more restricted weapons — police finally arrested him. They searched the designated storage location, and there were no guns. In his house, police found seven weapons. The other 42 weapons were missing — a “curious and sobering thing,” Justice Baird said. (In fact, the Canadian Firearms Centre had concerns about McDonald as early as March; their only response was to call him and accept his assurances that he was following the rules.)

McDonald suggested police must have taken them, or didn’t see them when they searched and left the doors of his house open and someone else stole them.

Then the guns started turning up at crime scenes — “more or less inevitably,” Baird noted.

On June 16, 2014, RCMP responded to a Burnaby home invasion. The suspects fled, but police found their vehicle — and a loaded Sturm Ruger semi-automatic handgun registered to McDonald. On June 21, the RCMP responded to shooting at Brentwood Mall in Burnaby. Weeks later a suspect turned himself in and handed over the gun he had used, another handgun from McDonald’s armoury.

In January 2015, Vancouver police arrested a man for shoplifting and found he was packing three Glocks, two from McDonald’s arsenal. In June a man was arrested driving a stolen vehicle in Vancouver. The suspect had two Glocks in a bag. They weren’t McDonald’s, but a search of the suspect’s home found a Beretta 96A1 handgun — offering “Ultimate Tactical Power,”according to the company — that he had purchased.

And in February this year, Calgary police investigating a violent home invasion found the suspects had another Glock from McDonald’s Courtenay collection.

All of which raises the question of just how restricted these weapons are if someone like McDonald can buy several dozens of them, ignore his permit requirements and come up with no explanation when they started showing up at crime scenes.

There are a lot of them out there. There were 796,000 restricted weapons in Canadian communities in 2015, according to the RCMP, 145,000 in British Columbia. (Plus 183,000 prohibited weapons.)

And the number of restricted weapons has increased dramatically — doubling from 399,000 in 2005. (There were 7.7 million legal guns in Canada in 2010.)

People who think it’s a bad thing to have twice as many restricted weapons in their neighbourhoods — whether in the hands of McDonald or some more responsible gun buff — tend to blame Stephen Harper. And the Conservative government did make it easier to own guns, including restricted weapons. It killed the long gun registry in 2012, and Bill C-42, passed in 2015, reduced the regulations on owning and transporting restricted weapons and reduced the ability of provincial firearms officers to control access.

And the Liberals so far have failed to deliver on their 2015 campaign promise to “take action to get handguns and assault weapons off our streets.” They pledged to repeal sections of C-42 that reduced regulations around transporting restricted and prohibited weapons, require enhanced background checks for people buying restricted weapons and implement regulations requiring dealers to mark guns so they were easier to trace.

So far, none of that has happened.

McDonald was sentenced to 40 months in penitentiary for failing to store his weapons properly. (He also was convicted for possessing brass knuckles and cocaine possession.)

But his guns are still out there. And so, presumably, are other people stockpiling arsenals of weapons that are supposed to be hard to get.

OK everybody, that sucked. Now, back to work 9 Nov 2016 12:23 PM (8 years ago)

I confess to despair watching the U.S. election results last night. I turned off the television before 9:30 p.m., knowing Donald Trump would win but thinking I'd sleep better if there was the faint hope of a different outcome. (I didn't.) My partner refused to watch any of the coverage, choosing to work and play accordion while instructing me not to share any information.

I'm not usually deeply invested in election results, beyond a desire to see governments punished for bad, corrupt or insulting behaviour. There are important differences between parties but, broadly, the country or province won't generally be dramatically transformed in four years no matter who governs.

The U.S. election was different. And the results were profoundly troubling. Especially as I've spent a long time working as a journalist based on the belief that people, given good information, would make good decisions. That didn't happen.

I reflect on all that in my Tyee piece here.

Sorry, have we met? Adventures in face blindness 3 Nov 2016 4:47 PM (8 years ago)

Have we met? You look familiar

The New Yorker ran a fascinating story about “super-recognizers,” focusing on a small Scotland Yard team whose skills let them identify suspects among hundreds of faces in the murkiest surveillance videos.

And it included a link to the Cambridge Face Memory Test, one of the tools used to assess officers’ ability to recognize faces.

The test is about 20 minutes. At the end, you get your result, and this message. “The average score on this test is around 80 per cent correct responses for adult participants. A score of 60 per cent or below may indicate face blindness."

I scored 57 per cent.

That’s hardly a surprise. I once spotted an acquaintance, a movie reviewer, at a repertory cinema. “Surprising to find you here in the evening, when it’s so similar to your work.” I said. “At least you won’t have to write about it.” I asked about the movie, him being an expert and all, and the entire conversation was based on his work and knowledge of film.

Except he wasn’t the movie critic, but one of his co-workers who looked vaguely like him and and must have struggled tremendously to follow my misdirected comments.

Bumping into another acquaintance at an art opening, I exchanged pleasantries while wondering why he seemed to be cowering in fear. My partner reminded me that I had berated him — with uncharacteristic venom — for an ethical failing a few months earlier.

And too many times, in my corporate days, I introduced myself to someone at a schmoozing event, only to have him say “yes, I know, you introduced yourself to me 10 minutes ago.”

And those ignore the countless social blunders I never even recognized, and the ones too embarrassing to share.

I was relieved to learn six years ago that I wasn’t just inattentive or indifferent to others when Oliver Sacks wrote about his much more extreme case of prosopagnosia, as it is called, also in the New Yorker.

And it was useful to know that my earlier efforts to learn how to become better at remembering people’s names were doomed. If you don’t remember faces, you certainly can’t put names to them.

I can recognize people if they are part of my life, of course. Context helps tremendously, and so does distinctive appearance or clues like clothing or voices.

And name tags. I wish everyone had to wear name tags, or even better have their names tattooed on their foreheads. That would be a double win, as I could pretend to make eye contact while figuring out who they are.

On the positive side, I’m friendly. When introduced to someone with the common “Do you two know each other?,” I always nod enthusiastically, just in case. I smile at strangers, because they generally look vaguely familiar and might be someone I know. (And because I do believe greeting everyone cheerfully - common in Central America - is preferable to Victorians’ fierce determination to avoid all contact with anyone they encounter. My cheery greetings while walking just seem to alarm people here.)

Some cases of prosopagnosia, following a brain injury or stroke, are fairly easily understood. But the much more common developmental form continues to be mostly a mystery.

It’s hardly a giant disability, especially if you can develop skills to cope.

But our world does value social relationships, those networks of acquaintances and business associates and friends that ease the way through life. And people who can’t recognize people have a much harder time maintaining those loose relationships. And their - our - inability to recognize an acquaintance can seem rude or arrogant.

Sacks notes that up to 10 per cent of people are affected to some degree by face blindness, a rate similar to dyslexia. But, he adds, while we’re aware of the challenges facing dyslexic children, and their strengths, and providing supports, the problems of people with prosopagnosia are ignored.

It’s not that a big deal for me. (Though, as the researchers note, I have no idea how other people see faces, so maybe it is and I just don't know it.)

But I’m pretty smart and educated. I had the chance to develop all sorts of coping skills. I’ve figured out how to pretend I recognize people who seem entirely unfamiliar, and decipher identity clues.

What about people without those advantages? Are they just bewildered and weirdly awkward, with all of the consequences that brings?

Maybe we can talk about this when next we meet. If I recognize you.

Postmedia's strange $50-million bet on Mogo 1 Nov 2016 1:00 PM (8 years ago)

I wrote about information inequality for The Tyee this week, looking at what's happening as traditional news media fade to black and new business models emerge based on providing high-value information to people and organizations that can pay high prices.

You can read it here.

As part of the research I went through Postmedia's financial report on the last fiscal year, released last week.

It was grim, which is unsurprising given Postmedia's five years of failure to find a solution to the collapse of its business. Revenue down, no positive news and a strategy based on "aggressive and accelerated cost-cutting" and transforming the business model from "selling audience to selling performance marketing solutions and outcomes."

Which could apply to thousands of businesses, from one-person marketing firms to giant media companies, in all sorts of fields.

Postmedia's deal this year with Mogo Finance Technology represents an early attempt to sell "outcomes." In January, Postmedia announced it would provide $50 million worth of "media value" to Mogo over three years — $15 million this year. That's a big boost for a company that spent less than $11 million on marketing last year, but has dreams of becoming the Uber of consumer loans and personal finance.

If the ads and marketing works, Postmedia hopes to benefit from a revenue-sharing deal and a chance to buy Mogo shares at a fixed price.

But the revenue sharing, based on the information available, is likely to provide about $3.5 million to Postmedia this year — less than one-quarter of the value of the services it's providing to Mogo.

And any chance to cash in on an increase in the value of Mogo shares looks remote. Postmedia negotiated a deal that gave it the right to purchase 1.2 million Mogo shares at a price of $2.96, their value at the time of the deal.

Since then, Mogo's share price has fallen by more than 50 per cent, to $1.36. Postmedia's share options are worthless.

On one hand, at least Postmedia is trying something new.

But it is a little puzzling that a company that couldn't figure out its own business has decided it has the expertise to pick winners in entirely unrelated fields.

And while there is no cash at risk, Postmedia's commitment of $50 million in ads and services does involve both real costs and its reputation.

Combine Mogo's ad budget and the contribution from Postmedia and the small company has a marketing budget equal to BC Lotteries, which spent $26 million on advertising and marketing last year. That was enough to encourage British Columbians to lose $2.4 billion - $6.6 million a day - gambling.

If Postmedia's giant marketing contribution doesn't produce results — if you haven't heard of Mogo by now, for example — that undermines the corporation's claims of effectiveness.

Postmedia has already been slashing print advertising rates, down 16 per cent in the last two years, reflecting both its falling circulation and fierce competition from giants like Facebook and Google. If the $50-million boost for Mogo doesn't produce real results, it will be even harder to convince other companies Postmedia should be part of their marketing budget.

But what do I know? Postmedia's board extended CEO Paul Godfrey's contract Tuesday. It was to expire in 2018; now he's to stay on to the end of 2020. Despite five years of decline, an inability to deliver on plans to revitalize the business and massive losses in shareholder value, somebody thinks Godfrey remains the person to lead Postmedia into what is likely its brief future.

Coca in Peru and Colombia, and the stupidity of the war on drugs 18 Oct 2016 10:09 AM (8 years ago)

"Why are Peru, Colombia Coca Numbers Going in Opposite Directions?"
That was the headline on a recent Insight Crime report. I am a fan of the site, which focuses on organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, offering valuable reporting and analysis.
But the answer to the question posed in that headline seems obvious.
Cocaine demand isn't going down. Market forces mean suppliers will find ways to meet the demand.
So if Peru is producing less coca, the leaves that end up as cocaine, Colombia or some other country will be producing more.
And Peru is producing less, thanks to government eradication campaigns. "Peru has reduced coca cultivation by almost one-third in the last five years, according to figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and in 2015 the country registered the lowest amount of coca sown in the last 15 years," the website reports.
But across the border in Colombia, things are different. Colombia went through its own eradication campaigns, cutting coca cultivation in half between 2007 and 2012.
The graph with the article shows the result. As Peru's cultivation went down, Colombia's increased to help meet the global demand for cocaine.
In 2011, the two countries had about the same number of hectares under coca cultivation, for a combined total of 126,200.
Last year, Peru's cultivation had been reduced by about 22,000 hectares and Colombia's had increased by 32,000 hectares. The combined total was 136,300.
The article offers some explanations for the trends, including community resistance to eradication efforts in Colombia and the involvement of FARC's left-wing guerrillas in production.
But the underlying reality has been established through almost a century of failed, wildly expensive efforts to deal with drug issues by limiting supply.
Cut production in one area, and another country will increase production to fill the gap. Make it harder to get heroin, and users will turn to prescription opiates. Crack down on the availability of those drugs, and fentanyl emerges as a more deadly alternative.
Attacking the supply side of the drug equation didn't work when the U.S. introduced Prohibition to end alcohol sales in 1920. It hasn't worked in the 45 years since U.S. president Richard Nixon announced a war on drugs.
Yet governments, including Canada, continue the costly, futile and ultimately destructive efforts, ignoring the obvious evidence of their failure, and the terrible damage that has been done.

Paying attention View RSS