Three cheers for us!

Congratulations to Jack Layton and the Federal NDP, who have now successfully sheparded their climate change accountability bill into Third Reading.
Well done!

harmonized sales tax

Its time for the BC Liberals to admit to what the HST really is. Its an attack on the health of British Columbians. Colin Hansen, Gordon Campbell and the rest of the BC Liberals have told us that the HST will be used to pay for the BC health care system. Maybe it will, maybe it will not. What the HST certainly will do is make it more likely that those health care services are going to be needed by British Columbians. The harmonized sales tax increases the cost of many of the activities we take upon ourselves in order to stay healthy; gym memberships, sports fees, healthy groceries and even life saving safety equipment will all increase in price thanks to the harmonized sales tax. The HST also punishes people for thinking of being environmentally friendly. Many people walk, bike or ride public transit to get to work, which is healthier for both people and the environment than taking private vehicles. The HST increases the price of transit fare, transit passes and bicycles, making it less cost effective to use those forms of transportation. This is going to create a more sedentary society that will suffer from increased health risks. Its insanity that the BC Liberals are going to use the HST, which they admit will bring in less government revenue, to pay for a service that will be used more because of that same tax. Please, tell your local MLA to vote against this attack on your health, vote against taxing healthy living.

Education by the numbers

Today was the opening day of a new session of the BC Legislature. I for one am glad that the representatives of the People have started to go back to work; the vacation they were able to enjoy was not one that their constituents were able to have, as most of us had school or jobs that required our daily attention.
Speaking of schools, today's floor debate centered around that very topic. It would have been a very informative debate, one that the people of British Columbia deserve to hear. Except that the governing BC Liberals didn't bother showing up with anything other than stock answers.
As it turns out, there isn't anything that is going to be done about the rampant school closures that have already occurred throughout the province. There's also nothing planned to help save the schools which are slated to be closed in the next couple of years. These school closures continue to hit our rural communities the hardest; these places are already losing people and skilled labour, and without schools there is no way to replace those who are leaving. But, don't let that worry you! Minister MacDiarmid has assured us that those students who still have a school to go to will receive more funding than ever before. The only problem here is just making sure they have a school to be taught in.
Of course, getting to an open school isn't the only problem for today's students. Once they're in the buildings, students are finding themselves in more crowded classrooms than ever. This government created legislation that specifically outlines the size and composition of British Columbia classrooms. What this government has failed to do is to enforce this legislation. Since the legislation has passed, there has been a forty-five percent increase in the number of British Columbia classrooms that violate those size limitations. The same can be said for the number of classes that exceed the limit of personalized education plan students. Forty-five percent increases are an indisputable number, with some districts reporting a more than one hundred percent increase in these violations.
Once again, the only line that the BC Liberals are willing to give is that funding has continued to increase per student, even as enrollment rates have declined in the province.
I have a problem with this Government meme about funding increasing. Mainly that it doesn't reflect reality. If you surveyed the various school districts in British Columbia, you would find it nearly impossible to find one that is not seriously in debt for the upcoming fiscal year. School districts are mandated by law to pass balanced budgets, so this has caused incredibly cruel cuts to be made to school budgets, cuts that affect our children's ability to learn in a productive environment.
Of course, this is probably news for the Liberals and particularly for Minister MacDiarmid. The minister, when asked about her portfolio and specifically the cuts her department has downloaded onto the school boards, began a pleasant, and utterly irrelevant, discussion about how children in some schools are learning the value of saving money to help Haiti. This is an admirable goal being expressed by the children. I wonder how amazed they would be if someone started asking them to save up so they could pay to get through the second grade this year; its more of a possibility than the BC Liberals would like to admit, thanks to their shameless handling of the education portfolio.
BC Liberal promises have fallen by the wayside over and over again, and in no area has this hurt more than in education. Minister MacDiarmid has promised that education funding will be a priority for this government. I sincerely hope that this time, the BC Liberal promise will mean more than empty words and a slashed budget.

I come today from the budget debate and the remains of yesterday's debate on education. The update from here on are straight from the hansard debate; I can only hope that the people speaking weren't actually saying something else.
Today's budget was absolutely schizophrenic in terms of the money earmarked for our education system. We have been promised continued increases in funding, and yet at the same time the Finance Minister is challenging our school districts to find even more cuts to make, cuts that our education system simply cannot afford. This government doesn't seem to be aware that there is nothing left to cut, that we are now at the point where teachers are losing their jobs and entire buildings are being sold off just to maintain balanced budgets for our school districts.
That is what a BC Liberal promise for increased education funding looks like; it looks like cuts to our school's services and it looks like reduced quality of our education system. Where is this increased funding? Its surely not going to the people and places that need it most desperately.

I love insanity

I wonder if Mr. Chris Hanzek would like to cite those studies that claim abstinence reduces unwanted pregnancies and STI transmission rates. I know for a fact that he is wrong, but it would be interesting to see what reality he exists in where his comments hold up to scrutiny. Looking to our southern neighbours, for the first time in over a decade, the Centers for Disease Control note that teenage pregnancy rates and STI infection rates are increasing. Interestingly, this coincided with the mandate of abstinence-only education brought to America by then-President George W. Bush. It may be hard to believe, but there appears to be a correlation between abstinence-only education and rising rates of teen pregnancy and STI transmission. The studies I cite do not show the extent of the problem, as pregnancy rates do continue to diminish into 2005, as students who were originally given comprehensive sex education age out of the system, or they remember what they were taught prior to the imposition of the new ideological agenda.
Mr. Hanzek claims that you don’t really need a study to show that telling people not to have sex and then hoping for the best works better than ensuring that young people have the information needed to make informed choices, and then giving them the tools needed to stay safe. Unfortunately, reality would tend to disagree with him. Perhaps we really do need such a study, so that biased, utterly incorrect information such as that being peddled by Mr. Hanzek and Ms. Stilwell can be debunked and our children can still get the information they need to stay safe and STI free.
Below are citations of actual studies taken on the subject, showing that abstinence-only education does not reduce unwanted pregnancy or STI transmission rates.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00053654.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/infosheets/infosheet_teen_pregnancy.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/infosheets/infosheet_teen_pregnancy.pdf

Words and actions, differentiating again

The BC Liberals have made a lot of noise in recent months, talking about how they are continuing to fund health care and education even in the midst of the economic downturn that they claimed would never affect British Columbia. It would be a change of pace for the BC Liberals if the words they gave us matched the actions they took in the Legislature. We have been told rather continually that education funding per student has not lowered under the BC Liberals, and has instead increased. If this is true, and by all means there is a lack of evidence to support their case, then how can they explain the dozens of school closures that have occurred across every school district in the province? These closures do not reflect the claimed priorities of the BC Liberals, and they most certainly do not represent the wishes of the people, who rely on these schools to foster stronger communities and educate our province’s future professionals.

The failure here is from the Ministry of Education, and especially its current Minister, Dr. Margaret MacDiarmid. Vague platitudes about the Throne Speech’s plan to create all day kindergarten and ‘bold strategies to renew the delivery of education’ do not replace schools that we have already lost. To be frank, adding full day kindergarten adds a further burden to school districts that already face budget shortfalls. Where will the money come to pay for all day kindergarten, as the BC Liberals have promised to deliver. Certainly, it is within their power to create all day kindergarten, their legislative majority would allow it. So, perhaps local MLAs would like to tell the population where the money for such a program will come from. Perhaps it will be more appealing to the BC Liberals to tell us why they can’t pass their legislative promises that are in highlighted in the Throne Speech, promises that were highlighted by the Minister in charge of the portfolio in question.

The Liberals keep claiming that education is one of their highest priorities. Our Premier promised that we would become the best educated place on earth under his leadership; this is a difficult claim to make when his leadership has led to the closure of so many schools. It is time for the BC Liberals to create commonsense, workable plans for our education system, one that takes into account the needs of everywhere in British Columbia, and a plan that is based on reality. The pipe dream they are selling the people now is just that, a pipe dream that is nowhere near becoming a reality.

Poverty revisited, how to kill the beast

To eliminate poverty, we must find jobs for those who are underemployed. Not just any job, these must be jobs that pay a livable wage that ensures all the essential needs of the person are covered; a shelter, food, water, and clothes. Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone to have, and there are also sadly not enough homes to put those people in as shelters. Society has become enamored of the idea of building large single dwellings that would house the rich, while blatantly ignoring the plight of the poorest in society. These buildings are an inefficient use of municipal land space, as the population density of these buildings is much lower than of condominiums or other affordable housing. These buildings could be replaced with condominium towers that could then be used to house larger numbers of homeless people for the same cost and revenue produced by a single larger home.
Of course, the inner cities have a different problem, in that the condominium spaces already being created are devoted solely for high income persons, and are not designed to be used as cooperative or subsidized housing. This is disappointing, as it is the inner cities where such a program of housing subsidization would be most effective. The solution here is to allow governments to subsidize part of the rental costs of the unit, so that lower income citizens can also be considered for occupancy of current housing projects.
What I propose is that those persons who are in the two lowest income tax brackets or are currently searching for employment be allowed to join construction crews who are specifically tasked to the construction of government-owned cooperative housing. These low income persons would be joining crews of regular construction personnel and would be given the training needed to occupy a construction zone safely. The goal of such a project is twofold; to first give these persons a wage and therefore an ability to consume goods and contribute to the tax base of the province and secondly to provide these citizens with a stable home and job from which they can wean themselves off of government assistance. These cooperative housing projects, once completed, would be rented out in a fashion similar to privately developed property, except that the owner would be the Provincial Government which could charge rates equal to the fair market value of such a space, with subsidies available for those in lower income brackets, ensuring that over time, the project becomes a net asset to government revenue.
Completed projects would of course be open to all citizens who could pay the fair market value for the apartment, but preferential treatment would go towards those who worked on the construction project. Further preferential treatment would be given to those who work on the project by means of further reducing rent payments per month and through on site job placement counseling. This specific service would ensure that those who worked on the original project would not be condemned to returning to poverty immediately after completing work, and would instead be able to find a new job that would continue to pay a living wage necessary to survive in their new home.
Obviously, there are certain issues that must be worked out from both a political and economic viewpoint in order to adequately fund and complete these projects. First, from a political standpoint, the Provincial government must be willing to accept high initial costs that will eventually be offset by the new stream of revenue being produced by the government owned housing complexes. Particularly in the current recession, this is difficult to do thanks to the rising deficit and the unwillingness of being portrayed as spending limitlessly. Political will and leadership will be required here, as the long term benefits may not immediately be seen by the party that enacts this policy. This should not be a consideration, as improving the lives of the people these projects would affect is the primary concern.
Secondly, the problem of hiring on new people to construction firms, particularly those who would not initially be trained to participate in such an occupation. There are legitimate safety and organizational concerns that could be brought up by current employees, specifically related to lack of specialized training and the appearance that non-unionized labour was being created from the working poor to replace those who already worked for the company and have been retained for long periods of time. Any form of this legislation would have to pass a clause stating that this new labour source would have to be used as a supplement to the regular construction crews, and could not be used as lower waged replacements for long tenured workers. To this end, the new workers could be paid ten percent less than the unionized and tenured crew staff, in order to ensure that fairness in the workplace is respected while still ensuring adequate financial stability for the new crews.
Corporations themselves would balk at such an enormous cost to their operating expenses, which could be appeased through a large, targeted tax cut specifically for those companies that decide to embrace the program. Furthermore, these companies would, naturally, be awarded the contracts to build the housing projects, but would also receive preferential treatment in the bids for other construction processes for the next twelve calendar months, to ensure that profits, and additional projects for local employees, continue to rise instead of stagnating.
This once again brings us to the problem of preventing government budgetary collapse, particularly in the middle of a recession. It is this author’s opinion that nothing should immediately be done to recuperate the cost these projects would impose upon the fiscal situation of the province. These imbalances, which would spike in the initial part of the project, would continue to decrease over time, while revenue would remain steady and begin to increase as more tenants enter the projects at market value and more projects are completed. This would cause revenues to increase at a vastly superior rate to the declining cost of expenses, eventually reaping into a budgetary asset as opposed to a liability.

Proud of who we are, yet no respect from our peers

Our schools are accepting baseless discrimination even while being ordered to comply with non-discrimination policies towards queer youth. Bullying towards the queer community is still prevalent in British Columbian schools, this in spite of the Ministry of Education requiring all school districts to create codes of conduct that enshrine non-discrimination against queer persons. The BC Liberal Government prefers to wash their hands of the issue, claiming that there is ‘no evidence’ that school boards aren’t working to comply with the Ministry order. This is difficult claim to make when fewer than ten of the sixty school districts in British Columbia have complied with the order, and why should they? The Government has shown that it’s not interested in actually doing anything to aid queer youth in the schools; there are no penalties for failing to update the district codes of conduct to reflect the new policy, and the results speak for themselves.
Just in British Columbia, over sixty percent of self identifying queer people admit to facing verbal abuse from their peers because of their sexual orientation, while anywhere between thirty and fifty percent face other forms of harassment at schools. In addition to these startling numbers, over seventy-five percent of queer youth report feeling unsafe in our schools, and shockingly, twenty-five percent admit that they have been physically harassed because of their sexual orientation. Children are in our schools to learn, and they cannot learn when they fear for their safety. This is an issue that is far beyond simple divisive politics, this is about making sure our children, all our children, are able to grow and learn in a safe environment without fear of being attacked because of who they are or who they are perceived to be. This harassment doesn’t come without substantial emotional and physical harm to the children that it is inflicted upon. Queer youth who report harassment are over two hundred and fifty percent more likely to intentionally harm themselves, three hundred percent more likely to seriously consider suicide and are four hundred percent more likely to attempt suicide.
The BC Government has made a good first step, allowing the elective Social Justice 12 course to be taught in BC schools. But this is not an issue that should be elective for students to avoid until their last year of public schooling. Even when we don’t see them in the classrooms, there are queer students all around us in the school system. How do we as a society accept that we are a fair and equal society when we refuse to teach our children that the myriad sexual orientations and gender identifications are not only natural, but are just as ‘good’ and ‘proper’ as heterosexuality? What is equal about celebrating the child with heterosexual parents and then going silent when meeting a student’s two fathers? If this government is truly dedicated to aiding queer students and erasing the pain and suffering they face in our schools, they will enact legislation and policies that not only make queer friendly literature available to all students in an age appropriate manner, but they will make sure that it is not as an elective, but as a requirement to graduation, just like non-discrimination lessons are required for racism and sexism.
It is long past time that we stop ignoring the signs as juvenile teasing and start accepting that homophobia is still a prevalent part of school society. British Columbians pride themselves on how open and accepting we are, so now it is time to start backing up our words with action, and end homophobia in our schools.