City Machinations

If you only took a quick glance through the recently released campaign contributions for each of the three municipal parties, you might fall prey to the classic Vancouver stereotype that the NPA is the home of the wealthy and the city’s left has to scramble for cash for their campaigns.

Except that, for Vancouver’s Fall 2005 municipal campaign, it simply isn’t true.

Sure the NPA spent $1.9 million.

Vision spent $1.5 million and COPE, still struggling with a debt left behind when Green et al abandoned them, spent $530,000.

But where it gets interesting is when you start to compare seats ran for and won.

Vision Vancouver, headlined by Mayoral candidate Jim Green, contested only five council positions plus the mayor’s seat. They won four of them.

Four seats. $1.5 million dollars. That’s $375,000 per council seat. Those are pretty darn expensive seats.

They won four of the six positions contested. No kidding – with that kind of dough, if you couldn’t spread your message, you might have greater problems.

COPE, on the other hand, didn’t put forward their own mayoral candidate, either because they were happy enough with Jim Green or couldn’t find anyone willing to take him on.

But they also contested seats on all three boards: council, school board and parks board. They won six positions at about $83,000 per position. That’s pretty good.

To place COPE’s success in context, Vision spent $4.50 for every $1 COPE spent to win a seat.

I’m sure COPE would have liked to have raised and spent more, but it just wasn’t possible without a headlining mayoral candidate.

Now, let’s contrast Vision’s record with that of the NPA, supposedly the party of big business and the elite, though last I checked, the elite doesn’t hail from Kensington or other points east - parts of the city that the NPA picked up this time around.

The NPA won five council seats, the mayor’s chair, six school board spots and five parks board positions. A grand total of 17 seats at a total cost of $1.9 million dollars. For those doing the math, that’s $111,765 per seat won.

Again, let’s draw the picture. The supposedly left of centre Vision spent over three times more for each elected position than the NPA did for the seats they captured.

Not only that, Vision’s cost for each candidate was a hefty price tag of $250,000 per candidate. The NPA spent about $70,370 per candidate.

Interestingly, the combined spending of Vision and COPE totaled $2.03 million and exceeded that of the NPA. Of course, COPE will say that’s irrelevant, but given together COPE and Vision made up a full slate, I’m not sure it is.

As seen today in 24 Hours Daily

Important Quote

I thought I'd reprise this one as a reminder that the responsibility rests in all of us to hold our elected officials (and the unelected ones, too) to account...

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong". ~Thomas Sowell

First step for better water?

First Nations living on BC reserves face some of the most dangerous drinking water in Canada, revealed Indian Affairs Minister, Jim Prentice, yesterday in Ottawa.

Near to my heart is the Shuswap Band, given my high school years spent in Salmon Arm. There are 8000 Shuswap people still living in BC. Many are found on small, isolated reserves scattered up and down interior river valleys from Soda Creek to Spallumcheen.

Others have moved away from their traditional territory to larger centres like Kamloops or Williams Lake for better employment , education opportunities, and, frankly, healthier living conditions.

Besides the Shuswap, there are six other bands in this province facing the spectre of a water crisis like that which hit the Kashechewan Band in Northern Ontario last year.

Over 1000 residents were evacuated when health problems struck residents.

TV clips of children with disfiguring skin rashes confronted Canadians. Many of us had forgotten, or chosen not to remember, the sub-standard conditions endured by our aboriginal populations.

BC bands at Toosey, Toquaht, Lake Babine (Fort Babine), Canoe Creek, Semiahmoo, and Taku River Tlingit are also highly susceptible to contaminated water.

The package announced this week supplements a $1.6 billion package announced in 2003, but is outside the Kelowna Accord negotiated last fall under the leadership of Premier Campbell.

This water plan calls for a five-point plan to improve standards on all reserves in Canada, but kick-starts work in the 21 communities most at risk:

• Set standards for the design, construction, operation, maintenance and monitoring of reserve water plants.
• Ensure all systems are overseen by certified operators by 2007.
• Kick-start action plans for 21 First Nations considered most at risk.
• Help develop related legislation with input from First Nations.
• Require regular progress reports.

Uniquely under this plan, first nations themselves will be responsible for ensuring their communities meet the standards – a departure from previous paternalistic approaches to dealing with these often troubled communities.

Prentice reiterated what many have already said – money is not the problem on reserves but accountability and standards are.

Phil Fontaine, Head of the Assembly of First Nations was quick to praise the initiative. His interview on CTV was supportive of the Conservative government’s approach.

"I applaud the decision taken by the minister to address these communities immediately. They are in crisis and their situation requires an immediate response,” said Fontaine, who worked closely with Prentice and the government team to put the plan together.

There are nay-sayers, of course. The Federal Liberal critic pooh-poohs the notion that first nations can govern themselves. The Liberals, of course, have spent decades entrenching government into the lives of First Nations– with little success.

Clean water along with accountability, just might be the first step to a new relationship between the Federal government and our struggling aboriginal communities.

(As seen today in 24 Hours)

Why competition is good - even in healthcare

Came across this today on one of my favourite blogs:

Brian Ferguson at A Canadian Econoview (bolding is my emphasis):

The Wall Street Journal ran a little editorial piece the other day which you might have thought had something to say to the public-private health care debate in Canada. And it does, but not in the way you might have thought.

No link, since the WSJ keeps these things well hidden behind a subscription wall and I read it in a paper copy of the Journal, but it ran on Friday, 10 March, and was headed LASIK Lessons:

The gist of the piece is that the reason health care costs so much in the US is that health insurance, as presently structured, makes everybody but the insurer insensitive to the price of care (and if the insurers try to do something about the cost of care they're accused of putting profit ahead of people's health, so they settle for passing the cost on in the form of higher premiums). The WSJ points out that LASIK laser eye surgery is generally not covered by insurance, meaning that most patients having it have to pay the whole shot out of pocket. The result is that the market is open and competitive, in the microeconomic textbook sense, and that competition has been driving the price of the procedure down - one of the few cases in which the price of a medical service has actually fallen.

It's not entirely unique. For example, a few years ago, Germany changed the way it covered prescription drugs under its national health insurance system, shifting from a system in which the patient paid a flat prescription fee regardless of the cost of te medicine to one in which the state set a maximum price that it would pay for individual categories of drugs, leaving the patient to pay any excess out of pocket.

Nina Pavcnik of Dartmouth College's Economics Department wrote a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper on the effect of the change (abstract here) and concluded that .......... producers significantly decrease prices after the change in insurance. Price declines are most pronounced for brand name products. Moreover, branded products that face more generic competitors reduce prices more.

There's also evidence on the same point from the Netherlands (this paper really is the one I mean, even though the abstract doesn't look it).

The Dutch have used a reference pricing system to determine how much the public system will pay for drugs. Basically the reference price set for a class of close substitute drugs is the maximum price the public system will pay for any of the drugs in that category - if a patient wants a more expensive one, the or she has to pay the difference out of pocket. A few years ago the Dutch cut the reference price on a whole range of drugs, so that, if the price of the prescription remained unchanged, the amount the patient had to pay out of pocket would increase. In fact, drug companies cut their prices, something they would only do if the market was very competitive.

So there's evidence from around the world that, when patients are faced with making a significant out of pocket payment for care they become very price sensitive, and, importantly, that suppliers respond to that price sensitivity by cutting prices. Sounds like textbook intro microeconomics because it is textbook intro microeconomics.

Now, one of the loudest claim made by opponents of increased market involvement in Canadian health care is that increased market involvement will drive the cost of health care up - just look at the US, right? So does this evidence give them a moment's pause? Of course not.

I won't name names, since I wouldn't want to embarass the University of Toronto by pointing out the type of logic employed by faculty in their medical school, but anti-market types have been faced with the LASIK evidence before, and their response has been that the fact that competition drives the price of care down is bad because it encourages people to have unnecessary care (by which, of course, they mean care that the individual patient thinks is worth sacrificing purchasing power to obtain but which the experts think he should just do without). So, markets are bad because they drive costs up except when they drive down costs in which case markets are bad because they drive costs down. Got that?

It's much clearer if you start from the premise that whatever markets do must be bad.

My goodness - if people keep writing this stuff, we won't have any sacred cows left in this country.

Labour success...and unrest.

March 31st looms large on the labour scene these days.

With only 15 days left for public sector unions to grab the $3000 bonus for each of their members, discussions are fast and furious at bargaining tables around the province.

Of the 39 bargaining units that needed to strike a deal by the deadline set by Finance Minister Carole Taylor, four have already reached four year contracts.

These include 1,500 COPE workers at BC Hydro who settled for 10.5 percent over four years. 1,600 electrical workers at BC Hydro have also cut their deal.

SFU and its faculty association have reached agreement and the 1,100 members will be voting over the next week to ratify.

Finally, BC Transit office workers have also reached settlement at 2.2% per year.

All four of these groups will receive their portion of the $1 billion bonus set aside in last month’s budget for workers who come to agreement.

So word on the weekend that the BC Government Employees Union – or BCGEU - had walked from the bargaining table probably isn’t sitting so well with its members who were counting on that extra $3000 this year.

Although 80% of those who voted were in favour of job action to turn up the pressure on their negotiations, it isn’t the union leadership who’ll lose out if the two sides can’t come to agreement – it is the members.

Because the BCGEU contract doesn’t expire until April, a threat of a strike doesn’t hold a lot of sway for the deal that needs to be reached now.

Union leader George Heyman says that he’s fighting over wages and concerns about privatization. But reported on radio from the bargaining sessions this weekend was that the two sides were very close on wages.

The BCGEU, like most public sector unions, lives in fear that the government will contract out services. The spectre of losing union dues and potentially losing members means less money to run campaigns against the government during the election.

The BC Liberals were elected to run government better. There have been screw-ups along the way, but their drive to find the most efficient manner in which to deliver public services to BC residents has been on the right track.

Sometimes that means finding a private-sector partner to work with. Guess what? The private sector employs people too. Some of them even belong to unions.

You’d think from the way the BCGEU was talking, after contracting out, public services are suddenly delivered by robots, rather than by fellow contributing members of society.

Workers absolutely have the right to bargain collectively and that’s the reason the union exists. But their members will lose out if they let their leadership play politics with their pay packets.

As seen today in 24 Hours Daily.

Hard Rock Dreams

Mining is an important industry in Canada and BC – a fact that was brought home to me this week when I attended the PDAC conference in Toronto, an international mining convention with attendance close to 20,000.

Grizzled old prospectors straight from the bush rubbed shoulders with well-heeled mining executives. Delegate badges read South Africa, Indonesia, Russia, China, India, and Brazil, among many others.

Not surprisingly, the mood was celebratory. Prices for commodities like gold, copper and zinc are reaching or surpassing all-time highs.

Producing mines, while facing increasing costs from fuel and shortages of skilled labour (hence mining wages skyrocketing among the highest in the world), are finding ready markets for their products.

Companies in the exploration stage are snapping up mining claims around the world eager to take part in the exploding growth of the sector.

There to capture their piece of the global mining pie were BC Mining Minister, Bill Bennett and the newly minted Canadian Minister of Natural Resources, Gary Lunn.

Minister Bill Bennett is passionate about bringing mining back to life in British Columbia and his ministry’s team was out in full force. From a booth on the trade show floor to hand-shaking at social events, BC appeared very keen to let the world know that mining doesn’t hold pariah status in the province any longer.

And for those of you who chalk BC’s booming mining sector up to high commodity prices – you are only partly correct, as the Minister told me. While the prices played a role to jump-start exploration and development work in the province, focus on streamlining the regulatory burden and opening relationships with First Nations have also been critical.

BC’s share of Canada’s exploration industry has grown from around 5% in 2001 to just under 10% in 2003 – a number that the Minister said is closer to mid-teens today. This increase is a pretty clear indicator that these changes are having an impact. Mining companies deliver $79 million in direct payments to government, not including the spin off effects from operations and workers.

Earlier this year, at the Roundup Mining Conference held January in Vancouver, Minister Bennett announced a job training program focused specifically on mining. These jobs are highly skilled and pay well, averaging $94,500 a year.

Because of these benefits, attracting mining investment is a competitive business and many countries were at the event showcasing their nations, including troubled spots like Nigeria and Mozambique.

But, as one industry leader told me after hearing the Nigerian Minister of Mines speak, “Unfortunately, flying bullets just don’t make for a great mining environment.”

Just one more factor in our favour as BC builds a strong and vibrant mining industry.

(As seen today in 24 Hours)

*Full disclosure - I work for a Vancouver-based mining company*

Excuse me, I need a phone booth...

This week the premier is in Europe saving public health-care.

Despite what you hear from the HEU, the NDP and others, the BC Liberal government isn’t hell-bent on destroying your access to health services.

The visits to Norway, Sweden, France and England are aimed to study what these countries are doing right in their public systems and what we can learn from them.

By the way, all of these nations rank above us by the World Health Organization. They are giving their citizens better health care – publicly-funded health care – in a more sustainable fashion.

And, horrors, they all have some private involvement in health care. The government pays, the private-sector delivers.

Carole James’ well-considered answer to our unsustainable health care system is for the Premier to visit BC hospitals.

That would be fine if he wants to check in on the $3.8 billion of additional funding his government has put into the current system, including the $1.5 billion this year alone. Or meet some of new doubled number of medical school graduates or the 6500 new nurses ready for patient care in 2006.

The health vested interests aren’t interested in seeing you and me get better health care. They are focused on their own agendas.

Which is a shame because when 44% of the tax dollars collected goes to health care, and that percentage increases each decade, sooner or later we’re going to hit a wall.

Which begs the question: why are the NDP so afraid to examine other options?

Would they prefer we continue with the unsustainable system we have so that one day it breaks down in a big colossal mess?

The NDP know perfectly well that our nurses and doctors and health care professionals are pushed each day to provide excellent patient care in an environment with never enough resources. Regardless if the government ramps up spending by $1 billion or $2 billion or $3 billion, there is never enough money.

Learning from other countries and jurisdictions which have found innovative solutions to their unsustainable systems is one really good way to go.

Another is the series of public consultations that will be scheduled over the coming year. These will ask what is important to you in our public system.

As Gordon Campbell said from Sweden, “British Columbians should understand that while we have the best health care system in Canada, Canada does not, in spite of all the things we say, have the best health care in the world."

Them’s fighting words in this country.

But kudos to a Premier willing to stand up and challenge us to create a better, stronger, longer-lasting public health care system.

(As seen today in 24 Hours Daily)

This pretty much sums it up, actually...

This was published today in the paper that first brought you the controversial muslim cartoons.

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq