This is especially true when the fate of vitally important, publicly owned assets such as water hangs in the balance. To have faith that water resources are managed responsibly, basic facts must be known. Who has approved access to water? How much do they have access to? And where do they get it?

As the gatekeeper for information on the booming water usage in British Columbia’s natural gas sector, B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) has the answers to such questions and a whole bunch more. That’s because the OGC has statutory authority to issue short-term water-use permits to natural gas companies. Because of that, the OGC can tell you which companies hold water rights, the name of the creek, river, lake or reservoir that the water rights pertain to, what the maximum daily water withdrawal limits are for individual permits, and even the coordinates that will allow you to find a particular water source (in many cases an unnamed creek) on a map.

But the OGC does not post such essential information on its website, and has actually suggested to members of the public that have requested such information that it may be difficult and costly to retrieve.

None of this makes sense. Far more complex data is maintained by other provincial government agencies and is readily available. If you go here, for example, you can learn more than you may care to about what is logged in British Columbia – by company, by type of tree, and by whether the trees were logged on public or private lands. You can even learn how much usable wood companies elect to leave behind at logging sites rather than truck to mills, or what individual companies pay in fees to the provincial government for the trees they log on public lands.

You may need a bit of guidance to search the database. But a helpful public servant – at a contact number listed on the webpage – will gladly guide you through the steps. That’s how seriously the provincial government views the public’s right to know when it comes to forests.

When it comes to simple, baseline information on water, however, such transparency is nowhere to be seen on the OGC’s website.

This does not inspire confidence, and at the worst possible time – when the fossil fuel-rich northeast corner of B.C. is experiencing unusually severe droughts.

The oil and gas industry is the only industry in British Columbia that gains access to water without Ministry of Environment approval. All other users – from municipal water plants, to aluminum and iron smelters, to pulp and paper mills, to farmers irrigating their fields – obtain short-term or long-term water allocations from the provincial ministry responsible for protecting our environment.

The preferential status bestowed to the energy sector inevitably breeds suspicion. Such suspicion only grows when information that ought to be readily available is not.

The OGC is more than aware that escalating water usage by natural gas companies has the potential to become a thorny public policy issue. Particularly as companies engage in increased usage of “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking” operations to unlock gas trapped in deeply buried shale formations. Such operations pump enormous quantities of water at thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure to fracture or break seams in the underground rock, thereby releasing the trapped gas.

To assuage concerns about such water usage, the OGC recently released a report on the topic. But reading the document simply reinforces the impression that the public is largely in the dark about the industry’s water consumption.

At one point, the OGC says that “a preliminary look” at water usage by natural gas companies operating in one shale gas-rich region of B.C.  known as the Horn River Basin found that the companies used “less than five per cent” of what they were allocated.

Putting aside what a “preliminary look” means, the report presents no figures on what water was assigned in the Horn River Basin versus what was actually used.

Once again, this does not inspire confidence.

As the regulator responsible for issuing water permits to energy companies, the OGC can easily post information on water allocations. It can also, if it chooses, post information on what the companies report using by way of the water assigned to them.

Such basic accounting information is an essential prerequisite to the sustainable management of water resources. As such, it properly belongs in the public domain.

Examining a hospital project, the Quebec AG report finds the P3 more expensive than public procurement.  He finds that Infrastructure Quebec, the agency that plays the role of Partnerships BC in British Columbia, continues to use assumptions the AG had criticized in earlier reports. 

Discussing the report Quebec’s Auditor General says:

This analysis contains two major inaccuracies. First inaccuracy: a major error in the analysis model, which in presenting a $33.8 million variance, results in showing that the PPP delivery method is preferable to the conventional method, whereas in the absence of this error, the conventional method is more economical by at least $10.4 million.

The Auditor General complains that the P3 deal does not promote accountability and that the project:

was done or will be done without having a vision of the projects as a whole in terms of their global costs and the operating budgets that will be necessary for these new institutions.

Infrastructure Quebec uses the same flawed methodology  that Partnerships BC used here to assess P3 hospital projects in Surrey, Victoria, Kelowna, Vernon, Fort St. John and Prince George.

Before discussing these, however, people should be aware that in my day job I am a researcher for the Canadian Union of Public Employees which represents some of the non-teaching staff of the Board.  I do not normally work on issues regarding schools.

I am not going to discuss specific budget issues since I lack the financial information.  What I do want to look at are both process and policy issues that arise from this report.

The School Act gives the Minister of Education the right to appoint “special advisors” in school boards to examine a broad range of issues regarding achievement and educational, financial or community matters.  These appointments do not require consultation with the board under review.  The Minister of Education sets terms of reference and the advisor reports to the Minister.

On April 14^th the province appointed B.C.’s Comptroller General, Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland as special advisor in the VSB to examine “the board’s budget development process, benchmarks, financial forecasts and position, management capacity, administrative expenditures, and opportunities for economies of scale, and make recommendations to assist the board to meet its obligations under the School Act. “

By setting the terms of reference for this review the Minister set the agenda.  The Comptroller notes in her report that:

Specifically excluded from our scope of work was the structure of the provincial funding model for education.

In other words, the terms of reference forbid the special advisor to even look at the issue being raised by every school board in British Columbia.  This automatically limited the review to only those issues the province wanted to address.

The Comptroller’s report goes far beyond what the province will permit its own auditor, the Auditor General to look at.  The Auditor General Act stipulates that the AG:

must not call into question the merits of program policies or objectives of the government, a government organization or a trust fund

The AG may examine the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the province’s operations but he must not call into question policy choices made by the government.  Many of the things the Comptroller questions are policy choices made by the VSB to serve their community.  The School Board is mandated to meet the educational needs of children yet the Comptroller complains in her report that “cost containment is not their first priority.”

The Comptroller writes at length on what she considers the VSB’s extensive advocacy activity.  This advocacy activity is focused on the province’s funding model for education, which of course the Comptroller is forbidden to even examine in the context of the Board’s finances.

Finally, in terms of process, when the Auditor General reviews some aspect of provincial government activity he is required by law to provide a copy of his report to the Minister of Finance seven days before e provides the report to the legislature.  In fact, he generally goes much further providing government a chance to respond in writing.  These responses are included in his reports.

In contrast, before being released publicly the Comptroller’s report went only to the Minister of Education and, apparently, the government’s communications shop.  The government issued a press release when the report was made public highlighting all negative comments in the report.  The School Board was not given an advance copy nor was it permitted to add its reaction to the report as the government normally does with Auditor General reports.  The School Board was left to respond on the fly.

The Comptroller’s report says:

The Ministry of Education describes the governance approach [for school boards] as a “co-governance” model between the Ministry of Education and school districts.

From a policy perspective her report demonstrates just how little “co-governance” the province is now prepared to permit school boards to exercise.  The government gave the VSB no say in whether or not a “special advisor” was required, who that advisor would be nor what their mandate would be.  They were not even permitted to see the report before publication.

Despite the fact that virtually every school board in the province is raising issues about the education funding model the VSB was singled out for “review.”  From a policy perspective it must be asked if this is an attempt to deal with provincial issues or an exercise in intimidation.

The review clearly goes far beyond what the province will allow itself to be subjected to in reviews by the Auditor General.  This double standard also raises questions about the so-called co-governance model.

The choice of the Comptroller as the special advisor raises questions as well.  The Comptroller is not independent in the sense that the Auditor General is independent.  She works for the provincial government.  People have spoken highly of her integrity but one of the results of this report is that no one in the future will accept that the Comptroller can be trusted as independent when she is assigned by the province to review politically sensitive issues outside of the provincial government.

In recent years school boards in British Columbia have been allowed less and less room to exercise their mandate in support of children and education.  Both the province’s funding model and changing provincial mandates have limited the ability of boards to make decisions.  One final policy question arising from the Comptroller’s report is whether this is the first step in an agenda to even further strip school boards of their powers in a move to more direct provincial control.  If it is the province may have cause to regret the move.  Once the curtain of school boards is removed the province will be visible to everyone as the man behind the curtain.

You need to register with Bid BC to see the actual documents but you can see a summary of the project in the Journal of Commerce. 

In the 2009 provincial election the pretrial centre was a contentious issue.  The province wanted to impose it in Burnaby against the wishes of local citizens.  It was one of the issues that cost Liberal MLA John Nuraney his job.  The project was subsequently moved to Surrey.

 The RFQ document shows this will be one of Partnerships BC’s Design/Build/Finance/Operate P3s.  The RFQ says:

It is anticipated that the Authority will make progress/milestone payments during construction (the amount, timing and terms and conditions of which will be set out in the RFP, but which are anticipated to be in the range of 40-50 per cent of Project capital costs). Project Co will be required to provide all other required funding for design, construction, finance costs and maintenance, by way of equity and/or debt financing.

The pretrial P3 doesn’t actually plan to put guns in the hands of the private prison operator.  Aside from helping to finance the jail the private operator will provide the following services:

i. General Management Services;

ii. Plant Services;

iii. Environmental Services;

iv. Grounds Maintenance and Landscaping Services;

v. Help Desk Services;

vi. Utility Management Services;

vii. Waste Management and Recycling Services; and

viii. Pest Control Services

BC is not the first jurisdiction in Canada to look at private prisons.  The Canadian and Ontario governments have looked at private facilities.  New Brunswick experimented with a privately operated prison before returning it to public management.  The United States has turned to private prisons to house their skyrocketing number of inmates.

There are many studies in the US looking at issues with private prisons.  Some of the issues involve low paid workers,  understaffing, staff turnover and mistreatment of prisoners.  Despite this, there is little evidence of savings. 

There is an increasing volume of evidence here in BC and in other provinces that P3s cost more than public delivery – see here, here, here and here.   But giving corporations powers over prisoners is a different matter, I would argue, much like giving churches power over residential schools.  Accountability is a serious issue with P3s and accountability is critical when we as a society take complete control of someone’s life.

When a private company finances a prison this gives them a say in its operation, even if their employees are limited to the gardeners and pest control staff.  And it opens the door to the American style of complete private management of prisons.

The fashionable electoral reform idea this year is to give corporations a real say. It’s time for individual citizens to share their electoral democracy with corporations to give meaning to those old legal rulings that said corporations are people too.

Of course, many were shocked at the Jan. 21st decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which said corporate entities have full First Amendment free speech rights, thereby trashing decades of U.S. legislation to limit election advertising spending by corporation and unions. There are now no limits on the amounts corporations can spend on political advertising in the U.S.

But did you know Gordon Campbell and the B.C. government are looking at the option of one-upping the Supremes  by giving corporations the right to vote?

It’s true.

Last October, the Premier announced the creation of a joint task force with the Union of B.C. Municipalities to review the rules for local government elections. The terms of reference for the task force direct them to examine giving corporations the right to vote in B.C. municipal elections. The committee is to report out in May and changes to legislation are expected not long after.

It seems corporations in B.C. feel they have inadequate influence on government decision-making, particularly about taxes. All that tax cutting and tax shifting of the last twenty years is apparently not enough.

Industrial ratepayers  in forest communities and commercial ratepayers in Vancouver have recently been pushing hard for homeowners to pay a greater percentage of municipal taxes. Starting in July, forest companies operating in six B.C. communities simply refused to pay their full tax bills and arbitrarily sent in cheques for only a quarter of what they had been legally assessed. The B.C. Supreme Court has ordered Catalyst Paper to pay in full, but the company is appealing and communities with Catalyst mills are feeling the crunch. Port Alberni is now planning to increase taxes for homeowners by 23.6%, while also reducing and contracting out services.

Corporations once had the right to vote in B.C. local elections, but that was eliminated by the Barrett government in 1973, restored by the Bennett government in 1976 and eliminated altogether again by the Harcourt government in 1993.

Today, there is no corporate voting in any other province and indeed – according to the task force discussion paper – the only place in the world which has it now is “The City”, that small portion of greater London which is home to much of the British financial sector.

The discussion paper also raises the amazing prospect that if B.C. does give corporations the right to vote, non-discrimination clauses in trade agreements like NAFTA and TILMA may make it impossible to restrict that right to B.C. corporations only. There’s every chance the trade agreements will force us to open up voting to foreign corporations doing business in B.C., as well.

Old fashioned ideas like “one human being, one vote” may soon be behind us. If this goes ahead, we can look forward to corporations finally having effective input and full equality with human beings.

It’s time for a refresher on all this. I think I’ll take another look at Joel Bakan’s outstanding video “The Corporation“.

Personally, I think Loukidelis’s leadership was almost completely responsible for BC’s FOI legislation keeping any credibility.  When the legislation was introduced under the NDP government it was considered among the most progressive in the world.  Then the Commissioner’s Office faced funding cuts under both NDP and Liberal governments.  Understaffing has meant getting decisions can take years. Bad interpretations of the legislation whittled away at clauses that should have guaranteed access to government information.  Liberal amendments increased timelines and the burden on applicants.  Whole new areas were declared out of bounds while BC Ferries was reorganized as a private organization and out of reach of FOI.

Despite this, Loukidelis faced the Campbell government down on a number of issues.  His opposition was largely responsible for stopping amendments that would have moved the government’s privatization schemes completely out of reach of FOI.  His determined criticism forced major changes to the privacy of BC medical information handed over to private American companies to manage.  He ruled that former Deputy Premier Ken Dobell had breached the rules respecting lobbying.  He also initiated a change in procedures that cuts months out of the FOI process when public bodies just refused to acknowledge or answer requests (deemed refusal).

I violently disagreed with some decisions of his office when I was on the wrong end of them, but on the whole I think he stopped the legislation from becoming a bad joke.

As a public servant for 10 years he acted with principle and according to how he saw the law.  If he keeps this up the Liberals might well have cause to regret appointing him as deputy attorney general.

With Loukidelis’s departure the legislative review of the FOI Act becomes even more important.  This review is required by the Act every six years.  In 2004 a committee made up almost entirely of Liberal MLAs put forward proposals that would have strengthened the role FOI played in government accountability.  The government ignored the report.

Another good report from this committee would be helpful in keeping the possibility of good FOI legislation alive.  If you think our FOI legislation needs to be improved make a submission to the committee.  The deadline for submissions has been extended to February 28.  You can find out all about the committee and its work here.

Dave Schreck has an example of a good, short submission to the committee on his website dated January 12 that is worth looking at.

These cuts have been devastating to many service delivery agencies and will result in the cancellation of programs that benefit the least fortunate in our society: children growing up in low income families, women at risk of violence, the poor. In a recent news release, the CCPA has called for the government to repeal all the cuts made since the February budget.

Make no mistake: these cuts are made because our provincial government wants to end up with a smaller deficit at the end of the fiscal year, not because we cannot afford to help vulnerable groups during a serious recession. Despite the recession, BC is one of the wealthiest provinces in this country. Our provincial debt is relatively low. We certainly have the capacity to cushion the blow of the economic downturn to the more vulnerable individuals and families among us. But our government is choosing not to.

In fact, in their obsession with minimizing the size of the deficit, our policy-makers are pushing people into further hardship. And those who have to endure the pain are those who can least afford it. Kudos to Bill Good for recognizing this simple fact on his CKNW show this morning.

The savings from reduced government grants to social service agencies are $354 million, a mere 0.9% of the overall $40 billion provincial budget for 2009/10. These cuts could easily have been accommodated in only a slightly higher deficit.

The recession is temporary, and so are the current deficits, but the lost educational opportunities for children would never be recovered. It’s penny wise but pound foolish to cut funding to programs that have already been pared to the bone and that provide services with long-term payoffs.

The government is trying to create the impression that cuts are concentrated among “nice to have” but non-essential programs. This is simply not the case. Many of the initiatives that are now being cut have been set up to fill a need that exists because the government is not providing adequate social services and supports out of its core budget. Literacy initiatives, supports for violence against women and children or seniors’ activity programs that keep people healthy and out of hospitals should not be left to the whim of discretionary grants funding. We need to ask ourselves questions such as whether we prefer to pay for programs that enrich the lives of disadvantaged children as they grow up, or for policing and anti-gang measures a few years in the future.

The secrecy with which these cuts have been implemented is also egregious. Without knowing exactly what is being cut, we cannot evaluate the impact of the cuts, and without openness and transparency it is simply not possible to have an honest public debate about priorities. This is why we’ve launched our own effort to track the cuts and we are asking affected groups or individuals to come forward and share their stories.

The culprit this time is the Housing and Social Development Ministry, which typically provides welfare caseload statistics at the end of each month, but has so far failed to release its April report.

Indeed, when visiting the Ministry’s website today (March 12, 10:30am), it’s quite curious to see the regularity with which reports were posted on the last day of each month as this screenshot demonstrates:

According to this pattern, the welfare statistics for March 2009 should have been released on April 30 or shortly thereafter. MacLeod reports that his emails and calls to the Ministry inquiring about the apparent delay in the welfare data have not been returned.

Welfare data were showing large increases in previous months (as Marc pointed out here and the Tyee reported here) and political commentator David Schreck speculates that delaying the release of the latest welfare statistics may be a deliberate move to contain likely negative information before the election (as quoted in MacLeod’s article).

For reference, the previous provincial election was on May 17, 2005 and the welfare statistics release for March 2005 is dated May 11 (bottom right-hand-side of each page in the report). This was later than the usual last-day-of-the-month pattern, but it came a whole six days before the election date.

Whether or not this delay is deliberate or the result of oversight, it is nevertheless an affront on the democratic process. Transparency, which includes data being made publicly available promptly, is an essential mechanism that allows citizens to keep their government accountable. This is particularly important in the wake of a general election, which is our main tool to keep governments accountable in democratic societies.

Statistics Canada and the Bank of Canada, both of whom release information that can be politically sensitive, have processes to formally schedule and announce release dates well in advance to prevent any possibility that data be withheld for political purposes. The provincial government should be held to similar standards.

–

2009 release dates for all of Statistics Canada’s data products can be found here. The 2009 schedule of interest rates announcements from the Bank of Canada is here.

A February report from BC’s Information and Privacy Commissioner’s described what he called, “an unacceptable pattern of government-wide failure to respond to access requests in as timely a fashion as it should.”

But the Commissioner’s study grouped both requests for personal information and general information. The FIPA study, which had access to the government’s own FOI data base, looked only at general records.

Requests for general records…are made in order to scrutinize government policies and actions and hold the government accountable for them. When one focuses on requests for general information, an even darker pictured emerges of government non-compliance with the FOI Act.

The FOI act requires government to respond to these requests within 30 working days. FIPA found that between 2006 and 2008 more than half of responses failed to meet this legal requirement. People considered troublemakers by the government were much more likely to have their requests delayed. FIPA reports, “Our analysis found that political parties, interest groups and the media appear to be singled out for special treatment under the Act.” Ministries assign “sensitivity ratings” to FOI requests. The media, political parties and interest groups are much more likely than other groups to have their requests marked as highly sensitive. And highly sensitive requests are almost three times as likely to be delayed as those with a low sensitivity. At an average of 110 days to respond, highly sensitive requests took more than twice as long as low sensitivity requests. According to Professor Alasdair Roberts, the province’s FOI tracking system,

may be the most sophisticated of its kind in North America. It provides numerous details on who is making requests, response times and the eventual outcomes.

As bad as all this may seem, FIPA finds an even worse outcome. Fewer people and groups are even bothering to use the FOI legislation. Requests fell from 2,381 in 2006, to 2,225 in 2007 and then to 1,793 in 2008. FIPA says, “We attribute this to increasing frustration and disenchantment with the many barriers that now characterize the FOI process.” FIPA concludes:

“Over the past 10 years, a government culture has developed that employs every possible tactic to discourage and delay requests for information that it considers in any way “sensitive.” The culture of denial has employed a combination of budget and staff cuts, legislative and policy changes, government reorganization, delaying tactics, excessive use of the Act’s exceptions, and the extension of secrecy to additional government committees.”

The Case Against STV

By David Schreck

Will STV “make your vote count”? Actually, BC-STV can make your vote worth less and make your MLA less accountable. Our existing first-past-the-post (FPTP) system is not perfect, but it is better than BC-STV.

Inequality is inherent in BC-STV. The Northeast (Peace River) would get two MLAs while the Capital Region would get seven. Some voters would see their vote dead-ended, not electing anyone and not transferred, while others would see their vote help elect more than one MLA. What’s fair about that?

No one should vote for STV unless they can understand how votes are counted. Supporters of BC-STV say that it doesn’t matter if people don’t understand how votes are counted. They argue that most people don’t know how their car works but they can still drive it. That analogy is misleading. In deciding whether to buy a GM or a Toyota vehicle, prospective purchasers need to know a lot more than just how to drive each car, such as whether the company will be in business next year and whether the warranty will be any good.

In deciding between voting systems, British Columbians need to know a lot more than just how to vote. They also need to know how votes are counted in order to be able to adequately compare FPTP and BC-STV. B.C. voters are not test driving BC-STV; we could be living with it for decades

The first word in STV is “single”. That is exactly what it is, a single vote, even though a constituency will elect from two to seven MLAs. With BC-STV the minimum number of votes required to win, the “Droop quota”, varies depending on the number of MLAs to be elected. In percentage terms the quota is equal to 12.5% of the total votes cast in a seven-MLA constituency, rising to 33.3% of the total votes cast in a two-MLA constituency. Those percentages are important because any votes in excess of the quota get redistributed to other candidates based on the instructions each voter gave by way of candidate rankings.

It can take a dozen rounds of adjusting votes before the count is finished. The last candidate to be elected usually has fewer votes than the quota, because there remains one position to fill and no further votes to transfer. The remaining candidate with the most votes in the final round is declared elected. That means that in a seven-MLA constituency, the seventh candidate to be declared elected wins with less than 12.5% of the total vote.

For a real-life example, look at the actual count in the May 24, 2007 Republic of Ireland election for the district of Dublin North, which had four representatives to elect and 13 candidates. The website ElectionsIreland.org allows you to see how votes were counted, how complicated vote counting is under STV, and that there are always some voters whose vote doesn’t count as much as the vote of others. In Dublin North, the vote count took ten rounds of redistributing votes, but the 5,256 people who voted for Brendan Ryan (who lost) did not have their second preferences transferred. You can pick any other real life example of STV and you’ll see that there are always some voters whose vote doesn’t get transferred and whose first preference doesn’t win.

Anyone who has ever had more than one boss at the same time for the same job knows that accountability can go out the window. With BC’s existing system of single MLA constituencies, accountability is clear. If you don’t like what your MLA did, or what your MLA’s party did, vote for a different candidate. With five MLAs representing one enormous constituency, each could say a problem is someone else’s responsibility or fault.

From an MLA’s point of view, large multiple member regions would make it impossible to service all the school boards, municipal councils and community organizations that would be in regions two to seven times larger than our existing constituencies. Supporters say that candidates would carve out their own constituencies within the large regions, which, if true, is another way of saying they would ignore large numbers of voters in the region since they would know that they could get elected, not with the most support, but with a minimum support of 12.5% to 33.3%.

Many of the assertions made by proponents of BC-STV cannot be verified, including the claim that STV is more likely to produce coalition governments because it is more likely to elect MLAs from more than two parties. Actual experience with STV, apart from municipal elections, is confined to Ireland, Malta, the Australian Senate and Tasmania. Only two parties have ever had their candidates elected to Malta’s parliament, although other parties continually try. By contrast, with our existing first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system, British Columbians elected MLAs from four different political parties (NDP, Social Credit, Reform and Liberal) as recently as 1991 and from three different parties in 1996.

There are 37 registered political parties in BC. They don’t all run candidates in all of the ridings, but most of them run candidates in one or more ridings. It is hard to support any claim that FPTP limits the choice offered voters or the ability of small parties to elect MLAs in BC; witness the Reform Party, or Gordon Wilson’s Progressive Democratic Alliance in 1996. The issue for STV enthusiasts is not electing an MLA or two from small parties as much as it is about holding the balance of power in a coalition government.

For no apparent reason, STV proponents are fond of claiming that the voting system would be the same, and yield similar results, in BC as it is in Ireland where coalition governments are common. There are big differences between Ireland and BC: BC is less homogeneous (Ireland is predominately white and Catholic); Ireland has 166 Members of Parliament for roughly the same population for which BC would have only 85 MLAs; and the Northwest, just one of BC’s 20 BC-STV electoral districts, is more than five times larger than all of Ireland.

There is no reason to believe that a government formed after an election using BC-STV would be like Ireland’s or any other. British Columbians would be rolling the dice with a new electoral system and would have no basis for predicting the consequences. The only thing that can be said for certain about BC-STV is not about what kind of government it might deliver but about what the 20 regions with 85 MLAs would look like, how votes are cast and how votes are counted.

STV should be rejected because its multiple-MLA electoral areas decrease accountability, its complex rules for counting votes are not fair, and allegations made by its proponents are not true.

David Schreck is a political commentator, economist and former NDP MLA for North-Vancouver Lonsdale. Retired, he keeps active with his website, StrategicThoughts.com. He is Secretary-Treasurer for the No BC-STV Campaign Society.

Fundamentally, providing an accessible home and community care system for our frail seniors is not only the morally right thing to do for our elders, it’s also the smart thing to do in terms of containing health care costs. Caring for seniors in the community is considerably cheaper than keeping them in hospitals (which is what happens when there is no available spot in residential care for seniors who can’t live independently).

An op-ed published in the Vancouver Sun on Thursday calls attention to the serious problems in seniors’ care in this province. The authors, Jeremy Tate and Marcy Cohen, who co-authored a recent CCPA study An Uncertain Future for Seniors: BC’s Restructuring of Home and Community Health Care, 2001-2008, blame “years of poorly planned restructuring and a failure to maintain (let alone enhance) access to key services” for the decline in seniors’ care. They call for “leadership and commitment to transparency, public consultation, good planning and increased access to seniors’ care.”

But do the party platforms promise to deliver any of these things?

There are certainly important differences in the two parties’ approach towards seniors’ care. The Liberal platform mentions seniors 23 times, but seldom in the context of health care. The closest they come to seniors’ care is promising to invest in housing, more specifically 1,000 new homes for “seniors and people with disabilities.” Their health budget, however, tells us not to expect any meaningful increases in care beyond current levels.

The NDP platform, in contrast, explicitly acknowledges that seniors’ health care needs are not currently met as well as they should be, pledging to improve seniors’ care by adding 3,000 new residential care beds, re-opening some 300 beds in closed facilities (like Cowichan Lodge) and establishing a Representative for Seniors to address their issues and recommend policy reforms. There have been questions, however, as to whether the amount of money allotted for the cause would be sufficient.

The report uses tax data of BC welfare leavers between 2000 and 2005 to see how people have done. Comparing those who left welfare before 2002 (when the government brought in sweeping welfare changes) with those who left after 2002 is very revealing. It turns out that the post-reform leavers were no more likely to find work, their incomes were less than the pre-2002 leavers, and they were more likely to be below the poverty line.

All of this stands in stark contrast to a government narrative that has long insisted that welfare caseloads declined after their 2002 reforms because more people were leaving welfare for work.

For more details, see Andrew’s piece.

The Commissioner is unhappy and he says so in tough language:

The stark fact is that the government’s overall record of compliance with its legal obligations under FIPPA is far from good. Even if they do not expect perfect compliance at all times or across government, British Columbians have a right to expect better than they are getting. They expect their requests for information about government actions and performance will be responded to in accordance with the law. Without timely compliance, the important public policy objectives of access to information – transparent and accountable government – wither.

The Commission says the government is taking 51 days on average to respond to requests not dealing with personal information. The law requires a response within 30 days. The Commissioner does not issue grades to ministries, but he does list the worst offenders. The Office of the Premier, which you would hope would have an obligation to set a good example, is the worst. Only 31% of requests get dealt with in the legal time frame. On average, the Premier’s Office takes 59 days.

Sadly, the situation is much worse than the Commissioner describes. He deals with averages but there are plenty of examples that take far longer than the averages. I have one request that has been outstanding since March 2007. That’s what? About 430 working days so far?

Some agencies fudge the numbers by making partial releases within the timeline. By doing that they are deemed to have responded and it becomes an appeal instead. That starts a separate process not counted in the time lines the Commissioner is talking about.

The appeals are the real time killers. The Commissioner’s Office is understaffed. The appeal period is routinely extended and can take over a year.

What’s that sound you hear? It’s transparency and accountability – withering.