Street Level

If there was ever a reason to not vote for the Liberals next month, it comes courtesy of Shirley Bond.

The woman who once sat as a trustee on a school board in Prince George — where 4,500 students ride buses 11,500 kilometres in total every day on 64 regular and 13 custom routes — now says parents should pay to send their kids to school by bus.

Perhaps this is yet another initiative by her government to cut down on school-bus emissions.

After all, if the buses aren’t rolling, they aren't spewing exhaust.

This is the same government that has allocated $1.1 million for special filters to be retrofitted on buses to reduce those noxious fumes.

This is the same government that has introduced an experiment in Kelowna with a hybrid electric school bus – at a cost of about $50,000 more than a regular diesel-fuelled bus.

They seem to know the buses are bad for health, but don’t understand how vital they are for education.

And now, just to hammer it home, School District 73 trustee Annette Glover, chairwoman of the finance and planning committee for SD73, has said the committee is prepared to recommend transportation fees in September if the province doesn’t come up with more money to cover the shortfall — although her press release doesn’t say how much will be charged.

So here are some questions to ask Liberal candidates Kevin Krueger and Terry Lake, should you happen upon them on the election trail in the next few weeks.

Do they believe education is a basic right?

Do they believe government has an obligation to deliver education?

Are they prepared to develop some sort of tax credit for parents who can’t afford to pay for transportation but who will be topping up the tanks with that lovely, ever-increasing carbon tax the Liberals have imposed on us all?

And let’s all remember that tax is supposed to hit an extra 7.2 cents a litre in just three years.

You could ask the Gordon Campbell boys why they’ve spent millions and millions of dollars in their green push to make school buses belch less and are now willing to throw that all away for those of us who can’t afford the hybrids and electric cars to make that drive back and forth every day.

Ask them what they plan to do with the traffic congestion that will be created on neighbourhood streets as those parents who won’t be able to afford the extra $20 per child per month.

This would be the amount school boards are now being told to charge just for the privilege of ensuring your kids get the education they are legally required to receive.

By the way, if you believe that $20 figure, the Liberals have a bridge to sell you.

Glover notes in her release that request for reviews by the B.C. School Trustees Association have been met by Bond with “total disregard.”

Sure, it’s easy to be mad at the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and its ad campaign advocating so many things for the school system, but maybe we should also be angry with an arrogant government determined to download everything onto families.

It’s so convenient to just criticize teachers as whiners who want everything their way: smaller classes, more support for special-needs classes and greater understanding that when a school closes, it impacts a community.

In fact, it’s almost a mantra for some to dump on teachers as greedy, overpaid, underworked leeches — but I wouldn’t want their job.

Because anyone who thinks teachers only work from the moment the bell rings at 8:30 a.m. to the closing bell at 2:30 is sorely mistaken.

Just as is anyone who thinks the way to handle the funding crisis that is crippling our education system is to charge parents for transportation.

Kids are our future.

Does it make sense to put financial barriers in front of that future?

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 8:23 a.m. Comments

Here are some names to remember in the next 53 days: Patrick Kinsella, Bob Virk, David Basi, Kevin Mahoney, Gordon Wilson, Paul Ramsay, Helmut Giesbrecht and Gordon Campbell.

There’s a good reason to watch for news on this crew — they could very well cause a provincial election result that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

First, some context. Just three days after Christmas in 2003 — far enough back it’s likely Campbell and company might have been hoping we all forgot about it — there was a police raid on the legislature in Victoria.

Remember those clips on the TV news? Big, burly cops carrying boxes and boxes of documents out of the seat of government.

Less than a week later, Basi, a ministerial assistant to then-finance minister Colin Hansen, was fired and Virk, ministerial assistant to then-transporation minister Judith Reid, was suspended with pay.

Eventually, we all learned the raid had to do with Campbell’s decision to sell BC Rail to Canadian National in November 2003 for $1 billion.

In 2004, Virk and Basi were charged with breach of trust and fraud for allegedly leaking confidential information to lobbyists for one of the bidders for the rail company, a suitor that was unsuccessful. A third provincial civil servant, Aneal Basi, was also eventually charged.

Five years of virtual silence followed. The justice system was apparently working its way through the evidence, while Campbell and crew were likely delighted to make it through another provincial election without having to explain anything about the controversy.

But not anymore.

The trial that began last year is starting to make headlines as documents are being made public — and that’s where my list of names at the start of this column come into play.

Let’s start with Patrick Kinsella.

Before this case, he and his firm, Progressive Group, were just a major player in the provincial Liberal party, a go-to guy for the past 30 years.

Among Kinsella’s resume accomplishments was working for the Bermuda-based Accenture “to promote and educate the B.C. government of the value of outsourcing a number of key government services.”

You remember Accenture, don’t you? It’s the company that, for $1.45 billion, now runs a big part of BC Hydro.

Kinsella was also the brains behind Bill Bennett’s 1983 election victory over Dave Barrett, eventually crowing to students at Simon Fraser University about how he had manipulated the public and media to get the win.

Now, he’s being asked to explain what he did, exactly, as an advisor to the senior management team at BC Rail during the privatization process that warranted a payment of $297,000 between 2002 and 2005, an amount of money even Kevin Mahoney, then a BC Rail vice-president, asked about in an e-mail to another executive.

The documents filed with the court reveal the answer to have been Kinsella was being paid because he was “a backroom Liberal.”

So far, no answers about what kind of actual work Kinsella did, if the job went through the tendering process — since BC Rail was at the time a Crown corporation — or why he was continuing to be paid long after the utility was sold to Canadian National.

And how do Gordon Wilson, Paul Ramsay and Helmut Giesbrecht figure into this scenario?

Think Watergate.

Think dirty tricks.

Within the thousands and thousands of pages the court is dealing with in the trial are e-mails allegedly sent by these three, each former NDP cabinet ministers, crowing about how the BC Rail sale will cause staggering job losses and how their party could use it to their advantage.

The only problem is all three deny ever sending those e-mails.

Which brings us to Gordon Campbell, the man who usually loves those photo-ops and chances to talk about how great his government is.

He’s understandably quiet right now, using the convenient dodge that he can’t answer any questions because the matter is before the courts.

It’s political face at its finest, kind of like watching an old Road Runner cartoon. You know that bird is going to go as fast he can to try and outrun the train.

And you know he just won’t do it.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 12:08 p.m. Comments

I remember being told at a very young age the police were my friends.
If I ever needed help, find a police officer. Call 911.

They were there to protect me.

That was a long time ago, and I wonder how many parents are still teaching their children the police are their friends.

I find myself spending more time explaining to my kids — young teenagers who are questioning all they see in the world around them — why the police who tasered Robert Dziekanski won’t be charged in his death.

I’ve had to listen to a senior RCMP officer in Kamloops tear a strip off me because I questioned the wisdom of assigning a couple of bulky cops, dressed in their “gang squad” leathers, to parade through local bars and look intimidating.


I’ve had to listen to a mother cry, distraught because she’d reported her teenaged daughter missing and, two days later, had yet to have an officer show up at her house to get some information.

I calmed a friend who had complained to the local RCMP about how it treated her son — only to have the officer who arrested the young man approach her in a store and take her picture with his cellphone.

He smirked and walked away.

I’ve had street friends complain about being continually harassed by local police, from just general rousting to one I found most distasteful, when an officer continually called a transgendered friend, who has chosen to be a woman, by her former male name.

Funny how it always seems to be the same cops they each name, privately, because they just don’t want to do anything to see the hassling and harassment notched up.

Such is the life of the marginalized in our society.

If you need any more examples, just consider the sudden death of Ian Bush up in Houston two years ago.

Do you think the Bush family continues to have any faith in their police — or the justice system?

There is something fundamentally wrong with the policing system in British Columbia — and it has to stop.

One of the first steps that should be taken is every single police detachment in the province should take a long, hard look at its members.

Listen to what they say.

Watch how they interact with others.

Maybe pay attention to public complaints about improper behaviour.

Perhaps that way, they could weed out the kind of police who might confront a newspaper carrier and throw out racial slurs.


Maybe they’d identify the ones who think that a badge and a gun — and let’s not forget the ever-present taser — give them permission to drive home drunk, put the boots to someone or throw an addict out into the frigid winter night to freeze to death.

The next step would be to quit moving these officers from detachment to detachment.

It’s an awful lot like the Catholic Church used to do with its pedophile priests, shunting them off to different parishes when their current flock started to get an idea something was wrong.

The location changes, but where’s the guarantee the behaviour, the attitude, change as well?

It isn’t easy being a police officer.

They put their lives on the line.

For that, they get to carry a gun and other weapons for protection.

It doesn’t give them the right to think they can flash their badge and be forgiven for their transgressions.

It doesn’t give them the right to shoot first and think later.

And it certainly doesn’t give them the right to think they’re above the law.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 7:49 p.m. Comments

Note: I was honoured to have this column read at Anne's funeral. Even now, after having written it, read it many times and seen it published, it makes me cry to realize that such a vital light in our world has been extinguished. But every time I look at Sean, I see the child Anne saw, the one with the potential yet to be realized -- and I thank whoever it is up there for bringing this incredible woman into our lives.





The voyage through the world that is autism is much like visiting an unknown country.

Sure, there are guidebooks that can tell you what you may see, what landmarks you may encounter, some of the problems you’ll face as you travel through — but they are just words.

Reading about the chance you may encounter a bridge that’s difficult to cross as you travel isn’t the same as trying to make your way across the rickety connector.

And so it is that, when finding oneself in a strange land, we tend to look for a person, someone who has been there before and can help us savour the happy moments and prepare for the challenging ones.

In my voyage through autism, there have been several such guides, but none like Anne Simmons.

I met Anne as I’ve met all those who have been there as my youngest has worked his way from diagnosis of autism to confident high-school student.

Another of my “tour guides,” Patti Pernitsky, told me of the incredible Child Development Centre and how the staff there work with special-needs children. So, when Sean had outgrown Patti’s nursery school, we moved him to the CDC.

And we found Anne, a woman who, with a calm, even voice and an arm around my shoulders, assured me my youngest would be fine there.

I didn’t need to worry, Anne told me. She’d be there to help him learn.

It was scary. At that time, still a pre-schooler and challenged with communicating to others — including his family — Sean would struggle.

He’d become frustrated and angry and, as with many who live with autism, would shut down.

Sometimes, he’d lash out.

His play was solitary, choosing to get out the blocks or a puzzle and do them alongside someone rather than with one of his day-care mates.

As the days went by, I continued researching autism, reading about treatments, symptoms, characteristics — doing all those things parents do when their child has been given a diagnosis that is both foreign and frightening.

But, through it all, there was Anne.

She’d be there in the morning to give Sean a hug and help him get settled.

She’d be there when I came to pick him up, always with a positive story about how he had done that day.

She was there when he started interacting with other children.

Anne was there when my son started to play with his peers outside in the centre’s incredible yard.

She was there when I needed to understand how the theory I had been absorbing was being put into practice by my baby.

And this incredible woman was there when Sean, by now in kindergarten, made the monumental step of being able to take the HandiDart bus from Stuart Wood elementary each school day over to the CDC building for the afternoons.

She watched as he went from a five-year-old who needed the driver to help him off the bus to a confident student who could wave goodbye to his driver and get off himself, coming into the day care, heading to his cubby, putting his coat away and finding his room — and his friends.

Now, Anne didn’t do all this alone — no, there were so many other staff there who all played a part in helping Sean break through the isolation of autism and interact with his world.

And they each contributed to making him who he is today, a teenager who towers over his mother, who has chosen drama for a major, who is on a bowling team and — despite once being told by a specialist he would likely not talk — who rarely shuts up.

Through the years, I stayed in touch with Anne, showing her photos of my kid as he grew and progressed.

It wasn’t just politeness — I wanted her to see how the work she did with him at the beginning resonates even today.

My friend , Anne, unfortunately left us last Sunday.

And, while it’s almost a hackneyed phrase to say, in her case, it is true — she has left such a massive hole in the fabric of the CDC, its staff and families.

For more than three decades, she cared for children — really cared for them.

And I’m so fortunate that one of them was my son.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 4:21 p.m. Comments

The province’s attorney general, Wally Oppal, wants all of us to start holding our judicial system accountable.

He wants us to let him know — as the top judge in B.C. — when we think all those legal beagles who work for him are doing things with which we don’t agree.

So, here’s my contribution to the list Oppal is no doubt creating about instances of justice delayed being justice denied.

Back on Aug. 22, 2008, KTW photographer Dave Eagles captured an altercation between retired RCMP officer Pete Backus and John Gibbons, a — at the time — wheelchair-occupying marginalized man living in a rooming house in downtown Kamloops.

Gibbons complained to police, who began an investigation.

That took months to complete, but a file eventually made its way over to Crown counsel’s office, a document one would assume would lay out all the evidence and would have the police recommendation about pursuing charges against either man.

And there it sits, still waiting for someone to take action — 160 days later.

People in this city have been arrested, tried, convicted and jailed in that time.

Everyone involved on the justice side, from the police to the lawyers, have all insisted the time lag isn’t to give one of their own — albeit a retired one — an easy ride.

They’re not moving slowly because of the “blue code.”

Nope, they have to look at the totality of the situation, not just the dozens and dozens of photographs Eagles took or the statements by the two KTW reporters who were also at the scene.

And that’s a good thing, because — as we’ve learned from the inquiry into the Robert Dziekanski death at Vancouver International Airport — we want our police to not act recklessly, not prejudge a situation, not not ask questions.

But, at the same time, the judicial side of our criminal-justice system knows there are problems.

They know people are losing faith in their ability to protect us.

They know we sigh, roll our eyes or perhaps even utter some expletives when someone with a lengthy record gets a slap-on-the-wrist sentence.

They know — because Oppal has told them — the court system in B.C. moves too slowly as lawyers play their delaying games, judges allow them to do it, accused people join in on the games sometimes and nothing happens.

In fact, some people accused of crimes have figured out it’s smart to stay in custody, drag the case out and then get that double credit for time already spent incarcerated if — when — they’re convicted.

For that matter, why is a day spent in jail waiting for a trial worth two days spent in prison after conviction?

I’ve never been able to understand that logic.

Lawyers out there, please feel free to explain it to me.

It’s not easy being a judge or lawyer.

It’s mind-boggling the amount of data they have to have in their grey cells, the swiftness with which their minds must operate, the way they work the system they’re dedicated to uphold as they make their cases.

But, as they do all this — as they make judgment calls on what to do or say and when to do or say it — the rest of us simply see a system that’s not moving.

We see situations like the one people in Langley have been dealing with as the same criminal — arrested and released over and over again — continued to break into their businesses and restaurants.

In fact, that specific statistic for the central Fraser Valley city saw an increase of 20 per cent, with 690 break-and-enters in businesses in 2008.

That’s almost two a day.

There’s something wrong here.

Even Oppal knows it.

I wonder how long he’ll take to fix it.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 5:03 p.m. Comments