Street Level

But Monday isn't going to be much better.
It's been a tough week at KTW. We've killed our Sunday paper for reasons that, to the true-believer reporter types some of us are, make no logical sense.
Economic sense, maybe, but to go another day without something tangible, something you can hold in your hands that tells you what's going on -- it's sad to think that reality is disposable in today's world.
It was interesting sitting in on a meeting between the kids in the newsroom and the publisher today. They're so gung-ho; angry at the death in the family we're living with, but they still believe and they want so much to find ways to connect with people and tell share the stories they write.
they want to figure out ways to dive readers to our online presence at kamloopsthisweek.com. They want to engage readers in an online forum. They want to have a dialogue with you, to share ideas, to ferret out the stories you want to tell.
They're willing to use just about any medium that will work and, if the publisher goes along with some of their ideas, you're about to see some truly innovative ways to interact with the KTW reporting staff.
For me, though, it's been a roller-coaster ride.
As i sat bemoaning at home bemoaning the decision I feel is truly wrong, I remembered a day about 27 years ago when, while sitting at home on a medical leave, I got a call from the editor of the metropolitan daily I called home for 25 years.
Believe it or not, he told me, the publisher (who owned the paper, one of the last true, great, independent newspaper publishers) was killing our evening edition.
It was the end of the industry, many of my colleagues said. How could we continue with no evening paper?
Funny thing is we did. We had our morning paper and the five other editions that we sent out at night to our regions. We just didn't have our city evening edition.
We got letters to the editor but, in the end, we learned how to rethink to package our paper for morning deliver and our readers learned how to communicate with us to ensure the news they wanted continued to be covered.
It was an instructive lesson to remember.
They were good old days, they're slowing leaving but there's always tomorrow.
We can dread it or embrace it.
Working with the kids who share our newsroom, it seems I've got no choice.

Posted by Dale at 7:54 p.m. Comments

Disclaimer: I have five children so, obviously, I like kids.

I find them fascinating, annoying, incredible, exasperating and awe-inspiring — particularly as they go through those real terrible twos — the double digits of teenage years.

My teenage years were far from conventional — at the time.

Growing up in the 1960s, I lived in a family where “good girls” didn’t wear slacks to school, didn’t listen to rock ‘n’ roll (Sonny and Cher were “singing from hunger” in my father’s eyes), where you had to be aware of current events to survive dinner-time conversation and where girls really should always learn shorthand, just in case our silly job dreams didn’t pan out — which, of course, my father was sure they wouldn’t.

To cross him was to incur the kind of wrath that today gets you a visit from social services.

So I find it truly amazing to watch as my brood goes through their teenaged years. Three have successfully passed this necessary rite; two are making their way through it.

I learn from each of them daily — and it’s why I can’t understand why there are so many in Kamloops who view teenagers as aliens, strange creatures to fear, who must be controlled.

This thought came coursing back to the forefront of my thoughts recently for several reasons.

First, there was a former Kamloops RCMP officer talking on the radio about an incident in his new detachment.

This same officer is one I had some heated words with one day a few years ago when he confronted my then-teenaged oldest son as he got off the bus down at the old Thompson Park Mall.

James had his skateboard with him; he took it with him everywhere, as teenagers often do.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to use it on the streets, although I’m pretty sure he didn’t always heed that dictum.

But, on this day, he was just getting off the bus to catch the next one to get to his job on the North Shore, when this officer stopped him, told him skateboards weren’t allowed downtown and then snapped the board in half across his knee.

When we “chatted” about it, the officer said James had been seen in the company of a known drug dealer.

I asked what that meant. He told me James had got off the bus behind this bad guy. Nope, they didn’t talk. They just happened to be in the same space, which was enough for this cop to label my teenaged son.

My second-youngest, barely into his teens, experienced similar age profiling recently.

He and his buddies all wear purple bandanas.

Apparently, in a couple of parents’ minds, that means they’re in a gang.

It was enough of an issue that the principal and vice-principal of his school asked the guys to stop wearing their bandanas, all the while acknowledging these parents are so wrong to stereotype a group of boys that way.

In Liam’s mind, it’s as bad as the situation the teen boy faced one day when he wore a pink T-shirt to school — the stereotyping he was subjected to became a national anti-homophobic movement.

And, finally, there’s rookie Coun. Marg Spina, who has fuelled the local anti-teen movement with her truly ridiculous idea that proprietors of places where teenagers gather should play some sort of “white-noise” frequency that will apparently only be heard by teenaged ears and incite them to find some other place to hang out.

Apparently, she thinks there’s some sort of frequency emitter out there that can be tuned to some modulation that only teenaged ears can hear — and it’s strong enough to drive them away.

News flash! Teenagers gather together. They hang out. They’ve done it through the generations. Spina probably did it herself.

And, at least when they’re gathered in a public place, we know where they are and what they’re doing.

If they’re a nuisance, the business owner should be the one to move them on. If they don’t, it’s a policing problem, not a councillor’s issue.

There’s really no need for this “white-noise” idea — for the teenagers or from Spina’s mouth.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 9:04 a.m. Comments

I’ve pretty much had it with David Suzuki continually spouting off about the carbon tax in this province.

Now he’s waded into the election campaign, declaring he won’t vote for the NDP — long the party of favour for environmentalists — because its leader, Carole James, has declared she will axe the tax if elected.

James has never impressed me as premier material and her political speeches have often sounded tried and tired, but on this one, she’s right.

The tax needs to go — and here’s why.

There is more to British Columbia than Metro Vancouver and Victoria.

Not everyone lives a healthy hike from the nearest SkyTrain stop.

I’ve looked all over Kamloops and I just can’t find one anywhere.

Not everyone can bike to work. I know I can’t for many reasons.

It’s a good 17 kilometres from my house to work and, to be honest, I couldn’t bike that far if there was a motor attached to the two wheels.

Besides, bikes don’t come with sidecars for two teenagers, who I drive in to the city for school every day.

Yes, they could take the bus, but that means a two-hour ride there — and another two-hour ride back home — and I just don’t think those four hours sitting in a diesel-powered, exhaust-spewing bus going both ways is a good idea.

It would be 20 hours a week on a bus; think of it as spending half your work week perched precariously on those bench seats, trying not to slide off as the bus lurches from stop to stop.

Some will point to the recent Statistics Canada report that says people in Vancouver have longer commutes than those of us who live outside the centre of all things British Columbian — but that ignores the fact that there, they at least have options.

The final reason is that, in my job — as in many of your jobs — a car is essential.

I worked with a reporter who refused to learn to drive, taking cabs to all of his assignments. Never could figure out where he got all the money to pay for that, because it’s not an expense most publishers will approve.

I can’t afford one of those fancy hybrid-electric-100-miles-to-the-gallon vehicles Suzuki and so many other environmentalists now drive.

If I could, I’d certainly buy one because those fill-ups at the PetroCan pumps every week are expensive.

But my income isn’t in the six figures — or even five big ones.

A friend suggested I sell my house and its two acres out on the edge of the city and buy something downtown, where the boys wouldn’t have to spend so long on the bus and I could bike to work.

I’m hoping he was joking because, as committed as I am to doing what I can to save the world, nothing is going to pry me away from my own hunk of heaven, a place where I can sit out back, look at the hills and the river and enjoy tranquility and silence.

Not sure the last time those two were found in the hustle and bustle of downtown Kamloops.

I think James has actually got it right with her cap-and-trade proposal, which would see the biggest polluters in the province — I’m pretty sure Domtar has more emissions than my little Buick, the husband’s Ford and our high-efficiency furnace combined.

(Although I have to admit it’s disconcerting to see James now promoting something she dumped on heavily when the Liberals brought in legislation to create this very system. But then, it is election time, when political posturing and compromise are apparently required behaviours.)

I do the best I can to preserve the environment, as most of you likely do. I compost, recycle, reuse, repair, try to buy locally and organically, avoid drive-thrus on the rare occasions I go to a fast-food restaurant and don’t spray my fruit trees with pesticides.

And, for doing all of this, I get the pleasure of watching the cost of many of the essentials of my life going up, courtesy of this tax — and I’ve yet to see any of those touted tax cuts that are supposed to offset it all for me — and for most of you, too.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 4:12 p.m. Comments

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