Sounds like school based budgeting.

It's deja-vu all over again.

Its an excellent subject choice, Rafe, and a good article. You've gotten to the heart of it. Which levels of government should pay for it? And if municipalities are to take on more repsonsibility and accountability, how can the provinces (and the feds for that matter) assure uniform access of services and equal treatment to Canadians and British Columbians under their own expected responsiblities bestowed upon them with their respective constitutions and policies? Where is that fine line, that break between municipal and provincial responsibilities?

Certainly, education, healthcare and the environment should belong under the jurisdiction of the provinces, not the municipalities and I would argue, under the feds more than any other government in terms of how standards need to be met, and my whom.

This current provincial government has shown continual disregard for assuming its true repsonsibilities. You know. To govern! To administrate! To actually spend money to provide services that belong under "provincial jurisdictions", instead of cutting and slashing and stoking a few cheques.

Rafe is completely right concerning Campbell's future attempts of applying "Martin economics" at a provincial/municiple level.

Education... healthcare... environment... Mayors and Councillors beware! "Don't sign a god damn thing, or you could put tens of thousands of provincial employee's out of work along with sending your own municipalities towards bankruptcy."

Thanks for the "heads up" on upcoming misery Rafe :). Just when I thought I couldn't get any more depressed about the people with power! We sure could use a modern day Tommy Douglas to call them on their subversive tactics. Someone righteous, but non-political, to ridicule their spin, while throwing a little humour into it, highlighting the absurdity of their thinking. People loved that kind of message back then. Pessimistically, I'm not sure he/she would get any press nowadays.
On a personal level, I could refuse to pay my taxes...but I already know where that would get me. Failing that, I could volunteer to go on a starvation diet on the steps of the legislature and hope to get some attention before becoming unintelligible and/or hypothermic. Before I take these drastic steps and end up looking like just another presumably homeless dead person found in a doorway, I will bequeath my entire net worth (big deal!)to the litigation against David Emerson. Could it just be that we unwittingly lost our collective goals and souls when we urbanized, turned our backs on community ties and let others do our thinking? That's it! - I'll move to a small settlement in the far north or a Newfoundland outport where I know my neighbours and elect a well respected member of the community to speak for me. I won't watch TV, listen to the radio, use the internet or be afraid of the future. And I will think about all of you I've left behind once in a while and pray for you. Anyone know where I can get me a time machine or do I just to what so many other city folk do - tune it out?

I'm just kidding about tuning it out - I'm up for the struggle. I just long for the good old days.

'him speak with forked tongue, kemo subby.'

- tonto, regerring to anything gordon campbell says.

oops, referring.

Look at TransLink, Mair's axiom surely fits. First, RAV was going to be $1.2 billion, mere chump change for a metro; then $1.5 billion, later ecalating to $1.9 billion. According to DoRAVRight, the total for RAV is now $2.2 billion, with the cost rising by 1% a month or more as the other Olympic projects are! Final direct costs for RAV will be anywhere between $3 billion and $4 billion, with total costs nearing $11 billion over 30 years!

Beware of Liberals bearing transit gifts!

It sounds like school-based budgeting because that is exactly what it is. The BC government has already tried "subsidiarity" in our school system. Give lump sums of money with no targeting to the school districts and let them make all the hard choices. Get rid of any policy or "red tape" that hinders their decision making. The problem is that in some places across BC, trustees, principals, and administrators will make very poor decisions that will affect children. Things like closing down schools, having no library, or loading up one class with all the special needs students. When the parents whine, the Campbell government just points to the school district. It's not his responsibility is it? Campbell never wanted a "round table" on education issues, he wanted it to go away. Well, things don't always go like we wish.

Is passing the buck leadership? I don't think so. We elect a provincial government to set policy for the whole province. Local decision making is great when done well, but poor decisions in one municpality can affect areas outside it. We need good policy from the provincial government to ensure that if you move from one town to the next you won't end up drinking swamp water.

I come here often to read these marvellous, intelligent, funny, and exasperated comments that are regularly posted and regurgitated in all of their splendiferous forms within these threads. I seldom post (vent) here because I’m frequently looking at what I would say or feel, so other than saying ‘yeah sock it to the man’ or steaming off a ‘kiss my ass’ at the establishment, there is not much to add here by me to the what’s really happening file here at the feisty one. Some call my practice lurking I call it reading, besides can’t spell much and my grammar…well... But labelling is the norm these days and can be very effective in keeping a good person or ideas down. Why it’s an industry unto itself me thinks.

In short we are Phuck-ed people it’s plain and simple. Held lock step by credit cartels, mass institutional corruption, and an evil empire(s). Change? Well I am getting more and more doubtful by the day about that one. Maybe Reagan was right about what would force change when he spoke of ‘alien invasions’. Or perhaps an event(s) so shocking that we would actually take a real stand, but recent history tells me these human events may not be the impetus that is so desperately needed. Short of another human development in our evolutionary ladder or something ‘supernatural’ I believe we are looking at the status quo that will become worse. Science fiction writers have told tales of a machine that couldn’t be shut off and I believe that day has come. So for every pebble of positive change there is a mountainous landslide of shite that buries it and the rest of us with it.
Get your gum-boots on folks ‘your soaking in it’.

While there's lots of good reasons for local decision making, there are essentially two exceptions:

1) As Rafe mentioned, in the cases where local decisions do not serve the greater good, e.g. they harm a minority with no strong local voice (cutting special ed services in schools is an example cited above), NYMBY issues or corruption in local administrations (selling out to developers, etc).

2) In cases where accountability for administration and delivery of services is handed down to local/regional authorities, while funding remains a provincial decision. This produces the ideal framework for a political agenda of underfunding and service cuts: the political authorities doing the cutting can conveniently deflect the political costs of their decisions by blaming local authorities that are essentially powerless.

It's been all too clear that the latter is the primary motivator for the push for devolution under the Campbell government. One of Campbell's first initiatives in 2001 was to bring in Doug Walls to design the devolution of community living and child and family services at MCFD. Walls offered a devolution plan that was approved by Cabinet even before the Core Review was over in Fall 2001 and before anyone else even knew what had hit them.

The BC Liberals demonstrated an enormous urgency to rush through this devolution process, ignoring all the advice of their own experts so that they could hand over all MCFD services to regional authorities within three years. At the same time, MCFD's budget cuts were end-loaded to the third year of the three-year service plans. Political commentators found this odd (normally you try to get the cuts out of the way early in the mandate, so that voters have forgotten the pain). But it wasn't odd at all, if the whole idea behind devolution was to have someone else holding the bag by the time the cuts were put into effect.

As we all know, the plan went sideways when Walls' history and modus operandi caught up with him and it became clear that the unseemly haste had led total chaos in the ministry. Nevertheless, Campbell managed to quietly cut loose the community living side last year, when he devolved those services to a new authority that was still at least 18 months away from being ready to take on its mandated task. Now he's made it clear that the next priority is to cut loose Aboriginal and child & family services -- incidentally the focus of intense political heat these last 6 months.

Had his initial plan worked out, he would have been able to dodge most of that heat, blaming local and Aboriginal authorities for all that went wrong instead. There should be absolutely no doubt that "subdidiarity" is all about creating political insulation for an agenda of continued government downsizing/privatizing.

The critical connection between devolution and budget cuts under the BC Liberals is reinforced by a pivotal point that I forgot to mention -- i.e. that the centrepiece of the Walls devolution plan was his outlandish and totally unsupported claim that devolution would permit 20% cost savings due to bureaucratic efficiences, thus allowing Campbell to cut the MCFD budget by 20% without hurting services.

It was clear to the most casual observer at the time that this was utter crap. That Campbell bought this without reservation and despite the warnings of his own experts either demonstrates enormous stupidity and incompetence, or his enormous callousnes and confidence in believing that it would be someone else's headache by the time the cuts were implemented and the obvious results became clear to all.

Very well put, Name, and that is definitely at the heart of the matter here...governmental moves that are intentionally targeted to remove the interference, the rough edges, that the lives of human beings cause to their relentless well-oiled pursuit of privatization. People and the "messy social" and "human" concerns of the people just get in their business-blindered way...so your choice, Name, of the words "political insulation " is apt to the nth degree. They want no part of us...the people of this province....

Except when it comes to our taxpayer money..that they'll take... steal at their pleasure (they would use the words "re-direct" or "flexibility") from our vitally-needed social services in order to fund their own select stash of privatized interests.

This is not a government, but legislated larceny... that has created its own larcenous language in which to hide their crimes .

"Subsidarity?"...Isn't that New Orleans' middle name?

not much time to blog...but I would say "Beward subsidiarity" when the 'centralized powers" such as Victoria/Ottawa try to download "costs" for programs/services...without negotiation of a proper , multiyear - "fiscal agreement" to cover those costs, or better yet, with providing for the "negotiation" of fiscal and jurisdictional subsidiarity agreements. That is - no program/service downloads accepted unless the municipality/region having a negotiated multi-year "fiscal agreement ...or for municipalities/regions without them obtaining greater taxation powers ...instead of the province "hogging" all the tax/royalty/fee collections. For example, the Sullivan mine in Kimberly contributed 20 or billion to the Provincial Treasury...and what did they get for it...closed schools, hospitals, cut-backs, no proper -day-care for kids, high tuition fees in the regional college...but if the East Kootenay Region -had the constitutional or quasi-constitutional authority to retaina portion of the royalities from that mine for regional "public-goods' expenditure...they would not have necessarily suffered the 'Campbell cut-backs", and they could have designed and paid for regional programs to benefit the residents of that regions. Of course, ditto that for every region of the province. Now of course - Rafe -doesn't offer anything whatsoever to counter the 'bad effects' of subsidiarity - which is a tendency I like with respect to some matters. You could still have 'meet or exceed' provincial standards for health, education, water quality, pollution indexes, etc...but then the regions & cities/municipalities within them would have the 'taxation & reveneue" collecting powers to pay for the programs/services that will meet or exceed provincial standards. ...anyways...what do you all think, eh? gotta go -

How do neoconservatives and neoliberals reconcile devolution of the public sector with aggregation in the private sector? Simple, they are two sides of the same process. Break up democracy, build up corporatocracy. This is about structural change much deeper than merely downloading political headaches to political minor leaguers.

Y'all remember Christy Clark, when she was Education Minister, telling school boards that they were poor managers because, after the gov't. gave the teachers a raise but never funded it, the boards complained about having to cut programs/teachers? Y'all remember the Sun and Province reverberating her inane reasoning and thus garnerning public support for her tough stance?

Me and some folks from work think that, for all their amazing efforts Gordie and some of his cronies deserve a nice holiday. So, we think people should:

Tape a loonie to a postcard and mail it to:

Gordon Campbell
Parliament Buildings
Victoria BC V8V 1X4

Tell him it's so they can go quail hunting with Dick.

In the Shuswap we are seeing another side to the phenomena: download to someone who doesn't have either the legal power or the reach to bring in any sort of solution at all: I am referring to the continued controversy about whether or not developers should be allowed to dump treated sewage into the lake... which just happens to be clean and the source for drinking water for a large number of individuals.

On the one hand, the provincial government forbids any attempts at alleviating the problem (land disposal and composting toilets) while giving the developers no alternative to lake disposal. They are also refusing to bring in a blanket ban on such disposal (like Okanagan lake has, after having suffered much from such disposal) because "they canot pass an order in council identicle to that governing the Okanagan".

On the other hand, they say that the only solution is viable regional zoning, when zoning has consistently failed to prevent anything. The regulations are basically unenforceable (anyone who wants to do something that runs counter to the zoning just goes ahead and does it, and then gets approval after the fact for the exception to the rules) since the laws can have no teeth, and even if they were enforceable, the whole lake wouldn't be covered... meaning that someone from outside the zoning could subvert the entire purpose of the regulations by dumping treated sewage.

And yeah, our local MLA is minister of health... and it is the health ministery which prevents the use of composting toilets, which have served admirably for over 30 years in the Canadian Shield and Thousand Islands... Hey, even Adrian Clarkson had one, it's not as if it was a new invention... and the local rednecks would vote for the Devil himself if he ran against the NDP.

Good times.

R. Smiley

ripponfalls, I understand your concerns.

I predict that one day the Shuswaps will have its own sort of Walkerton, Ontario style water crisis and only then, when tourists have fled and most of the developers have declared bankruptcy and jettisoned any of their legal responsibilities, will politicians start the long, if even possible clean up of what was once a nice clean lake.

Look, on the north shore of the main arm of Shuswap Lake are at least six year-round boil orders, put in place because the water is so filthy you risk your health drinking it.

Almost all of the pollution can be traced back to one source, human occupation and primarily the result of bad septic tanks.

Is it good for bathing or anything else? I don't know but I no longer swim at the large Scotch Creek Provincial Park because of the water conditions nearby.

Shuswap Lake is a bath tub in the summer, a bathtub into which local sewage seeps constantly.

The primary reason local politicians allow (they aren't forced by anyone), develpopers to spew their crap out into the lake is the fear that another candidate for council will grab that developer's ear and his political contributions.

As for provincial politicians, well, there is a little less competition given that the current provincial government seems to have a lock on contributuions from the local devlopment community.

Of course, you also have to factor in the sad reality that much of the so called cottage property around the lake is owned by Albertans who seem to have a special distain for environmentally friendly services and facilities, especially when it might mean a tiny tax increase.

Time after time, efforts to bring in new approached have been shut down by absentee landowners.

If we are ever required to export water to help Albertans through a drought or something, I vote we put the pipe at our end in right between a couple of those boil-order areas.

True, but some of those boiled water orders (Anglemont, for example) don't concern water from the lake.... That is a whole different kettle of fish, including Forestry allowing logging of the watershed, and a private contractor who gained control of the water service for $1.00, constantly complains how he is losing money on the thing, doesn't do repair work, and refuses to give it up.

I know what you mean about the Albertans. Why does that province breed scofflaws? Cars with Alberta plates have passed me on that road (and I know every corner, so I drive a lot faster than the average caravan can) as though I was parked on the shoulder. They come in and as far as they are concerned, we are the Tijuana of the north minus the brothels (or not...). However, as non residents, they don't vote in the elections. The first real problem is still the locals...

I can walk the beaches and see traces of suds in the water next to large lakeside homes who have nothing but a dry well inherited from the previous cottage on the site... of course the soil is only aggregate (read glacial till, round stones of various sizes) and the waste water passes through that like the preverbial through a screen. And when we protest a development, the provincial bureaucracy comes in and reaches a settlement which they are unwilling to reveal to us on the basis of the polluter's right to privacy.

It is still a lose- lose situation.

R. Smiley

Downloading, or practicing subsidiarity, if you prefer, has all kinds of real effects upon the delivery of public services.

I'm surprised no one has brought up the Albo case: Today the family lost 97 year old Mr. Albo too. Penny Ballam's report confirms that the health system failed to provide quality care for Mrs Albo when the 91 year old woman was sent, against the family's wishes, away from her family into 'the first available' long-term care bed. She died within two days.

Budgetary restrictions and bed closures in the Kootenays, combined with shuffling health care responsibilities onto the Regional Boards, is behind this (along with an overstressed hospital administration no doubt) without much question. Would anyone like to bet that minister Abbott is going to follow through, in accordance with Rafe's subsidiarity principle, and place the blame for this debacle upon the Kootenay Regional Board?

Perhaps Premier Campbell will have a solution when he returns from his winter sojourn in Northern Europe. On the other hand, he may be planning to stop in Hawaii again for a break before returning to his duties here in British Columbia. Perhaps though he's practicing subsidiarity too and has downloaded all the difficulty questions to his 'BC team'.

should be 'difficult' in last sentence.

Rippenoff

Some of those “suds” might be waste organic material that is natural. I once asked a fish biologist about the suds I see on a apparently pristine river, that was the answer they gave me.

A better questions? How do neosocialists do the same?

Working Man

Neosocialist - ¿Cuál es ése?