http://www.thestar.com/gta/columnist/article/653428

Jun 19, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (1)
Joe Fiorito

Charlotte Vaughan was telling me about her younger sister, Aimee: “She did three years of business administration in two years and got a job in government services at Queen’s Park.”

Aimee was in her teens at the time. A smart cookie, motivated, an achiever who was on her way.

Charlotte said, “Aimee is the middle sister. We were very close. She was responsible, she had friends, she travelled, she had season tickets to the Jays; she went to spring training a couple of times.”

Aimee goes nowhere now.

She has dementia.

Charlotte and I were sitting at a table in the sun on a patio downtown, and this is yet another story about how the health-care system fails those who need help the most. It is also about the helplessness we feel when the system does not serve us.

Charlotte said, “We began to notice the changes back around 1990, shortly after our mother died. Aimee started missing work and never having any money. Now and then she’d say things that didn’t make sense.”

Charlotte, who lives out of town and works in the city, said, “Now and then I’d come in for a concert and stay over with Aimee. I noticed her hygiene was slipping.”

Aimee began missing work. It got so bad she went on long-term disability; she withdrew, but she also got involved with a couple of con artists who talked her out of her money.

All this is shorthand for the deepest kind of family misery. Things came to a head when Aimee would not respond to phone calls. As it happens, one of the creeps ran up her phone bill and the service was cut off.

Charlotte went to see her sister. “I was afraid I’d find her dead. She was ill. She hadn’t eaten. The apartment was disgusting. There were bugs everywhere. She’d been vomiting. We took her to the hospital.”

That’s where the diagnosis of dementia was made, and this is where the frustration comes into play.

Charlotte and her family have been making regular visits to her sister – taking her shopping, helping with the laundry and so on – but they were unable to figure out how to get professional help.

“We got guardianship, and control of her finances, in 2002. But that didn’t solve any problems. It put the onus on us. We’ve been trying to get some kind of home services from the Community Care Access Centre.”

That takes a while – and it’s lousy that it takes a while – but here’s what’s worse: “The CCAC won’t go through us. They’ll go to Aimee’s door and ask if she needs help, and Aimee will say she’s fine. They’ll go away and close the file.

“When you call again later, there’s no file so you have to start all over again.”

That’s ridiculous.

The situation now: “Her place is filthy and overrun with bedbugs. We went to public health. They were really helpful. They put us in touch with cleaners. But what public health couldn’t do is put her somewhere for the three days it’s going to take to get her place cleaned.”

Charlotte said, “We made inquiries. We want to find her a place in the area where she feels comfortable. But we have to go through the CCAC for help; the frustration, I can’t tell you.”

It was not the noonday sun that caused her eyes to well up. Charlotte said, “All I want to do is to get her some help. Did you know that a nursing home can turn a person down? We haven’t been accepted anywhere yet.”

I’ll update you when I know more.

Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/653395

Jun 19, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (4)
Peter Edwards
Staff Reporter

CALEDONIA–Ernie Palmer says he’s smoking mad at locals who want to set up a “Caledonia Militia” in part to protect him from natives running a discount smoke shop on his front lawn.

“We have the OPP if there is lawlessness,” the retiree said yesterday in an interview on his 19-hectare property on Highway 6.

However, he doesn’t foresee any need for anyone to protect him from Oshweken resident Stephen (Boots) Powless, 44, one of the smoke shack’s proprietors.

“I have found (Powless) a very nice man,” said Palmer, who came to Canada from Hungary in 1957. “We have drunk so much coffee we’re swimming. … I have a good dialogue with Boots.”

While he didn’t invite Powless to set up on his land, Palmer said he respects the attempt to reinforce the assertion that native land claims can’t be extinguished.

At one point in an interview on Palmer’s lawn, Powless joined in and aimed a squirt gun at the property owner as if taking him hostage, which caused Palmer to burst out laughing.

Powless calls Palmer a friend, but said the area could have a long, hot summer of racial tension if the militia idea catches on.

“I have never run from anyone,” he said. “If they come here looking for a fight, they’ll get one.

“Hopefully, things remain peaceful,” he added.

He said he was willing to leave Palmer’s property until he read on the Internet of the plans to set up a local militia.

Organizers stated their right to remove “illegal trespassers” from local properties.

“Trespassers will be arrested and turned over to the OPP,” the Internet announcement said.

As for the militia, “hotheads need not apply,” the announcement said.

One of the organizers, Doug Fleming, also feels local racial tensions could come to a boil this summer.

“I think people are less resilient,” said the 47-year-old, who installs pools and cuts firewood seasonally.

He acknowledged some may have problems with the term “militia.”

“It conjures up images of shotguns and rifles,” he said. “We’re going to discourage (recruits) who are looking for a fight.”

The OPP says it opposes formation of a local militia.

Insp. Dave Ross dismissed criticism that the OPP haven’t kept law and order, noting the 148 charges laid against 61 people since early 2006, when protests began against a housing development on Douglas Creek land claimed by Six Nations.

“Our role is to act in an appropriate manner to monitor the peace and act in the best interests of everyone involved,” Ross said.

http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=2009/may/18/legislation/&c=2

The Hill Times, May 18, 2009

Conservatives still don’t have draft regulations for environment plan three years later
The Tories have been in power for more than three years, and still don’t have a plan.
By Bea Vongdouangchanh
The federal government still doesn’t have draft regulations to implement its “Turning the Corner” environment plan, it has not complied with the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, it’s overstating cuts to greenhouse gases, and Environment Canada can not show how it has arrived at its numbers, says Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan in his audit released last week, but the private member’s bill which forced the review of the Conservatives’ action plan is not useless, say environmentalists and opposition MPs.

“Just the fact that the [environment commissioner] had to come out with a report on the bill makes it efficient. Because of that, we keep talking about our commitments to lowering the emissions,” said Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez (Honoré-Mercier, Que.), who sponsored the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, Bill C-288 which was passed in 2007. “The government is deciding not to respect the essence of the bill, and that brings a problem that we have to raise.”

In an attempt to force the government to come up with a plan to meet Canada’s commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, Mr. Rodriguez’s bill requires the government to develop a climate change plan annually and submit it to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy for assessment. The law also requires the Environment Commissioner to track the government’s progress in implementing the plans, a report that Mr. Vaughan tabled last Tuesday.

Mr. Vaughan found that the government’s “annual climate change plans do not fully meet the requirements of the act,” specifically subsection 5(1) which calls on the government to provide details of the measures it will take to meet Canada’s obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997 and ratified in 2005 by the international community, including the date of when the measure will come into effect, and the amount of greenhouse gas reductions expected.

According to Mr. Vaughan’s report, the government failed to provide “a clear and direct comparison of expected results with historical emission levels,” to “describe how they address the requirement to include an equitable distribution of GHG emission reductions among the sectors of the economy that contribute to GHG emissions” and only provided an implementation date for 20 per cent of the measures outlined.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice (Calgary Centre North, Alta.) told reporters last week after the report was tabled that Bill C-288 was “partisan mischief” and blamed the former Liberal government for signing the Kyoto Protocol but then not moving toward a real climate change plan to allow Canada to meet its obligations of cutting greenhouse gases to six per cent below 1990 levels.

“So, not surprisingly, as a country, we found ourselves in a position when the Conservative government was elected in 2006 where we were 35 per cent beyond the targets that had been set,” Mr. Prentice said. “We’ll work continentally, domestically, internationally to ensure that we’re a constructive player at Copenhagen and we will do what we’ve committed which is to arrive at Copenhagen with a full suite of our domestic policies in place.”

In its response to the commissioner’s recommendation to clearly meet the requirements of the act, Environment Canada said that it will provide the necessary details in the 2009 climate change plan.

“Beginning with the 2009 climate change plan, Environment Canada will request responsible departments—and will undertake itself—to provide further detail regarding effective dates, timelines, and descriptions of program implementation,” the department stated in the report.

NDP MP Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley, B.C.) told The Hill Times last week that although the government did not meet its obligations under Bill C-288, the bill was “helpful in terms of exposing the lack of effort from the government.”

Environmental Defence policy director Aaron Freeman said the Kyoto Implementation Act “provided added scrutiny on the government’s climate change policies,” which showed the Conservatives’ “lack of transparency and intellectual rigour” on climate change. “I think the government’s climate policy is in disarray and they seem to be paralyzed, waiting to see what the U.S. is going to do and hoping they can lobby [U.S.] President [Barack] Obama for a weaker climate change plan than the one he’s promised,” Mr. Freeman said. “I think our government is soon going to wake up and discover just how far behind the rest of the world we are.”

Clare Demerse, associate director of the Pembina Institute’s climate change program, told The Hill Times that one of the most important findings in Mr. Vaughan’s report is the fact that the government has “repeatedly overstated the effect of its proposals.”

She said that the value of Bill C-288 was the requirement for “solid accountability,” which the commissioner’s report gives. “What the commissioner did last week is a real service in terms of explaining that on the climate file that accountability and transparency haven’t been there and it needs to be there,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that it requires a special piece of legislation to make that point because in reality I think this is just good policy that any government would want to be part of.”

Ms. Demerse also said in a statement that “it is regrettable that the auditor general has once again chosen to publish her own report on the same day as that of the environment commissioner.

The report, released the same day as Auditor General Sheila Fraser’s spring report, also found that one of the reasons the government was “overstating” the expected greenhouse gas reductions was because it was reporting the reductions for the years that the reductions would take place, but rather in the year that industry could buy credits or invest in the technology fund.

“It’s like saying you have money in the bank before getting a job. You can’t pay the rent with that. It’s dishonest,” Mr. Cullen said. “When the Conservatives came into power they were highly critical of the Liberals having botched this so badly, and rightly so, but they’ve found a way to screw it up even more. It’s either incompetence, negligence or some combination of the two, but the result is the same. Canada will be embarrassed and humiliated and I think Canadians deserve better.”

Mr. Vaughan recommended that the government “state its expected greenhouse gas emission reductions…in the years that they are most likely to actually occur, rather than in the years that the payment is made to the technology fund and other compliance mechanisms.”

In its response to the report, Environment Canada said it rejected this recommendation and “will explain its approach more completely in the next plan.” Environment Canada also said it is “committed to transparency in the way that emission reductions are estimated.”

Mr. Prentice said last week that he would look at the way the government has been making calculations on reductions and improve it, but noted that the government’s focus is on moving forward continentally.

“The real issue here is that we are working together on a continental basis and an international basis in this year which is a critical year in terms of arriving at an overall approach to greenhouse gases,” he said. “I’ve said that by the time we get to Copenhagen [the next round of UN climate change discussions in December] we will have domestic policies laid out for each source of emissions in Canada. That’s the same commitment that the United States has given. It’s the same commitment that the Australians have given and other countries.”

The environment commissioner’s report also stated however that Canada is behind on draft regulations that were promised last year for implementation by 2010. Mr. Freeman said this is not a surprise because “it is part of the government’s holding pattern, waiting for the Americans, to see what they do.” The government will need to get serious about its own policies, rather than waiting for the U.S. to make policies for Canada, he said, noting that Canada “will really lose out” if it is not a leader.

“The United States and other countries are equipping their economies for the new energy economy. They are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into renewable energy and clean technology to shift their economies away from dirty fuel sources. Canada is running in exactly the opposite direction,” Mr. Freeman said.

Ms. Demerse said Canada needs a more “ambitious” climate change plan and needs to implement a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. “For Canada to be a policy maker instead of a policy taker and to have something to bring to the table in Washington we are going to need to get our system in place and get the rules of the game in Canada sorted out,” she said. “It’s definitely a concern. There’s been a huge amount of delay and there’s a huge opportunity now for the government to move quickly so that we don’t end up in the situation where we just look to the United States rather than showing leadership in Canada.”

bvongdou@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090610/supplements_quality_090610/20090610?hub=Health

Updated Wed. Jun. 10 2009 8:18 AM ET

The Associated Press

Lead in ginkgo pills. Arsenic in herbals. Bugs in a baby’s colic and teething syrup. Toxic metals and parasites are part of nature, and all of these have been found in “natural” products and dietary supplements in recent years.

Set aside the issue of whether vitamin and herbal supplements do any good.

Are they safe? Is what’s on the label really what’s in the bottle? Tests by researchers and private labs suggest the answer sometimes is no.

One quarter of supplements tested by an independent company over the last decade have had some sort of problem. Some contained contaminants. Others had contents that did not match label claims. Some had ingredients that exceeded safe limits. Some contained real drugs masquerading as natural supplements.

“We buy it just as the consumer buys it” from stores, said Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com. The company tests pills for makers that want its seal of approval, and publishes ratings for subscribers, much as Consumer Reports does with household goods.

Other tests, reported in scientific journals, found prenatal vitamins lacking claimed amounts of iodine, and supplements short on ginseng and hoodia — an African plant sparking the latest diet craze.

“There’s at least 10 times more hoodia sold in this country than made in the world, so people are not getting hoodia,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon and frequent Oprah Winfrey guest who occasionally has touted the stuff.

Industry groups say that quality problems are the exception rather than the rule.

“I believe that the problem is narrow, that the well-established and reputable brands deserve their reputations,” said Michael McGuffin, president of the American Herbal Products Association.

Of course, prescription drugs have had problems, too. Dozens of deaths were linked last year to tainted heparin, a blood thinner produced in China, for example. However, pharmaceutical drugs must show evidence to the government of safety and effectiveness before they go on sale. Not so for dietary supplements.

Fifteen years ago, Congress passed a law that treats supplements like food and allows them to go straight to market without federal Food and Drug Administration approval. The FDA can act only after consumers get sick or a safety issue comes to light.

“We called it ‘the body rule,’” said William Obermeyer, a chemist who left the FDA to found ConsumerLab.com with Cooperman. If a supplement was harmful, “we had to have so many adverse events before we could make a move on it. It was really like closing the barn door after all the animals left.”

The law said the FDA could write quality control rules for products sold in the U.S. It took the FDA 13 years to adopt these, and they are just now taking effect. But the rules do not say what tests companies must do to prove what is in their products, and some tests can be fooled by subbing other ingredients. The rules also set no limits on toxins such as lead; nor do they change the fundamental way these products are sold to the public.

“It leaves the level of quality up to the manufacturer,” Cooperman said.

In a written statement, FDA spokesperson Susan Cruzan said the new rules contain what is “needed to ensure quality,” and that products that contain contaminants or whose labels do not honestly describe their contents, are considered adulterated and subject to further action by the agency. But she conceded that the agency is spread thin.

“In that FDA has limited resources to analyze the composition of food products, including dietary supplements, it focuses these resources first on public health emergencies and products that may have caused injury or illness,” she wrote.

Millions of Americans take vitamin, herbal or other dietary supplements. Annual sales exceed US$23 billion, and more than 40,000 products are on the market. Tens of thousands of supplement-related health problems are handled by U.S. poison control centres each year, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002.

Until last year, supplement makers were not required to report problems to the FDA, and even now they must report only serious ones. The agency estimates that more than 50,000 safety problems a year are related to supplement use.

The Institute of Medicine, an independent science panel that advises the government, studied the situation in 2005.

“The committee is concerned about the quality of dietary supplements in the United States. Product reliability is low,” says its report, which urged amending the 1994 law to tighten consumer protections.

Trade associations say the FDA’s new rules do that.

“We are FDA-regulated products,” though not in the same way as prescription or over-the-counter drugs, said Steven Mister, president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition.

The FDA can ask law enforcement to act against any company selling an adulterated product, said McGuffin of the herbal products association. “You can go to jail, you can have your company seized,” he said.

“We represent companies that we consider the responsible centre of the industry,” who are working to comply with the new rules, he said.

But his group only represents 250 of the 1,500 companies selling such products. And even though millions of people take supplements with no apparent ill effects, there have been many quality problems that a consumer might never realize because they don’t always produce symptoms:

CONTAMINANTS

ConsumerLab.com found lead in at least one brand each of zinc, black cohosh and ginkgo products tested in recent years. Lead can accumulate and cause many health problems, and the testing company wants a national limit of 0.5 micrograms per day — a level that in California requires a warning on the label.

A fungal toxin was found in four red yeast rice products in March 2008. And in 2007, federal officials warned about a liquid herbal supplement sold for colic and teething pain after finding cryptosporidium, a waterborne parasite that causes severe diarrhea.

Ayurvedics — popular herbals used in traditional medicines from India — often contain hazardous metals, studies in medical journals report. In 2004, researchers tested 70 ayurvedic remedies in the Boston area and found that one in five had potentially harmful levels of lead, mercury or arsenic. Tests in Houston, Chicago, San Francisco and New York City turned up similar results.

Metals naturally accumulate in certain herbs and come from the soil they are grown in. Many supplement ingredients come from Europe, India and China.

“We don’t know how much of the ingredients are imported — whether they’re coming from across town or across the world,” Mister of the trade association conceded.

But even manufacturers get duped, said Jana Hildreth of the Analytical Research Collective, a group of scientists advocating better supplement testing.

“Companies started going to China and demanding lower prices,” and unscrupulous suppliers sometimes spiked products with cheap ingredients that can trick lab tests, she said. An example: a buckwheat derivative, rutin, in place of pricier ginkgo.

POTENCY PROBLEMS

In ConsumerLab.com testing last November, four out of seven supplements contained less ginkgo than claimed on their labels, and one failed to break apart properly to release its ingredients. Seven out of nine failed in tests in 2003, as did six out of 13 in 2005.

“It is now believed that ginkgo is among the most adulterated herbs,” the company reports.

Tests by California scientists of two dozen ginseng supplements, reported in a nutrition journal in 2001, found that many differed from their labels. The concentrations of some ginseng compounds varied by up to 200-fold from product to product.

In ConsumerLab.com tests, six out of nine chondroitin supplements failed testing in April 2007. One had only 8 per cent of what it claimed to contain, and one “maximum strength” product had none.

Vitamins and minerals had problems, too. A “high potency” iron supplement contained less than half the amount claimed. Of 23 top-selling vitamin C pills, one provided less than half the amount promised; the suggested dosages of some others were beyond recommended safe levels. Of 10 vitamin A supplements, one provided twice its stated amount, raising concern about toxic side effects.

Last year, nearly 200 people were sickened by supplements containing up to 200 times the amount of selenium stated on the label. Symptoms included hair loss, discolored and painful fingernails, muscle cramps, joint pain, diarrhea and fatigue.

HIDDEN PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

The FDA has repeatedly warned about herbal pills found to contain versions of Viagra and similar drugs to help men get an erection. These can pose a heart hazard, especially when taken with certain medications.

In December, the FDA expanded warnings about dozens of brands of weight loss pills. Though the labels did not say so, some contained sibutramine, a controlled substance that poses heart risks; rimonabant, a drug not approved in the United States; a seizure medicine, and a diuretic.

Red yeast rice, a traditional Chinese medicine, has compounds that may block cholesterol in a way similar to statin drugs. Some red yeast rice products have been found to contain lovastatin, the active ingredient in the drug Mevacor. Problems can occur at high doses or with other medicines.

OTHER RISKS

Even “safe” supplements can be harmful. Beta-carotene takers still had increased rates of lung cancer six years after one study was stopped. These supplements “appear to increase rates of the disease, particularly among smokers,” the National Cancer Institute warns.

In another study, men taking vitamin E were slightly more likely to get prostate cancer, and those taking selenium were a little more likely to develop diabetes. The results could have been due to chance, but federal officials were taking no chances and stopped the study last October.

Other studies suggest that high doses of vitamin C may help shield cancer cells from treatments designed to kill the cancer.

“Antioxidants are not the magic bullets that the supplement industry would like consumers to believe,” said David Schardt, a nutrition expert with the consumer advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “They’re not even necessarily benign.”

Herbal sex pills containing the African tree bark extract yohimbe have landed men in hospitals with heart rhythm problems. This herb can cause high blood pressure, increased heart rate and other symptoms, the government warns.

The most serious side effects occurred with diet pills containing ephedra — heart problems, seizures and even deaths. The FDA banned it in 2004. The battle started in 1997, when the agency wanted strong warnings on labels, and it became a test case of FDA authority that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the FDA ultimately prevailed.

DRUG INTERACTIONS

Ginkgo, vitamin K, garlic, ginseng and other herbals can cause bleeding or clotting problems if taken with certain medications or before surgery. St. John’s wort, promoted for depression, affects metabolism of more than half of all prescription drugs and can undermine birth control pills. Other supplements that can interfere with medicines include glucosamine, saw palmetto, soy and valerian.

OVERSTATED HEALTH CLAIMS

Makers can say a supplement addresses a nutrient deficiency, supports health, or reduces the risk of developing a problem, but then must say the product “is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”

So consumers will see vague claims, such as “promotes healthy immune system function.” The immune system has dozens of parts, and modifying one can be helpful or harmful, so “it’s a quack concept,” said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired physician who runs Quackwatch, a Web site on medical scams.

The Federal Trade Commission has stepped up actions against deceptive ads, said commission lawyer Rich Cleland.

“It is a little like playing Whack-A-Mole,” because each time one problem is resolved, more seem to pop up, he said.

Last year, his agency reached a settlement against the makers of Airborne, a supplement aimed at people in crowded places such as airplanes, offices and schools. Company founders “made false claims that Airborne products are clinically proven to treat colds,” and there is also no evidence the products can prevent colds, the FTC complaint says.

Airborne’s makers agreed to add $6.5 million to the $23.5 million they had already agreed to pay to settle a related private class-action lawsuit, bringing the total settlement fund to $30 million.

Industry also has stepped up self-policing. The Council for Responsible Nutrition gave money to the Council of Better Business Bureaus so it could hire a lawyer to investigate some supplement sellers’ sketchy claims.

“There were cancer cures and ‘blast off 29 pounds in 39 days’ — really the Wild West of advertising. It was totally out of control,” said the BBB’s advertising division director, Andrea Levine.

The BBB council targets the worst claims in popular categories, such as diet, cold and flu, menopause, joint problems and sleep aids.

“We can’t do them all,” but want to send a broad signal about what kinds of claims are over the line for each type of product, she said.

—————————————————————-

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/652771

Many newcomers stuck in jobs that are `dirty, dangerous and difficult’

Jun 18, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (4)
Lesley Ciarula Taylor
Immigration Reporter

Dumping newcomers in pizza delivery jobs sets them up for a dismal future in Toronto, an innovative new study reveals.

The rags-to-riches immigrant stories Canada has been bred on don’t work anymore, say the two professors who led the project that will be released today. In fact, given the increasingly fragile economy, many of the standard methods of dealing with newcomers are making their lives worse.

“The whole argument that, like they did in the `60s and `70s, immigrants will start off in survival jobs and move to stable jobs – that doesn’t happen,” said Patricia Landolt of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto

“Rather than wait around while we create an underclass, we need to deal with this now.”

And not just for immigrants, she added. As of 2006, more than 40 per cent of all workers in Ontario worked in low-wage service jobs.

Landolt and Luin Goldring of York University were the lead researchers on the Immigration and Precarious Employment project, which over three years interviewed 300 Latin American and English-speaking Caribbean immigrants in Greater Toronto with a variety of incomes and backgrounds. The study includes a manual in Spanish and English for people who deal with newcomers, available at arts.yorku.ca/research/ine.

Rather than just measure one thing at a time – full-time work or benefit deductions or scheduling or how wages are paid – the project created an index of precarious work that factored all of them in.

“Each indicator of precariousness is not necessarily a problem. It may not even be illegal. But taken together they result in jobs that are dirty, dangerous and difficult,” the study said.

Leading immigration academics and community activists are part of a policy group and a community group that will take the research further.

Among the major findings:

Despite an immigration policy designed to lure “the best and the brightest,” education had no impact on whether immigrants ended up in a precarious job. The only thing that made a difference was the ability to speak English.

Their first job in Canada had a big influence on the rest of their work lives: Those who started with precarious jobs were more likely to stay in them. Bad advice was a prime factor in ending up in precarious work.

Temporary foreign workers “set the floor on how far down you can push everyone else,” said Landolt.

On-the-job training helps improve immigrants’ working lives, but government education and training strategies don’t have much impact.

More than 75 per cent worked in non-union jobs and more than 70 per cent worked only part-time. Sixty per cent had weak or vague contracts. More than a third were paid cash.

50 per cent reported working with chronic pain.

30 per cent reported their work was dangerous.

By: (Karen) Jia-Yun Cao
June 17, 2009

Its summer and its 2009. I look down at my desk and instead of something inviting, I see a button with the phrase “Fair Contract Now! 416 CUPE 79”. I wish I had a cold drink. Not alcohol. I don’t drink alcohol; I can’t find any appeal in it. The City’s going on strike. They did it in 2002 and 2005; the only time I ever took notice was when it affected our garbage pick-up. This time around, I worked for the City. As a summer student. Full-time. But still.

A friend recently asked, are you only angry about the strike because you won’t get paid? She works for the federal government’s Immigration and Refugee Board. Surprisingly, it was ranked as the 3rd worst federal public department to work in out of almost a hundred others by employees. I think Environment Canada was ranked 1st. Hm. Makes me think.

No, I said. There’s a recession, and the union is being unrealistic. The City also thinks they’re stupid by coming forward with over 100 pages of concessions. It’s patronizing. “Bad faith” were the correct words used by both sides.

I sit in a cubicle, 40 hours a week, with 2 other people doing what some would call “monkey work”. There’s only one other summer student on our level but she sits further away. The lady next to me has been at her job for 20 years without any mobility within the public service hierarchy. She’s not mentally challenged or delayed, but she has an odd tendency to think aloud every single thought she has on her mind. She announces when she leaves for the bathroom, and she easily distracted by simple games on our phone and computer. All she does is order supplies. And she seems to struggle really hard with that.

The man next to me, he’s in a similar position, except he doesn’t think aloud. Both make well over $20 per hour. He doesn’t know how to use the computer very well. The other day, the manager was in the cubicle teaching him how to save a document on the desktop, including what “desktop” meant. I feel bad.

But should I? I work a another job on weekends. So I work over 50 hours/week. Its at a local health food store, mind you the employees cannot afford to shop there. Anyways, I asked one of them what she thought about this situation. She said, I like the unions because they can protect my black behind, but for some people, they just stick around forever.

So I have a dilemma. A personal and professional one. I study sociology, I know all about the lack of good jobs with living wages in Toronto, compounded by high cost of living, poor transit services, lack of social services in the suburbs, poor amount of affordable housing and the likes. Its heartbreaking. I live these statistics. I often repeat them: Toronto’s poverty level is almost 10% higher than the national average, 1 in 4 families live in poverty, food bank usage have doubled since 1989 and for many, its become a permanent solution. Canada is the only ‘developed’ nation without a national housing strategy. There are over 800 rules regulating welfare in Ontario, while asset rules like requiring singles to have less than about $275 in assets and families to have less than about $500 in assets in order to receive welfare traps people into this cycle, if not pushes them into the informal economy. Take all this into consideration knowing that Toronto’s GDP is bigger than 29 U.S. states. Clearly, something’s wrong.

But, here’s the personal problem: I also know many friends and acquaintances who have graduated from university with BAs and BScs who cannot find employment that reflects their education. They would be so happy just to get a $20/hour job.

Again, the strike. How do I feel about it? Should I be happy that there exist unions to provide people without marketable skills well-paying jobs that they would otherwise not get and may otherwise be living in poverty?

Oh, I forgot. There’s the inefficiency issue. Last summer, I worked full-time for 4 months with the Immigration and Refugee Board, and this summer, I am working full-time for another 4 months with the City. Inefficiency is a huge problem. Last year, I sent out correspondences and did work that others were being paid to do in permanent full-time positions. In a regular 8 hour day, I could finish my entire day’s work within 1 hour, if not an entire week’s worth of work within 1 day. But they would make you stretch it out to 8 hours or one week, either that or do endless filing afterwards. This year, it’s worst. I spend 40 hours a week doing almost nothing. Without exaggeration. The work given to me, done on a regular basis by other full-time permanent staff can be finished within a couple hours or a day.

So back to the strike. The man beside me is a clerk, he basically sorts internal mail. It takes literally one hour at most to do daily. What does he do for the rest of the day? I think he reads and reads and… reads. Internet, books he bought etc. The women beside me, she can theoretically do all a day’s work in an hour, but she struggles to stay on top. I think it’s a mental thing. So she’s kinda off the hook.

The problem? There exist people like these two employees all over the entire public sector! The other day, someone was sleeping in the bathroom. Unless someone kills someone, the union basically protects your job for life.

So who deserves these $20/hour mundane, mind-numbing, but well-paying job more? Unskilled individuals? Or skilled and more educated ones?

I don’t know. I grew up in public housing. I also went to university. So I came from both sides. Knowing the cost of university and everything I gave up for it, I think I’m going to side with the latter.

So the strike, apparently you can picket and get paid to do so. I don’t want to start about all the benefits a unionized worker has for them and their families. Its not a bad thing, but it creates a two-tier system: those employed in the public sector with good wages, benefits, salaries and tax-payer backed pensions. And the rest of us, the majority that exist without all the amenities above.

This may be the first time I agree with Conservatives.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/staying-loyal-to-local/article1184679/

Jennifer Yang

From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail, Wednesday, Jun. 17, 2009 10:32AM EDT

Over the past eight months, Calgary’s Sky 360 restaurant has achieved something of a recession-time miracle.

In October, as the economy started nosediving, the upscale restaurant opened for business at the top of the Calgary Tower. In January, with the restaurant industry in atrophy, Sky 360 was spending money on higher-quality ingredients and bumping menu prices 3 to 5 per cent.

Today, chef de cuisine Alain Chabot says business is booming and Sky 360 is profitable. So what’s the recipe behind his success? Buying local. “[The Calgary Tower] was notorious for being bad food,” Mr. Chabot says. “The company as a whole wanted to change that image. Part of the package was I get to use the ingredients I want.”

He says his locavore habits have helped keep his restaurant in the sky. “The quality’s gone up and that, in a sense, has to do with [ingredients] being local,” he says. “Diners get it.”

But are all diners willing to pay for it? As the recession continues, restaurants are taking a hard look at the cost of ingredients – especially the premium they may pay for local meat and produce. Last week, after Toronto chef Jamie Kennedy noted the financial challenge of embracing local food, some observers speculated that a hubristic devotion to regional ingredients was what humbled his restaurant empire.

Still, chefs who champion local ingredients – including Mr. Kennedy – say they aren’t abandoning the movement. Even as many of them have suffered through the downturn, most are sticking to their principles. They’re just trying to apply a bit more creativity and business savvy.

Mr. Chabot estimates that using farm-fresh ingredients costs about 15 to 20 per cent more than buying from commercial suppliers, but he says choosing provenance over price sets up a closer relationship with producers.

“[You can] go to them and say, ‘Listen, food costs are too high this month. What can you guys do to help me?’” Mr. Chabot says. “You’ve had a coffee with them, you’ve gone to their farm and petted their lamb. At the end of the day, yes, they’re your supplier, but they’re also your friend.”

Mr. Chabot says many of his suppliers have waived their delivery fees, and his boss also recently negotiated a better deal with one of the restaurant’s meat suppliers, slashing costs by about 10 per cent.

In food-conscious British Columbia, chef Brandon Owen says restaurant patrons have come to practically expect B.C. ingredients on their menus.

As corporate executive chef with Neptune Food Service, Mr. Owens has consulted for restaurants undergoing a transition toward local-oriented menus, including mainstream businesses such as the family-friendly chain ABC Country Restaurants.

In some cases, Mr. Owen points out, regional meats and vegetables can be cheaper. “Right now, B.C. local hothouse tomatoes are the cheapest tomatoes available on the market,” he offers as an example.

In other cases, he’s sourcing less expensive, but still local, produce. “We’re also working with our farmers and saying, ‘Okay, can we grow some of the more versatile and cheaper alternatives?’ Like squashes, carrots, onions and more of the produce that is readily available.”

For others, loyalty to local nets savings of the non-monetary sort. Sure, locally procured food may come at a premium, but using high-value ingredients can also make the job easier, says Brad Long, executive chef and co-owner of Veritas restaurant in downtown Toronto.

“Just buy really good ingredients,” he says. “You save time, you save money, you save cooking steps.”

At Cowbell, a charcuterie and restaurant in Toronto, weekend business has more or less halved since the recession began. Owner Mark Cutrara and his team process their meat in-house – meaning labour costs are high – but he’s keeping menu prices reasonable by shifting costs around on the plate. For example, whereas Cowbell’s pre-recession menu might have boasted a 60-day dry-aged beef for $42, today Mr. Cutrara ages his Ontario beef for just 30 days, which is less labour-intensive, and sells it in smaller sizes with an assortment of other cuts.

Certainly, not all restaurants have stayed local in the recession. Leor Zimerman, chef of Toronto’s Czehoski restaurant, says he has been forced to scale back.

“If it was up to me, I’d only buy local and organic, definitely, but that’s just not possible right now,” Mr. Zimerman says. “I’ve witnessed restaurants go under because the chefs have too much pride.”

And for higher-volume restaurants or chains, staying local is an especially tough act to juggle. Last winter, Italian restaurant chain Il Fornello started offering all-local daily specials in its nine restaurants across the Greater Toronto Area. That’s no longer affordable, president Ian Sorbie says.

“I think if we were a single-unit restaurant with a clientele that wasn’t really price-sensitive, it would’ve been easier to maintain,” he says.

Il Fornello’s first stop for produce is still the farmers’ market, Mr. Sorbie says, but now they’ll also shop across the border if they have to.

As for Jamie Kennedy, long regarded as a pioneer of local food in Canada, he says he’s not abandoning his movement.

“I do not blame the engagement in the local food movement for my financial woes,” he says, attributing them to his own strategic mistakes instead.

With his company now at a smaller, more manageable size, he’s exploring different approaches and strategies for absorbing the higher costs of local food.

He also has an established network of farmers and suppliers supporting him through the difficult times.

“The community of suppliers around me are fully committed to helping me see this through,” Mr. Kennedy says. “There is incredible opportunity out there. It needs to be lassoed, and people need to believe it will work.”

Somewhere in between
By: (Karen) Jia-Yun Cao

Globe & Mail “Facts and Arguments” submission:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/
It is recommended that you read some of the past “Facts and Arguments” articles before submitting one. Submissions are welcomed by Canadians from all walks of life and must be 800-1000 words max.

June 17, 2009

In February, I started looking for another full-time summer job. It’s become an annual ritual, crammed on top of exams. This time, I spent an additional 100 hours on my resume, cover letters, interview prep and finding appropriate outfits among my second-hand-laden closet.

It worked. The calls came in. The Canadian Cancer Foundation, the Council of Canadians, Newcomer Women’s Services Toronto, the Don Mills Employment Resource Centre, Immigration Canada and the City of Toronto. All admirable places, I took up a position with the latter.

I also work part time at an organic health food store on weekends so that come September, I still have a job. This means I work 7 days a week, right out of exams in May till September 4th, 2009. Except of course, the City is going on strike.

What am I trying to do?

At the organic health food store, we make $9-$11 per hour. The full-time employees stereotype us, the young part-timers, usually students. I am one of them. I know they do it. Behind my back. Just another university-educated soon-to-be-yuppie about to join the crowd that can afford to shop here. We’ll be serving you one day.

But that’s not true! I would scream in my head. In fact, I go out of my way to not talk about anything of remote intellectual nature. Because every time I do, unlike at school and among friends, the conversation stops. So I don’t speak of politics, world issues, environmental issues, social issues, just small talk about movies and whatever. Not that, those are not of intellectual nature.

And I live the statistics of Toronto’s worsening poverty, lack of affordable housing, poor transit, and how profit-driven the health food industry has become. Toronto’s poverty level is almost 10% higher than the national average and food bank usage has doubled since 1989, while our GDP is bigger than 29 U.S. states. Clearly something’s wrong.

I despise the sense of superiority that many, not all, but many within the health food, alternative-medicine, new-age lifestyle have towards the majority that can’t afford it. It denotes that they are better than us, just like most people who are university-educated think they’re better than those who aren’t, which fundamentally assumes that there was a level playing field that was merit-based to begin with. And we know that’s not true. Unless there are equal conditions, there’s no such thing as equal opportunity. If there was 1 homeless man, it would be his problem. But there are millions of homeless individuals, families, children and women. So it’s a societal problem.

I grew up in Toronto’s Regent Park public housing then I moved to Scarborough where talking about poverty was a taboo. Here, it existed among new-comers in different forms: isolated seniors, isolated single mothers, isolated youths etc. – compounded by the suburbs’ lack of social services, transportation infrastructure and thus the social and economic advantages that exist downtown.

I use terms low-income and new-comers, not because they are politically correct, but because sociologically, it tells us why these groups are living in these conditions.

What am I getting at?

I can’t break the barrier that separates my middle-class university education and my co-workers’/my past working-class background and conditions. But I try so hard. Yet I feel like I don’t belong in either group – middle or working class. I stand somewhere in between.

I can’t connect with people living in desperate poverty because I no longer live in such situations. I can’t connect with the middle-upper class that work in the sectors that I’m trying to get into because they have little to no understanding of what its like to work 12 hours a week, making $7/hour and thus may not understand the need for more and better public housing. Is it okay that on most days, I feel more in common to other students studying international development, political science, environmental policy, and sociology, who coincidentally happen to be mostly Caucasian, than my Asian peers, who dominate the sciences and math?

I don’t know.

My parents forced me to go to U of T; they hated Ryerson for being a former college. I got angry, and defied them by studying sociology and environmental management instead. But now I’m scared. It’s a BA and it teaches no employable skills. My education is entirely financed by OSAP and savings. If anything, I expect to live in at or below the poverty line upon graduation, except with $20 000 debts. A Prof once said “all this interdisciplinary education talk is important but in real life, you have to specialize in order to actually get a job worthy of a university education”. I think I’m trying to prove her wrong. Some days, it’s hard to convince myself that it’s working. But I’m trying. This is why I slave away my only months off at 50 hour a week jobs.

So the stereotype at work continues, while I build my resume. Slowly.

Therefore I’m not the kind of soon-to-be-yuppie type that universities are full of. Not in their attitude. But I want to be in their position. I envy their financial security, perhaps even the respect that their social status has.

Is that wrong?

Again, I’m trying. Somehow I will get the university interdisciplinary education I want, with the practical skills I need in order to get the life-fulfilling job I crave. It’s only when you’re financially and socially secure, that you’re able to help others, right?

So here I am, spending the only months I get off each year, the prime of my youth, my early twenties slaving away at 50-hour-a-week jobs. Is there a good part? The friends I make. They make me happy and they keep me going. I’m not sorry if I become a yuppie. I tried to connect but you stereotyped.

Source:
http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=2009/june/15/qa_rubin/&c=2

The Hill Times, June 15, 2009

Global economy to get ’shock of its life’ when oil hits triple digits
Energy expert and former CIBC economist Jeff Rubin says he’s doesn’t give a hoot if politicians read his book. When oil prices soar, ‘the folk’ will force the political players to do the right thing.

By Kate Malloy

Jeff Rubin says global economy will get the “shock of its life” within 12 months of the end of the recession when oil prices hit triple digits and the age of globalization starts to come to an end.

The former maverick chief economist for CIBC’s World Markets for about 20 years and author of the new book Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, says demand for oil will outstrip supply, food prices will soar, and countries will be shocked into growing their own food, manufacturing their own products, and paying a lot money more for everything.

There will be winners and losers.

The triple digit oil prices will do more for the environment “than 100 Kyotos,” he says, but if the world doesn’t get off oil, “the values of tolerance and equality may turn out to be artifacts of the era of cheap oil, and the world may face political and cultural upheaval in the stagnant economy of decades ahead.”

Mr. Rubin has a lot to say. Skyrocketing oil prices, and not subprime lending caused the global recession. Fuel efficiency leads to increased consumption. Ethanol and other alternative fuels are “a joke.” And the green farm-gate? It’s one of the most energy-intensive industries in the world and “a head-fake.”

Why is the world about to get a whole lot smaller and when will this happen?

“Because distance will cost money in the world of triple-digit oil prices. That means the food that you eat, the steel that you use, everything will all of a sudden have to be produced locally because supplying yourself from far-away markets like China will be penny-wise, pound foolish. What you save on the wage bill, you’ll more than burn in bunker fuel.”

When will this happen?

“This has already started to happen before the recession kicked in and this will happen within 12 months of an economic recovery because within 12 months of an economic recovery, we’ll be staring right back at triple-digit oil prices.”

When do you think the recession will end?

“Well, you know, folk have different ideas about that, but recessions are finite events. We’ve only been in recessions about 20 per cent of the time in the whole post-war period, so whether the recovery starts in two months from now, or whether it starts six months from now, the fact is that whenever it starts, within a very short order of time, within 12 months of that time, we’ll be looking right back at triple-digit oil prices.”

Why do you say “take away cheap oil, and the global economy will get the shock of its life?” What’s going to happen?

“Well, because the global economy is all predicated on cheap oil, so that you bring your components to assemble something, you bring it all around the world to the cheapest labour markets to assemble it, and then you ship it again all around the world again. Well, guess what you have to burn to move goods? Whether you move goods by rail, by truck, by air, or by boat, you’re only burning oil and the global economy is a very energy-intensive way of organizing the economy.”

So what’s the shock of our lives?

“Well, the shock of our lives is that all of a sudden we’re going to be eating local food, we’re going to be making our own steel and we’re going to be making our own flat screen TVs. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, except for the fact that everything that we’re going to soon make ourselves, that we used to import from China and the developing world, it’s going to cost us a whole lot more money to make it ourselves.”

Why do you say “skyrocketing oil prices, and not sub-prime lending caused the recession?”

“Well, because you didn’t need Lehmann Brothers to go under to create a world recession; you’ve just needed oil shocks and this was the biggest oil shock of them all. I mean, my problem with the subprime mortgage explanation of the world economy is, how did falling housing prices in Cleveland cause a recession in Japan and Germany? And why were those recessions twice as deep as the recession in Cleveland? Maybe there was something else going on. Now the falling housing prices sure took a huge chunk out of my bonus. Why do you think I’m writing a book? [Laughs]. But there’s a big difference between blowing up investment banking bonuses—and I was part of that world at CIBC World Markets—and global GDP, a big difference. If you want to blow up global GDP, you don’t need Lehmann Brothers; you just shock oil prices, like ‘73, like ‘79, like today which is twice as big a shock than in ‘73 and ‘79.”

So why’s everybody saying that then?

“You know why? Because it’s a lot easier to think that way. We can always bail out the banks, we can always bail out the Clevelands’ subprime mortgage holders, and we can bail out the auto companies. But guess what? There can’t be an energy bailout. If triple-digit oil prices is the real cause of this recession, then there’s little governments can do because it’s not about government, it’s about you and I.”

Why do you say “fuel efficiency” doesn’t lead to conservation, but leads to increased consumption?

“Because that’s what it’s done. Take your average car. Your engine is 30 per cent more efficient than it was, say, in the 1970s, but your average vehicle today consumes just as much oil as that gas guzzler your parents drove because what have we done with all those efficiency improvements? All of a sudden, those efficiency improvements have turned into a giant, honking SUV. So our cars now are much faster, they’re much bigger, they have all kinds of energy-sucking options that are now standard, like air conditioning, onboard computers, entertainment systems, and we drive our cars 30 per cent more.”

Why do you say ethanol and other alternative fuels are “a joke?”

“They’re not a joke to the people who are getting all the subsidies, but they’re a joke to the energy user because at the end of the day, 75 per cent of all the energy in that seemingly green fuel is hydro-carbons. Corn does not grow itself. Corn does not march down the road to the distillery plant and the distillery plant does not run by itself and ethanol doesn’t ship itself. It goes in trucks. All of those things—from the fertilizer to grow corn, to the oil to run the tractor—all of that is burning oil and natural gas, so it’s a head-fake.

“We think it’s green, but it’s very oily. In fact, I’ll go even farther than that: behind the façade of the green farm-gate is one of the most energy-intensive industries in the world. Modern agriculture today is really about turning fossil fuel into food when you think about where the fertilizer’s coming from and where the energy to run the combine and the tractor. So, I think it’s a head-fake.”

Why do you say the real dangers of carbon emissions (global warming) come not from North America, but from the developing world—and there should be a “carbon tariff?”

“Because 90 per cent of the growth of global emissions in the last nine years have come from countries outside of Kyoto, the developing world. So all I’m saying is before we start making expensive sacrifices to save the environment, you better make sure that we’re not doing that totally in vain. In other words, before we start closing coal plants here and start paying three times more for power, you better make sure that China’s not building 800 coal plants and using those 800 coals plants to power manufacturing factories that send us their goods. If China wants to do that, we have to charge them a tariff so they pay the same price for their carbon emissions as we’ll pay for our emissions.”

Why will Canadian industries like steel and agriculture be revitalized in the world to come?

“Because you won’t be able to import those frozen lamb chops from New Zealand. It’ll be cheaper to have fresh lamb because the cost of shipping, and not just shipping, steel doesn’t have to refrigerated, lamb does. That refrigeration unit on that boat, by the way, is fuelled by bunker fuel, the same thing that’s powering the boat’s engines. So we’ll be raising our own lamb.

“Do you know that last year China exported $6-billion worth of food to America and almost all of that had to be refrigerated. At least steel doesn’t have to be refrigerated, so America is not going to eat $6-billion less of food; they’re going to grow their own. But the question is where are they going to grow it? Well, I think what’s going to happen is real estate values in the suburbs are going to fall because people won’t be able to live so far from where they work and, at the same time, food prices are going to soar because of the cost of importing things and all of a sudden some of those far-flung suburbs might get reconverted back to farm land that they were 30 to 40 years ago.”

Why do you say the end of the current recession will see oil prices rise to unprecedented levels and that reverse globalization is not necessarily a bad thing?

“Well, oil prices will get to those levels because the only supply that we can bring on is an extremely expensive supply. Like, when the world’s relying on the Canadian oil sands to supply it with oil, it’s time to buy a bike. It’s the bottom of the barrel and it’s not that it isn’t there, it’s there, but it requires a hell of a lot of energy to get it out of the sands and to make that worthwhile you’re going to need triple-digit oil prices or people aren’t going to get funded to build $3-billion oil sands projects.”

You say “like globalization and our affluent, debt-dependent consumer economies, our values of tolerance and equality may turn out to be artifacts of the era of cheap oil, which will mean that we may face political and cultural upheaval in the stagnant economy of decades ahead.” Why?

“If we don’t get off oil, that’s for sure. I mean, look at what’s happening in Canada, the U.S., Britain, Australia. Already, there’s a backlash against immigration and that’s par for the course; any time economies start to stumble then there’s a backlash against immigration and also because the unemployment is rising. We’re talking about a world slower economic growth, any way you cut it and that means that we’re probably likely to see less movement of people, less migration. And if you look at our economy, or the economy of Western Europe or the U.S., we’re usually impacted. The last 30 to 40 years have been one of the largest migrations in human history, from the developing world to the developed world.”

But then you say “on the other hand, restructuring our economies and our way of life to adjust to an energy-constrained world will offer many opportunities for innovators. There will be many silver things.” Why?

“Well, we’re going to find that many of the jobs that we thought were gone forever, will be coming home; maybe obviously not car plants, but steel plants, farms, manufacturing jobs. We’re certainly going to be a greener economy. I think triple-digit oil prices will do more for greenhouse emissions than 100 Kyotos because we just won’t be able to afford it. I think going back to the worlds we’ve known, maybe our worlds get smaller, but we become attentive custodians of our own little worlds, which probably make our neighbourhoods better places to live. So I don’t see this as entirely or at all necessarily apocalyptic.

“It’s only apocalyptic if we continue to insist on consuming as much oil as we did when oil was cheap and abundant, then it becomes apocalyptic. But I think we’re going to change, which is the whole point of the book.”

How will people make that jump from triple-digit oil prices? How will people heat their homes, for instance?

“Maybe people will have smaller homes. Maybe people don’t need 3,000 square foot homes, just like maybe people don’t need Yukon Denali SUVs and maybe we don’t need to eat avocadoes in the winter in Ottawa. Maybe people in California can live without Ontario maple syrup. I mean, we adjust but if we continue to say, ‘I’ve got to eat avocadoes in the winter,’ and I’ve got to continue to drive my Lincoln Navigator or my Yukon Denali, then yeah it becomes apocalyptic, then it becomes like what Detroit is going through right now.”

What do you think of the Canadian federal political leadership on these issues of energy and the environment?

“I don’t base my hope on that. I base my hope on the market. When gas is $7 a gallon, folk won’t have to buy my book. They’ll know exactly what to do. They’ll get off the road. I think the price mechanism here can be part of the solution.”

Do you think the federal government is taking any kind of leadership on any of this stuff?

“It’s the price of oil.”

That’s it?

“It’s a pretty big it! For example, why are we spending billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to prop up an industry that’s doomed to obsolescence anyway? Why aren’t we using that money instead to invest in our future and not our past? Our future is public transit, our past was Yukon Denalis on the 401. But that’s where the public investment is going to try to keep Yukon Denalis on the 401. First of all, we shouldn’t be building any more Yukon Denalis and why spend more on roads when there’s going to be less cars in the future on those roads.

“So that’s where I’d say they’ve got it wrong, but the politicians will get it right, because, ultimately, the voters will tell the politicians. The auto sector is two per cent of the GDP, it’s less than that in the U.S., yet, people are conditioned by the past to believe that if we walked away from the auto industry that our economy would crumble. Well, guess what? If that was true, then our economy would have crumbled a long time ago because the auto industry is a shadow of what it once was either in Canada or the United States.”

Are you getting any feedback from federal politicians about your book ?

“None whatsoever. But that’s not the feedback I’m interested in.”

What feedback are you interested in?

“I’m interested in how average people relate to the issues that the book raises because, again, I don’t think the solution is Bank of Canada raises interest rates X, or Flaherty tables budget deficit Y. It’s where you live, what you eat, what you do; that’s what weaning the economy off oil is all about. It’s not about the Bank of Canada. It’s about you and I and what we do and ultimately, our choices will have political implications.”

Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, by Jeff Rubin, Random House Canada, pp. 286, $29.95.

kmalloy@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/650299

When Canadian military training backfires … on us

An exclusive Star series investigates how the war in Afghanistan is creating a dangerous new class of offender in Canada – and finds growing evidence in jails, courtrooms and homes across the country

Jun 13, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (82)
David Bruser
STAFF REPORTER

Pte. Matthew Charles Keddy sits in the prisoner’s box, his second court appearance in as many weeks.

Already charged with beating up his girlfriend, he’s in court this time following his arrest on the Reversing Falls Bridge in Saint John, N.B., for violating a restraining order.

In recent days, Keddy has seen the inside of a jail and a psychiatric ward. And in the weeks to come he will be brought before two other judges, plead guilty to assault, listen to his girlfriend’s tear-soaked impact statement, and spend five more days in the psychiatric ward.

This is a lonely moment for the 26-year-old infantryman and veteran of the Afghanistan War. On this day, no one from the military shows up on Keddy’s behalf, which riles Judge William McCarroll as he tries to set the terms of Keddy’s pre-trial house arrest.

Judge McCarroll: “There should be somebody here from the military, right? To take responsibility. And I don’t understand why there isn’t. I mean, he went to Afghanistan. He did his part. He’s back here now. So what is he, cut loose?”

Prosecutor: “They are aware he’s got psychological issues. There were programs set up for him that he has not been attending. And their position is … they’re not in the business of 24-hour-a-day babysitting, because they perceive that he is a soldier and has responsibilities himself.”

Judge McCarroll: “The word `babysit’ certainly doesn’t apply to this young man. He’s certainly not a baby when they send him overseas, that’s for sure.”

Prosecutor: “They were aware of the alleged assault of the girlfriend. They were aware of the no-contact order with the girlfriend …”

Judge McCarroll (agitated, his voice rising): “Were they aware that he was on the Reversing Falls Bridge, going to jump off it?”

LIKE AN ANGRY BRUISE coming to the surface, the cost of the war to Canadian soldiers is starting to show in jails, courtrooms and homes broken by booze and rage.

After serving their country in the heat, grit and unpredictability of the Afghanistan war zone, where hundreds of Canadians have been killed or seriously hurt by unseen roadside bombs, the troops are bringing the violence home.

Spousal abuse. Suicide attempts. Barroom assaults. Drunk driving.

A Toronto Star investigation shows the problem is escalating, presenting police, lawyers, judges and psychologists with a new and dangerous class of offender.

“Your training that the taxpayers of this country paid for should not be used against them under any circumstances,” a judge told a soldier convicted of assault. “You need help. You need counselling to get over whatever trauma you experienced when you were in Afghanistan. You’re not the same man you were when you left Canada, and that is a sad reality of war.”

The Star reviewed court documents and interviewed scores of soldiers – from privates to warrant officers, light-armoured-vehicle drivers to snipers, those with physical injuries and those without – as well as lawyers, law enforcement officials, psychologists and others connected to military communities from Vancouver Island to CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.

Some examples of post-Afghanistan crime:

In a Winnipeg police station, a soldier-turned-child abuser repeatedly smashes his head against the wall after a detective places him under arrest. He later pleads guilty to assaults that caused a total of 19 broken bones in his triplet sons, and is serving a three-year jail sentence.

On the side of a road in Gatineau, Que., at 6:30 a.m., a young veteran of the Afghanistan war named Yuri Miljevic-LaRoche, his eyes red and breath stinking of alcohol, tries to give first aid to the bicyclist he struck with his car.

In a New Brunswick courthouse, Richard Donald Malley is found guilty of assault after he hit a man in a Miramichi bar hard and often. It happened just days after he returned from Afghanistan. The court hears Malley, 21, may be suffering from a psychological injury.

All the soldiers interviewed by the Star describe an incredible journey that takes them to the Afghanistan moonscape 10,000 kilometres away, where they live in what they call a state of “hypervigilance.” Many return looking for a powerful distraction from the memory of what happened there. Others come home feeling empty. There’s a void that needs filling. They fill it with booze or drugs or both. These men want to reclaim that feeling of living at the centre of the action. They want back out on that edge. Instead, many of the soldiers in this story end up in the back of a police cruiser or in jail for the first time in their lives. Without criminal records before the war, they now report to a probation officer or child services worker, or both.

“It was after the Breathalyzer they put me in cuffs,” recalls Travis Schouten, now living in Sarnia and fighting a see-saw battle with his psychological injury, known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “When they did that, I was empty. I had been to Afghanistan, lost friends, done something good, and here I am in the back of a police car, like a common criminal.”

Schouten awaits trial after an incident in Whitewater Township, Ont., in which he says he rolled his car into a ditch, injuring one of the passengers.

Retired colonel Pat Stogran, who led the first group of Canadians in Afghanistan in 2002, seemed visibly agitated when presented with the Star’s findings, including details of how some of his former soldiers are abusing drugs and alcohol and getting into trouble with the law.

“These guys who are walking wounded, these are the guys who might as well be bleeding out on the Kandahar desert right now,” says Stogran, now the Veterans Ombudsman in Ottawa. “I am devastated to hear that.

“What (the Star has) done here validates a lot of the stuff that’s been nagging at the back of my brain. You send anybody away to a shit hole for six months and they’ll come back changed.”

He argues the military must better prepare soldiers for the stress of war, including subjecting them to virtual-reality representations of warlike conditions before they go on tour.

“I don’t think the military is doing enough. It’s not all about learning how to pull the trigger and strip and assemble your weapon. It’s also about seeing the blood and gore and really being able to relate to somebody who’s badly mutilated and you have to put tourniquets on. We tried to set up a program of stress inoculation. I brought it to the powers that be.”

But Stogran says his ideas were ignored. “I’ve been ranting and raving. It’s fallen upon deaf ears.”

Stogran also wants the military to make soldiers prepare “life plans” to get them thinking about how to live a life of purpose after leaving a war zone and the military.

In the meantime, he pledges to ask the military to consult with corrections officials to get a handle on exactly how many veterans are landing in jail. He fears that what the Star found may only be the “tip of the iceberg.”

“A lot of the troops are still serving, doing multiple tours, and perhaps still haven’t had time for their pot to boil over.”

SINCE STROGAN took the first group of troops into Afghanistan seven years ago, 26,800 Canadians have been deployed and 119 have died, the most of any Canadian combat mission since the Korean War. More than 400 have been injured by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), mines, rocket attacks and direct combat. At least 1,000 have suffered severe psychological trauma.

In the past few years, as the military has stepped up recruiting to try to keep pace with its costly commitment (roughly $7.5 billion to date), the damage has escalated.

The number of soldiers killed in action jumped from single digits in 2002 through 2005 to about 30 in each of the following three years. And more than one in five Canadian soldiers and police officers deployed to Afghanistan leave the force with psychiatric problems, a number that has rapidly risen in the past 12 months. The closer a soldier is to combat, the more likely he or she will develop PTSD, which can affect someone who has suffered a critical injury or witnessed death, or who has been threatened with death or critical injury.

Symptoms include reliving the traumatic experience through nightmares, flashbacks or even smells; hyper-arousal that can lead to sleeplessness, irritability and anger; and avoiding conversations, places and people reminiscent of the traumatic event.

Keddy, a foot soldier during his tour in 2007, told the Star he shot an enemy combatant at close range and was never the same. “I went and served my country with honour and dignity and I came back and my life went straight to hell,” says Keddy, now 27. His mother, Brenda Love, added: “It was war he went into and somebody else came back. His eyes are dead. You start talking to him about the war, you can see that blackness come over him. It’s going to take a long time to get that little boy back.”

Meanwhile, the military justice system is seeing a steady increase in disciplinary and criminal matters coming before military courts.

In the court-martial system, where more serious cases are typically dealt with, the number of cases has increased each year since the beginning of the war, with a 16 per cent jump in 2007-08 from the year before.

Records of court-martial proceedings offer a window into a military struggling to cope with stressed troops. In February 2007, in Kandahar province, a sergeant “severely injured” a corporal, dislocating his jaw during an “unauthorized” training session on the use of flexi-cuffs and the handling of detainees.

Also in Kandahar, in the wee hours of Christmas Day 2005, a drunk master corporal ratcheted up an ongoing dispute with a corporal by pointing a loaded rifle at him from less than two metres away. The master corporal cocked the rifle. The corporal, fearing for his life, took the rifle, grabbed his superior by the throat and kneed him in the ribs, released the magazine from the weapon, cleared the chamber and returned the ejected round to the magazine. The court reported that the corporal has nightmares about the incident.

The military says it does not keep data on military members who are arrested off base, charged with a crime or convicted of a crime by civilian authorities.

Repeatedly asked to comment on the Star’s findings, the military did not respond.

The mounting cost of the Afghanistan war on the soldiers, their families and communities is troubling a number of judges from Winnipeg to Saint John.

In the summer of 2008, when faced with Sgt. Ronald Anderson, a veteran of two Afghanistan tours and sufferer of PTSD, sitting in the prisoner’s box charged with uttering a death threat, New Brunswick Judge Patricia Cumming signalled a new problem facing the criminal justice system.

“More and more the courts are being asked to venture into areas with which they are not particularly well-equipped to deal,” she said. “What we’re dealing with is a situation everybody talks about – post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet no one here has an understanding of what that actually entails, what risks that puts to the defendant or to others in his proximity or with whom he has a close relationship.

“It is daily life that he’s been dropped back into after going through all of these horrific experiences – the loss of friends and comrades in such violent and horrific ways, seeing children die … I will say that in dealing with these matters in the future, and I expect there will be many more, that counsel may have to consider perhaps more detailed hearings … upon which the court can actually rely when making these types of decisions.”

ON NOV. 24, 2008, in a monotone recitation of the facts, the prosecutor detailed for the court what police had found on Tweedsmuir Court in Oromocto, N.B., four months earlier.

Shonda Lynn Burgess said she and Matthew Keddy had a fight. That Keddy threw a remote control at her before pushing her. The constable reported Keddy had pushed Burgess with both hands, lifting her clear off the ground and onto her butt. The constable saw bloodstains on her jeans and a swollen left arm, and that she had trouble walking.

Prosecutor: “What she has is a cracked vertebrae.”

Keddy has pleaded guilty to assault and will be sentenced to three months’ house arrest and 12 months’ probation.

The prosecutor’s summary done, Burgess steps to a microphone in the courtroom.

Burgess: “As I sit here thinking about what to write for my victim impact statement … I can’t do it. I’m going to cry all the way through it.”

Burgess pauses, then reads on.

“Being attacked by the man one loves pulls at every part of that person. Matthew attacked me and ended up cracking my tailbone and ending our relationship and in turn making it very untrusting.

“I am not certain as to why this happened on that day. I am not sure that I ever will. I didn’t deserve to be attacked.”

She cries all the way through the rest of her statement.

IN PETAWAWA and nearby Pembroke, communities heavily populated by military families, where storefronts seem to compete for the highest number of “Support Our Troops” posters, the suffering is not on display.

But it is not far from view.

At the Phoenix Centre for Children and Families, where clients can discreetly enter from a back alley, the military family caseload has rocketed from 12 in 2005 to 85 today, with 20 on the waiting list.

Director Greg Lubimiv says the families are “grappling with issues ranging from anxiety-driven child behaviours like bedwetting and aggression, to domestic violence, depression and marital breakdown.”

“More deployments actually compound the stress on many of our soldiers,” Lubimiv adds.

Since 2006, the proportion of military family clients at Phoenix who have experienced the stress of multiple deployments has risen from 33 per cent to higher than 60 per cent.

“There is a dramatic increase in marital conflict,” says Lubimiv. “And when you have people who are feeling depressed, moving into substance abuse is common. And there is a fair tie-in between substance abuse and violence …”

A defence attorney who represents many military clients based at CFB Petawawa says that shortly after a tour returns from Afghanistan, he sees a spike in the number of domestic assault charges, some involving a weapon, along with impaired driving and “confinement,” which he describes this way:

“It usually takes the form of a complete loss of control, where all hell’s breaking loose and a spouse is trying to call the police … and you’re blocking the door, you’re ripping the phone out of the wall. That’s a classic. The phone rip out of the wall. Happens a lot. Can’t tell you how many times guys have had restitution orders to replace the phone. And the phone is often the weapon.”

A young corporal, interviewed by the Star on CFB Petawawa, pushed his wife down the stairs.

“We were arguing. I remember I was at the top of the stairs. I blacked out. From what she tells me, I put my hand on her face and pushed. When I snapped out of it, she was at the bottom, screaming and bleeding. I took her to the hospital in (nearby) Pembroke.”

On a recent afternoon in the backyard of his small house on base, the corporal sat on the edge of a lawn chair, pumping his knees. Being seen talking to a reporter likely would not promote career advancement. But he figures nosy neighbours will assume a man with a notepad to be his probation officer or child services worker, both of whom make regular appearances.

Chain-smoking, a bucket full of stubbed-out butts within reach, the corporal recalled his tour in 2006 – the snap of bullets, the smell of an exploded IED, a medic screaming, dust everywhere.

“I can remember everything. It’s like we were VHS players before the war. Now we’re Blu-ray players.

“When I came home, that first day, got home early in the morning, I couldn’t be here. I had to get back.

“When you’re overseas, your life’s on the line. Hypervigilance. You get home, there’s nothing.”

Not even the thrill of meeting his newborn son for the first time.

“You need to find that adrenaline rush.”

The corporal pleaded guilty to assault. He says the judge gave him 18 months’ probation and allowed supervised visits with his son. The corporal was only recently allowed back in the home. He visits a psychologist on base every two weeks, is on Cymbalta, an antidepressant, and wears a mouthguard at night. He grinds his teeth in his sleep. The corporal says he needs a new mouthguard because the one he has is badly chewed.

IN HIS FAST FALL from soldier to suspect, Pte. Matthew Charles Keddy, without a criminal record before the war, has shared the same courtroom as drunk drivers and an armed robber sentenced to six years in a federal penitentiary.

Prosecutor: “According to the information the (military is) getting, he’s not cooperating with the program.”

Judge McCarroll: “Well, if he’s mentally ill, maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he can’t comply. Maybe it’s not his fault. Maybe it’s as a result of the fact that he went overseas, saw some terrible things and is back here, suffering from some kind of a stress type of situation that he needs help for.”

Keddy violated a court order to stay out of Saint John when he went to the bridge. (The order stemmed from the assault charge involving his girlfriend.) On this day, Oct. 20, 2008, Judge McCarroll tells Keddy he must stay on the base, CFB Gagetown, unless accompanied by his parents, and undergo a psychological assessment.

Judge McCarroll: “How about it, Matthew? Are you willing to go through the program that they have up there (on the base)?”

Keddy: “I just want to go home.”

Judge McCarroll: “Home with your parents, you mean?”

Keddy: “Yeah. You send me up there, I’m going to go nuts.”

The microphone picks up Keddy’s sniffles. His voice shakes.

Keddy: “They say they’re going to help me, but they don’t help me. They don’t care … (sniffling) … They don’t care.”

Judge McCarroll (addressing Keddy’s stepfather in the courtroom gallery): “How was everything before he went overseas?”

Stepfather: “Oh it was good. He was happy. He was excited about life. He loved Canada.”

Keddy: “I was normal.”

David Bruser can be reached at 416-869-4282 and dbruser@thestar.ca.

———————————————-

Between:

Her Majesty, the Queen

- and –

Afghanistan War Veteran

From the courts. Each of these eight men served their country in Afghanistan, and had trouble with the law upon their return to Canada. Some have been convicted, some are awaiting trial. Most of those convicted received house arrest or probation, not jail time.

Douglas Kurtis Brown:

The former Edmonton police officer awaits sentencing after being found guilty in April of four counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm. He was off-duty and driving his BMW when he ran a red light and collided with a pick-up truck. The truck was thrown onto its side, and an occupant was pulled from the flaming wreckage moments before it exploded. One victim needed bones set, another skin grafts to treat burns, another stitches and a psychologist.

A military official confirmed for the Star that Brown had served in Afghanistan for six to nine months and returned a troubled man, underwent counselling and saw his marriage fail.

Jeffrey Robbie Barwise:

Earlier this year in Brandon, Man., Jeffrey Robbie Barwise pleaded guilty to several charges, including possession of narcotics and careless storage of a Glock 22 and Remington Express 870 pump-action shotgun. His court appearance followed a bizarre incident in which Barwise, who had no prior criminal record, was found at his home by CFB Shilo Military Police shot through his right hand. His friend was found shot just above the right knee. The MPs theorized the two were drinking and maybe doing drugs and tried to practise a manoeuvre in which they disarm each other with live ammunition.

The court heard Barwise, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, served in Afghanistan in 2006 and saw his friend shot in the neck and paralyzed. Barwise avoided jail time. He was sentenced to two years’ probation, required attendance at all substance abuse and mental health counselling appointments, 100 hours of community service or a $1,000 charity donation, and a five-year firearms ban.

Yuri Miljevic-LaRoche:

In the early morning of Sept. 12, 2006, Miljevic-LaRoche’s car struck Claire Paquette as she rode her bike to work. The impact broke Paquette’s collarbone. She had to have surgery on her back, spent four days in a hospital, had no memory of the accident and missed nine months of work. In a Breathalyzer test, Miljevic-LaRoche blew more than twice the legal limit.

He admitted drinking but denied being inebriated, claiming the rising sun momentarily blinded him. The court also heard that the 29-year-old had never been arrested before, and that he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after Afghanistan.

A Quebec jury did not believe Miljevic-LaRoche’s version and found him guilty of drunk driving and drunk driving causing bodily harm. Though the prosecutor asked for at least nine months in prison, Judge Claude Champagne sentenced the soldier to a year of house arrest followed by 12 months probation, a ban on alcohol consumption and an 18-month ban on driving a motor vehicle.

Ronald Anderson:

Last summer in Oromocto, N.B., the sergeant and veteran of two Afghanistan tours was arrested after his wife reported to police that in a profanity-laden tirade he threatened to kill her, blow up her mother and shoot her father in the head, and that he would get away with it because of his mental illness.

Anderson pleaded guilty to unsafe storage of firearms (14 hunting guns), and a judge found him guilty of uttering a threat.

Judge Patricia Cumming said Anderson’s offence was “serious,” yet she discharged him conditionally, meaning he would serve 12 months’ probation and keep a clean record.

Travis Schouten:

He says that in April 2007, after leaving a bar in Pembroke, he rolled his car in a ditch, injuring one of the passengers. Schouten awaits trial. Court documents from White Water Township show he faces two charges – drunk driving and dangerous driving causing bodily harm.

Matthew Keddy:

The private from CFB Gagetown pleaded guilty to assault.

The assault plea stemmed from an incident in which he pushed his common-law girlfriend, cracking her tailbone.

He avoided jail time, and was sentenced to three months of house arrest and 12 months’ probation.

Richard Donald Malley:

On a Saturday night in March 2007, just a few days after Malley had returned from Afghanistan, he was on the back patio of Dooly’s Bar in Miramichi, N.B., drunk and feeling slighted by comments made by another patron. The 21-year-old soldier repeatedly hit the man in the face, causing potentially permanent damage to the man’s eye.

Malley’s father told the court his son’s behaviour had changed “significantly” since he came home, that he often found his son “sitting quietly by himself frequently in tears.” Malley had witnessed two friends die on a rocket grenade launcher attack, and a military superior suspected the young man might have post-traumatic stress disorder. Malley admitted he drinks too much since coming home. He has an infant son to care for.

Malley, who had no prior criminal record, was sentenced to six months’ house arrest, followed by a year of probation, continued attendance at counselling to treat his PTSD, and a five-year firearms ban.

Winnipeg man (to protect the identity of his child victims his name cannot be published):

The 24-year-old soldier pleaded guilty to assaults that caused a total of 19 broken bones in his triplet sons. The man told investigators that he squeezed the premature infants to stop their crying and that he sometimes picked them up with one hand. His lawyer offered evidence that a recent tour in Afghanistan was a “stressor.” The man spent nine months in pre-trial custody. He is serving the remainder of a three-year jail sentence in Headingley Correctional Centre.