Tag Archives: seniors

British Columbia, Class War, Family

BC Liberals Cut Funding for Adults with Disabilities and Give Snowbirds an Extra Month

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moira
Social Development Minister Moira Stilwell thinks adults with fetal alcohol disorder and autism deserve more than a 50% funding cut, while snowbirds get a 7th month of healthcare!

I’ve seen the BC Liberals do some pretty cruel, heartless things over the years, but this is one of the worst.

They are cutting more than 50% of the money that supports adults with fetal alcohol disorder and autism, while giving snowbirds a 7th month of medical coverage for living in warmer climates over the winter.

Snowbirds will be back in country during the election. Many will be thrilled they will get an extra month down south next year. And snowbirds are more likely to vote for the BC Liberals because of this.

So if you know any snowbirds, please let them know what this new budget cuts, which will help fund their 7th month down south.

Families first? It seems [voting] snowbird families come first and families with adults with disabilities last.

Read the gory, cruel details here.

Here are the cuts to vulnerable adults:

The B.C. government plans to drastically reduce the average amount of money it spends on adults with developmental disabilities over the next three years, budget documents show.

Adults with fetal alcohol disorder and autism who receive service under the personal supports initiative will see the biggest decline. Documents show the average cost per client in that program dropping from $24,000 to $16,000 this year alone — a 33 per cent decline.

In two years time, the average cost per client in the program will be less than half what it is today, the documents show.

At the same time, the program’s caseload is expected to more than double from 424 to 945.

B.C. plans to slash funding for adults with disabilities – Local – Times Colonist.

And here is the gift to snowbirds:

“There are many British Columbia seniors who enjoy winters away each year, and this change makes it possible to allow them some extra time away without worrying about losing their MSP coverage,” said Ralph Sultan, minister of state for seniors, in a statement.

The proposed amendment to the Medicare Protection Act would permit an additional 30-day absence — if the time out of the province is used for vacation.

via Basic medical coverage extended for absent snowbirds – Local – Times Colonist.

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Endorsing Alnoor Gova for the Burnaby-Douglas Federal NDP

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I am supporting Alnoor Gova to be the next federal NDP candidate in Burnaby-Douglas, and that riding’s next MP.

Seven-year NDP MP Bill Siksay announced in December that he will not run in the next election, which could be called as early as this spring.

So the Burnaby-Douglas NDP is having a nomination convention on February 25 to find a replacement.

The party has approved three candidates to compete for the right to maintain the NDP legacy in that riding: Alnoor Gova, Sam Schechter and Kennedy Stewart.

Here are the reasons why I am endorsing Alnoor Gova and helping his campaign win the nomination and the general election.

  1. Alnoor’s creativity, insight and policy depth are compelling. Though I have known about Alnoor for quite some time in the COOP Radio circle and through progressive politics around town, I only met him in person last Thursday night at the “Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan” event he helped produce. I found him to have a keen mind. He also has a creative way of engaging in policy issues linking idealism and philosophy to practical ways of addressing national security, citizenship and immigration and basic human rights like universal public healthcare.
  2. Alnoor’s analysis of the political realm is rich. It’s one thing to support the NDP and be appalled with Stephen Harper and quite put off by Michael Ignatieff, but I heartily agree with Alnoor’s sense of how the federal Conservatives and Liberals are working in a de facto coalition to pursue regressive goals that work against the interests of the poorest 95% of Canadians.
  3. Alnoor is a 21st century politician. Despite it actually being the 21st century, not all candidates seem to understand that the post-9/11 world is profoundly different from the 20th century. The highest profile endorser for each of his opponents is a provincial NDP cabinet minister/leader whose greatest political successes were in the 1990s. Today’s world is global, with permeable, dotted-line borders and multi-faceted citizenship. The Burnaby-Douglas riding is emblematic of Canada. It is ethnically diverse with recent immigrants and children and grandchildren of immigrants, of whom many consider Canada to be but one of their homes. People come from all over. They relate to more than one place. They have global sensibilities. Despite this cosmopolitan reality, Canada is becoming a more closed place through divisive policies. Alnoor understands this. He understands what is dangerous about these policies and he will be a powerful voice for opening up Canada to the 21st century world to recover our global reputation as a progressive nation.
  4. Alnoor personally understands the necessity of universal healthcare. A topic dear to my heart is the corporate attack on universal healthcare, and the gaping policy hole from the absence of a national pharmacare and seniors’ care component of medicare. Canadians are being gouged and bankrupted because they have to pay Big Pharma for medicine and cynical real estate speculators for elder care. With our aging population, we cannot abide this attack. Alnoor’s personal commitment to be a part of his parents’ healthcare reflects how he honours our elders. At a time when we are increasingly reminded of the path our elders have carved for us, more of us need to recognize our multi-generational commitments.
  5. Kennedy Stewart’s campaign is not compelling. Not only is his campaign website free of any federal policy priorities, the most compelling argument he seems to be making about why he should be the NDP’s candidate in Burnaby-Douglas is that he was asked to run by the riding executive. His campaign material also states that he will work hard and that he has big shoes to fill. That’s fine, but I can’t see what he would bring to the federal political arena. He also has a healthy body of academic work on municipal politics, but that makes me wonder why he isn’t running to be a municipal politician since that is his academic specialty.
  6. Sam Schechter’s lacks experience in federal political issues. Also a candidate from a municipal background, he was a city councillor in North Vancouver before he moved to Burnaby, while Alnoor has lived in Burnaby for 25 years. And while Sam Schechter does a reasonable job reviewing some key federal NDP party platform ideas on his website, he does not offer much in terms of his own insight into how he would address these federal policy issues.

I have lived in Burnaby-Douglas twice in the last 20 years, having only left several months ago. I found the community to be warm, richly personal, compassionate and progressive. That is much of the reason the NDP has held that seat federally for so long. Another reason has been the high quality of MPs who have served the community so well.

I also know the riding needs a vibrant, passionate advocate for issues that resonate with the people of the riding and all Canadians.

Members of the Burnaby-Douglas NDP will receive candidate information this week and have a chance to see the three candidates at a meeting on February 22 before voting on February 25. I strongly recommend members visit the three candidates’ websites above to learn about what they have to offer and how they plan to be a public servant in the tradition the riding is used to.

Alnoor Gova impresses me most, so I am supporting his campaign and I encourage you to become informed and support him as well.

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Flaherty’s CPP Double Cross

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Even Bush couldn’t privatize social security. But Jim Flaherty found a way to inject the cancer of privatization into our national pension strategy after spending months letting us all think his words that supported the CPP actually meant anything. Silly us for putting any credence into that.

Flaherty’s double cross is to abandon improving the CPP to maximize all of our elders’ financial stability in their senior years in favour of creating a

“private pension plan for small businesses, employees and the self-employed” because “now is not the time for mandatory increases for Canada Pension Plan premiums, saying Canada’s economic recovery remains fragile and the Conservative government is worried about ‘putting more burdens on employers and employees.'”

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/12/20/flaherty-pension-reform-talks.html?ref=rss#ixzz18jHgBzsH

Below is what we should have been doing with the CPP.

I say this all again because when we go to the polls this spring or some time after that, if you know anyone who is retired or even over 40, you need to tell them that the Conservative government, along with their Liberal coalition partners, if they don’t block this privatized pension plan, have set back even further the possibility that all elders will get to live in dignity in Canada. This fight just became an election issue, hopefully enough to crash the parliament along the way.

And if you’re under 40 and you vote to support the Conservatives with their anti-universal seniors’ financial dignity privatization scheme, then I hope you know how to respond to the seniors in your life who will be one step closer to economic despair because of yet another missed opportunity to help lift them out of poverty. Because that would mean actually building the Canada we have inherited isn’t worth much after all.

We need to fight for collective solutions by fighting the insidious ideology that individualized retirement plans will save us all. RRSP tax breaks only help the 25 per cent of Canadians who are wealthy enough to contribute to RRSPs. This is absurd.

…

Similarly, we need to fight for the dignity of retired workers so we can stop seeing our elders living in such economic circumstance that they’re forced to ask if we’d “like fries with that,” or to awkwardly greet us in a chain clothing store.

Since even our current federal finance minister has noted the value and stability of the CPP, we need to use the minority government context to support the Canadian Labour Congress and the NDP in their efforts to pressure the vulnerable Liberals and Conservatives to enhance the CPP. After all, we got the CPP in the first place in a minority government situation, along with Medicare and student loans. Doubling the CPP and increasing the Guaranteed Income Supplement would make a substantial difference in people’s lives.

via Labour Day, Dignity and Doubling the CPP : Politics, Re-Spun.

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Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, Labour Day 2010

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Imtiaz Popat and I celebrated Labour Day on “The Rational” last night. The video podcast is below.

We discussed:

  • Labour Day
  • my Labour Day article today: “Labour Day, Dignity and Doubling the CPP”
  • volunteer labour
  • dignity for seniors
  • doubling the CPP because $11,000/year is unacceptable
  • BC’s pathetic minimum wage
  • a fall federal election could lead to a Liberal minority government and time to leverage them for economic dignity
  • student poverty is a result of right wing ideological choices: post-secondary education is seen as an income boost and the government wants its cut
  • the government is managing our CPP funds by investing in tar sands and privatized highways
  • BC’s Gateway Project and the North American transportation infrastructure vs. Peak Oil
  • workers and unions need to engage in society by working in coalition with community groups and climate justice
  • corporations and government employers are not taking the lead on greening our society, so workers need to
  • extremism, xenophobia and skapegoating
  • increased corporate profitability, how productivity gains aren’t trickling down to workers: class war
  • all majority governments are bad right now, especially considering how much of the social conservative agenda being introduced by Harper with just a minority government
  • BC Conservative party’s increasing viability, along with the BC Greens means more of a chance of a BC minority government in 2013
  • what will it take for a BC political party to say they’ll actually get rid of the HST?
  • and we would have talked about this intensely if I had read it in time!

The video podcast of the conversation lives at Vista Video.

You can watch it in Miro, the best new open source multimedia viewing software: http://www.miroguide.com/feeds/8832

or…

You can watch it in iTunes: itpc://dgivista.org/pod/Vista_Podcasts.xml

or…

The podcast file is at http://dgivista.org/pod/COOP.Radio.2010.09.06.mov

http://vimeo.com/14760536

Enjoy!