Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

The Globe & Mail, Aug 16 2006

The Canadian Medical Association has recently recommended that private competition be introduced into medicare by allowing physicians to bill patients (or private insurance plans) for services that are covered by medicare, and allowing medicare to purchase covered services from for-profit private facilities.

Those who champion privatization claim these modifications of Canada’s publicly funded health-care system would save money, help eliminate waiting times and possibly even improve the quality of care.

Policy-makers need only look to the United States for the evidence such claims have no merit. The U.S. experience shows that private, for-profit medical insurance and investor-owned medical facilities are a bad deal for the public, and that a health-care system that encourages physicians to behave like private entrepreneurs leads to extravagant costs.

Those who would deny this obvious evidence are either blinded by unshakable faith in market ideology or are biased by their interests in businesses that profit from the privatization of health care.

Read more at globeandmail.com.

By Bill Tieleman

But even by his own steamroller standards, Premier Campbell violated a basic covenant on the weekend by forcibly rewriting legal, negotiated contracts that were still in force. If he is not prepared to respect so basic a legal agreement, what other contracts is he prepared to rip up? This is not reform. It is legislative vandalism.

- Globe and Mail editorial on Bill 29, Jan. 30, 2002

Canada’s highest court has ruled that Premier Gordon Campbell’s “legislative vandalism” is illegal.

On Friday the Supreme Court of Canada looked at B.C. Liberal legislation that ripped up freely negotiated, legal collective agreements and rejected it.

It is a stunning and welcome repudiation of reprehensible actions that took away the jobs of about 8,000 health-care workers through privatization.

Those same workers, who were so terribly mistreated, should now be compensated by the Campbell government.

(more…)

By Dennis Howlett, Coordinator, Make Poverty History

There is little or nothing in the 2007 Federal Budget that will help to make poverty history.

Several measures that appear to address poverty, on closer examination turn out to be inferior versions of previous Liberal initiatives or actually deliver more benefit to rich families and less or nothing to poor children who need assistance the most.

A case in point is the Child Tax /Credit/ announced in this Conservative budget, which should not be confused with the Canada Child Tax /Benefit/ that Make Poverty History has been campaigning to have increased to $5100 per child. The Conservative Child Tax /Credit/ will do absolutely nothing for the poorest children whose families have no taxable income.

|inline

via BC Human Rights Committee

History is never neutral. Framing is everything. Take Vancouver’s anti-Asian riots of 1907.

On September 7 of that year, the Asiatic Exclusion League led a parade to City Hall at Main and Hastings streets, calling for an end to Asian immigration to British Columbia. More than 8,000 people, including local politicians, labour leaders, and members of fraternal organizations, rallied with banners reading Stand for a White Canada.

Only 2,000 could fit in City Hall, so crowds drifted to Chinatown, a block away. A rock thrown through a store window touched off a rampage of smashed signs and glass, and looting that continued into neighbouring Japantown, where the crowd faced some resistance before police showed up to quell the violence.

In the following days, Chinese and Japanese armed themselves with guns, preparing for another siege. They held a general strike, refusing to go to their jobs in homes, restaurants, and mills.

William Lyon Mackenzie King, then federal deputy minister of labour, held hearings on the riot. Almost a year later, damages were awarded: $26,000 to the Chinese, $9,000 to the Japanese.

Henry Yu, an associate professor of history at UBC, sees 2007 not just as the 100th anniversary of the 1907 riots but marking three other key years in the history of Asian immigration to Pacific Canada: 1947, 1967, and 1997.

Continue reading at straight.com

The surprising thing about Grace-Edward Galabuzi, author of a new book entitled Canada’s Economic Apartheid: The Social Exclusion of Racialized Groups in the New Century, is that he is a gentle, scholarly man.

He uses facts, not polemics, to make his case. He acknowledges that Canada has been good to him since he fled Uganda at gunpoint in 1982. There is nothing angry or strident about him.

But passion is not measured in decibels. And Galabuzi is nothing if not passionate about resisting the formation of a non-white underclass in his adopted home.

|inline

By Bill Tieleman

The voice of the dead was a living voice to me. – Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1847

The voices of 188 dead workers speak loudly from beyond the grave.

That grim number marks the total of workplace fatalities and accepted work-related death claims in B.C. in 2005.

It is a totally unacceptable number, a shameful number, a number that should be intolerable to us all.

Behind that number lies 188 different tragedies, 188 families where someone went to work and never came home again, 188 unsafe workplaces.

And 11 of those 188 were young people, aged 17 to 24 years old.

|inline

I like paying taxes. Taxes allow us to pursue our aspirations collectively and thus they greatly enrich the quality of life for the average Canadian family. Taxes have brought us high quality public schools that remain our democratic treasure, low tuition at world-class universities, freedom from fear of crippling health bills and excellent medical services, public parks and libraries, safe streets and livable cities. None of these things comes cheaply.

Taxes are the price that we pay for goods and services produced in the public sector from which we all benefit. They are equivalent to amounts we pay as prices for goods and services produced in the private sector.

Read more at straightgoods.ca.

In recent weeks, federal politicians have attempted to court the “immigrant vote” with certain policy announcements such as hose relating to Chinese Head Tax redress and the $975 landing fee. In response to such announcements, a diverse number of community-based groups will be challenging federal politicians to address immigration issues in a substantive manner at a press conference on Thursday January 12th at 10:30 am at Philippine Women’s Center (451 Powell St, Vancouver). Head Tax redress has become a key community-driven election issue. At least three Liberal cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister have now spoken about reversing their position of “no apology, no compensation”.

|inline

We are very proud of our ads. They underline the fact that Paul Martin’s B.C. Team has delivered results for B.C., and that Jack Layton isn’t the answer for progressive voters.

- B.C. federal Liberal campaign co-chair Mark Marissen

In an election campaign that has seen some big whoppers, describing the federal Liberals as the “progressive” answer for voters has to take the prize.

Let’s just see how progressive the Paul Martin Liberals really are.

|inline