BC Politics with Hubert Beyer

IT’S SHOW TIME IN B.C.

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VICTORIA – The lunatics have at last taken over the asylum. That statement may be open to criticism from the political correctness police, but what else would you call the current recall circus?

In a never-ending quest to redefine the boundaries of frivolity and entertainment that is B.C. politics, some agitated citizens of Lala Land are grimly determined to take the nation’s collective mind of its problems by providing a public spectacle Shaw Cable would die for.

Move over Toontown, we got recall.

The effort to unseat two central B.C. MLAs started a week ago. The grimly determined citizens have a total of 60 days to kick Helmut Giesbrecht, NDP, Skeena and Paul Ramsey, NDP, Prince George, out of office. To succeed, they must collect the signatures of 40 per cent of the voters eligible to vote in the last provincial election.

In both cases, roughly 8,000 signatures are needed. Those figures are only a couple of hundred shy of the total number of people who voted against the two MLAs. The task is formidable, but our grimly determined citizens are giving it all they’ve got.

And just when you thought the show had reached its highest-possible ratings, John How of Terrace introduced a new twist to the plot by filing a second petition to recall Giesbrecht.

How is no admirer of the recall legislation, which is exactly why he entered the fray. His only reason for filing the petition is to disrupt the process, to derail the real recall campaign.

You see, the recall legislation is not only stupid, it’s full of holes. First, it didn’t take How very long to figure out that the legislation doesn’t say only one petition can be filed to recall an MLA.

How says all he wants to do is highlight a "rather a shoddy piece of legislation." He doesn’t, of course, intend to collect any signatures, not, I suppose, until it becomes apparent that the real petition might succeed. If that’s the case, he will probably try to split the recall vote by collecting some signatures himself.

How’s action had a second major effect. To defend himself against the first petition, Giesbrecht, according to the act, could only spend about $29,000. With the second petition on the scene, he appears to be able to double that amount.

That loophole could also be used by people wanting to unseat an MLA by filing any number of petitions, each one of them entitled to the same spending limit, but collecting signatures for only one petition.

All of which has Lorne Sexton, the grimly determined leader of the forces wanting to oust Giesbrecht, in a bit of a flap. He says he is going to check with his lawyer to see whether anything can be done if people in the riding are being confused by the two petitions.

No law against checking with lawyers, Lorne, but I suspect if the Recall and Initiative Act is worded so badly that any number of petitions can be filed to get rid of an MLA, it won’t contain safeguards against confusion.

And now, in the spirit of this NDP government’s love for gambling, it’s time to enter the recall pools. Let’s wager some serious dough on this show.

I’m not giving any odds, but my money is on Giesbrecht and Ramsey keeping their seats. The whole thing is so ludicrous that the grimly determined citizens will have a rough time collecting the necessary number of signatures.

But succeed or fail, the show will have lived up to Canada’s expectations of B.C. politics: the crazier, the better.

HOUSING CRISIS LOOMS IN B.C.

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VICTORIA -- In 1971, my wife and I bought our first home in Victoria, a three-bedroom bungalow that carried a price tag of $26,000.

We got the place with $300 down, thanks to W.A.C. Bennett, whose Social Credit government helped first-time home buyers by way of either a $1,000 grant or a $5,000 second mortgage at a very low interest rate.

With that kind of help, tens of thousands of young families were able to buy their own home, and it still puzzles me how the man who brought in such socially advanced policies could go down to defeat in 1975.

Twenty-two years later, most young families have no hope in hell to buy a home. Some lucky ones might be able to squeeze into a condo, provided their parents help out, and they have a job, which has become a rare commodity as well.

What happened? Plenty, and the Canadian Home Builders’ Association is listing some of the reasons in a report, "Housing 2020: A Time for Action," released last week.

Not surprisingly, governments at every level stand out as the biggest culprits in the housing crisis. The association estimates that the price of a new $200,000 home carries more than $40,000 in direct and indirect government costs.

Municipal development costs alone have risen by 650 per cent in the last 10 years and total more than $100 million a year in British Columbia.

A the provincial level, the association says, support for school site and parkland levies, contaminated land legislation and restrictive land use measures have pushed development costs to record highs.

And, the association points out, B.C. consumers pay a far greater share than other Canadians of the GST on new homes because of high land prices in this province.

Association vice-president Keith Sashaw says that British Columbia is facing an acute housing crisis. "We will need one million more households in the province by the year 2020." But given the current rate of building, B.C. will be nowhere near that figure. Since 1994, new home starts have plunged by about 10,000 units a year.

The B.C. Home Builders’ Association, which has more than 1,200 members throughout the province, makes 24 recommendations aimed at enhancing housing affordability – 12 for provincial action, six for municipal action, four for home builders and two for all B.C. citizens.

To British Columbians at large, the association says, "don’t be selfish when new developments are planned for your community. Rigid not-in-my-backyard attitudes will reduce housing affordability and choice for your children and generations to come." The association also advises British Columbians to hire professional builders and renovators.

The provincial government is urged to remove school site levies on residential development, curb over-zealous application of contaminated land legislation, and revise the Agricultural Land Act.

"Under the Agricultural Land Reserve, many acres of productive farmland have been divided into passive, non-commercial ‘hobby farms’ that are, in reality, large rural housing lots," the association says in its report.

To the association’s recommendations, I would like to add a couple of my own: One, release province-owned land for housing on a lease basis. Two, revisit the second-mortgage scheme so effectively used by Bennett Senior.

A home built on land owned by the province and leased to the purchaser for 99 years would come in with a far lower price tag. And by underwriting second mortgages and subsidizing the interest rates, the government could make sure that a lot of people who can’t afford to purchase their own home now would be able to do so.

Needless to say, if the government took steps to increase housing starts, the province would reap substantial benefits, of which employment is not the least.

We haven’t seen much in the way of innovative policies from this government. It’s about time Premier Glen Clark came through with something besides rhetoric.

INVEST IN YOUTH BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

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VICTORIA -- I would like send a few kudos Reform MP Keith Martin’s way. The last time I wrote about Martin I didn’t have a lot of good to say. That was when he predicted that native self-government would result in conditions resembling South Africa’s former Apartheid system

Alas, the Member of Parliament for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca on Vancouver Island has more than redeemed himself with his recent tabling in the House of Commons of a motion to develop a national strategy to assist children in their first eight years of life.

Martin’s proposal is aimed at the core of the most glaring problems our children face: rising dropout rates, teen pregnancies and youth crime. Martin says the old ways of dealing with those problems no longer work, if they ever did.

"Historically, our response to this social blight has always been detection, detention and deterrence. But these punitive measures are not only expensive, but they simply don’t work."

He points out that it costs about $95,000 a year to keep a youth in detention. That’s an atrocious figure, and the worst investment possible in our young generation.

To decrease teenage crime, Martin believes, "we must shift our energies from crime management to crime prevention." And that, he says, means identifying the true causes of criminal behavior.

"Verbal, physical and sexual abuse, experiencing the victimization of others, and poor nutrition are all obvious threats to normal psychological development," Martin says.

"However, more subtle factors a lack of supervision by caring adults, parental rejection, and inconsistent care can also have devastating effects," he adds.

Martin’s remarks pack a special punch. He’s a physician. He’s seen his share of human misery, because sooner or later, malnourished and abused children will end up at a doctor’s office, some closer to death than alive.

His proposal is also timely, as Victoria and, indeed, the rest of Canada, is riding an emotional roller coaster, following the killing of a teenage girl by her peers, an unprecedented crime in this relatively sedate city.

Martin says that programs similar to the he is advocating exist elsewhere and have proven to be very successful.

"Healthy Start," an initiative introduced in Hawaii several years ago, focuses on high-risk families while a woman is still pregnant. By applying basic parenting skills, proper nutrition, conflict resolution and substance abuse counter-measures, the outcome of the Healthy Start program has resulted in a 99-per-cent reduction in child abuse.

Martin also points to a successful program in Ypsilanti, Michigan, that concentrates of improving parental skills, promoting healthy babies, increasing family cohesion and encouraging social skills.

That program is credited with having reduced youth and adult crime by 50 per cent, lowered teen pregnancies by 40 per cent and resulted in higher employment rates and family incomes.

"The long-term savings for taxpayers were enormous and worked out to roughly $6 in dividends for every dollar spent," says Martin.

"In order to give children a chance to build a normal psyche and break the cycle of crime, punishment and incarceration, we must invest resources that prevent children from slipping through the cracks of society in the first place rather than try to pick up the pieces later at a much higher cost."

I hope Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his Liberal government are listening to Martin. The man’s ideas have merit and should be acted on, regardless of party politics.