8 Tuesday, January 10, 2012 Ladysmith Chemainus Chronicle
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Opinion
Who will you nominate?
YOUR WORDS “I don’t know if we can make it bigger, but we can make it different and make it exciting,” Duck Paterson, Page 5
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s we delve into 2012, the Ladysmith Chamber of Commerce is asking us to look back at the past year and recall the people, businesses and organizations that have made an impact in our lives. The Chamber is calling for nominations for the 2011 Spirit of Ladysmith Community Awards, which will be handed out in February. It’s time to start thinking about the people and businesses you think deserve to be recognized. Eight awards will be presented, and there are categories for Business of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Notfor-Profit Organization, Customer Service, Volunteer of the Year and Youth of the Year. The awards are meant to recognize achievement and leadership and to honour those who make an impact in and around Ladysmith. Past winners include Ladysmith Health Food Store (Business of the Year), Lena Birtwistle (Youth of the Year), Ladysmith and District Credit Union (Large Business of the Year) and Val Duckworth (Volunteer of the Year). We’re sure there are lots of people out there who go about their day-to-day business and make a difference in your lives without even knowing it. They never expect any recognition, but this is the perfect opportunity to let them know how much you appreciate them. It’s fitting that the awards have the words “spirit” and “community” in their name, because peer-nominated awards like these sure help build a sense of community. The awards ceremony — which is changing this year to a more affordable night of awards, appetizers and dancing in an effort to attract more people and bring in more of the community — sounds like it will be another of those great events that brings everyone together and makes you feel lucky you call this community your home. Nomination forms are available at the Chamber office at 411B First Ave. The deadline for nominations is Jan. 20, so start filling out those forms.
Question of the Week
Have you participated in a Festival of Lights work party? Vote online at www.ladysmithchronicle.com. This web poll is informal, not scientific. It reflects opinions of website visitors who voluntarily participate. Results may not represent the opinions of the public as a whole. Black Press is not responsible for the statistical accuracy of opinions expressed here. Results from last week’s question Did you start the new year with a polar bear swim? Yes 10% No 90%
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Progress Board served B.C. well BC Views by Tom Fletcher
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ow is B.C.’s economy doing? This question occupies a great deal of time in our political debate. But since that debate is mostly an exercise in selecting facts and passing blame back and forth, it’s difficult to tell. Former premier Gordon Campbell set out to change that in 2001 with the establishment of the B.C. Progress Board. Independent directors established six “core targets,” environmental, health and social indicators as well as economic measures, and tracked them annually with comparisons to other provinces. This created a 10-year database that doesn’t exist anywhere else. It hasn’t exactly been flattering, a sign that it has been kept free of political interference. Premier Christy Clark’s recent decision to replace the Progress Board has sparked another round of political blame-storming. The NDP opposition was accustomed to jumping on
the annual rankings and trumpeting the ones that cast the B.C. Liberals in a bad light. Predictably, they portrayed the remake of the board as an effort to sweep embarrassing results under the rug. Media often focus on the political horse race rather than details of policy. When the board’s reports came out, they typically covered the political fight and glossed over the findings. The key flaw with the Progress Board turned out to be its emphasis on provincial rankings. B.C. ranked first for the entire 10 years in health and environmental conditions and near the bottom in a complex measure of “social condition” that was often oversimplified as poverty. In most measures, including economic ones, the rankings barely changed in a decade. In his final report, board chair Gerry Martin noted that B.C.’s improvements in economic output and income were significant b u t d i d n ’t m o v e t h e m up the rankings because other provinces had simi-
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Vol. 103, #23 2012
lar success. Big recoveries in Saskatchewan and Newfoundland meant that B.C. sometimes slipped in the relative rankings despite major gains. Martin noted that on crime, “initial performance was so poor that B.C.’s best-incountry improvements over several years were needed just to move B.C. to about average.” (There’s an example of how independent this board has been.) Crime is part of the board’s “Social Condition Index,” along with low-birth-weight babies and long-term unemployment. This has been a favourite of opposition critics because B.C. started low and slipped lower. But they won’t tell you the whole story, through the NDP 1990s as well as the B.C. Liberal 2000s: “B.C. ranked sixth in the Social Condition Index in 1990, improved to third in 1993, but deteriorated through the rest of the 1990s and into the next decade such that it sank to last place for 2001 and 2002,” the final report says. “Improvements between 2002 and 2007 saw
B.C. reach fifth place in 2006 and 2007, but rank changes on low birth weights and long-term unemployment brought B.C. to seventh in 2008 and ninth in 2009.” Does this mean the NDP government of the 1990s did a bad job, or that the B.C. Liberals did better and then screwed up? It could be spun that way, but there are external factors involved. The B.C. Progress Board didn’t just do rankings. Its policy suggestions were implemented in regulatory reform, energy self-sufficiency, creating community courts and UBC Okanagan, and proceeding with the Site C dam. Martin notes that the successor organization, the Jobs and Investment Board, will carry on the performance monitoring and “hold government’s feet to the fire,” in particular on its ability to attract investment. It’s time to stop arguing about the level of poverty and find new ways to alleviate it. Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press newspapers.
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