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www.albernivalleynews.com
Friday , Oct. 28, 2011 Alberni Valley News
Alberni Valley
NEWS The Alberni Valley News is published every Friday by Black Press Ltd., 4656 Margaret St., Port Alberni, B.C. V9Y 6H2. Phone: (250) 723-6399. Fax: (250) 723-6395. Classifieds: (250) 310-3535. The Alberni Valley News is distributed free to 9,800 households in Port Alberni, Cherry Creek, Sproat Lake and Beaver Creek. The Alberni Valley News is Vancouver Island owned and operated.
CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2011
Publisher: Teresa Bird Editor: Susan Quinn
EDITORIAL
Boat missed on shipbuilding It’s a long road to ‘community’ living A promising shipbuilding contract for $8 billion won by Vancouver’s Seaspan Marine last week will most certainly benefit Nanaimo Shipyards and its divisions, like Alberni Engineering. Tasked with building seven non-combat coast guard and Fisheries and Oceans vessels, Seaspan will have its hands full completing the contract and Nanaimo Shipyards has put itself in a strong position to sub-contract some of the work and maintenance on the current fleet. Ron van Wachem, Nanaimo Shipyard’s president, said it could mean at least 100 wellpaying jobs, including skilled labour and management positions. After three years of economic uncertainty, this is one of the brightest economic lights the city has seen since Harmac refired its pulp lines. So where is the city’s new Economic Development Corporation? Created and tasked with the intent to improve Nanaimo’s economic future, the corporation missed the boat. Despite the EDC having a board of directors for almost a year, Nanaimo Shipyards hasn’t received a single phone call in the past few days from a corporation representative or the mayor’s office to determine how they can work together to produce a skilled workforce, or how the city can help in any way. In the year-long request for proposals, there was a similar silence from the city. If we want true economic development in this city and not just rhetoric, we need to get the people who were put in the positions of responsibility involved in the process. Moving economic improvement off the drawing board requires action to help guide Nanaimo’s ship into port – and so far that hasn’t happened. — Nanaimo News Bulletin
TOM FLETCHER B.C. Views
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ICTORIA – My first glimpse of B.C.’s care system for developmentally disabled people was as a teen in the early 1970s. My grandfather brought me to his workplace, Tranquille “school.” The Kamloops institution that began life as a tuberculosis sanitorium in 1907 was by then converted to warehouse a different group of society’s outcasts. Ambulatory inmatepatients wearing locked-on football helmets wandered the courtyard of a sprawling prisonhospital complex that featured its own fire station. Tranquille would hit the headlines a decade later, when Human Resources Minister Grace McCarthy announced that she was enacting a plan, years in the making, to close such places. Tranquille, with
323 inmate-patients and 675 staff, would be first. A 1983 newspaper report captured the mood: “Mentally retarded persons in institutions must not be ‘dumped back on the doorstep of their natural families’ when these institutions are closed, the executive director of the B.C. Association for the Mentally Retarded warned Monday.” The B.C. Government Employees’ Union began an occupation of Tranquille buildings the next day, expelling managers. The sit-in lasted three weeks, joined by Tranquille’s 120 psychiatric nurses, before staff agreed to work on the system that would replace it a year later. Some patients did go back to their families, with support services. And today B.C. has a network of 700 group homes, essentially
smaller institutions. Their province-wide union contract was just renewed under the B.C. government’s “net zero” wage mandate, with an additional $18 million to enroll employees in dozens of contracted agencies to a pension plan for municipal employees. Lobbying and court action have forced expansion of provincial services to those diagnosed with autism and fetal alcohol conditions. People with Down syndrome and other disabilities now live much longer, to the point where some develop dementia as well. All this is on top of the many previously independent seniors developing dementia and other disabling conditions at an accelerating rate. Stephanie Cadieux, the latest minister of what is now called Social Development, has asked
‘The political focus has been on CLBC’s closure of 65 group homes...’
TO COMMENT … We welcome your original comments on editorials, columns, on topics in the Alberni Valley News or any subjects important to you. Only letters that include name, address, and day and evening phone numbers and that are verified by the Alberni Valley News can be considered for publication. Letters to the editor and articles submitted to the Alberni Valley News may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms. The Alberni Valley News is a member of the B.C. Press Council, a self-regulatory body governing the province’s newspaper industry. The council considers complaints from the public about the conduct of member newspapers. Directors oversee the mediation of complaints, with input from both the newspaper and the complaint holder. If talking with the editor or publisher does not resolve your complaint about coverage or story treatment, you may contact the B.C. Press Council. Your written concern, with documentation, should be sent to B.C. Press Council, 201 Selby St., Nanaimo, B.C. V9R 2R2. For information phone 888-687-2213 or go to www.bcpresscouncil.org.
for a multi-ministry examination of the adult care agency, Community Living B.C. As CLBC’s budget rises past $710 million, there are services from the health and children and families ministries going to disabled people as well. The political focus has been on CLBC’s closure of 65 group homes with only 200 residents, and its push for adult adoptions rather than institutions with shift workers. This is true “community living” that should be established where practical, with appropriate inspections. The NDP wants a moratorium on group home closures, even if they’re decrepit or mostly empty. It wants a backlog of 2,800 applications for new or increased service eliminated, apparently without any efficiency moves. It wants an “independent review” of CLBC followed by a full-time independent advocate for developmentally disabled people. Continued / 11
Commitment to accuracy To report corrections and clarifications, contact editor Susan Quinn at 250-723-6399 or e-mail: editor@ albernivalleynews.com or drop by our office at 4656 Margaret St.