Just in case you have any complaints about the Canadian medical system...

 

Our daughter, Enid, is married to Isaac, who is a scientist working in the enormous National Lab in Richland, Washington State. Through work Isaac has a very good --and very expensive, even with the subsidy -- medical plan, which covers Enid.

Enid and Isaac recently acquired a new baby, Louis Harree Arnquist, who is perfect in every way. 

But his birth is when his parents' encounters with the health bureaucracy began. 

Here's her rant on the subject:

 

1. On Louis' 32nd day of life, Isaac tries to enroll Louis on his health plan at work. He soon finds out that he needed to do it no later than Louis' 31st day of life (which was a Sunday, we had visitors, we're tired new parents, and life is crazy). 

2. He writes an appeal letter, which has to be mailed old style. No one will answer a phone or write an email - it is simply not done even though it is 2015. We assume that the insurance will cover him retroactively once the appeal has gone through. Isaac does everything he can to make it happen faster than the maximum 30 days, but there isn't much he can do in the end. 

3. In the meantime, we make plans for alternative coverage JUST IN CASE. We fill out numerous forms on the Washington Health Plan Finder website and are able to look at plans and compare. All 56 are all terrible (not a single one has Louis' pediatrician or the Richland hospital in their network!) but it's better than nothing. We can't enroll him until October 1st - that is the rule lest you try to insure an already sick child. 

4. I call in to ask for the deadline to purchase the Oct. 1 plan. I'm told I have until September 23rd at 5pm. 

5. September 23rd, we get bad news from Isaac's work plan. They won't cover Louis because it was day 32 of his life and that is the rule. At least it's good timing, because we can still purchase alternative coverage, or so we think. I try to purchase said coverage, but suddenly I can't see the available plans. I call to find out what's going on, and the man on the other end says the website isn't working properly, and I should try on Saturday. He assumes they will be manning the phones on Saturday because the website will be down the rest of the week. I ask for assurance that they will let me get Oct. 1 coverage despite missing the deadline. He says it should be fine. 

6. Saturday Sept. 26, I try to log on to the website but it's still down. It claims it will be back on Sunday at 9:00am. The message saying the site is down is dated Sept. 23. 

7. Sunday: Still down. 

8. Monday: I can log on, but I still can't see any plans. This is the point where my memory is blurry because I talked to at least 5 people in 3 days. But I know that on Monday they told me that even though I hadn't been asked to by the website or a person on the phone, I would have to upload our financial info. The person on the other end assures me that it's not my fault and it won't affect my Oct. 1 coverage. He/she (I can't remember) is surprised that I was ever able to see plan options without having uploaded this stuff. That was an error. I upload our info within 5 minutes. I call back to find out why I still can't see plans and the woman tells me to wait. I obsessively check for a status update. At some point in the day, the website is down again. 

9. On Tuesday I talk to two more people. One woman hangs up on me TWICE by accident. Another writes a "ticket" to get someone to take a look at what is going on with my account. I can't remember what else happened on Tuesday but I definitely cried on the phone out of frustration. One woman told me that Louis was eligible for the subsidized health plan. I explained that he was definitely not, which should have been obvious from the eligibility determination and our financial information. Maybe it's her first day?

10. On Wednesday, I call again to find out why our problem APPEARS to have been fixed and yet I still can't see plans. He realizes that I need to upload Louis' birth certificate. Again, I haven't been told this or seen that this needs to be done anywhere on the website. The man on the phone is really kind, but I cry anyway because I'm so tired of dealing with new problems every day. He writes a new "ticket" to get the tech people to sort my account out properly this time. 

11. Thursday morning: website is down again.

12. Thursday afternoon: Huzzah! I can see plans!! I choose a plan! It's terrible. The deductible is in the mid-1000s and after the deductible I pay 50% coinsurance until I reach the yearly out-of-pocket maximum which is a crazy $12 500. I would pay for a more expensive plan (this one is about $111 a month, as I recall) but those ones have no out of pocket maximum for out-of-network hospitals and don't give me anything more for his out-of-network pediatrician care. I need SOME assurance that I won't go bankrupt if Louis has a serious complication. 

13. They force me to pay $25 a month for a terrible dental plan. My baby has no teeth. Obviously. He will be eligible for Isaac's plan again in January, by which time he still will not have any teeth. 

14. I apply, and I can only see that Louis is enrolled in the dental plan. I can't see anything about a health plan. I call and ask what's going on and the woman says her system isn't working. I need to call back right away and see if someone else can help. I call back and talk to a nice fellow who tells me he's going to write another ticket (this is #3!) to see if the tech people can sort this out for me. He asks me what plan I chose, but I only remember the name of the insurer because the plan names are pretty dull.

15. I wait, and REALLY hope that some insurance company will insure Louis for Oct. 1 despite the Washington Health Plan Finder's incompetence. I feel pessimistic after our experience with Isaac's insurance. If he can only be covered for Nov. 1st, we will pay a $400 penalty in our taxes for having an uninsured child for 3 months. 

I might as well mention that this week I sorted through the seven plans offered by my employer because I have to choose one for when I go back to work in December. It took me three hours to make an informed choice, and I'm still not sure I really understand the difference between the plans. It's always a gamble, because you never know what care you'll need ahead of time. Will it be cancer, a car wreck or absolutely nothing? I prefer not to gamble and choose a slightly more expensive plan (but not the most expensive one, because that one would cost me $500 a month). 

I also might add that I am fairly privileged. I have enough free time to deal with this kind of stuff (although not a ton, being a new mom with some work obligations while I'm on maternity leave), I have a lot of education that has prepared me to advocate for myself intelligently and understand complicated language in health plans, and I have enough money to pay the cost of the insurance and the exorbitant out-of-pocket costs. Many Washingtonians in my position are not so educated with so much free time and money. 

I remember fondly how annoyed I got with MSP in British Columbia. How adorable. I long for a time when I knew how much everything would cost me when I went to the doctor or hospital (always zero). Now even if I have the required insurance, I'm never sure what's covered or what it will cost me. I have to check to see if a doctor is out-of-network before I choose one (too late for Louis). I have to know which hospitals I can go to before I go to one. I have to spend hours on the phone trying to sort it out when two separate labs bill my insurance company and my insurance company doesn't pay the bill (that happened last winter).

In short, I think this is a terrible system. I do not want to hear any more politicians claiming that Americans have the best health care in the world. Maybe, but only for a select few. And even those people probably spent hours and hours trying to sort through endless healthcare choices to get the best deal from some insurance company, which is really just an expensive middle man.

Lest we forget….

Nothing changes until we change our electoral system.

Amid all the noise of the phony niqab war, the slicing and dicing of the federal electorate, and the multitudinous outrages the Harper administration has visited on Canada and the Canadian government, we're in danger of forgetting that while this election is critically important, really, we should be thinking about the next one.
Because if we don't want to continue down the path the Harperites have led us, we're going to have to make it impossible for 38% of the electorate to effectively impose one-party rule.
We're going to have to change the way we elect governments.

For the first time ever, I think, the four major parties all have clear proposals on the table:
1.  The Conservatives offer the status quo, and why not? It has served them extremely well recently, and conforms admirably to their vision of a segmented, special-interest, hot-button electorate.
We've now had occasion to try it, and that should be enough incentive to look at the alternatives on offer.
2.  The NDP and Greens are offering Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMPR). Other (admittedly much smaller, like Germany and New Zealand) countries have made that work effectively. There are a number of variants, but essentially the elector votes in a constituency for a member, and then, in consideration of the national popular vote, parties get to appoint members as well. This would serve the Greens (who elect one, but poll north of 5%) well, and would encourage any number of small parties. It would undoubtedly represent the electorate better than any other system.  In Germany the system has a threshold for representation, which largely solves the Israeli problem of very small parties distorting the will of the majority in exchange for becoming part of a majority coalition.
The Greens have no chance to be either government or influential this election, so if you want the Greens to increase their numbers and their influence in the future, paradoxically this time you will have to vote NDP. (!)
3.  The Liberals are offering a system they call Alternative Vote (AV). It's the system most political parties now use to choose their leader: the elector votes for his/her favourite, then provides a second choice, and even a third. The count starts with all the votes; if no one gets 50%, the bottom person drops off and his/her second choices are counted, etc., until one candidate has at least 50%.
That's the system that gave the Liberals Stephane Dion, almost no one's first choice, on the 4th ballot.
The only time it was used in Canadian elections, as far as I am aware, was in 1952, when it led to the first (minority) Social Credit government in BC. The next election, fought in 1953 under the same system, returned a majority Socred government...
...which then promptly changed the electoral system back to the traditional “first-past-the-post” (FPTP) system and ruled until defeated by Dave Barrett's NDP in 1972.
A much more complex variant, actually a combination of AV and MMPR,  nearly became BC's electoral system in 2005, but got only 57.7% in the referendum vote, and required 60%.
AV is a lousy system if you're a fan of any small party, in that it is unlikely to elect candidates of such parties, but at least, unlike FPTP,  it permits the majority to form government. It also has the benefit of legitimizing individual MPs, in that all of them know they represent at least 50% of their electorate. It's even possible this would embolden some of them to think for themselves, or at least represent their constituents.
And it's easy to explain and easy to implement, so it would be an easier sell to the general electorate than MMPR.

Either the NDP/Green alternative or the Liberal one would be a vast improvement over what we have.
So this time, let's make electoral reform job #1, and let's get it done even if we have to vote for a party we might not otherwise support.
Remember ABC: Anyone But Conservative!

Update: our community mailboxes

So what’s up with Canada Post and the mailboxes they promised we’d have no later than September 21?
Turns out, in Campbell River the Canada Post contractors got only the first third done, prepared the sites for most — but not all — the others, and then, near as I can tell, halted the project. Maybe only temporarily, but I’ve seen no progress since well before the 21st.
People here tend to blame the incompetence of Canada Post, an easy target. Some even blame the union (how on earth does that work?!) 
But what if the apparent stoppage is deliberate policy? What if someone has finally  figured out that if the Conservatives don’t win the election, they’re not actually going to need those boxes in those locations?
That would actually be kind of smart!
And nobody at Canada Post is going to put out the obvious press release, saying, “It’s likely there will be a change in government after the election, so we’re going to wait until we get our new instructions.”
Even if that were entirely accurate!


September 29 revision:
Sandy was right and I was wrong: Canada Post is merely incompetent, proved by the fact that our mailbox arrived sometime late yesterday.
Which once again demonstrates the wisdom of Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is probably correct.
Justus' Addendum also applies: it's almost always delusional to look for any of subtlety, strategic thinking, or intelligence when dealing with a bureaucracy!

Notes from my walk through our neighbourhood today, September 20, 2015

1.  Usually by this time there would be Conservative signs sprinkled throughout the Rockland area where we live. This time they’re almost non-existent, although our across-the-street neighbour finally got his up this week, after our NDP sign had been up for nearly a month. As a rule, he beats us to it.
2.  Many of the places I associate with Conservative signs now sport Liberal signs. But not enough to be a trend.
3.  The Liberal signs are red. Except the bag signs, which started to appear this week. They’re quite distinctly orange, and from a distance I kept mistaking them for orange Blaney NDP signs. The Liberal candidate’s name is Schwarzhoff, hence takes up a lot of room on a small sign, hence is rendered in a small typeface, so you can be quite close before you notice the difference.
4.  I cannot see how the Liberal campaign would profit from this colour synergy, so maybe what we have here is the first clear indication of cooperation to come, as it surely must: there’s simply not enough separating the NDP and Liberal platforms to allow the Conservatives to carry on. And it’s pretty obvious by now that no party is en route for a majority.
5.  Judging only by the sign campaign, North Island-Powell River will return an NDP member. (Fortunately, there are other reasons to believe this as well!)
 6.  Canada Post sent us a letter three weeks ago:
"You will start picking up your mail and parcels at your new community mailbox on Monday, September 21.
We have started to install community mailboxes in your neighbourhood and to deliver keys to customers. If you haven’t received your keys or your mailbox has not yet been installed, don’t worry; you will have everything you need to start using your community mailbox by September 21...
Canada Post is proud to serve you and we are committed to making this mail delivery change as smooth and convenient as possible."                                                                       
Today there are no new community mailboxes in our immediate neighbourhood. Although most of the pads appear to have been prepared, some locations are still just holes in the ground.
Bet we don't get any mail tomorrow.
Just on the other side of the hill, en route to the Beaver Lodge Lands, I spotted a couple of the new ones, and of course all the ones I expected, the ones that have been there since that subdivision started to fill up, some 30 years ago.

Some modest requests

For me this election it's all about replacing the toxic Harper government, and I'd vote for anyone most likely to do that. Luckily for me that's the NDP candidate in our riding, but I'd vote Liberal or even (gasp!) Green if I thought those were more realistic choices.
So I'm happy to report they all have viable plans that would improve the present democratic deficit enormously.
Which brings us to the rest of the agenda for the next government, where, once again, I'm lucky because the NDP platform appears to me to be both realistic and transformative and consequently, easy to vote for.
But  ­- although it pains me to say it, and maybe it's a “third party” thing  ­- there are some files on which the Liberals clearly own the way forward.
So I'd like the next government, whether coalition, NDP, or Liberal, to steal some of those ideas, please, and implement them.
For me, infrastructure support for cities lines up right behind affordable child care. The Liberal plan to go into more debt while the interest rate is at an historical low so that the federal government can get involved in city infrastructure spending makes more sense to me than obsessing with “balancing” the budget, which is always a mugs game anyway. Over 80% of us live in metropolitan areas, and conditions are not improving, especially in the larger centres. Furthermore, such spending, it has been demonstrated repeatedly, is good for the economy, which just happens to be tanking under the careful ministrations of the Conservatives.
Win-win, in other words.
Then there's the Senate, our expensive, ineffective, but unfortunately necessary albatross.
I'm for abolition, of course, so it's easy to vote for that. But I'm also realistic enough to know that Prince Edward Island and Quebec, among others, will never agree to abolition. They have their reasons, and they're not illegitimate. Abolition also means opening the Constitution, and, having watched both the Meech Lake and Charlottetown debacles, I'm not prepared to go there again. For me, that's off the table, which means that reform is the only realistic option. The Liberals just happen to have implemented what I think could be the most transformative reform possible: they've removed Liberal senators from the Liberal Parliamentary Caucus, and have promised to reform the way senators are appointed.
Let's have more of that, please.
And finally, the drugs file. The Conservatives have been disastrously wrong about this, and any of the opposition parties would improve matters dramatically. But the Liberals are correct to press legalization and control, which is a far better option than the decriminalization the NDP is proposing.
I was watching some of our very middle-class neighbours sitting out on their deck with some friends, chatting and  overlooking the pool the other night. They all looked to be in their 50's. I was busy doing the dishes, and happened to see one of the guys smoking what appeared to be a cigarette. He didn't appear to be exhaling smoke; I then saw him pass that cigarette to the woman next along. I couldn't see the others, but eventually the cigarette came back to him and the process was repeated.
It's not news, but Justin Trudeau is on to something when middle-class Canadians sit calmly on a deck of an evening, evidently totally unmindful of who can see them, and pass cigarettes around!
Just sayin'.

News: Conservatives want to warn us about change!

A few days ago my sister-in-law, Marion, sent me and a raft of others a link to an article in the New York Times called “The Closing of the Canadian Mind” by Toronto writer Stephen Marche. It's perhaps a little over-the-top but makes a good case, seasoned with a dose of acid, for why we desperately need a change in government; I recommend it.

You will undoubtedly already have read it.

Consequent to this, in my email inbox this morning, I received a copy of a letter from one of the others on the raft. It was addressed to Marion, and titled, “Be careful what you wish for...” It claimed to be based on a reading of her blog.

It clearly wasn't. It was a reaction to her recommending the New York Times article. But OK.

What struck me, however, and what I cannot get rid of, is the smugly condescending, even chauvinistic tone of the title: as if a successful semi-retired businessman from Penticton knows more about the needs of the country than a retired judge from Toronto, and feels free to point out the errors in her thinking!

As if.

I'm guessing he votes Conservative.

In reaction, I thought I'd compile a little list of my top 10 political wishes for implementation after the campaign ends, just in case anyone has forgotten why we need change.

I want...

1.  an electoral system that doesn't reward 39% of voters with all the marbles.

2.   a government that respects and obeys the law, particularly the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

3.   a government which isn't in perpetual election mode and doesn't game the system for partisan advantage.

4.  a Senate (if, as appears almost certain, there must be one) that actually applies “serious second thought” to government bills

5.  a Security apparatus that is supervised by either an independent or a multi-party political board

6.  parliamentary committees that actually consider the bills and issues before them, and are free to report to Parliament on the evidence, in a non-partisan way

7.  a Ministry of Defense that respects its service men and women, and proves it by looking after the injured

8.  non-partisan judicial appointments

9.  an end to partisan advertising on the public dime

10. a foreign policy that is about more than unconditional support for Israel

There is, of course, an entire litany of other issues: support for the CBC, resuming the long-form census, answering questions in Question Period, loosening the rules for charity political involvement...and I, just like you, could go on and on. In fact, the Tyee compiled a list of 70 outrages so we don't have to try to remember them all.

The case is depressingly clear; it's no wonder Conservatives want to warn us about the dangers of change.
Because it sure is tempting!

A story...

...In which Justus learns something useful:
Last summer San bought a large blow-up wading pool. For the grandchildren.
It's fine, and the kids loved it, but inflation is time-consuming and a bit tricky. As one might expect, it takes a lot of air.
So last summer I thought, "I'll just use my shop vac". The big one, the one that actually works and that I use for cleaning the workshop and also, when that was necessary, for unflooding the basement. Turns out it sucks really well, but doesn't blow worth shit.
Happily, I had an old one, on its last legs, which no longer sucked much, but blew long enough to inflate the pool.
As I  said, the kids loved it, and consequently, so did we.
That was last summer, and this winter I did a cleanup. The old vac was one of the casualties, because I'd forgotten why I still had it but remembered it was nearly dead.
So we arrive at this year. San and various grandchildren would like the pool up. My shop vac still isn't adequate and our house vacuums don't blow.
But, I remembered, somewhere we have an inflation pump, for the large air mattress we used to go camping to Ontario which we no longer have because it sprang one too many leaks.
I found it: 12V; I got a pump that plugs into the car.
I couldn't see how I could get the car close enough to the pool.
So, I reasoned, there must be a transformer available that would do the trick. And there was, AC to DC, available at Canadian Tire.
So I bought it, brought it home, and plugged the pump in. It ran, but barely. Not nearly enough to inflate the pool.
Off to the internet, to discover that, while the output of my new transformer was 12volts, 2amps, the car's output is 12 volts, 15amps.
So I maneuvered the car down to near the pool, nearly taking out the bird feeder, and inflated the pool.
And resolved never to try that again.
Instead, I ordered the correct transformer, worth considerably more, from Amazon.
It arrived today, and works exactly as advertised.
Anyone want a spare AC to DC transformer in perfect working order, for free?

The Alberta election: some random thoughts

1    How about that election, eh?
It was certainly one for the record books, like the Rae win in Ontario in 1990, but much more decisive: all the polls said NDP majority, Conservatives running as far back as 3rd, but almost nobody believed something that politically improbable could happen.
Until it did.
Now, of course, the result appears kind of obvious: this is the province that elected mayors Naheed Nenshi and Don Iveson, the one that elected the most “progressive” of Progressive Conservatives, Alison Redford, when the polls all said that scary Wildrose was sure to win the 2012 election.
So it turns out all that really happened was that Jim Prentice appeared to be both kind of uncharismatic and in the pocket of the oil industry. And Rachel Notley, who almost nobody knew before the campaign, appeared, by contrast, to be kind of charismatic, straight-talking, and progressive, but in a business-friendly way. Really, not scary-NDP at all.

Isn't it delightfully satisfying when political hubris is punished so completely?


2    Many pundits have identified Prentice's “look in the mirror” remark, assigning responsibility for Alberta's current economy to Alberta voters, as deeply offensive, and one of the reasons he and his party were crushed. Although it's hard for an outsider like me to see how he's wrong, he apparently didn't help himself when he added: “We all want to blame somebody for the circumstances that we are in. But the bottom line is we’ve had the highest cost and the best public services in the country, and we haven’t built, basically, a revenue model that sustains them.”
Prentice could hardly say, “We've been pandering to those of you who want first-class services but wanted to pretend they were free for the last 43 years”, but that's what the Alberta economy and political system look like to those of us in the neighbouring provinces.
I'm not convinced Notley's NDP will have an answer. In Canada we're all deeply committed to magical thinking where taxes are concerned. We don't want to pay them, but we insist on the services. The NDP is not better than other parties in this regard: we still believe that taxing the rich and corporations is the solution, when that is, at best, only a small part of it.
Previous Alberta governments could have done like Norway, but voters chose instead not to pay sales tax.
I doubt if Notley's NDP will take that on.


3    It is an article of faith in NDP circles that assembling a database of sympathetic electors and then organizing them to get to the polls is the path to success, and undoubtedly that groundwork is part of it. But in the Alberta election that territory belonged to the PC's, who also happened to have most of the money.
We can probably conclude from this, and the last federal election in Quebec, that sometimes the leader and the conventional wisdom of the day is all that really matters.
Further evidence: the last provincial election in BC, when Christy Clark, a charismatic, photogenic lightweight, beat  Adrian Dix, a serious, thoughtful pro, on style points and with a whisper campaign that impugned his morality. The fact that she promised to deliver the wonders of the Ali Baba cave didn't hurt, but I doubt if it tipped the balance.
We could easily have lost North Island, and would have, in spite of far superior organization and enough money, had it not been for Claire's popularity on the islands, where she, as the MLA, had been regularly and where the Liberal candidate hadn't bothered to visit.


4    What kind of premier will Rachel Notley be?
Above all, I suspect, she will be pragmatic. You don't overcome 43 years of PC government by challenging the electorate's fundamental assumptions, at least, not all in one go.
She'll have her work cut out just to deal with the well-funded campaign to undermine her government's legitimacy that is undoubtedly in the offing, and she should expect the federal Conservatives, the ones that offered their congratulations today, to do everything they can to sabotage her success.
I imagine she'll be guided by the examples of Roy Romanow, Alan Blakeney, Gary Doer and Greg Selinger, rather than those of Dave Barrett and Mike Harcourt...
She certainly won't be a socialist premier.

And finally, can we NDPers please abandon the canard that the NDP has to revert to it's “socialist roots” in order to win? That's so clearly not the case!

Duffy, drugs, and redundancy

ONE:

I never liked Mike Duffy.

And when, at CTV, he became an obese, hale-fellow-well-met caricature of “The Parliamentary Reporter”, whose only journalistic attribute was that he could gain access to any politician he wanted in return for faithfully reporting the spin of the day, “loathing” is perhaps not too strong a word for the quality of my admiration.

I do believe I liked him even less than I like the odious Rex Murphy today.

So Stephen Harper appointing him to the Canadian Senate merely confirmed what I already knew about Harper and his government.

Patrick Brazeau? Pamela Wallin? Mere icing on that cake.

Subsequently, when Duffy et al were caught with their faces fully submerged in the trough, apparently (if reports are to be believed) some people were astonished that Duffy and Harper took advantage of the appointment. Apparently no one could have foreseen that the Senate of Canada would be exploited to satisfy the political desires of the Harper government.

Seriously? Did they think Duffy was being recognized for his outstanding journalism? Did Duffy accept the appointment because of any ambition to subject the laws passed by the House to “sober second thought”? Did someone have to point out the trough to Mr Duffy, and did anyone think it necessary to warn him against immersing himself too deeply?

Of course not. Duffy did exactly what was expected: he raised tons of money for the Conservative Party, spoke to partisans whenever asked, and basked in the limelight and the love. Almost all of it on the Senate's dime, and while making sure that his income was commensurate with his new status.

Like most Canadians, I cheered when Duffy and Co. were outed as the porkers they are, and followed the subsequent political farce, the one that culminated in bribery and the self-serving justice imposed by their fellow Senators, closely.

But I'm mostly over that now. I'm pretty sure almost none of this will stick to Harper by the time there's an election on the line, and I'm pretty sure the Canadian electorate is already feeling even more cynical about politicians. The Senate, which for procedural reasons cannot be abolished, will be discredited even further. 

I expect this cynicism suits the present government, the one that brought in and passed the "Fair Elections Act" (Bill C23, which actually only makes it harder for disadvantaged people to vote) just fine.

None of this is good news for the 60% of Canadians who do not support the Harper government. I wish I saw any indication that the combined opposition was actually serious about taking control, changing government, and cleaning up the mess.

TWO:

Yesterday the CBC did an expose, revealing that too often your local drug store carries expired drugs on its shelves:

After Shoppers Drug Mart recalled one lot of Alesse 21 birth control pills that expired in September 2014 and were sold to about 100 women, a Richmond, B.C., resident sent CBC News photos of a newly purchased non-prescription allergy medication stamped with an expiry date of August 2014. A CBC producer found more on the shelf at the same store.

When CBC News checked a dozen drug stores from three chains in Toronto, journalists found a diabetic nutritional supplement that expired last October, other past due allergy medications, an expired sleep medication and a number of products that expire this month.

OK; that's not good. I think we can safely assume that expired drugs are less effective than they are meant to be, and that's bad. But they're not toxic, and they do contain active ingredients.

On those same shelves one can find homeopathic nostrums, “approved” by Health Canada:

Health Canada is responsible for ensuring that remedies sold to the public are both safe and effective. In recent years, however, Health Canada has allowed various natural health products to enter the market without requiring rigorous proof of effectiveness. Indeed, there are many remedies and homeopathic preparations currently licensed for sale that do not contain any of the allegedly active ingredient. A number of these are hom­eo­pathic “nosodes.”

…

Health Canada continues to assure Canadians that it tests products for safety and efficacy before allowing them to enter the market. All approved homeopathic products are given a DIN-HM number.

And there's more: “Bogus Children’s Remedy Invented by CBC Marketplace Approved by Health Canada” is the headline of a story which pretty much sums up the contents. Follow the URL for the story.

Personally, those stories strike me as a lot more to be really concerned about.

Just saying.

THREE:

There's a war memorial in Ottawa, located just outside the front doors of the Parliament Building.

After someone was seen urinating on it a few years ago, the Conservatives thought it would be a good idea to put a guard there.

So there were two ceremonial guards there when a nutter with a rifle decided to make a statement at Canada's Parliament, and the first thing that nutter did on his way into the building was shoot at both, and kill one.

The thing is, those guards, as is the norm, were armed. They just didn't have any ammunition.

And that seems fine, if you're only protecting the War Memorial from urinators.

So, after Cpl Nathan Cirillo was killed, did the braintrust at the Parliament Buildings decide to provide the guards with ammunition, so they could actually guard the war memorial?

Well no: they provided police protection for the guards at a cost of $425,000/ year.

Frankly, that seems more than a little counter-intuitive.

Not to mention redundant.

Bill C51

19 February, 2015

The Hon Stephen Harper,
Office of the Prime Minister

80 Wellington Street

Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2


Dear Sir,

I am deeply worried that Bill C51, currently before Parliament, goes well beyond the intentions stated by the government.
I refer you to the articles by a number of very knowledgeable people, including legal and parliamentary experts, who have made this point before me.
And I am old enough to remember the RCMP, acting under similarly-vague authorization to that envisioned by this bill, illegally burning down a Quebec barn belonging to a relative of an FLQ member.
I thought we had learned from that experience.
It is also very worrying that there appears to be no effective oversight of the security agencies which would be empowered by this legislation.
I trust appropriate amendment will be made before passage to correct this legislation, and to render it acceptable in a fully-democratic society.

Yours very sincerely,



copy: MP John Duncan
121 East Block
House of Commons
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6