Tilting at Windmills

Four families in southern Ontario are facing a $340,000 legal bill that they say is unfair (Globe and Mail). The four families tried to convince a judge that a windmill turbine farm proposed to be developed close to their properties would lower the value of that property and one assumes more importantly, negatively affect their health. They lost that case. Then they lost the appeal. The wind turbine companies are arguing that the families should pay their legal bills. It is, in civil cases, quite normal for the loser to have to pay the winner's legal costs. By doing so the court insures that frivolous cases are less likely to appear before them. The family are arguing that the companies are rich and can afford to pay their own bills. They also state that forcing the losing side to pay the legal bill will, in the future, scare people from taking things to court when they feel it is legitimate to do so.

I must confess that I find my feeling in this case to be quite conflicted. On one hand I can appreciate that it might be disturbing and annoying if there was a clear view, from my house, of a wind turbine farm less than a kilometre away. While the court said that there was no proof that property values would be lessened, I am not sure if I would purchase such a property. Despite the fact that the scientific community is unclear as to the potential health effects of living near a turbine farm, it is conceivable that some people would be affected by the noise. I think there is a valid argument to be made that such installations need to be positioned so that they inflict the least possible harm.

On the other hand, is this proposed installation and the resultant court case just one more example of NIMBY (not in my back yard)?  No one wants another nuclear plant built anywhere, but especially nowhere near people. No one would support another coal or oil fired generator. And apparently no one wants a number of windmills whistling in the wind anywhere near their house. Hydro electricity, while it may be the least polluting of all electrical generation systems, significantly disrupts the environment and the lives of people who live in that area. The people in that area have the right to protest.  I also suspect that many of the people who complain about having any sort of electrical generation plant built near them are also some of the same people who moan about the health dangers of being near low frequency electromagnetic fields generated by transmission lines. For those people the paradoxical desires to live nowhere near a hydro generating station and at the same time to disagree with the development of transmission lines corridors seems somewhat absurd.

In Canada our rate of use of electricity has since 2005, risen (indexmund). There is no reason to believe that we will reduce our consumption. In fact given the ever increasing number of devices that we all need to charge daily, it seems far more likely that our rate of consumption will increase. The electricity needs to come from somewhere. Either we find ways of producing it close to our major industrial/urban areas or we use large tracts of land to inefficiently and expensively move that power to those industrial/urban areas.

I believe that the individual should have the right to fight against the decisions of large corporate entities. I further believe that there are times when such actions should be supported by the state. Not because the state believes in the case but rather because the issue is important enough to be tried in public, in a formal setting. I think it is entirely possible that the cost of such litigation, unless it is supported by a third party, will become so prohibitive that people just stop trying. But I also think we need to accept that sometimes, some people are going to have to make some compromises in terms of creating a perfect life. Sometimes we need to accept that the greater public good supersedes our personal desires.

 Of course if we had government funded, legislatively supported environmental reviews that were effective and efficient maybe we would not need a court to decide. Or we could just start to use less electricity which would not solve the problem but it would somewhat alleviate it.

Hosipital Wait Times and Paying Taxes

Yesterday morning as I was eating my breakfast and wandering through the various on-line news sites I came across the following headline on CBC "Patients' 'lives ruined' as hip surgery waits grow"(CBC). According to the article, people are having to wait not just months but years to have a defective hip replaced. I can only imagine not only the discomfort (medical term for it hurts like hell), but also the frustration of having to wait for what now seems to be a fairly common operation and the dislocation of one's life while you wait. I suspect that I would be fairly outraged if I was in that position. For a number of years people in Canada have been complaining about the lengthy wait times for such operations and for almost an equal number of years various provinces have been promising to do something about it. Clearly if said provinces have tried to fix the problem they have been unsuccessful. Or have they?

It was not difficult to find accurate and current statistics as to the number of hip replacements being done on an annual basis (something sadly missing from the CBC article). Canadians had approximately  23,000 hip replacements in 2007 (Stats). That was twice as many as were done ten years earlier (ibid). "In 2012–2013, there were 47,137" (CIHI) hip replacements. In other words it appears as if the number of hip replacement done in Canada doubles every nine or ten years. To put it another way: in 2012-2013 Canadian hospitals did four times as many hip surgeries as they did in 1995. Given the number of baby boomers who are approaching 65-70 and who are all potential recipients for hip replacement surgery and the increasing number of younger people who are also requiring them, it is easy to predict that the number of surgeries will double in the next ten years.

The cost of such an operation appears to change a little bit depending upon which province, but in BC, each hip replacement costs an estimated $13,100 (canada.com). Which means tax payers in Canada paid approximately $617,494,700 for all of hip replacement surgeries done in 2012-2013.  In all likelihood, we will spend more next year and even more the year after etc.etc.

In 2013 it was projected that Canada would spend $211 billion on health care. That is approximately double of what we spent in 1995 (CIHI). While there is some suggestion that that rate of health spending growth is slowing down or at least stabilizing (CTV), there is no doubt that Canada will continue to spend a sizable percentage of its GDP on health care. But it equally as clear that it is not enough if people are having to wait extended periods of time to get needed surgeries.

To reduce the costs one could cut the salaries of doctors and nurses (although I am not sure if I want the person holding the knife to be irritated at the system), we could raise more money through taxes, we could allow those who can afford it to arrange for the operation to be done privately or we could employ the evermore frequently used Canadian strategy of whining about poor service and demanding that someone else pay for it.

There was a time when most Canadians had a general awareness that for the system to work everyone needed to pay into it. That awareness seems to have been lost. Too many Canadians  are content - no eager - to rant and rail against the government and its inefficiencies. It has become too easy for all political parties to argue that taxes can be reduced and service maintained by just "tightening our belts" a  little bit. It is time we realized that if we want to have a good health care system (and a good educational system and etc. etc.) then we need to pay for it up front. My heart goes out to all of those who are in a long waiting line to get the necessary surgery, but I think the question needs to be asked: how many of them  would have voted for higher taxes to pay for the services they now demand?

Open letter to Quebec Court Judge Eliana Marengo

I am curious. Which of the following people's testimony, because of their choice of clothing,  would you refuse to listen to if they appeared in your court . Which of these people would you deem to be dressed inappropriately?  I am inclined to believe that if Mother Theresa, Malala Yousafzai , MP Tim Uppal or a Catholic nun were in your court you would be delighted to hear what they needed to say. Why not Rania El-Alloul?

In Canada our judges are appointed. This means that, unlike some parts of the USA, our judges do not have to pander to public opinion to get re-elected to their position but rather can apply the law consistently. It is the Canadian public's assumption that our judges are nominated for their position because they are reasonable, well educated, mature, experienced and thoughtful people.

Clearly, at least in this case that assumption was wrong.

Private vs Public Community Colleges

At the end of last week Everest College, a private college, was shut down by a Ontario provincial regulator stating there was some concern over their capacity to be financially responsible (CBC). Since then there have been numerous articles in the main street media discussing the college's failure and what it means for the students who were enrolled in the various programs. CBC had an article this morning where former students and one ex-instructor wondered why the college had not been closed earlier (yahoo). They, in the article, suggested that the college was operating a scam and that it was more interested in profits than education.

What surprises me is that people are surprised that some of the private colleges may be sub-standard.  I am almost shocked at the naivety of people who believed that they would get a high quality education from a private college that at best has minimal accountability to the community. These colleges are privately operated with no government funding. Regardless of how wonderful their brochures, television ads or internet sites look and sound, the colleges exist for one reason. They exist to make a profit for their investors. Their only source of income is the tuition that students pay.  It should not be a surprise therefore, that at least some of the private colleges do everything they can to ensure that students, regardless of their skills or capacities, are encouraged to keep on attending. And if that means making assignments easier or giving lots of extensions etc - that is what happens. I have talked to a number of people who have taught at either a private university or college, and they have all told me that the pressure on the part of the administration to give passing grades to all students is considerable.

I have no doubt that there are many highly competent and dedicated instructors working in the private college system. They, unfortunately, are getting paid considerably less than any comparable instructor at a Ontario community college. I am equally sure that there are numerous students enrolled in a private college who work incredibly hard and who would do well in any post secondary institution. I am sure that the vast majority of the students who attend colleges systems such as Everest deserve far better than they are getting. But they, their parents, their employers or high school guidance teachers need to be aware of the dangers of private educational systems. It is obscene that people are allowed - no encouraged - to borrow money to attend a post secondary institution only to find out their education is worthless.

The public however, also need to be aware that within the publically funded college system, some things are not that different. The peculiarity of the government funding mechanism (at least as I understand it) ensures that retention of students from first to second semester and into the third semester is critical. College recruitment strategies are complex, expensive and consume senior administrative staff for portions of the year. At the college I taught at, the number of students applying for specific programs as compared to previous years was a topic of frequent discussion amongst Dean, Chairs and Coordinators. All of the staff (part time and full time) were given regular updates in terms of intake.

There is no doubt in my mind that the college graduated students who were clearly not qualified to work in their chosen field. I would like to believe that the controls, evaluations and accountability systems built into the community college system in Ontario ensures that these are rare occurrences. I don't think they are.  It would also be wonderful if there were enough good jobs for the graduates. In the two programs I taught in - this was not true. Far too many students after graduations end up working in part time jobs with little hope of advancement.

We have created a post secondary educational system where it is assumed that (1) everyone has the right to go to college or university and (2) that everyone needs to go. Neither belief is true. We need to re-think why people go to school. In the meantime we need to make sure that perspective students, regardless of what school they plan to attend, know the truth.

Thinking about Hitchhiking

I am not quite ready to be planning my summer trip. With all of the snow shovelling that I have had to do in the past few weeks combined with daily highs of minus 20 degrees Celsius (plus wind chill), it is rather hard to think about hitchhiking across Canada. On the other hand there are brief signs that the wanderlust part of my sub-conscious brain is almost ready to take control over the rest of my grey matter.  When I wake up in the middle of the night there are faint rememberings  of dreams of being outside the Flying J in Winnipeg, of standing at the chaotic intersection at the west end of Brandon or that first glorious view of the Rockies just past Calgary but these snatches of images are too brief to hold on to. But I know the need to travel is close because have started to read, as my bedtime reading, travel books. About this time every year I get the yearning to read about other people's adventures. My preference is to read about people who sail, usually alone, around the world.  I don't know why these stories attract me - I have little interest in sailing but at sometime during the cold days of late January or early February I am drawn to these types of stories.

In the last month or so I have read three travel/adventure books. The first was about people who row across oceans, either the Pacific or Atlantic. The second book that I read was written by a man who had sailed from New Zealand to the Antarctica and back again. The third one that I am just finishing is about a young woman who wanted to walk through Papua New Guinea. It is never clear to me why any of them  do what they do. What I do find amazing however, is how little planning they seem to do for these trips that not only take some time to complete, isolate them from any human contact but also put their lives at a very real risk.

People who row across oceans do prepare for months in advance in part because they need to build up the muscles and the skills needed to row for ten to fifteen hours a day for weeks. Because there is an international federation of rowers and a number of competitions,  there are clear rules about how to be safe. Some of those rules seem to be a little use. Their boats, for the most part are sophisticated pieces of equipment that amongst other things, after being completely flipped over by huge wave, need to be self-righting. But universally the rowers complain about the food that they have brought with them, the lack of space to sleep and store their stuff (especially when it is a two person crew) and the skin break down on their derrières from seating on a wet seat. Some of them seem to spend a fair amount of time, while on the ocean, trying to find solutions to this problem. In addition the technology they bring with them for both navigation and staying in touch with people seems to fail far more often than it works. Personally if I was going to get into a boat only six meters long and spend sixty days in it working my butt off, I would make sure that I liked the food that I brought with me and that the technology was hardier than much of it seems. I would also make sure that the seat would not cause skin breakdown.  

The man sailing to the Antarctica only survived because various scientific stations on that forbidding continent helped him rebuild his boat and re-supplied him. His sail boat flipped at least three times. Not only did his electronics fail but even his watches (accurate time telling is critical to knowing where you are if one is using a sextant) did not work well! His organization was so bad and so rushed that his supplies were badly stored on board. He could not find some basic necessities because they were buried under other things, the head (bathroom) was full of food stuff and not useable for its original purpose and the gasoline (for his outboard motor) spilled.

And finally for the young American travelling through Papua New Guinea there were a number of times that she was rescued and taken care of by either missionaries or employees of the various western companies that are there exploiting the wealth of that struggling country. Her pack weighted 43 pounds but I am not clear, other than a mosquito net, what she had in it. The fact that she survived had more to do with the innate goodness of other people than her planning or self-survival skills.

In reading these books it often feels as if I spend more time planning for my five or six day trip across Canada than these people do who are planning on traveling in much harsher conditions for longer periods of time. And on occasion I wonder if I think too much about my equipment I think I need to have. Or if I spend too much time preparing for the trip by making sure I have signs to attract drivers etc. Maybe it would be more of adventure if I went with less stuff (or the wrong stuff) and had to suffer a little bit more. And then I figuratively slap my face and realize there is nothing wrong in having stuff that will keep me reasonably dry and warm. And if carrying a water filter and a wee stove is a bit much - having a cup of soup and some tea after a long day is pretty nice.