Author: Steve Wettlaufer

Maybe I’m the idiot here (lord knows it wouldn’t be the first time), but it strikes me that the sort of people who are going to be sleeping on sidewalks aren’t going to be the sort of people who have $100 just kicking around. B.C. city approves bylaw that would fine people for sleeping on sidewalks

A B.C. city has adopted new amendments to a bylaw banning people from lying or sitting down on city streets.
Penticton City Council voted Tuesday night to approve amendments to its Good Neighbour bylaw that stops people from sitting or lying down on sections of the downtown core.
The amendments will also stop people from gathering outside vacant stores, and will be in effect every year between May and the end of September. Violators could face a $100 fine.

And again stop me if I’m the dumb one, but how are these rules not meant to target street people? If not them, then who? The occasional over-served college kid? For Christ’s sake, the Mayor can’t even make it all the way through his denial without basically admitting as much.

In a statement posted to the city’s website Thursday, Mayor John Vassilaki defended the potential additions to the bylaw.
“Downtown residents and businesses are tired of the bad behaviour and brazen crime they are witnessing and they’re demanding more solutions,” he said in the statement.
Vassilaki acknowledged he had heard from citizens in the week since the amendments who suggested the bylaw would target homeless people, but denied that bylaw officers would indiscriminately ticket them.
“Since our last Council meeting, concerned residents have said the proposed amendments will impact those without a home. That’s possible,” he wrote. “If someone who is homeless is obstructing passage along one of three designated sections of downtown high-traffic sidewalks…they will likely be approached by Bylaw Officers and be asked to move.”

Not that I expect there to be any (see stone, can’t get blood from a), but any revenue the city does manage to collect from this had better be going directly into programs like affordable housing and addiction services so that maybe we can actually help solve the problem instead of just shoeing it into a quieter neighbourhood.

Two things here:

1. The headline Authorities: Man who set himself on fire faces arson charge sounds like something I should be reading in a joke or in one of those stupid hoax stories designed to trick people who have neither a good eye nor a grasp on Google.
2. What was this cop thinking? Yes it seems to have worked out ok, but shooting electricity at a flaming man covered in gasoline sounds like one of those things that has great potential to end rather poorly. Someone can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about that.

Camden County authorities say Karl Ireland was violating a restraining order that barred him from the Berlin home. When police arrived, they found the 47-year-old Berlin man in the rear yard near a shed and ordered him to “show his hands.”
Authorities say Ireland instead poured gasoline on his head and somehow ignited a fire. An officer used a stun gun to force Ireland to the ground so they could extinguish the blaze and administer first aid.

Ontario government may let pharmacists prescribe treatments for minor issues like sore throats

I’m all for this, assuming it’s well thought through and administered, of course. Not for reasons of my own convenience like the government seems to be suggesting here, but because anything that’s going to free up doctors to deal more personally with patients is hard to argue against.

If you’ve needed a doctor or have had to watch someone go through the medical system, you may have noticed that there’s at times far too much emphasis put on getting people out the door as quickly as possible rather than on listening, investigating and treating. People go to their doctor, obviously sick and in need of help, and the attitude they get is sometimes less of a how can I help you and more of a what do you expect me to do about it, why are you bothering me? I know at least a couple of people who, after dealing with illnesses themselves as best they can for days or weeks and getting nowhere, have gone in only to be told to basically rub some dirt on it and come back if they’re still shitty in another three weeks.

This isn’t because all of the doctors suck. Some of them do, but most of the time the problem is that their caseloads are absolutely nuts and there’s just no time for anything. If there’s a way to reduce that without negatively affecting care, why not do it? And if you’re going to do it, there probably isn’t a better group of people to put the responsibility in the hands of than pharmacists. They’re already the ones giving you the important details after your doctor throws a piece of paper at you and says here, take these, so why shouldn’t they be trusted with the flu shot or the weapons grade cough drops? They’re a readily available resource (think about how many drugstores there are in the average city/town), so why not use them to their fullest potential?

Pharmacists in Ontario could one day prescribe treatments for minor health issues such as pink eye or skin rashes.
The Progressive Conservative government announced in its recent budget that it intends to expand the scope of practice for certain regulated health professionals, such as pharmacists, nurse practitioners, dental specialists and optometrists.
Health Minister Christine Elliott said Thursday it’s about convenience for patients.

“Sometimes people aren’t able to get in to see their physician, for example, during the course of the day, but they can go in on weekends, they can go in the evenings to see the pharmacist,” she said. “If it’s a low-grade issue, then we believe that there are certain things that pharmacists should be able to treat.”

Pharmacists may also be allowed to administer the flu vaccine to children under five, Elliott said.
The specifics will have to be hammered out with the health professionals’ colleges and governing bodies, she said, and it could take up to a year for any changes to be in place. Additional training would likely be required.

In a rare moment of clarity, Doug Ford and whomever pulls the strings that make his arms and lips flap have decided that perhaps being universally hated might not always be so great and have kicked a few particularly stupid cuts down the road.

Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government has backed down on retroactive funding cuts to municipalities after sustained pressure from local leaders, who warned of devastating impacts to public health, child care and ambulance services.
Municipalities had been pushing back hard against the funding cuts, which were announced after they already passed this year’s budgets, saying they would need to raise taxes or cut services to cover the shortfall.
Premier Doug Ford said he heard from municipalities that they could find savings in their own budgets, but they needed more time to do so.

“We’ve come up with a conclusion that we’re going to work together,” he said Monday. “We’re going to maintain the funding throughout this year. Every mayor I talked to said they can find savings. So that’s good news. But they said they needed more runway.”

The Tories are trying to trim an $11.7-billion deficit and had announced a host of funding cuts to municipalities, including for public health, child care, ambulance services, libraries, tourism and conservation authorities.
Ford said Monday that the in-year cuts to public health, child care and land ambulance will not go ahead. It was not clear whether they would proceed next year.

I’m sure they will, unless it happens to be an election year. They’ll just be more sneaky about it.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like perhaps this was done at least partially on purpose. Not necessarily by Ford himself, because he’s kind of dopey. But the ones who actually handle the hard work of being province ruining assholes day to day have to find some way of figuring out where the line is. How much of our slash and burn agenda can we get away with at once, basically. Even the dimmest of bulbs in the PC family have to know that some of their plans are going to be unpopular and that enacting them leaves only a few short years before most of them are out looking for work. That’s why they’ve come out of the gate so fast on so many things. You get the hard stuff out of the way early and then you can maybe paint yourselves in a better light later by funding a few things that’ll be fresh in the minds of people with short memories come 2022. And if you have to pull back, you can say “hey look, you guys! We’re listening to the people!” And then you know to slow down and chop the living hell out of things more stealthily. Instead of death by a thousand cuts a thousand at a time, you make death by a thousand cuts two or three at a time and it looks less egregious because it isn’t all laid out in front of us at once.

Maybe that’s giving them too much credit, but real bulls in china shops don’t ever listen to reason, so the fact that these ones appear to be for the moment suggests that there’s more than simple incompetence at work here. And when you think about it, that’s probably the worse of the two options. It means they’re self-aware and are being as awful as they are with intent.