“Ahmadi is still months away from getting permanent resident status, putting him in the unlucky group of middle-class British Columbians who have found themselves targeted by a tax purportedly imposed to crack down on rich real estate speculators from overseas”
I would not call Hamed Ahmadi unlucky, he’s a victim of the all too common policy apparatus that confuses residency with visa status. The BC non-resident tax of 15% on properties is supposed to target “foreign” (read Chinese) investors buying in Vancouver with no intentions of living there. I presume there are multiple other ways to determine residency and “localness” for the purpose of determining who lives here and who does not. The BC government, in its haste to demonstrate it was doing something, took the easy route and used visa status as a proxy.
Hamed lives and works in BC, which meets my definition of local. While a speculation tax on non-residents is a reasonable approach, using visa status to determine residency, and providing no sensible exceptions for locals with alternative paper work is lazy and thoughtless policy making, so is not providing exceptions for people with home buying applications already in process. It’s almost as if someone looked at the polls and press and wrote the law in a day.
In many ways, this is personal for me because I lived in the US for 10+ years under various non-permanent visas that left me vulnerable to these poorly designed, thoughtless policy measures. I lived in the same town for 10 years, was very much a local by the time I’d left, with a stable set of friends, family, work, places I shopped in, hiked to, causes I supported, volunteer work I did, and more. So, Hamed’s story could have been mine, and in some smaller ways, was mine for other parts of my life.
“CTV News spoke with BC Liberal cabinet minister Andrew Wilkinson on Wednesday and asked several times for comment on Ahmadi’s situation. Wilkinson responded by repeating a piece of blanket advice for the people impacted. “Those who find themselves affected by the tax should seek legal advice because individual circumstances vary,” Wilkinson said.
This is typical of policy makers who are so removed from the day to day lives of the people whose behaviour they seek to regulate. The casual assumption that regular people can afford professionals who bill at multiple hundreds of dollars an hour speaks more about the types of people these ministers hang out with than anything else. But this sounds familiar too, I needed to consult lawyers multiple times to help me with immigration paper work.
As someone with a high level of institutional trust, and who thinks governments can affect our lives for the better with sound and thoughtful policy interventions, these types of hasty policy making are deeply disappointing. There are multiple other policy measures to make housing more affordable. The CCPA just released a comprehensive document of policies, focusing on the actual problem, the lack of affordable housing. Investment in affordable housing with a focus on cohousing and social housing, and zoning changes that reduce the protections afforded to affluent property owners would go a long way.
Before I begin, I use the word “car” to describe all passenger-first vehicles regardless of their design and so-called market segment. Whether it’s a sedan, hatchback, or an SUV, or one of those ridiculous two rows of seats “pickup” truck designs with a short and almost useless flatbed, they are primarily used to transport people and so they are all cars to be regulated as passenger vehicles. Also, electric or fossil, these issues don’t change.
Access to deadly devices. I see a car as a deadly device, a gun we use to travel around in, which kills unless operated almost perfectly. Who can access a car? How do we control access to a car?
Speed and Proximity. Any speed greater than 50 kph leads to almost certain death. So how do we control speed? The closer cars and drivers get to vulnerable people, the more likely they are to hurt them. Cities, downtowns and other dense spaces have many people walking and biking about, and cars pose much more danger than on a freeway.
Design. The heavier and taller a vehicle, the more likely it is to kill. If a subcompact car is a pistol, a large passenger “truck” car is an AK47. So how do we control car design?
Human skill and attitude. Driverless car hype aside, cars are operated by humans. The more unskilled, distracted, angry they are, the more likely they are to kill
Necessity and frequency of use. The more people are forced to use killing devices for transport, the more likely they are to kill people.
The system. We currently assume that use of killing devices by untrained amateurs as transportation is normative. This is the default way to be, and any changes to the default are catastrophic. People call this motonormativity, car brain, you pick the term.
If you were not motonormative, how would you tackle this issue of car violence?
Access
Right now, car access works as follows. You pass a one-time driving test in a country in your teens. That gives you access to drive most passenger vehicles anywhere in the country for the rest of your life (and in many cases, other countries too). Yes, your license can be suspended for various reasons. But that does not prevent you from driving a car, it only prevents you from driving one legally. So, we have hundreds of instances every year of people who are not allowed to drive hurting others with their cars. This is not an actual restriction of access, it’s administrative.
Solution: Take the next logical step. Tie car access to a functioning license. The technological solution is as simple as installing one more security system that does not allow a car to start/move unless a valid license is tapped or inserted. This way, people with suspended licenses will not be able to drive unless they take extreme measures. If someone is in a mental health crisis, then instead of jailing them on suspicion, you simply restrict access to deadly devices just like you would restrict access to a gun, or sharp knives. This is not a 100% stop as there will be exceptions (steal a license, hack the car, get an enabler), but it will stop most access issues. You could get more nuanced and tie certain cars to certain licenses as well, that way if you don’t want your car to be driven by anyone else than yourself, you implement strict access control. This way, you give people with mental health issues, or substance issues the time it takes for them to get help while restricting their access to dangerous devices, not their entire freedom.
Speed
Right now, cars are designed to go 3-4 times faster than kill speed with no physical restrictions (armed and dangerous). Once again, restrictions like speed limits are just administrative. Most humans don’t comply, and inappropriate speed is a major factor in auto violence. Cars are also almost always allowed in very crowded spaces where they are operated near vulnerable people.
Solutions: These solutions sound draconian if you are in car culture. Remember, in addition to being a transport device, the car is also a killing device. You’re driving around in a gun! Speed restrictions are linked to proximity. The closer you are to people on bikes and on foot, the slower the top-speed on your vehicle needs to be. And this is a technological speed limit, not an administrative one. We have the technology to tie speed limiters in cars to GPS. Why, we even restrict ebikes to 32 kmph currently. Even though imperfect, this could be a starting point. I would go a step further. All cars are, by default, in “city” mode. That means their speeds are capped to a max of 25-50 kmph depending on location. I would start with a 30 kmph default maximum and have GPS-linked increases up to 50 in places where there are fewer people walking. Then, when you are on a highway you press the highway or speed button to allow the car to go faster in places where it is less likely to encounter vulnerable people. Highway speeds are hard-capped at 10 kmph above the maximum speed limit in the country in addition to being limited by GPS. We will need a way to light up a car very prominently to display its highway/speed status, and ways to disable back to city mode if activated in the city. If a vehicle is seen in a city on speed/highway mode, the assumption is that it’s armed and dangerous. The status quo, remember, is all cars are armed and dangerous! Tie this to robust and affair utomated enforcement with speed cameras, radar etc. so the police can’t choose not to enforce traffic laws (like they are currently doing in Victoria BC)
Proximity
The more people walking/biking in an area, the greater your access restriction to cars and the tighter the speed control. Whether it is creating car-free streets, adding congestion tolls to cities and busy neighbourhoods, or putting up real barriers to prevent access during a festival/gathering, the goal is to greatly reduce the interactions between killing devices and unarmed people. There is so much work going on in this space, the 15 minute city for example is one such framework to think about design that minimizes deadly car interactions.
Car design
This one is simple. Cars cannot be allowed for sale if they are too tall, or too heavy. Cars are not cellphones, they have to be regulated with safety as the overwhelming priority. The safety approval process must take equal care of people outside the car, not just inside. There’s overwhelming evidence (and physics) that shows large cars like “trucks” or “SUVs” cause disproportionate harm. If you need to carry more people, design appropriately to bring the harm levels back to baseline car. There is also the disturbing trend of touchscreen menu-based interfaces for cars that is terribly unsafe. All of these need changing.
Driver skill and attitude
This is tied to access and design. If you think of the car as a gun, then it should horrify you that amateurs with one-time testing and no continuing professional development are allowed unlimited access to cars. Driving a car is a cognitively demanding task, and research shows that any level of distraction away from simply driving on a highway with no people and no distraction increases risk. Given that, it’s quite amazing more people are not hurt more often. It is proof that most people are working hard to do the right thing and concentrating on driving most of the time. It is clearly not enough. People have suggested more frequent retesting may help, continuing education as well. But ensuring driver licenses aren’t just pieces of plastic would go a long way. Same with driver attitude. When you’re performing a cognitively demanding task, you must stay calm. Unfortunately, the act of driving in proximity to hundreds of other drivers you don’t know and can’t communicate with increases stress in an already distrustful and dangerous environment, hence the common road rage issues. Add in the unpredictability and extra difficulty level of negotiating crowded urban streets, it’s all so demanding. Some of this can be handled through access restriction, some through speed control. However, the underlying issue is that driving is stressful and causes stress. Even with all the tools of so called “self-driving”, anything other than complete attention is dangerous. So you have to address necessity and frequency
Necessity and frequency, and the system.
Many books have been written on this topic. So I won’t go into much detail. For example, Life After Cars, or Car Free Cities, and so many more. The overarching point here is to reduce the necessity and frequency of private driving by designing our living and working systems appropriately. For example, I have a car, but I use it maybe once a week on a longer office drive (which I would not need to if we had a better transit system), or for getting into nature quickly. The rest of the time, most of what I need is within a 10 minute sweat free ebike ride: Groceries, medical appointments, kids school etc.
Needless to say, each of these interventions major and minor face a motonormative culture and entrenched opposition. So expect none of them except possibly the system design (which is happening in many places).
James Hansen gave an interesting talk on the physics of climate change, the magnitude of current anthropogenic emissions versus historical CO2 regimes, and the need for immediate action at the NCWarn forum on the Cliffside power plant issue.
In a CBS 60 Minutes profile in March 2006, Hansen said, “The speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes humans are making to the atmosphere and the surface.” Carolinas Clean Air and NC WARN are part of a statewide effort by public interest groups to block the new Cliffside plant and help the state reduce greenhouse gases by aggressively ramping up energy efficiency, cogeneration and renewables. That effort has already stopped one of two plants Duke sought to build at Cliffside – by proving it wasn’t needed. The second unit has suffered multiple delays and cost overruns and is the subject of ongoing legal battles over air pollution and water permits.
Some background: Duke Energy, the North Carolina utility wants to spend a heap of public money building a new coal fired power plant in Cliffside, NC. The problem? They will not sequester or otherwise capture the massive CO2 emissions out of the plant, which is inexcusable given what we know about climate change now.
Following an excellent talk by Mike Nicklas of Innovative Design, a Raleigh based green architectural firm which focused on reducing demand by increasing efficiency, James Hansen’s talk was an excellent primer on climate change, its history, its easy and basic correlation with atmospheric CO2 concentrations, our current state of affairs, and what we need to do in the next 10 years.
Their presentations can be found here (Nicklas), and here (Hansen). Go see it. Hansen talked a lot about the interaction of scientists, policy makers and the media in framing the “debate” and contrasted the quick march to consensus on the ozone hole with the the sometimes deliberate fact muddying of the climate debate.
The memories aren’t all good. The country the Benhmudas love is also the country that rejected them as refugees. In 2008, the Canadian government deported the family back to Libya — even though the two youngest boys, Adam and Omar, are Canadian citizens by birth.
For the boys’ father, it meant being deported to torture.
Adel Benhmuda, now 43, says he was detained on arrival at Tripoli’s airport and taken to the notorious Ain Zara prison on the outskirts of the Libyan capital. For a total of six months, during two separate periods of detention, he says he was repeatedly beaten.
Note that the tougher it is for refugees to prove their case, the more likely it is that some will be sent back for further persecution.
The US Supreme Court ruled along political lines on the 30th of June, 2014 that “closely held corporations”, over 90% of all US businesses, are now free to discriminate against women (and it was specifically women and birth control) if their religion leads them to believe birth control kills babies, or that women who use birth control are Satan’s spawn (the belief does not have to be factual).
The Supreme Court says corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women.
The justices’ 5-4 decision Monday is the first time that the high court has ruled that profit-seeking businesses can hold religious views under federal law. And it means the Obama administration must search for a different way of providing free contraception to women who are covered under objecting companies’ health insurance plans.
I am not going to debate the wrongness of this decision, the notion that businesses can have religious beliefs, and can use them to discriminate against certain types of people is not up for debate. And, the discrimination is very specific and targeted…
The other, more ubiquitous discrimination is in the notion that the health care you get has anything to do with the work-for-pay arrangement you have with the organization you work for. I am probably the millionth person to mention this, and whole books have been written on the subject, but, the link between healthcare and your employer is wrong because it anchors discrimination. This particular egregious case goes one step further and discriminates based on gender as well, not just work status.
The US had a chance to sever health benefits from employment when they had a three-year debate on expanding health insurance coverage. Thanks to the ability of small political minorities to filibuster and block action, and a corporate-funded reluctance for change, the US kept their employer-based health insurance system in place, and with it, all the discrimination that entails. Uwe Reinhardt reiterated a number of these points recently in the New York Times.
Back Home
Is BC any better? Yes and no. Thanks to Canada’s Medicare, parts of our health care system are universal and not subject to employment ties. But, there are several exceptions making us a two-tier health care system:
The health insurance tax or MSP (what our government cutely calls a “fee” in order to not call the yearly increase in this fee a tax increase): Many employers will pick up part/all of this tax for their employees, whereas one that doesn’t can pay more than 1000 dollars a year for a family. While there is an element of progressiveness to the pricing with very low-income people paying less/nothing, it is weak, families making > 30K per year pay full price.
Our public health insurance system assumes people don’t have eyes or teeth. So, if you want your cavities filled, a root canal, or want to see clearly, you need “supplemental benefits”, and these are mostly employer-provided. Oral health is a clear marker of health inequality.
Mental health is not covered, this is inexcusable, as Andre Picard notes.
Treatments that improve overall health, like massages, are not really covered. Once again, your employment status determines whether you have the “luxury” of holistic preventative measures to reduce stress, pain, and many other issues.
Historically and currently oppressed groups, Canada’s indigenous people for example, get a short shrift on the benefits like massage, nutrition, counselling and holistic treatment they need because of disparity in employment availability.
This quote from the Andre Picard article I mentioned summarizes the discrimination.
The well-to-do pay. The middle-class scrape together the money the best they can, sacrificing so their child can get care. And those without the means wait, or do without care.
There are other side-effects. Because “benefits” are expensive, companies have a vested interest in only having certain “valuable” employees benefit. The rest get treated as contractors, have their hours strategically reduced, and much more.
It’s almost as if there’s an unspoken moral argument here, you don’t deserve good teeth or a massage if you don’t work for a living.
Yes, you can buy individual supplemental insurance, or pay per use, but neither of these are cheap because you as an individual have no bargaining power.
We in BC also have a long way to go to break the link between healthcare and employment. Will it cost the average BC resident more money? Let’s consider:
A simpler system with one buyer is administratively efficient. It takes the thousands of decision points every HR administrator or group in every company/union has to make and transfers that to a single entity. Public universal plans are about four to ten times more efficient (pdf) than fragmented private plans.
A bigger entity can negotiate much better rates for you, whether it is for drugs, or for dentistry, or for anything else (a bigger risk pool). If all of Canada administered one simple pharmacare system, we would negotiate much lower prices with pharmaceutical companies. We would also have better funding to run and evaluate effectiveness studies.
Funding preventative, holistic healthcare means fewer hospital visits. In a universal system, there are no artificial barriers between a massage, drug treatment, surgery, stress reduction counselling, or ergonomic counseling for back pain. You don’t have to prove your work injured you in order to get the right treatment, your first point of contact with a medical professional (not necessarily a doctor) decides which path works best. You do not have to get sick enough to go to the hospital before you get treatment covered by insurance.
Pitfalls
There are concerns with a universal single-payer system:
As Vox points out, if a government administering the single-payer system decides not to pay for contraception, then no one gets it. So, getting good universal healthcare is about constantly winning political battles. The good thing about universal healthcare in Canada is that it is incredibly popular, polling near 90% approval (pdf). So once quality is improved, governments will find it hard to cut back.
Like any other public system, the quality of the institutions drafting policy and administering the system is vitally important. Well run public systems are efficient. But conservative movements in the last 30+ years have worked hard to dismantle the quality of public institutions and trust in such institutions. In this reality of shrinking budgets and staff levels where bureaucrat is a term of insult, ensuring that public system expansion is handled efficiently is no given. There is an entire industry of political parties, think tanks and media devoted to tearing down the concept of a publicly administered good, and ready to pounce on every little misstep (Remember the Obamacare roll out anyone?)
Will employers raise wages from all the savings they get from not providing health benefits, and will these raises cover the increase in taxes we will pay for universal healthcare? Probably not right away, but it will happen eventually.
Transitions
Clearly, we can’t transition tomorrow. A public system would need to be in place and functioning before our employers get out of the health insurance business. I would phase universality in the following order:
Drugs
Teeth and eyes
Preventative and palliative care.
We would also need to rethink the”fee for service”, where healthcare providers are paid per widget, and think about a different system closer to a salaried model, more on that in future blog posts.
One man is dead and two others are in hospital after a shooting near a popular downtown Victoria nightclub early yesterday.Officers were called to the scene around 2:50 a.m. after a report of shots fired outside 751 View St., between Douglas and Blanshard streets.Yesterday morning, forensic investigators inspected the body as it lay covered by a white tarp on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the exit to the View Street city parkade, about two buildings down from the Red Jacket nightclub.
The video summarizes the issue. Long story short, an American company, Signal International colludes with an Indian contracting company to lure 100s of workers from India with false promises of greencards. The workers proceed to go deep into debt with the contracting company to make this happen. Once in the States, it turns out they’re given H2B guest worker visas (yes, I treat all my guests by making them pay 1000s of bucks a month for sharing a trailer with 25 other people) that are specifically not eligible for green cards except under family quotas. This is bonded labor, American style. No arguments can be made that these workers have it better than in India and they should be grateful.
I am incredibly proud of these workers for finding the courage to strike and take their protests to DC. The Washington Post seems to have dedicated one measly article worth of coverage.
There are many reasons for this exploitation. The dehumanization of third world (including Mexican) workers is a contributing factor, so is the broken immigration system that allows excessively restrictive employment contracts. Most importantly, the U.S department of labor exists solely to make the lives of the companies it regulates easier. It has nothing to do with labor any more.
I am glad they’re protesting for their dignity and broken promises. Wonder what’s stopping the company from firing them for striking, they’re not allowed to strike! That way, they can then notify the aptly named ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) to have them deported.
