New Media

Anyone know what the story is behind this decrepit house on Main Street where they keep mannequin heads in the window?

Imagine you’re the slumlord owner of a rent-controlled bedbug-infested hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. You’ve pocketed big bucks over the years from the government that was supposed to pay for essential renovations. Your welfare-dependent tenants usually don’t complain too loudly about the mold or the rats or the lack of working toilets, for fear of being tossed out on the street.

But this time, they couldn’t help themselves, when a wall fell down, exposing several families to the elements and the shocked stares of onlookers from Hastings Street. They spilled the beans. Reporters from all over the country started talking about the deplorable crisis. It’s downright embarrassing.

An independent auditor comes knocking to go over your financials. He wants to find out what you’ve done with the millions of dollars that you were supposed to use to fix the leaky plumbing and the crumbling brickwork and rotten wood and broken windows. You tell him to take a hike. When he objects, you physically throw him out.

Then you get an epiphany. Oh, this is brilliant. You file a grievance with the United Nations over your ill treatment.

How do you think this story ends? With you keeping your hotel? With the United Nations giving you a badge of honor? With your long-suffering tenants patting you on the back for your courageous stand? With you not going to jail?

No.

No, no, no, no.

The crisis of Attawapiskat has thankfully helped put the entire system of First Nations reserves under more scrutiny. Band leaders on many (most?) reserves operate with impunity and an explicit rejection of democracy. The nepotism, corruption and wastefulness not merely of money but of human beings is something that people in the rest of the country would never stand for.

I’ve been ambivalent about this problem over the years because I don’t live next to it. I see the conditions on reserves in the news from time to time. The places do look awful. But that’s not the fault of the government shoveling cash into these places. No amount of cash can paper over this perpetual horror show. Not with band leaders demanding 280 new houses at $250,000 a pop, according to the NDP — houses in the middle of nowhere that are just going to fall apart again after a few years because under the rules on reserves, no one actually owns the property.

Think about that figure again: $250,000 per house. That’s just to build a house, since the land has no value. This is a house that will stand in an isolated community with no jobs, no schools, no hospital, no reason to live there at all. Why does it cost that much to build a house there? Because that’s what the band council says it costs… for houses that are going to end up as firewood.

This problem needs to be solved yesterday.

The solution? Simple. Stop the flow of money. There are some examples of well-run, prosperous reserves that are closer in development to Whistler than Attawapiskat. They will survive, maybe even thrive. But those reserves like Attawapiskat that cannot survive without massive infusions of funds (or fail even with such generous support) need to be dismantled. Let the people living on those reserves migrate to places with education, jobs and a hope for a future.

No more money. No more reserves.

We rule!

That is all.

Yup. That’s my opinion. Anonymous political bloggers are cowards who don’t have the guts to stand by their own words.

This blog post is an open thread. Bring the debate, people. Comments are open.

Mind you, anonymous commenters are cowards, too, IMO.

This was a fun one. My recent profile on the top executive of YVR, published in BC Business magazine: Larry Berg, CEO, Vancouver Airport Authority:

The CEO has a touch of lingering laryngitis and an annual general meeting tomorrow to prepare for, but he talks in a charming, reassuring voice, assisted by lemon tea. With his white button-down shirt, blue paisley tie and glasses set on a face that might belong to your friendly neighbourhood hockey coach (indeed, Berg is a “huge hockey fan”), he has the look of a professional everyman.

Berg first joined the airport authority in 1992 as senior vice-president of operations, but his connection goes back a lot farther. He first arrived at Sea Island in 1960, when he was 13 years old. “I was here as an air cadet with 442 Squadron from Cold Lake, Alberta. I came here for two weeks of summer camp,” he says, recalling a time when the area still had a barracks and a mess hall. “Certainly, I never thought then that I’d be here heading up the airport authority one day.”