I searched Google to see if Postmedia’s Vancouver Sun had reported on this outrageous story. A friend thinks Tyler Olsen is probably BC’s hardest working journalist. His tiny team at Fraser Valley Current keeps delivering news that larger organizations miss or ignore. Perhaps it is because FVC doesn’t simply rewrite talking points issued by politicians and corporations.
Health Minister Adrian Dix told me before the 2017 election that governments aren’t defeated, they defeat themselves. Like the BC Liberals did before May 2017, Mr. Dix seems to have forgotten that piece of political wisdom.
Categories: Health
in-sights.ca 
The road to privatization is being paved with plundering by NDP hacks!!!
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Given signs that the system is stretched beyond limits, there needs to be an extensive audit of the health authorities regime in British Columbia. No doubt there are wasted resources through very top-heavy and ineffective bureaucracies in five separate authorities, matched within government by bureaucratic denizens tasked to support and keep supposed watch on each. But those may be small potatoes when it comes to the overall picture.
Do the health authorities have common procedure manuals, training modules, computer systems, personnel records, etc. or does each go its own way? Do they share best practices and purchase supplies and services together in bulk buys? Is it a seamless exercise for staff to move between authorities? Are they competing against each other for personnel recruitment?
Can BC’s Auditor General assure us we’re getting the best bang for our $30Billion? Or is that too much to ask?
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Speaking with one of my medical doctor contacts here in BC’s Interior about this outrageous compensation package for BC’s health authority board directors, the following is my summary of the response:
If there were evidence that boards of directors were playing a crucial role in re-designing health care, and working exceptionally long hard hours at doing so, one might be sympathetic to the increased funding.
Looking at alternatives to BC’s and Canada’s “manager-heavy” health care approach, there’s wisdom in the Buutzorg model of home-delivered community care, as a central part of addressing the “grey tsunami” of care for an aging population. It was developed in the Netherlands and is now widely replicated around the world. In essence, caregivers and their clients are given block funding, and they work out, together, the best way to use the money. Management is not involved.
The system is so efficient that long-term care institutions are shut down, beds in hospitals with patients awaiting placement in a LTC institution are freed up, and costs go down while patient satisfaction goes up. https://www.buurtzorg.com/about-us/buurtzorgmodel/
The international LTC expert consultant who described this program (initially on White Coat Black Art) said Canada is not keen on this approach, acting as if doctors are the centre of the universe, and the only problem with health care is a shortage thereof.
Furthermore IH (Interior Health) is manager-heavy in the opinion of many, primarily because this is a means of maintaining control over PR and political messaging. The sudden increase in compensation seems to be part of that pattern.
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What’s left to say? About the state of journalism?
Remember “Wood-stein”?
Both in the book, “All The President’s Men”, and in the movie there’s a bit of the reality of Journalism that folks never understand.
It’s never up to Journalists to decide what’s News. Editorial Policy does that. Editors understand which lines must never be crossed.
Editorial policy dictates who says what, about whomever, whenever.
Reporters don’t suddenly shout, I’m about to make history! Back me for 14 months!
The stories they write are assigned and given due dates.
If an editor thinks an article drifted off course, its time to call rewrite.
Careers always are at stake.
Jobs available in what’s left of this market have plummeted in number. Ask anyone at Postmedia if they’re worried about the next purge.
For Journalism students – who do you expect will hire you?
In the film version you saw what Ben Bradlee and WAPO was willing to risk.”OK then, let the boys run with the story.”
Behind that decision? Hired at age 16, Bernstein had a trusted track record. Newbee Woodward (a Republican) had ties to multiple intel sources nobody else knew about. How did those ties happen? Inside knowledge gave Woodward a huge advantage. An edge.
This combination of talents and the idea of sticking it to Nixon but good was worth the WAPO gamble.
Remember the late phone call to AG John Mitchell? The late phone call is a very old technique.
John Mitchell:
All that crap, you’re putting it in the paper? It’s all been denied. You tell your publisher–tell Katie Graham she’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published. Good Christ! That’s the most sickening thing I ever heard.
Had Wood-stein’s efforts failed? Aside from a massive lawsuit …
Job announcement! We need two seasoned volunteers to cover traffic fender benders! Bernstein! Show Woodward how this stuff works!
Will a Fox News report outline something that could cause the GOPers to lose faith in Their Chosen One? Or lose the House? Or Senate? That’s not how corporate journalism was ever intended to function anywhere on earth at any time on earth. It’s not why media has been gobbled up by billionaires.
In the last 60 years techniques defined by and applied by Goebbels, by the Russians, by the Chinese, by South African media to justify Kangaroo Courts and Apartheid, all have migrated into our own press and politics.
People like Sam Cooper whose life was threatened for his BC reporting, on drug gang trafficking, various murders, real estate swindles, Casinos skimmed for money laundering, foreign electoral interference, political influence peddling, and Canada’s steady decline of trust among the Five Eyes network have resulted in Cooper leaving the province.
Yes, like Tyler Olsen he’s rare.
But the fact that such talent isn’t desirable to the usual media conglomerates does explain something significant. Why have so many people switched en masse to wandering about in Social Media looking for a trusted source?
Is it a surprise that some have been hooked on click-bait? Down the rabbit hoile they go!
“Did you read the article that says Planning never works? It says right here that smart people have known for years that this is true because the Russians and Chinese made huge planning efforts and they all failed! See?”
That people get lost in rhetorical mud doesn’t mean that the public isn’t aware that politics and media are long overdue for radical reform.
The problem?
Guess who gets to decide what needs to be reformed?
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Odd so far that others who replied somehow forgot the main issue – timid and compromised media refusing to fact check reports offered by politicians more notorious for willingness to lie than for answering straight questions with straight answers.
But among media professionals themselves?
When former US media pros openly question the impartiality, integrity and competence of US media, reports like this one emerge.
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/the-real-reason-corporate-media-won-t-cover/?utm_source=breaking
We need to talk about the abominable headline below, and how it is we have come to the fatal point where The New York Times and our broken mainstream media seem to need the America-attacking Donald Trump a helluva lot more than the America-attacking Donald Trump seems to need The New York Times and our broken mainstream media.
“Trump Can Win On Character”
During the past few, rocky years my feelings about the newspaper I grew up reading as a kid — the paper that influenced me more than any other to become a newspaperman — in the New Jersey suburbs have evolved from surprise, to shock, to disappointment, to anger, to rage, to complete revulsion …
Aside from platforming maniacal, caustic headlines topping spurious content like the one above (which I promise to get to in a minute), this newspaper’s inability to spot the biggest news story of our lifetimes, and treat it with the heft it deserves, is journalistic malpractice, and a very real danger to our country.
Returning to Adrian Dix as Health Minister?
Rafe Mair, former Environment Minster under the Socreds, post defeat, underwent a sea change and became an actual Green advocate and campaigner. But then he did something awful, I thought. He interviewed Adrian Dix! He lewt Dix ramble on then split the tape into two segments. I watched both in disbelief.
In a sense Mr Mair’s seeming passivity during the interview seemed uncharacteristic. But the picture it presented was prophetic for outlining why when Mr Dix ran for the Premier’s job, not only did he lose after a double digit lead – he actually cost the NDP one less seat.
That didn’t explain why Mr Mair interviewed Dix. The session wouldn’t improve Mr Mair’s ratings. Not enough people had ever heard of him or knew he had a website..
Having exchanged emails before, I decided to ask him..
But wait.
I remembered that Mr Mair was a lawyer. Typical of his trade it was understood that letting a defendant hang himself often worked. To me Mr Dix had done just that: by offering blatantly deceitful and cringe-worthy evasive testimony.
I didn’t email Mr Mair about that, but when I asked him about his change in focus from Socred beliefs he mentioned a need to atone.
Post Dix defeat, almost instantly BC media chimed in with a handy “explanation” of what should have been a nice cruise to an NDP majority. There was nothing wrong with surveys already taken, except that support for Dix was “soft”
Meaning? Until voters had a chance to hear New Leader Dix and evaluate him as a potential Premier they’d park their intention to vote with him. Then decide.
Despite having been hoist by Mr Dix efforts, to stall, dissemble and prevaricate, first Mr Horgan then Mr Eby learned nothing from what Mr Dix considered appropriate and accepted means to deflect criticism. Cite irrelevant statistics, praise bloated never fulfilled intentions, and gloat.
With the merger of Ebenezer Rustad’s surging party with dying Kevin Marley’s party an overdue price is becoming clear. Dumb politics indeed can defeat dumb politics.
Mr Dickens, Mr Swift, M. Voltaire, Mr Dante Alighieri would love this bit of history we’re learning to recognize as BC’s fate. A Divine Comedy indeed. All hail our Spectatorship!
Now about the question of Branded or Sponsored Content in all of Canada’s floundering media…?
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Your vignette about Rafe Mair provides an opportunity to illustrate both the way journalism could and should be done versus the way it is currently for the most part conducted.
Rafe was, as he would put it, sent to Coventry for fearless practice and advocacy of the right way. His replacement was a poster boy for milquetoast going along to get along. He even publicly bragged about never being told what to say by his employers, not recognizing the obvious implication that followed the claim. He also self-identified by telling us on social media that he didn’t have an opinion regarding the BC Rail plea deal because he never covered the trial. He was on prime time talk show air throughout seven years of pre and actual trial for one of the biggest scandals in bc political history and he attempts to get out of answering legitimate questions about it by denying he covered it. And he’s apparently admired by his peers as one of the “good” ones. Such is the state of our current mainstream media.
Unfortunately, your observation about no one taking up the cudgel (to borrow another of Rafe’s phrases) regarding the current woeful journalistic state might be because Norm has canvassed the topic to a fare-thee-well (Rafe again). Many may just be tired of beating that dead horse, and fearing what is to come with its replacement; a society getting its AI-generated news on social media through that little illuminated handheld rectangle.
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