It is Time For Alberta to Set Up a Comprehensive Volunteer Screening System

The media reports about child pornography charges against a school employee and volunteer involved with already vulnerable children are disturbing. The school system and the agency involved were quick to respond and did so effectively.

The question remains about how do we screen out people with inappropriate pasts and how do we continue to monitor changes in behaviours on an on-going basis that is cost effective and respects personal privacy?

The voluntary sector in Alberta under the leadership of Volunteer Alberta has been focused on this challenge for a couple of years at least. They have been advocating compulsory and comprehensive volunteer screening and police checks as part of the solution.

Full Disclosure…I had the opportunity to work with the voluntary sector on the issues and to study the practices and procedures in place for volunteer screening around Alberta. Here is a link to our report and recommendations.

The risks are to vulnerable Albertans who are served by the voluntary sector, the volunteers themselves and the agencies and directors who may face liability and will could become uninsurable for certain third-party liability risks without a government intervention to help ensure the safety and security of vulnerable clientele. Without insurance coverage these organizations will not survive.

Our report recommendations are as current today as they were in the summer of 2006 when the report was presented to government. This is a critical and complex public policy issue that ought to be undertaken by governments. A confidential, centralized comprehensive and authoritative volunteer screening and checking system should be designed, developed and implemented in conjunction with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

There needs to be due diligence procedures in place and training done in the voluntary sector to ensure the operational integrity and effectiveness of any policy. There needs to be a balance between public protection and personal privacy. There must be an on-going and confidential feedback loop to the voluntary sector agencies as the facts about the behaviours of volunteers may change over time.

There has to been reluctance that morphed into inertia at the provincial government level on dealing with this issue. If the government of Alberta is serious about health wellness and prevention, including mental health of potential victims, setting up a system for police checks and volunteers screening is a cost effective step in the right direction. It will not be fool-proof but it will discover inappropriate “volunteers” and tend to discourage and deter them from “volunteering” in the first place.

There are 19,000 registered not-for-profit organizations in Alberta who do great work in all kinds of service areas in our society. The management, directors and agencies themselves are at serious risk without proper police checks and volunteer screening policies in place. We can see, as evidenced by the recent child pornography charges, the systems can work effectively but they are no iron-clad guarantee of protection. Life is not that simple.

This matter of volunteer screening is a public safety and security need that must be addressed. It is a societal values issue that requires we also ensure adequate protection for the generous and compassionate good citizens who volunteer their time and skills to serve the greater good in our communities. It is a practical problem that will not go away or solve itself over time. It needs government intervention and some political will activiated now!

Premier Stelmach, please move immediately on the recommendation in this report on police checks and volunteers screening that commissioned by the not-for-profit voluntary sector about two years ago. Matching grant programs are great and welcome but this issue is one that, if left unattended by government policy and action, can undermine the effectiveness and even the existence of many service providers in the voluntary social services sector.

Harper's Foreign Investment Review Policy Targets China

Here is our regular monthy column that we do for the LaPresse newspaper in Montreal. It was publised last week.

The Broken Equilibrium of the Canadian Economy
Satya Das et Ken Chapman

Surging oil prices and the rising Canadian dollar will profoundly alter Canada’s equilibrium. The short-term volatility in commodity and currency markets this week is a blip on the way to $100-oil. Rising oil prices drive the dollar’s strength, as does Canada’s fiscal stability and its falling national debt.

The Canadian economic balance – relatively cheap energy prices, a weak dollar, a flourishing manufacturing industry – has been under threat throughout the early years of the new century. Now, it is definitively broken. The contrast is ever clearer between the energy-fuelled boom of Alberta and British Columbia, and the manufacturing economies of Central Canada reeling with higher input costs and reduced export revenues from the United States.

The Bank of Canada faces the difficult – if not impossible – demands of reconciling these two economies under a single fiscal policy that works to the benefit of each. Politicians aren’t likely to be satisfied with the Bank’s logical response – to concentrate on its core mission of controlling inflation, thereby preserving the intrinsic value of the currency.

The realistic answer of what to do about expensive oil and the high dollar is: get used to it. While this may be no comfort to a manufacturing sector in turmoil, the only viable strategy is to adapt to this new reality, no matter how painful this may be in the short-term. Canada, with the world’s second largest oil reserves, is the only stable democracy with a secure and abundant hydrocarbon supply. Despite the high costs of energy production in Alberta – and a recent announcement of higher royalties beginning in 2009 – the “democracy premium” is seen as well worth the price to a world thirsty for more and more oil and natural gas.

This trend is unlikely to change soon, according to the International Energy Agency, despite a growing and justified public unease about climate change and the sustainability of the hydrocarbon economy. In fact, preliminary findings from research being conducted by our firm show Albertans deeply committed to protecting habitat and capturing carbon emissions as the oil sands are developed to feed the world’s energy hunger.

Yet rising oil prices are not necessarily a disaster for Quebec and our other Canadian partners. More than half of the government revenue from oil sands development goes to the federal government. In 2006, the federal share amounted to $12 billion. This goes a long way in equalization payments, and amounts to more than a third of Ottawa’s transfer payments for health and social services.



Moreover, compared with Alberta, Quebec enjoys significant economic diversity. Quebec is home to Canada’s largest money pool, the $240 billion Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and the tens of thousands of families it benefits. (By contrast, Alberta’s Heritage Savings Trust Fund, set up by Peter Lougheed to house petrodollar revenue, only has about $15 billion saved because government kept on diverting the interest income for general expenses). Despite recent revelations regarding its investments and fiscal performance in La Presse, the very existence of the Caisse and its clout in international markets is an asset that is the envy of other provinces.

Aerospace, the financial services sector, biotechnology, health and of course tourism are major contributors to the Quebec economy. More than 100,000 highly skilled Quebecers work in the IT industry alone. The concentration of skilled workers is surely a result of widely available and reasonably priced higher education – Quebec tuition fees are typically less than half of what college costs in Anglophone and Allophone Canada. Indeed, one can assert that Quebec is strongly placed to compete globally in the knowledge economy, precisely because it doesn’t have the “easy” money of Alberta’s petrodollars.

The challenge for Canada is to wisely invest the economic benefits of the energy boom – remember the federal share is greater than Alberta’s – in building an even stronger knowledge economy. And to apply that knowledge to “greening” our collective future by making environmental sustainability and stewardship the essential precondition of developing our energy resources.

Will the Alliance and Wildrose Parties Bring Down Ed Stelmach?

I see Grog commenting on this Blog and I found that he resides at The Cracked Crystal Ball II Blog. I recommend you visit him and daveberta for more updates on amazing political adventures of Craig Chandler.

I wonder if the polls referenced in the Chandler Fundraiser Letter at CTV Calgary and the Calgary Herald were those much abused and laughably unscientific web based “polls” that can be invaded by self-selecting and self-interested trolls. My guess it they were.

The line that I liked most from the Fundraising Letter was "Alliance, the Wildrose Party, Independents and many from the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party who are organizing to insure that Ed Stelmach is not supported in his next leadership review."

So Alliance and Wildrose members will get together with independents and some PCs, all under the Craig Chandler as martyr banner and conspire to take Ed Stelmach out as Progressive Conservative leader?

They obvously need a common enemy in order to have something they can agree on! Sweet!

Harper Decrees "There Will Be NO Nuclear Accident"

How confident are you that Steve Harper knows what he is talking about when he says “There will be no nuclear accident” when they prematurely start up the Chalk River reactor?

I mean Steve Harper is a smart and clever guy - we all know that because that is what we are constantly being told. But now we have to ask is he mimicking Steve Martin and being a wild and crazy guy? Could it be that Harper has morphed into Homer Simpson?

I agree that the plant has to be reopened so the isotopes can be developed. We are risking lives in real time without them. Politically deciding to reopening reactor before it is declared safe by our independent regulator is the lesser of two evils. It is a calculated risk but not one where the PM can unequivocally say there will be no accident. That is beyond misleading. It is personal arrogance morphing into delusions of omnipotence methinks.

This all-party “emergency” over-ride of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, our national nuclear energy watchdog, drives me to conclude that there is too much politics and not enough Peace Order and Good Government going on in Ottawa. And that didn’t just start 2 years ago when Harper “happenstanced” into power. This has apparently been going on for some time including under the old Liberal regime.

How come this old plant had not been upgraded earlier? Why did it take so long? Why was there not an alternative plan for isotope production during the Chalk River shutdown? Why is this 50 year old antiquated nuclear plant virtually the only global source of medical isotopes? How does this comedy of errors happen and who is to blame for it continuing?

My answer is that it is the pettiness of personality politics and the prominence of partisan bickering. That is the default culture of all political parties these days. While it is fodder for mainstream and new media, such gamesmanship allows the media to think they/we are absolved of a duty to inform and educate about what is really going on in government.

Frankly I think Canadians are past being weary of this stupidity and are now just disgusted with these antics. While our governors are trying to score cheap political points at each others expense they are seriously neglecting their real job of governing. There are serious issues facing this country and the globe and they are not easily resolved.

So Hey Ottawa, cut the cleverness and cant. Smarten up, focus and do your damn job!

Chickens Come Home to Roost

This is a week of facing the music and the consequences of past choices and bad behaviours for some pretty high profile folks.

On the criminal front the convicted serial killer and pig farmer William Picton will be sentenced this week. The convicted fraudster and British Lord pinning to be Canadian again will be sentenced today

On the political front the Commons Ethics Committee has heard from Karlheinz Schreiber, aka the Artful Dodger. Now we are anticipating the testimony from Brian Mulroney, a former Prime Minister, aka The Eloquent Liar.

In Alberta the “colourful” Dr Lyle Oberg is reported to be announcing his “retirement” from politics today. Dr. Oberg was adept at sitting on political powder kegs and giving off sparks. Stelmach has run out of patience with the irrepressible Dr. Oberg. It looks like he is about to politically implode instead of explode as he goes out with a whimper and not much of a bang.

In theses examples we have some proof that the systems will actually work effectively on occasion.