UBC Learning Exchange Flirts with Funding Fraud

The UBC Learning Exchange on the Downtown Eastside is dabbling in the type of funding fraud that was prevalent at Carnegie Centre for years: taking money from taxpayers to provide services to low income people and then locking the doors to those services for the flimsiest of reasons.

Despite making a big deal in the media about the services they provide to the Downtown Eastside poor, staff at the UBC Learning Exchange have begun locking the poor out of the Learning Exchange on Mondays. Monday is a day when most taxpayers would expect a richly funded educational facility to be open and operating full tilt. But the poor arrive and find the door locked and peer in to see povertarians sittin' pretty.

You can bet the povertarians haven't mentioned this to funders.

Dionne Pilan, Co-ordinator of the Learning Exchange, did tell Downtown Eastside "learners" at the Learning Exchange that she planned to lock them out one day a week. In a classic povertarian "exchange" with learners, she asked them what day would be the least worst for them to have the facility closed. Most people chose Wednesday. "We decided on Monday," she reportedly announced. No mention of who "we" was, but presumably it included the Director, Margo Fryer, and others on their 17 member staff, some of whose jobs are fundraising. "Did she ask if Monday was ok with you?", I asked users of the Exchange. No, was their answer.

Pilan explained that staff had decided on Monday because they figured Downtown Eastsiders were too stupid to remember that the Learning Exchange was closed on Wednesday. Actually, she avoided the word stupid. She said, according to Downtown Eastsiders who were reliving the experience at Waves just down the street, that staff believed it would be too difficult for them to remember that the Learning Exchange was closed on Wednesday; Monday would be easier to remember.

The poor actually have no difficulty remembering where they can get a free coffee on the Downtown Eastside and on what day. Coffee is bait UBC uses to lure the poor into the Exchange.

And the poor are smart enough to figure out, as one man who no longer goes to the Learning Exchange said, "'Dionne wants a long weekend." Of course, it is not the sort of long weekend where she can stay home, but it's a slack day. "Any day that she doesn't have to deal with you guys is like a day off", he said. He also offered an explanation for why Dionne chose Monday, over Wednesday, to lock out the poor. She can already count on a slack day one Wednesday a month, on welfare cheque Wednesday, a day when many regulars at the Learning Exchange have more pressing business to take care of, like shopping. If you were already basically getting one Wednesday a month off, he asked, "Wouldn't you chose Monday to close? That gets you an extra day."

Poor but not stupid.

By locking the doors on Monday, Pilan and Fryer end up short-changing the poor for the entire week, particularly on Tuesdays. There is a bottleneck on Tuesdays, caused by people who after a weekend without computer access couldn't get access to one on Monday to check email, etc. People get less computer time as the receptionist who signs people on and off computers is under pressure to cycle them through fast.

Pilan's excuse for closing the Learning Exchange one prime time day a week is that she can write grant proposals for new programs, like a program to teach Downtown Eastsiders how to teach computer skills to others for money. Let's get this straight: she's locking the poor out of services she's funded to provide to them in order that she can write proposals for more funding to provide services to the poor. She reportedly said she had two grant proposals to write and, 'I
can't do that and deal with you people at the same time.'

Here's the dirty secret: she doesn't have to deal with them. The receptionist does that. Sometimes there are even two receptionists. Pilan comes out of her office to chat and socialize with Downtown Eastsiders, to talk about the Olympics or whatever. It's possible she may also cover for a receptionist on a break. Sometimes, I'm told, she also occasionally comes out if there is a computer question that a receptionist can't answer, but that if she were writing a grant proposal, people could simply be told that their question would have to wait until the next day.

Downtown Eastsiders suspect they've been duped, that a closure that was sold to them as temporary, is actually permanent. The sign on the Learning Exchange door announces, "New Hours", not temporary new hours. How long does it take to write two grant proposals? Surely not more than a month of Mondays. The Exchange has been closed for two Mondays now.

If Dionne's grant proposals are not written soon and the Learning Exchange re-opened, the poor have their own proposal: that funds earmarked for providing them with computer facilities on Mondays be returned.

Downtown Eastsider who sent Obama a Threatening Letter Arrested

Photo: George stands in front of the UBC Learning Exchange. He asked a Downtown Eastsider with a camera to take this photo; I think it was taken in early 2009 but I haven't had a chance to talk to the photographer. George was wearing his Alaska t-shirt but did not yet have his Sarah Palin glasses.

I asked Dale, a homeless guy with a shopping cart who hangs out in front of McDonalds restaurant at Terminal & Main, where George was. "You know George, the guy who wears the navy blue t-shirt with FBI on the front," I said, prompting Dale's memory. "The cops picked him up," said Dale who used to sleep in the same spot as George under a bridge. "He was threatening people."

Don't get me wrong, George wasn't threatening his friends and acquaintances around the Downtown Eastside. He was actually quite affable, always quick to call out, "Hi!"

Downtown Eastsiders had cautioned George, who was a fixture around the Downtown Eastside with his shopping cart -- "my carriage," he called it -- that he couldn't go around threatening people. You just can't send President Obama a letter warning him,"You're dead", he was told when he showed the letter with the fax receipt stapled to it. You can get arrested for that; you can do jail time, people warned him. But George would remind people of the reason he was immune from prosecution. "I'm George Washington incarnate."

George had recently been notified that he had inherited money from his half-brother. He showed the will to people on Whopper Wednesday at Burger King, and at other places too; it had an official red seal in the upper corner. He said that when he got the inheritance, "I want to get a room in a rooming house." On the front page of the will was the name of a Montreal law firm, along with their address and telephone number. George said he phoned them and threatened them.

Long before George learned of his inheritance or threatened Obama, he had been regularly dropping into the University of British Columbia Learning Exchange on Main St. near Keefer to use the free phone. He would phone the Canadian Security Intelligence Service [CSIS] and threaten to bomb them. Once CSIS returned the call and spoke to a staff person at the Learning Exchange, according to George. The staff person told George not to use their phone again.

But George needed access to a telephone on another day, so he told staff at the Learning Exchange that he just needed to make a quick call. He made it quick, the call to CSIS, threatening them.

UBC Learning Exchange staff banned George from the premises. I know that because I was walking past with a couple of friends in the spring when George, standing out front on the sidewalk, asked a woman with us if she would do him a favor and go inside and fill up his coffee cup. The Learning Exchange provides free low quality coffee to attract the poor, keep the sign-in numbers up, and keep the funders believing they are helping ahelluvalot of down and outters turn their lives around.

UBC President Stephen Toope who helped himself to $565,000 in income and perks last year will never mention George, the guy they kicked to the curb. All the networking these UBC povertarians do at their catered openings and socials at the Learning Exchange -- Toope gave a speech at one last November -- you would think they would have a few names in their Rolodex like homeless advocate Judy Graves to call and ask, "Is there anything you can do here?"

Standing on the sidewalk out front of the UBC Learning Exchange, George was always friendly, stopping people to chat, most recently about his new Sarah Palin rimless glasses that he got a kick out of wearing with his Alaska t-shirt. Dionne, the Learning Exchange Co-ordinator, a white woman who likes to remind people that's she's really Black -- a sort of Michael Jackson in reverse -- would stand just feet from him when she ducked outside to stand in the sunshine on her breaks, taking long drags from her cigarrette, escaping into her novel.

"They were looking for him," Dale said. Vancouver Police spotted George standing with Dale last month on Hastings St. across from the First United Church. They grabbed him. They told him they were sending him back to where he'd come from; George had always claimed he had been born in the U.S. and had Canadian status. The police took the cheap handcuffs George carried with him -- he claimed to be an under cover FBI agent, which would explain the handcuffs -- and handcuffed his shopping cart to Dale's, creating a headache for Dale. The police told George, "You've been threatening people," Dale recalls. "The cops were laughing at him."

Sharon Get your Gun

There is something so Canadian about the reactions of women runners to the murder of Wendy Ladner-Beaudry in Pacific Spirit Park at UBC. Over and over again, women have been telling the media that they will get a whistle.  One woman said she will be giving out whistles.  American women would be holding taser parties or applying to get real guns.  But Canadians seem to be long past thinking along those lines.

Except for Sharon Gregson.  

Gregson, a Vancouver School Board trustee, caused a furor when she posed on the cover of a gun magazine and stated that she believes that women should be allowed to carry guns for personal protection.  

Actually, if there is anyone who should be feared it's Sharon Gregson.  Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have a paper trail of evidence establishing that Gregson is one of the trustees who has been covering up the use of criminal tactics and political psychiatry by the School Board to deter bullying complaints.  These tactics are behind the current international boycott of Vancouver School Board diplomas.  Gregson is not roaming the woods ready to pounce and murder but the tactics she has tolerated at the VSB, particularly smear tactics involving the manufacture of psyhiatric and police records to destroy the reputation of a complainant, could conceivably result in the death of a targeted citizen.   But when it comes to Gregson's gun stance, I'd like to hear more from her.  

Over the past month, the American radio show Coast to Coast radio has twice had a guest -- I'm trying to remember his name -- who did his Ph.d research on gun violence.  He claims that gun men on shooting sprees in the U.S. consistently choose places where guns are prohibited; unarmed people make easier victims. In Vancouver yesterday, the would be jewelry store robbers on Robson St. ran out of the store immediately after the owner fired one shot.  I was surprised the owner even had a gun. 

Dr. Laura has a gun.  She's a karate expert but she's not relying solely on that to protect her if she is a victim of crime.  She has a problem with California's gun law though, that requires that you keep your bullets separate from your gun.  Dr. Laura makes fun of the fact that when being attacked you have to stop and load the bullets into your gun.  That's about as effective as jogging in Pacific Spirit Park with a whistle.   A whistle is better than nothing, but I think women jogging should at least carry a knife; afterall, they have to have something on them to carve up the apple they take with them for a snack. 

Wendy Ladner-Beaudry: Murder on the Right Side of the Tracks

Wendy Ladner-Beaudry wasn't white trash.  

On Monday, the CBC website printed this about Friday's murder of Beaudry-Ladner in Pacific Spirit Park at UBC:

"Dozens of RCMP homicide investigators continued to scour a heavily forested urban park in Vancouver's west side on Monday, searching for clues in the killing of a jogger."

Dozens?

On Tuesday, Metro News printed this: "About 75 police officers are working around the clock to gather evidence and interview witnesses in the murder of Wendy Ladner-Beaudry, who was killed while jogging through Pacific Spirit Park."

Seventy-five police officers?  

If a woman on the Downtown Eastside, whether white or aboriginal, was murdered, there is no way there would be dozens of homicide investigators scouring the area for clues.  You wouldn't see that on the day of the murder and you wouldn't see it four days later.

Take the young white woman who was allegedly shoved out a window of the Cobalt Hotel during a dispute over drugs. A man who lived down the hall said a homicide detective knocked on his door and asked him if he had heard anything. He said he hadn't. But later he recalled that he had heard what sounded like a cat screeching and had peeked out the door.  He remembered too late though. That homicide detective was gone never to return.  And there weren't dozens of investigators combing the Cobalt for evidence.  

I can understand why women who live high risk lifestyles get less sympathy from the cops and the public when murdered than a straight-living jogger. I don't agree with it -- murder is murder -- but I can understand it; if you treat your own life like it's cheap, then expect other people to treat it as cheap too. But even if a straight woman living on the Downtown Eastside, not into drugs or the sex trade -- and there are many such women on the DES -- was found dead and bloodied in Crab Park like Wendy Beaudry-Ladner in Pacific Spirit Park adjacent to million dollar homes, do you think there would be "dozens" of homicide detectives scouring the scene for clues?  Then you're on drugs.

Another thing.  After the murder of Ladner-Beaudry, there was speculation that the attacker could have been a homeless man in the park.  A neighbor said she had seen an "unusual" looking man in the park who was unwashed and smelled. 

But police know that statistically women are more likely to be murdered by an intimate male partner than a stranger.  At the press conference yesterday, the victim's husband Michele Beaudry provided himself with an alibi.  "I was at Whistler having lunch", he said with a short laugh.  I'm not saying he was involved, but he knows he's being looked at.

The Luck of the Irish

A few years back, I knew an Irish immigrant, Paul, a tall, blonde, balding guy with a bushy beard. He had a wife and children, a girl and two boys, out in a suburb of Vancouver. I met him a few times; I know lots of people at UBC where he worked as an electrician.  It was a soft job: one of the guys who worked with Paul in UBC Plant Operations told me, "I don't remember ever taking a coffee break less than half an hour long."

A former co-worker of Paul's told me that he played guitar and had been in a band, in Ireland I believe.  Shortly after he quit, the band made it big.  

Paul eventually got out of doing electrical work by getting elected Vice President of his CUPE Local at UBC.  Rather than working at Plant Operations on campus, he now worked in the union office. He had a secretary and when the union newsletter had his photo in it, he would ask her to give him extra copies to send to the relatives.  Working class boy makes good.

People who worked with Paul agree that he was not at all snobby and enjoyed banter with co-workers, but he was quick to rage and to use dirty tactics against political opponents.  A male manager in UBC Human Resources announced that he would no longer deal with him.  A steam fitter in Plant Operations, an immigrant from Scotland who had begun questioning the dollar amounts on cheques handled by the union office, discovered that Paul had told police that he had threatened him. 

Observers say Paul didn't seem to initially have the confidence to be a union Vice President and morphed into a payroll clerk, immersing himself in correcting minor payroll mistakes, mistakes that were common at the time since UBC had switched to a new payroll system.  But union staff thought these were problems that Paul should have been referring to UBC Financial Services. Eventually Paul started doing that, and even referred himself to one of the female managers in Financial Services.  

It may have been this manager who sent the letter to him at the union office.  Paul never forgave his secretary, Kim, for not seeing the word "Personal" on the front of that letter.  That was the beginning of the end for Kim.  She then pushed her luck by speaking up about working conditions.  Paul got her fired.  That was easy to do since CUPE had been quietly employing non-union secretaries.    

One afternoon when the union office was exceptionally busy and Paul's help was needed, sources say he disappeared.  His explanation was that he had been at this manager's home installing a new overhead light.

He must have been re-installing it at a later date when a staffer in Financial Services walked in on the two of them in a compromising position. "She lost her job," a former co-worker of Paul's at Plant Operations said of the manager.  Paul didn't lose his.  The luck of the Irish.

But then again, some people say the luck of the Irish does not refer to good luck but to bad luck. Then it would be Kim who had the luck of the Irish.

I've heard that the luck of the Irish could also refer to the fact that Irish immigrants were at one time perceived as less than competent, so anything good that happened to them was considered luck. That would bring us back to Paul.