Premier Campbell Accused of Pink Shirt Hypocrisy on Anti-Bullying Day

Photo: Christie Clark (centre)

Premier Gordon Campbell and CKNW talk show host Christie Clark may wish they had left their pink shirts in the closet as their own bullying baggage is dragged out along with the shirts. Campbell has declared Feb. 25 "Anti-Bullying Day" and announced he will support Clark's "Pink Shirt" campaign to oppose bullying campaign by wearing a pink shirt today.

"The pink shirts are a gimmick", according to a press release by Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry [COPP], while the actual record of Campbelll and Clark indicates that bullying tactics are well within their comfort zone.

Both Campbell and Clark, former BC Education Minister, are accused by COPP of having looked the other way when informed in writing that provincial dollars were being used to finance illegal criminal harassment, fraud, and "political psychiatry" tactics to ensure that "Bullying Complaints Go Nowhere." The political psychiatry tactics, in particular, have resulted in an international boycott of diplomas issued by the Vancouver School Board, a fact that Campbell has been keeping under his hat.

But COPP was not the first to sound alarms. As early as the fall of 2002, Reggi Balabanov, outgoing President of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils with whom Clark would have been familiar, mentioned in a Vancouver Sun interview that intimidation tactics were being used against citizens pursuing bullying complaints with school administrators. Balabanov said complainants were finding themselves the focus of police visits to their homes and that this had put a "chill" on the willingness of citizens to pursue complaints.

The boycott was triggered by the case of a Vancouver woman -- she lived on the Downtown Eastside at the time but has since moved -- who COPP claims became the target of political psychiatry by VSB bureaucrats using Coastal Health Authority resources. She became a target almost immediately after informing the VSB in writing that she intended to campaign in an upcoming election about their mishandling of bullying complaints. The VSB-School Liaison would later admit in a taped telephone call that he had emphasized to the VSB that there was "nothing untoward" about this woman's letter, but they nonetheless used it as the sole basis for arranging to have her assessed for "apprehension" to a mental hospital. The nurse, Don Getz, who arrived unannounced at her home to perform the assessment was, incidentally, wearing a pink t-shirt. (For a more extensive account of the political psychiatry tactics employed, click on boycott.)

The bullying worked. The woman was sufficiently terrorized that she did not campaign on the bullying issue in the election.

The provincially-funded political psychiatry that ultimately led to the boycott was brought to the attention of Premier Campbell in a letter addressed to him and hand-delivered to his office. He did not respond.

The full range of evidence of a criminal level of bullying by provincial government staff to aid the VSB in deterring bullying complainants must be investigated if Campbell is committed to the slogan, "Bullying Stops Here." And it must be investigated if the international boycott of diplomas issued by the Vancouver School Board is to be lifted. But as COPP points out, "It's going to take more than putting on a pink shirt."

Vision's Eleanor Gregory ‘Pulls a Sarah Palin’ by Using her Private Email to Conduct Potentially Explosive Government Business

When it comes to conducting government business on her private email account, rather than on her official government account that would put the email on public record, Vision Vancouver’s Eleanor Gregory is beginning to look as much like Sarah Palin as Tina Fey.

Just as hackers exposed Palin for conducting business as Alaska’s governor on her private Yahoo account, Gregory, an elected Vancouver School Board trustee, has been exposed for using her private email account for communication on a potentially explosive government issue.

Gregory (pictured above) has a government email address, eleanor.gregory@vsb.bc., which she gives out publicly. Yet when Gregory was contacted at that government address by a victim of alleged illegal “political psychiatry” at the VSB — Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have identified the VSB as practicing Soviet-style political psychiatry and “as an absolute last resort” organized an International Boycott of Vancouver School Board Diplomas — Gregory immediately switched to her private email account egregory@gregoryandgregory to respond. “That’s the email of the law firm she runs, I think with her husband,” says the alleged victim. “But that firm isn’t involved in this case.”

The alleged victim received two emails from Gregory, both via her private account. At the end of the body of each email, Gregory’s private email address was re-stated as her contact address. “There was no mention of her vsb address”, says the victim.

Criticism directed at Palin for using a private email account to perform business in her role as Alaska governor could also apply to Gregory in her role as an elected VSB trustee: “E-mail that’s public business ought to be done on public accounts that can become public record”, Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition in the U.S., told Alaska’s Juneau Empire newspaper during the furor over Palin’s private email.

If government communication on an issue is being investigated, emails sent through a private account will not be readily available. Dave Jones, an assistant attorney general in Alaska told the Juneau Empire, “The difficulty is finding out they exist.”

The use of private email for government communication also increases the risk of confidentiality breaches. The victim of alleged VSB political psychiatry is concerned about who may have had access to Gregory’s private email account at Gregory & Gregory. “I have no way of knowing who has access to the email at her office. Maybe her secretary does, or maybe her husband.” The victim would also like to know whether Gregory used her private email account to communicate about her case with other Board members or staff. “I wrote to the Board last year”, says the victim, “and I said that because of the amount of libel generated by the VSB in this case, extra precautions should be taken to preserve confidentiality.” In fact, the victim had directed Gregory to that written communication addressed to Board Chair Ken Denike, when she first wrote to her at her VSB email. “That was before she switched to her private email.”

Not only Gregory’s switch to a private email account but the content of email she sent through that private account – the content will be examined in a separate article – led the alleged victim to conclude that Gregory was not acting in good faith.

Just as Palin’s conduct reflects on Presidential candidate John McCain who endorsed her, Gregory’s conduct reflects on Vancouver mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson who has been praising her on his campaign website. Robertson presented Gregory to the public as his ally, even after she was exposed for having done nothing as a trustee to ensure a criminal investigation into the practice of political psychiatry at the VSB, political psychiatry which evidence suggests was intended to deter freedom of information requests and election campaigning about VSB mishandling of bullying complaints. Robertson and his Vision Vancouver party face an election in two weeks.

A press release from Robertson’s campaign office quotes Gregory as saying that her “priority is to do what I can to assist his campaign.” It may be assistance he can do without.

Ken Gets Cancer

Vancouver School Board trustee Ken Denike, who has been accused of being complacent about the VSB's alleged practice of Soviet-style political psychiatry, has been diagnosed with colon cancer. Denike says the cancer was caught early and he will start radiation and chemotherapy this week. He still intends to run for School Board in the November election.

Denike has been a trustee as an international boycott of Vancouver School Board Diplomas organized by Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry has gained ground. The boycott was organized as an "absolute last resort" by COPP when Denike and fellow trustees allegedly showed no interest in curbing the well-documented use of Soviet-style political psychiatry by VSB staff to deter complaints. Denike in fact was on School Board -- he has served two terms -- when an alleged cover-up of a political psychiatry case was orchestrated.

A victim of VSB political psychiatry and related fraud, says she has seen no sign whatsoever of concern on Denike's part about such illegal practices by VSB staff. Denike never once spoke to her about her experience. Although she had been in touch with the VSB previously about her case, she specifically wrote to Denike in his role as Chair of the VSB in 2007," she says. When asked if she had received a response, she shook her head and said, "I'm still waiting."

When I asked, this alleged victim of VSB political psychiatry about his cancer, she responded, "I wish him a full recovery". But she added that she hopes he comes out of it with more sensitivity to people whose wellbeing has been jeopardized by the political psychiatry openly practiced by the Vancouver School Board.

Executive Asst. in Lyndon Johnson's West Wing Fights for Democracy in Powell River

Patricia Aldworth went to the coastal pulp mill city of Powell River to retire. But the woman who had learned about politics while an Executive Assistant in the West Wing during Lyndon Johnson's Presidency, couldn’t retire. Not when she saw that democracy in Powell River was being fed through the wood chipper.

Aldworth ran for a Council seat in a by-election in this scenic British Columbia city, which has become a retirement destination for Americans. She won.

But not one Council member showed up for Aldworth's swearing-in ceremony; Mayor Stewart Alsgard emerged from his office only when the crowd of Aldworth's supporters overflowed into the hallway.

Councillors and the Mayor had shown up for an in camera meeting just a few hours before Aldworth (pictured above) was sworn in though, on March 4^th. At that meeting, they instructed City lawyers to launch a defamation suit against Aldworth and two other pensioners, now known as the Powell River Three. Did I mention that the other two, Winslow Brown and Noel Hopkins, were in their eighties?

Brown tried to wriggle out of this jam. He went to Council on March 11 and, voice quivering, apologized. "I had no idea how far the city was prepared to go. I'm a pensioner on a fixed income. I could never afford to fight this lawsuit in court. If I tried, it would financially destroy me, [I would] lose my home and family." At the end of this groveling, Brown handed his letter to the City Clerk and asked, 'So, is it ended?"

It had not ended.

A few weeks later, Mayor Stewart Alsgard (photo above) publicly reiterated his position that the City had been defamed and had a right to take legal action against the Powell River Three and anybody else who criticized them.

"Sounding more like a Soviet apparatchik than a Canadian," Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham wrote, "Alsgard went on to say the defamation suit provided a tremendously important lesson for the community's young leaders about 'courtesy' and 'mutual respect'."

"I can't imagine a more regressive lesson in democracy," said John Dixon, Secretary of the BC Civil Liberties Association. Dixon has a home in Powell River and went into the local newspaper office to place an ad to sell his motorcycle, only to see the public humiliation of Cecil Brown's apology splashed over the front page.

There is a name for the type of lawsuit that the Powell River Three are facing: SLAPP, Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

The City’s decision to sue the pensioners came after the Mayor and Council decided they'd like to borrow 6.5 million to redevelop the north harbor. Even though there was a by- election coming up (the one that Aldworth would win), Council decided not to let citizens vote on the borrowing but to instead require opponents to go to City Hall to fill out a form. Ten percent of eligible voters – roughly 1,000 people – would have had to make the trek down to City Hall to put a stop to this borrowing. Outraged by this process, a group of pensioners organized to write letters to the editor and hand out copies of the forms at the mall, even helping people fill them out. It was involvement in this activity by the Powell River Three that prompted the Mayor to give them a SLAPP up the side of the head.

“No government should be allowed to sue its citizens for defamation regardless of what is said,” Aldworth told the Vancouver Sun at the beginning of May. “It really goes to the underpinnings of democracy. If you don’t allow citizens to criticize their government, then the government can get away with anything.” And Aldworth, who earned a law degree at Georgetown after leaving the West Wing, noted that because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms only came into effect in 1982, there is not yet much case law upholding the right to free speech.

Aldsworth also said -- and I've been saying this for years -- that Canadians aren’t as well educated about their rights or as willing to stand up for them as Americans.

Dixon wrote a letter to the Mayor and Council asking them to drop the lawsuit. He pointed out that in Ontario, the courts ruled against municipalities in 2006 that had launched SLAPP suits against citizens. In one Justice Kenneth Pedlar wrote: “If governments were entitled to sue citizens who are critical, only those with the means to defend civil actions would be able to criticize government entities.”

If the City doesn't back down, the BCCLA intends to take the issue to the BC Supreme Court and ask them to do what the Ontario courts have done – declare that a government cannot sue it’s own citizens.

In Canada, Powell River is everywhere

The problem in Canada is not strictly in Powell River; the problem is that in Canada Powell River is everywhere. What Bramham called "Soviet apparatchiks" are not only operating openly in the government of Powell River, they are operating openly under Mayor Sullivan in the City of Vancouver, they are operating full tilt at the Vancouver School Board, and they are operating openly in Human Rights Commissions across Canada.


The case of Vancouver homeless man William "Bill" Simpson left no doubt that Soviet apparatchiks are well ensconced in the City of Vancouver government. When Simpson was elected to the Board of the Directors of the City of Vancouver's Carnegie Community Centre, one of Mayor Sullivan's henchwomen banished him to the sidewalk outside. Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, General Manager of Community Services, wrote a letter to Simpson a couple of weeks after he was elected, banning him "indefinitely" from the Carnegie Centre. When City management staff Ethel Whitty and Dan Tetrault hand-delivered Simpson the letter on behalf of Forbes-Roberts, Whitty told him that he would not even be allowed into the building to attend Board meetings.

Forbes-Roberts' revealed in her letter that Simpson's crime was one of free speech. He operated a website, she noted, which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog which has criticized Carnegie staff. The blog had revealed such taxpayer rip-offs on the part of staff as the semi-regular locking of doors to computer and education services which they were funded to provide to the poor. Lawyer Gregory Bruce wrote to the City, reminding Forbes-Roberts that the concept of guilt by association was "contrary to the rule of law". She did not reinstate Simpson.

It became clear in the Simpson case that City of Vancouver staff were functioning as thought police. When questions were raised at a Carnegie Community Relations Meeting last summer about the lack of grounds for barring Simpson, Whitty defended the barring by stating, "He said he was proud of the blogger." This thought policing by Whitty was actually caught on tape.

Rachel Davis was one of the few Carnegie Board members who opposed the banning of a duly elected Board member from the building and Board meetings. And what did it get her? The Board held a special meeting following a regular Board meeting, when she was on her way home to pay her babysitter, and decided to send her a letter asking her to resign. Davis didn't back down. Did I mention she was born in the U.S.A.?

Photo: Ken Denike, Vancouver School Board Trustee

If you want a textbook case of Soviet apparatchiks shutting down free speech, though, look at the Vancouver School Board. Look at what the VSB did to a woman who wrote a letter to the VSB criticizing their handling of bullying complaints that she and others had independently lodged against a physically and verbally abusive teacher. In the letter, the critic stated that she intended to campaign in the upcoming tightly-contested School Board election about VSB "duplicity" in the handling of bullying complaints. Upon receiving the critic's letter, the VSB quickly resorted to a tactic that was used against political dissidents in the former Soviet Union and continues to be used against dissidents in China: political psychiatry. The VSB abused political influence to arrange, under pretenses the police officer involved admits they knew to be fraudulent, to have their critic subjected to a psychiatric assessment.

The VSB arranged to have Car 87 -- a police car containing an armed police officer and a male psychiatric nurse -- arrive unannounced at their critic's home to perform the psych assessment. Car 87 is an ideal tool for smearing political adversaries as it works like this: even if you're cleared, you're never really cleared. A "Car 87" notation remains adjacent to your name on the police computer system for "99 years".

A few hours after the Car 87 visit, Police School Liaison Sergeant Lester told the critic in a taped telephone call that the VSB had given him a copy of her letter which he read and emphasized to the VSB that there was "nothing untoward" about the letter. (Her letter to the VSB was the sole evidence submitted to him by the VSB in support of the visit, a fact he confirmed during the taped call.) Despite Lester's protests about lack of evidence, the VSB pressured him, providing no additional evidence, until he approved the visit. "It was clear-cut case of fraud," says the targeted critic.

Car 87 visits are restricted by legislation to instances in which there is evidence that an individual is at "imminent" risk of killing themselves or others. The only thing the critic was at risk of killing was the slim chance that the NPA School Board had of retaining power. The critic could prove that an NPA trustee had been assuring the public via television that bullying complaints were being taken seriously, when in fact correspondence being received by complainants indicated otherwise.

When the critic obtained a copy of the psych report, she discovered that the psych nurse, Don Getz, after being briefed by the VSB, had entered "freedom of information requests" as the sole reason for the Car 87 visit. She had made two or three routine freedom of information requests over a period of a year for documents from her file. Georgina Kosich, the VSB clerk who processed Freedom of Information requests was presented to Constable Michelle Sevigny and nurse Getz as the primary witness in the case, and met with them to release the critic's freedom of information requests. Kosich apparently fraudulently concealed from the psych nurse and cop, the letters she had sent the critic encouraging her to submit freedom of information requests to the VSB.

Not only did the critic discover from reading the psych report that her ability to access documents under the Freedom of Information Act was presented as socially deviant, so too were signs of an intellectual life visible in the home-office space where psych nurse Don Getz and Constable Michelle Sevigny interviewed her. A computer surrounded by papers and books, and two bookshelves stuffed with books, were rubricized in the psych report as 'clutter'. The VSB were now burners.

Even the fact that the critic had been competent and responsible enough to substantiate all claims in her letter to the VSB was viewed by the psych nurse -- after he was briefed by the VSB -- as an indicator of mental illness as it made the letter "a little long". He admitted he had not personally read the letter.

As Getz and Sevigny left the critic's apartment, she commented to Getz that it was the election a couple of weeks away that had prompted this psych assessment. He agreed with her! She included this fact in a written complaint lodged with the VSB immediately after the visit. Getz has never disagreed with this statement.

The VSB's pre-election exercise in political psychiatry was successful. The critic was sufficiently terrorized that she abandoned her plans to campaign against the NPA in the election.

Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have responded to the failure of the VSB to address their history of political psychiatry by organizing, as an "absolute last resort", an international boycott of diplomas issued by the Vancouver School Board.

Shortly before this Car 87 terror was inflicted by VSB on a potential election campaigner, the outgoing President of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, Reggi Balabanov, had sounded an alarm about the use of police to intimidate bullying complainants. Complainants were too often finding police showing up on their doorsteps, Balabanov said, resulting in a definite "chill" on the willingness of citizens to pursue school bullying complaints.


But no discussion of the duck-taping of the mouths of Canadians would be complete without a mention of publicly funded Human Rights Commissions across Canada. Originally set up as inexpensive forums for handling discrimination complaints such as those against landlords and employers, Human Rights Commissions have morphed into thought police operating kangaroo courts. Both the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the B.C. Human Rights Commission have targeted writer Mark Steyn, a Canadian living in New Hampshire, after Macleans magazine published a well supported piece by Steyn on Islamists. The Alberta Human Rights Commission has targeted Ezra Levant, the former publisher of the Western Standard, for publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Levant had published the cartoons as a pro free speech statement, supporting publications around the world which had done the same.

Human Rights Commissions are always your best bet if you don't have a leg to stand on in a real court. They will use taxpayer's dollars to pay your legal fees, while they bankrupt your critic. On the Vancouver blog, Covenant Zone, where truepeers, a Canadian, and dag, an American from Idaho, monitor this racket, there is a link to a column by the Ottawa Citizen's David Warren:

"The notion that 'freedom of speech is an American concept' -- I am quoting Dean Steacy, principal "mediator" (i.e. thought-crime investigator) for the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- is proving sadly true in the limited sense that most of the money donated to the various legal defense funds has come, via Internet, from outraged citizens of the U.S."

Warren asked Canadians to divert donations intended for the Conservative Party of Canada to the defense funds of some of those targeted for these Kafkaesque prosecutions. He believes that action could jolt Prime Minister Stephen Harper out of the "sleepiness" from which he and so many other Canadians are suffering as the right to free speech is blungeoned to death.

The above tactics of Soviet apparatchiks on government payrolls in Canada are a mere sampling of those currently being used to harass citizens exercising their right to free speech.

What is to be done? Maybe Canada needs more Americans.

School Board Boss Asked to Resign from United Way Board of Directors

In recognition of International Human Rights Day last week, Chris Kelly, Superintendent of the Vancouver School Board, was asked to resign as a member of the Board of Directors of the United Way of the Lower Mainland.

The Dec. 11 request was made by a woman -- known in previous posts as the whistleblower --who alleges she became a target of political psychiatry by the Vancouver School Board in Nov. 2002, after announcing her intent to campaign in the then upcoming election about VSB "duplicity" in handling bullying complaints.

This is the second time the whistleblower has asked Kelly to resign from the United Way Board. She first made the request on November 6, 2007. Kelly didn't acknowledge receipt of the request even though she asked him to do so.

The whistleblower has the support of Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry in requesting Kelly's resignation from United Way. It is the position of COPP that it is hypocritical for Kelly to be using United Way to promote himself as an individual committed to the larger social good, while he has done nothing in response to evidence that “political psychiatry” is being practiced by the Vancouver School Board to undermine political opposition. Political psychiatry practiced by the VSB, according to COPP, is similar to that practiced in China and the former Soviet Union.

Kelly was not an actual instigator of the alleged political psychiatry which has led to the request for his resignation. The political psychiatry was instigated in Nov. 2002, while the VSB was searching for a new Superintendent. When Kelly was hired as Superintendent, he inherited the political psychiatry scandal, a case which one VSB administrator referred to in a memo as "an ongoing problem."

Failure by Kelly to address evidence of political psychiatry practiced at the VSB resulted in COPP, "as a last resort", organizing an international boycott of high school diplomas issued by the Vancouver School Board. "Kelly had ample opportunity to avert that boycott," says the whistleblower. "He knew about it for years before it ended up on the internet." The future of every student in the school system is being affected by that boycott, but she says she has never seen Kelly show the slightest concern about it.

United Way promotes Kelly on their website as a visionary. In fact, he kicked off the United Way Campaign in September with a speech promoted on their official website as “a powerful vision."

Even the alleged fraud and misogyny to which the whistleblower was subjected after the VSB arranged for her to become the target of political psychiatry seemed to be within the comfort zone of Kelly. He has done nothing about the administrator who arranged for the whistleblower to become the target of political psychiatry after Sergeant Garry Lester, the VSB School Liaison, told him that there was "nothing untoward" about her conduct.

Kelly has done nothing about the fact that any sign of competence or intellectual ability in the female whistleblower was identified as social deviance by the psych nurse briefed by the VSB at the beginning of the political psychiatry exercise. Her letter announcing that she would be campaigning in an upcoming election was identified as "BIZARRE" behaviour. The fact that she had taken the time in the letter to substantiate claims by several people that their bullying complaints against a physically and verbally abusive teacher had been mishandled was considered suspect -- "It's "a little long, don't you think?", the psych nurse asked, peering at her through squinted eyes. [The psych nurse admitted that he had not read the letter but was relying on a briefing by the VSB.] Papers and books scattered around the whistleblower's computer in her work environment appeared to be the basis for the label "cluttered" in the report. The fact that she had submitted routine Freedom of Information requests was considered a key sign of mental illness -- in fact, "freedom of information requests" was the SOLE entry in the section of the psych report requiring that the official reason for the visit be identified.

Even vigorous physical exercise by the whistleblower was considered a sign of social deviance. When the psych nurse recruited by the VSB intercepted the whistleblower after her exercise class when she was still wearing her gym clothes, the fact that she was sweating appeared to be used against her. She was identified as having "strong body odor".

In campaign advertisements, United Way claims that, "Everyone's potential can be realized." The contradiction between this claim by United Way and practices at the Vancouver School Board which appear to be within the comfort zone of Kelly was cited as a reason why he should resign as a United Way Board member.

Attitudes of the VSB can best be summed up by comparing the resources they invested in attempting to discredit the whistleblower as a mental case, while avoiding investigation of a clearly disturbed male VSB administrator. This male administrator was working as a Principal at a VSB school in Nov. 2002 and appeared, the whistleblower says, to become "fixated" on her. "I had never been to his school," says the whistleblower, "I had never spoken to him; I had never heard of him; I had never expressed an interest in going to his school. But he had it in for me." But this Principal was determined to subject the whistleblowing woman to political psychiatry. He showed VPD-School Liaison, Sgt. Garry Lester, a copy of the whistleblower's letter announcing her intent to campaign in the upcoming tightly contested election. This was his basis for wanting her targeted for a psychiatric assessment at her home, assessment for potential apprehension to a mental hospital. Lester read the letter and told him that there was "nothing untoward" about the whistleblower's letter. But the administrator pressed Lester to essentially perform an illicit favor and approve the visit. "This is fraud," says the whistleblower, who in turn pushed for a criminal investigation.

This Principal then turned up at the whistleblower's home. He seemed to be "under the influence of alcohol or something" and pressed her to drop her complaints. He stood on the sidewalk speaking to her over her intercom, at one point telling her that if she had to deal with the "little c*nts and their mothers" that he had to deal with on a daily basis, she wouldn't last. Her livingroom window is close to ground level, just a few meters from the building's intercom system, which resulted in the Principal's loud, belligerent comments being heard by a man sitting in her apartment. The incident was reported in writing to the VSB and they were given the name of the witness and how he could be reached before he left town. The VSB did not contact either the whistleblower or the witness. Kelly, in the years since, has continued to allow this administrator to be in charge of children. "[This Principal] tried to do serious harm to the reputation and wellbeing of a woman he had never met and Kelly acts like it's business as usual for this guy."

"I believe. . . . that everyone deserves respect". That's one of the lines in this year's United Way campaign advertisement.

Not only was the whistleblower disrespected but she felt terrorized enough by VSB political psychiatry tactics that she did not campaign in the Nov. 2002 election. But she feels that the terror campaign initiated by the VSB has never ended. Kelly has done nothing to get the life long record that anybody targeted for political psychiatry -- even when cleared -- has adjacent to their name on the police computer system. Second, she says, Kelly has "left me dangling", never knowing to whom the VSB will next release the defamatory political psychiatry file they have on her. She discovered through Freedom of Information that her file had repeatedly been released by VSB staff to individuals external to the VSB Head Office. Kelly failed to respond to her written request dated Nov. 7, 2007 that, due to the "extreme level of libel" associated with the political psychiatry, he stop allowing her name to be released in regard to this case. He had to work within privacy legislation, she reminded him. The whistleblower has reason to be concerned about security as the "political psychiatry" record she was left with as a result of VSB actions has surfaced on two occasions to interfere with her life. "I feel stalked," says the whistleblower, "and Kelly doesn't seem to care how I'm treated."

"I believe. . . that every person has value." That's a line from a United Way Campaign advertisement.

This is a bad time for Kelly's link to political psychiatry to be exposed. United Way was exposed just two months ago for having a more direct link to political psychiatry. A Dec. 2002 case surfaced in which United Way had attempted to stop the dissemination of a Report on United Way by arranging for police to begin visiting a woman thought to be making it available to donors. The resulting police report has since been demonstrated to be rife with fabricated and misrepresented evidence. As United Way worked with police on the case, a VPD Car 87 assessment of the woman was arranged under allegedly fraudulent pretenses. Car 87 assesses a targeted individual for apprehension to a mental hospital.

If Chris Kelly fails to resign from the United Way Board of Directors, it is time that his fellow Board members request that he do so. COPP and the whistleblower agree with United Way campaign advertisements: "That a safe, supportive community is everyone's responsibility."

BCTF Member Stands in Soup Line

It was the night before welfare day. Last Tuesday night, the Salvation Army Soup truck pulled up as usual to Main St. & Cordova at 9:45 to hand out piping hot soup and peanut butter and jam sandwiches to the poor.

A well-dressed BCTF member who teaches at the Vancouver School Board Eastside Learning Center for adults a block away, lined up for a bowl of soup. Several people saw her; in fact she said hello to a couple of people. She has been a VSB teacher in the neighborhood for years. She is middle-aged, a little on the heavy side, with short blond wavy hair.

"Those people make a fortune," exclaimed Serg, a Downtown Eastside resident, "and she's taking food from the hungry."

A couple of years ago, the media reported discussions in London, England of shutting down food lines for the poor due to widespread abuse. Working people were using them as a convenience, instead of cooking for themselves.

Truth is, virtually everybody you see at the Sally Ann soup truck on Tuesday and Sunday nights in Vancouver looks poor.

Other teacher-related articles on this blog:
Vancouver Teachers Demand Recycling in Schools
International Boycott of High School Diplomas Issued by the Vancouver School Board

Vancouver Teachers Demand Recycling in Schools

It was a back flip worthy of the Olympics.

Yesterday, Vancouver School Board Chair Ken Denike said no to teachers insisting that a standard recycling program be set up in all schools. It would be too expensive, he told CBC news on Tuesday, Sept. 25. He said recycling in schools was a volunteer effort, although he admitted that it at times deserved a failing grade. "We have attempted in a number of schools to put in a recycling program," Denike said. "But unless you have a diligent teacher there, or someone really pushing it, it doesn't continue."

But here’s what Denike told the CBC the next day: "It's time to do it." On Wednesday, Sept. 26, he said, "I think it's important to do it fairly soon while we've got motivation and interest in schools. Students have also been pushing for the change.” Denike promised a review by the School Board of the possibility of a district-wide recycling program.


One teacher who put pressure on the School Board to organize a standard blue box program is Michelle Tayler (photo above), a Grade 4 and 5 teacher at Queen Mary Elementary. Tayler told the CBC on Tuesday that while the curriculum emphasizes environmental education, the School Board sets a poor example by discouraging students from actually practicing what they've learned. "Just after lunch you'll see a lot of juice boxes — they're thrown into the garbage cans", Tayler said. "I would have thought by now something would be in place."

Last spring, students from Lord Tennyson Elementary and Lord Byng Secondary made a presentation to Vancouver School Board committees on the topic of recycling and overall sustainability in schools.

Sharon Gregson, the trustee who oversees Lord Byng Secondary School and who last year appeared in the National Firearms Association Journal sporting a gun on the front cover and a tattoo on an inside page, told the CBC that she is keen on recycling. [In fact, after she recycled her husband, Ian Gregson, he accused her in The Tyee news in April 2005 of taking off on vacation to the Dominican Republic with her new boyfriend and saddling him with their joint-custody kids, sabotaging his ability to campaign as a Green Party candidate.]

Gregson told the CBC that it will take time for a standard recycling program to be voted on by the School Board. First funding will have to be found and then the issue will have to be discussed at appropriate committees.

Gregson says the issue of recycling got backgrounded as trustees have been focused on other issues lately, such as “a lack of adequate funding from Victoria, the problem of last year’s lower than expected enrollment, the problem of facilities that need to be seismically upgraded.” She avoided any mention of the international boycott of Grade 12 diplomas that the VSB was accused in the media last week of concealing from parents. The boycott has some parents looking to next year's election, when even a new recycling program may not be enough to save this School Board from ending up in electoral landfill.

Int'l Boycott of Vancouver High School Diplomas Concealed By School Board

(photo: Ken Denike, Chair, Vancouver School Board)

While the Vancouver School Board is exporting schools and diplomas to the children of the elite in China's Communist Party, Vancouver residents say it is importing tactics of political repression used by China's Communist Party.

The result is an international boycott of Vancouver School Board secondary school diplomas. The boycott was launched in 2004 by individuals who have since formed the ad hoc group, Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry. The DTES Enquirer has learned that Vancouver School Board trustees and administrators, including Principals and Vice Principals, were sent written notification of the boycott but concealed it from the public.

Organizations around the world "are being asked not to recognize these diplomas", according to a Feb. 13, 2004 notice entitled, "International Boycott of Diplomas Issued by the Vancouver School Board", received by the VSB.

The boycott stemmed from evidence that the VSB was using police intimidation and political psychiatry to deter legitimate citizen complaints. Pursuing a complaint against the Vancouver School Board can earn the complainant a visit from Vancouver's notorious "Car 87", a police car in which an armed constable and psychiatric nurse ride. They arrive at a complainant's home, according to official forms that they complete during the visit, to perform an assessment for "apprehension" to a mental hospital.

A psychiatric notation appears for life adjacent to that individual's name on the police computer system -- even if they are cleared. But here's the catch: even when you're cleared, you're never really cleared. The wording on the form reveals that an individual is simply not a candidate for apprehension "at this time".

In the fall of 2002, outgoing President of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils mentioned intimidation of individuals pursuing complaints with school administrators in an interview with the Vancouver Sun. Reggi Balabanov stated that complainants were discovering police on their doorsteps. This has put a "chill" on the willingness of people to pursue complaints, Balabanov said. [Balabanov was not involved in organizing the boycott.]

The boycott was ultimately triggered by a case involving police intimidation and classic political psychiatry in October 2002.

The woman targeted for political psychiatry was the last (last known) of several individuals, both female and male, who had lodged complaints --with no knowledge of one another's complaints at the time -- with the School Board about a verbally and physically abusive teacher. The VSB instructed her to submit her complaint in writing to Violence Prevention Co-ordinator Lisa Pedrina, but when she did, she got no response. Months later, she wrote a letter to the VSB criticizing this lack of response. She quickly received a letter dated Sept. 12, 2000 from the VSB in-house lawyer, Richard Hall, threatening her with legal action for "liable and slander" -- this lawyer could not spell "libel" -- if she dared criticize Pedrini again. The woman asked trustees to ensure that the VSB stopped issuing threats to prevent the raising of legitimate concerns with staff.

Hall had told the woman in the threatening letter, that if she wanted her complaint processed, she would have to re-submit it. This is a typical "obstructionist tactic" she says. She asked trustee to investigate why this in-house lawyer could not simply pull her original submission out of a VSB filing cabinet? Hall later left his job at the VSB.

With Hall's departure, the VSB hired an external lawyer, Wendy Harris, to send the woman a letter stating that "no substantiation was found" to support her claims that previous individuals -- who had by now heard of her case and contacted her -- had lodged complaints about this teacher. "There are no records which could be located to indicate that either of these individuals had made complaints against [the teacher]...." Complainants were stunned by this response. The VSB ignored written notification that a previous complainant, a male, was willing to provide them with letters on VSB letterhead brushing off his complaint against this teacher, as well as a postcard he had received from the teacher apologizing for 'attacking' him. The VSB also ignored written notification that an earlier female complainant was willing to speak to them, a complainant who had been telephoned at home by a VSB supervisor when she suddenly stopped all school volunteer work after being physically assaulted by this teacher; the supervisor told her that the teacher would be sent on "sensitivity training." The VSB had been given contact information, in writing, for both these complainants. They had also been provided, in writing, the names of two VSB supervisors who had received complaints about the teacher.

The above example was one of several outlined in an Oct. 12, 2002 letter to the Vancouver Board to illustrate that they were paying hundreds of dollars an hour in taxpayers' dollars to evade a genuine investigation into this case. The woman stated in the letter that she intended to campaign in the election, just two months away, about VSB "duplicity" in the handling of bullying complaints, specifically their practice of assuring the public that such complaints were being taken seriously when in fact letters complainants were receiving told a different story. The ruling party, the Non-Partisan Association, was poised to lose the election; any campaigning by the woman could have been damaging to incumbents.

The VSB called police "Car 87".

In the morning of Nov. 5, 2002, the woman responded to pounding on her door by opening it and discovering an armed constable, Michelle Sevigny, standing with psychiatric nurse, Don Getz. Getz was flapping her Oct. 12, 2002 letter to the VSB in his hand. It is noteworthy that her Oct. 12, 2002 intent-to-campaign letter was the sole evidence submitted to police and the psychiatric nurse to justify the visit.

The woman felt sufficiently terrorized by the Car 87 visit that she dropped plans to campaign in the School Board election.

At the beginning of the visit, Getz told the woman, "You seem fine to me." As he was leaving at the end of the visit, she claims -- this is something she reported in writing to the Health Authority and the VSB at the time -- Getz told her that he shared her view that the upcoming tight School Board election had motivated the VSB to arrange this visit.

In his official psychiatric report, though, the sole reason Getz provided for going to the woman's home to assess her for "apprehension" was that she had made "freedom of information requests" to the VSB. Indeed, at the end of the Oct. 12/02 letter, the woman had requested that documents from the file be released to her under the Freedom of Information Act. The woman had made two routine freedom of information requests over the previous year. Getz revealed in his report that the only person the VSB made available to meet with him was Georgina Kosich, the Labour Relations and Freedom of Information Assistant at the VSB. (When he arrived, he had chatted with the VSB's new lawyer, Michael Hancock, who had directed him to Kosich.) The woman has in her possession letters from Kosich responding to her Freedom of Information requests and inviting her to feel free to contact her again.

The revelation in Getz' report that the VSB had diverted him to a freedom of information clerk reinforced the fact that they did not feel at any risk. Yet Car 87 is, according to Health Authority policy, to be reserved for cases where the targeted individual poses an "imminent" risk of killing themselves or others. That policy was confirmed in a taped telephone call with Jan Fisher, Head of Client Relations at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. Fisher told the woman that she "might get an apology" as a mistake had obviously been made. It wasn't a mistake, says the woman. "It was a pre-meditated attempt to intimidate me and discredit me with the electorate."

The fact that the Car 87 visit was no mistake tends to be supported by comments made by Police-School Liaison, Sergeant Garry Lester, whom the woman telephoned for answers on the afternoon of Nov. 5th, just hours after the visit. He told her during a taped telephone conversation (advocates routinely advise DTES residents to tape conversations in cases of police intimidation and political psychiatry) that he had stressed to the VSB that there was "nothing untoward" about her Oct. 12/02 letter. But the VSB pressured him, he revealed, so he approved the visit. (Such soliciting by bureaucrats of a favor from the VPD in order to have a critic visited has turned up in documentation pertaining to four cases of political psychiatry and/or politically-motivated police intimidation brought to the attention of DTES Enquirer bloggers.) Lester confirmed, when asked by the woman during their telephone conversation, that the Oct. 12, 2002 letter was the sole evidence considered in the decision to send Car 87 to her home.

Despite the lack of evidence that the woman posed a risk, approval of the Car 87 visit allowed instant access by Car 87 staff to her medical records. "They had no evidence against me," she says, "so they went on a fishing expedition to see if they could find anything to use against me." [She can prove that content of her medical records was altered when transferred into the Car 87 report. She has copies of both the original record and the Car 87 report. But this will be covered in another post.] She has no history of mental illness.

During the year and a half between the Oct./02 Car 87 visit and the organizing of the boycott of diplomas issued by the Vancouver School Board, records confirm that efforts were made to have VSB trustees take responsibility for their alleged instigation of police intimidation and political psychiatry. In 2003, trustees held an in-camera review of the case of the woman targeted by Car 87. She was not invited. But a staff person implicated in wrongdoing in the case was invited to brief the Board. The woman learned from meeting notes obtained through Freedom of Information that evidence in the case had been consistently misrepresented at the meeting. "He said the teacher wasn't working for the Vancouver School Board at the time we lodged our complaints, like we were all too stupid to know what school she worked at." All they had to do was check the payroll records, she points out, to confirm that she had definitely been a VSB teacher when the complaints were lodged.

Jane Bouey, elected in Nov. 2002, was a Vancouver School Board member during the term in which the in-camera review was held and the VSB persistently evaded addressing allegations that they had restricted freedom of expression via Ca 87. No hint of Bouey's record was provided to the public as she appeared in the media to sell a draft of "Safe Schools" legislation. This "Safe Schools" draft was criticized for imposing excessive and heavy-handed limitations on informal, day-to-day speech of students. Critics who believe the VSB is comfortable with tactics typical of the Communist Party in China and the former Soviet Union are hardly dissuaded by the fact that Bouey is Assistant Manager of the Communist Party's People's Co-op Bookstore in Vancouver and uses the internet domain address of the Communist Party's People's Voice newspaper as her personal e-mail address. While on the School Board, her partner in her personal life was (and may continue to be) Kimball Cariou, editor of the People's Voice.

There is no doubt that the Vancouver School Board was aware of the boycott ultimately triggered by this case. A Freedom of Information request to the VSB by the woman visited by Car 87 resulted in the release of a copy of the notice entitled "International Boycott of Diplomas Issued by the Vancouver School Board" bearing the stamp, "RECEIVED Feb. 23, 2004 HUMAN RESOURCES". The VSB also released other documents pertaining to the boycott bearing "RECEIVED" stamps with dates in 2004. Further, a copy of the notice of the boycott was hand-delivered to the Vancouver School Board headquarters at Broadway and Granville in March 2004, at which time proof of receipt was provided by a receptionist who signed a photocopy of the notice and signed her name on it.

The VSB has never formally responded to the boycott. An internal memo, though, does reveal a somewhat flippant response from a VSB administrator, "Wendy", in a handwritten memo to another VSB administrator, Sue Arthur, dated Feb. 27, 2004:

"Sue – put your "Legal Counsel" hat on for this . . . . Take care & happy Friday!"

CUPE Has A lot of Nerve Demanding Whistleblower Protection

CUPE BC President, Barry O'Neill, spoke to the media yesterday about the strike by civic workers in Vancouver. "[O]ur members are hurting out there," O'Neill said.

Paul Faoro, President of Local 15 which represents indoor workers, was with O'Neill at the press conference. Local 15 and the City of Vancouver have been able to agree on a wage increase of 17.5 over five years. But like Local 1004 (outside workers) and Local 391 (library workers), Local 15 hasn't been able to get the City to meet their demands for job security as well as protection for whistleblowers.

Protection for whistleblowers?

O'Neill has a lot of nerve. There is an unresolved complaint against him for allegedly being involved in the harassment of a whistleblower inside CUPE. A former secretary to two CUPE Presidents was blowing the whistle on unfair labour practices inside CUPE when a letter she had written to Barry O'Neill about the issue was turned over to police in Dec. 2002. She was then visited by VPD Constables Ng and Herrmann in what she alleges was an exercise in intimidation.
One of the issues raised by this secretary -- who had left CUPE with two glowing letters of reference -- was that she saw female co-workers fired after they spoke up about such issues as unfair workloads, verbal abuse, and the fact that CUPE had renegged on a promise of a pension. They had no job protection as these CUPE secretaries did not have the benefit of a union.

Earlier the same year, 2002, CUPE had muzzled a whistleblowing steamfitter and CUPE member working in Plant Operations at the University of British Columbia. The steamfitter persistently spoke up about alleged irregularities in WCB payments which he was briefly receiving, cheques which were processed through the employer and the union. Twice large cheques arrived at his door, for the amounts he had claimed he was owed. They came from the Back to Work office at UBC which was headed by a woman who was on the CUPE Local 116 Executive. But no explanations were given for these cheques. He didn't shut up. The Executive of CUPE Local 116 called the police on him, claiming that he had been threatening.

CUPE BC took an interest in the steamfitters case. They sent a lawyer to a meeting with him and the university. He had not brought a lawyer. The CUPE lawyer,whom he described as "tough", told him that he had to get a psychiatric assessment and take medication or he would lose his job. Guess who shut up about the WCB issue? But CUPE was accused of becoming involved in "political psychiatry".

Conclusion: Barry O'Neill has alot of nerve to demand that the City grant CUPE's membership with protection for the whistleblowers amongst them. But Local 15's Faoro, who is rumored to be angling for O'Neill's job when he retires, has alot of nerve too.

Local 15 was made aware in 2003 of the tactics from unfounded police complaints to political psychiatry that their dues to CUPE BC were supporting. What did Local 15 do to ensure that workers could speak up about workplace conditions without fear of harassment? Nothing. But Faoro had the term "fair" on his lips during this summer's CUPE strike, so the secretary wrote to him asking that he show some leadership and ensure that her grievance against CUPE was resolved.

Faoro ignored her.

"[I]t's time to actually end this dispute," Faoro told the Vancouver Sun yesterday. Which dispute would he be talking about? The one between his members and the City of course, not the whistleblowing secretary's dispute with CUPE.

"In order to show leadership, and try to resolve this dispute, we are prepared to take the lead....", Faoro also told the Sun. The whistleblowing secretary has yet to see these leadership qualities in Faoro.

Harassment of a whistleblower by CUPE is not restricted to the case of the secretary and the steamfitter. The Downtown Eastside Enquirer has obtained documentation supporting two other cases: the case of a whistleblower about the Vancouver School Board and that of whistleblower at the CUPE stronghold of Carnegie Center.

The Vancouver School Board Whistleblower: a CUPE member working inside the VSB involved herself in harassment tactics targeting this whistleblower

This situation occurred after several Vancouver residents had independently complained over the years to the Vancouver School Board about a verbally and at times physically abusive, and racist, teacher. Nothing was done. A woman wrote to the School Board in the fall of 2002 about the VSB's duplicity in the handling of such complaints, specifically their public assurances to the public that "bullying" complaints were taken seriously while in reality disregarding them and treating the complainants as the problem. She stated in the letter that she intended to draw public attention to this duplicity by campaigning in the School Board election, just two months away. In the same letter she made a freedom of information request for recent documents from the file pertaining to her complaint against this teacher.

The response this woman got was a visit from Car 87, in which a police constable and a psych nurse ride together. She believes that this was an attempt to undermine her credibility in the upcoming election campaign. When the woman read the psych report which cleared her but smeared her, the sole reason given for the visit was that she had made "freedom of information requests." The primary witness against this whistleblower was, guess who? A CUPE member. It was Georgina Kosich, the Labour Relations and Freedom of Information Assistant who processed foi requests at the VSB. Kosich was the only staff person who met with the psych nurse, Don Getz, when he arrived at the VSB in the police car, according to his report, (although he had briefly spoken to an in-house lawyer, new on the job, who directed him to Kosich.) More about Kosich: the targeted woman has letters she received from Kosich in response to her freedom of information requests encouraging her to feel free to contact her. The targeted woman's FOI requests had not been excessive; she had made two over the previous year. This case has been labelled "political psychiatry" by Downtown Eastside advocates.

The Carnegie Center Whistleblower: CUPE members were involved in getting an alleged whistleblower barred from Carnegie Center

The most recent case, of course, of the involvement of CUPE members in silencing a whistleblower is the notorious case of Bill Simpson, a homeless man who was barred from Carnegie Center because he was suspected of being associated with a blog. The blog was being used to blow the whistle on Carnegie Center staff [most of whom are CUPE members] and Director Ethel Whitty for not always giving taxpayers what they had paid for.

Roughly a year ago, bloggers began reporting to taxpayers when CUPE members [and one BCTF member] were locking patrons out of publicly-funded educational and computer services that were scheduled to be open. CUPE members interrogated volunteers at the Center in what took on the characteristics of a "witch hunt" for the blogger. In fact, one volunteer claims he was separately questioned by Rika Uto, Colleen Gorrie, and Carnegie Assistant Manager Dan Tetrault -- all CUPE members. The volunteer was also interrogated by two members of the BC Teachers Federation, Lucy Alderson and Betsy Alkenbrack, and Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty. This witch hunt resulted in Bill Simpson being led to the office of Skip, Carnegie Head of Security and a CUPE member with some seniority, and informed by Lucy Alderson that he was barred from the Carnegie Learning Centre.

But here's the thing about Skip: he showed a tendency to skip Simpson's rights. When Simpson asked him for something in writing so that he could appeal this barring from a public space, he recalls Skip saying, "Ah come on, give me a break, I'm new here." Skip never gave Simpson anything in writing, and neither did Alderson who was also asked.

Carnegie Board member, Rachel Davis, recently stated on Vancouver Co-operative Radio that every barring at Carnegie must be accompanied by an incident report. But security guards don't always produce one and when the do, she explained, they often won't allow the targeted individual to see it.

But efforts to stop legitimate whistleblowing at the Carnegie Center didn't end with this barring. They continued when bloggers alleged that a CUPE member in a social work role was repeatedly having sexual relations with male clients, many of whom were troubled. Two of these clients had successfully committed suicide and one made an unsuccessful attempt by jumping off a bridge and becoming a quadrapelegic -- although no direct link was claimed to exist between these tragedies and the supervisor's former sexual liasons with these men. The 'Sex in the City' supervisor was not named in the post at the request of sources who simply wanted her misconduct to stop.

Not only was the 'Sex in the City' supervisor never genuinely investigated but, with the support of CUPE, managed to wrangle a Workers Compensation judgement out of this situation. She took the position that bloggers at Carnegie were creating an unsafe work environment. Carnegie Board member, Grant Chancey, an outspoken CUPE supporter during the strike, wasn't buying this framing of blogging as a safety risk to a CUPE member. "This is not a WorkSafe issue", he said at a Community Relations Meeting at Carnegie, adding that he had seen no threats whatsoever on the blog posts "and I've looked and I've looked and I've looked."

The result of the WCB claim, according to Ethel Whitty, was that homeless Bill Simpson was once again barred -- this time from the entire building. He was no longer accused of blogging but simply of "featuring links" on his website to the blog criticizing CUPE members at Carnegie. Written notification of the barring was personally delivered to Simpson on June 21, 2007, after he was held at the front door of Carnegie by Trey, a security guard and CUPE member. Director Whitty and Assistant Director, Dan Tetrault, a CUPE member, came downstairs from their offices to deliver the letter. This was one of Tetrault's last acts on the job before going on strike to demand more money and of course whistleblower protection for himself and his CUPE dues-paying co-workers.

CUPE members from top to bottom at Carnegie involved themselves in this barring despite the fact that low income members of the Center had elected Simpson to the Board of Directors two weeks earlier. Did I mention that Simpson is not even allowed into the building to attend Board meetings? The henchmen at the front door, all CUPE members, will stop him.

In the case of the attempt to penalize whistleblowing on a blog, a characteristic tactic of CUPE leaders or members turned up -- the unfounded police complaint. Bill Simpson was contacted by police and so were others suspected of being associated with the whistleblowing blog. But a visit to an ex-boyfriend of the 'Sex in the City' supervisor and CUPE member was particularly telling. The police officer who appeared to be off duty told the ex-boyfriend that the Crown would not be laying charges as the blog content was true, but that he had come to register concerns about the blogging. Blatant intimidation. Blatant police state activity.

Carnegie Assistant Manager, Dan Tetrault, would have at the very least known about this police complaint. Did I mention that Tetrault is the guy with a high five figure salary out on the picket line asking for more money and whistleblowing protection for himself and his co-workers?

It's documented. CUPE leaders and members have a record of harassing whistleblowers by employing illegal tactics ranging from police complaints unsupported by actual evidence to political psychiatry similar to that employed in the People's Republic of China. And while doing nothing to address the suffering of whistleblowers whose reputations they have damaged, CUPE has the nerve to demand whistleblower protection for their members.

It's time to blow the whistle on CUPE.

Olympics "Civil City Slam" marred by hypocrisy

In Vancouver you will find sailing, hiking, skiing. And fighting. Vancouverites are fighting over preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics, preparations that involve efforts to curb aggressive panhandling, sleeping, crack smoking, pissing and even shitting on the streets by Vancouver’s underclass.

On the right is Mayor Sam Sullivan. Sullivan introduced “Project Civil City” earlier this year to curb “public disorder” in Vancouver. The Civil City initiative, the Mayor has officially announced, will target homelessness, the open drug market, aggressive panhandling, and will attempt to increase satisfaction with how public nuisance complaints are handled.

On the left is Member of Parliament Libby Davies and others she refers to as “progressive electeds” and activists. The left takes the position that the Mayor’s Civil City erodes civil liberties of the poor and addresses symptoms of poverty rather than underlying causes.

On Tuesday evening, representatives of Vancouver’s left came together in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, the poorest neighbourhood in Canada, to criticize the Mayor’s Project Civil City. They called the event, “Civil City Slam”.

The Forum was chaired by Libby Davies, known simply as “Libby” by many on the Downtown Eastside where low income people vote for this federal politician en masse. Davies told the crowd in the church auditorium that Project Civil City will hurt the poor while making Vancouver “squeaky clean” for the Olympics.

In the leaflet widely distributed to advertise the Civil City Slam, a column by left-leaning Allan Garr in the Vancouver Courier newspaper was re-printed. Garr had mentioned this month’s visit by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin to address the Vancouver Board of Trade about Atlanta’s 1996 Summer Olympics experience. Franklin admitted that Altanta had made a mistake by investing in temporary shelters to get the homeless off the streets, only to discover after the Olympics that when the shelters disappeared, the homeless reappeared. What Franklin had not spoken about though, Garr wrote, was the civil liberties mistakes made in Atlanta during the Olympics:

“What she didn’t mention was this: Before the games, Atlanta passed a half dozen laws that made it illegal to panhandle aggressively, urinate in public, lay on a park bench and - my favorite – walk across a parking lot if you don’t have a car parked there. Homeless activists in Atlanta report the laws were later thrown out. But over the course of the games, thousands of homeless men were arrested.”

Inside the Civil City Slam at First United Church there was a standing room only crowd. To get in though, you had to pass a man on the steps handing out literature accusing Israel of apartheid, and a woman at the door of the auditorium with a table of literature which included Anti-Poverty Committee leaflets accusing Olympic Committee director, Ken Dobell, of being a “capitalist hog”.

David Eby: civil liberties abuses could result from changes ranging from new police powers to charge civilians and a “broad interpretation” of who is sufficiently mentally ill to be institutionalized

One of the first speakers was David Eby, a tall, thin, young lawyer with light brown curly hair who works for Pivot Legal Society. Eby mentioned media reports that City Councilors and Olympic Committee directors are feeling threatened by the Anti-Poverty Committee which recently stated an intent to evict Olympic Committee directors from their comfortable offices and homes, just as poor people are being evicted from their homes during preparations for the Olympics. (The APC had just hours earlier carried out an eviction by trashing the Vancouver office of Olympic Committee director Ken Dobell, within the Canada Place offices of Premier Gordon Campbell.) Eby pointed out that for the Olympic Committee, “the biggest threat to what they have planned is meetings like this.”

Eby said he has already noticed an erosion of civil liberties on the Downtown Eastside as the City prepares for the Olympics. He mentioned the raid on the offices of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association by police searching for the stolen Olympic flag, even though another organization had taken credit for stealing it.

Regular reports by Downtown Eastside residents of getting “jacked up” are another sign in Eby’s view, that civil liberties are being eroded as Vancouver gears up for the Olympics. Eby explained that each pair of police officers working the streets of the Downtown Eastside is expected to meet a daily quota of civilians they have had a conversation with. What that conversation entails, he said, is taking the person’s name and running it through the police computer system for no reason. These quotas work out to 303 people being stopped a day on the Downtown Eastside. That’s “the kind of civil society” the neighborhood is being subjected to. If you do the math, Eby explained, it works out to every resident of the Downtown Eastside being stopped six times a year. Eby got his point across, but the reality is that myself and my friends and acquaintances on the Downtown Eastside not involved in street life are not finding ourselves randomly stopped by police.

Eby says Project Civil City is bringing in a “No sit, no lie” bylaw. Anyone who walks around Vancouver knows who this bylaw is aimed at: the homeless who sleep for hours on benches and sidewalks both day and night. But Eby says that even people who hang around on a park bench can be targeted.

Project Civil City will also tackle aggressive panhandling, the open drug market, and public nuisance complaints, according to Eby, by allowing police to directly lay charges. Previously Vancouver Police had to wait for Crown prosecutors to approve charges. Crown prosecutors, Eby explained, tend to be more cautious than police, throwing out cases for such reasons as evidence being collected through an illegal search. Police are being given these new powers, Eby believes,“because the Crown is just getting in the way.”

Another tool police may finally be given on the Downtown Eastside is close circuit television cameras, according to Eby. Cameras to fight the open drug market and other crime have been proposed over the years by police, only to be opposed by the left wing establishment at Carnegie Centre which publishes the popular Carnegie newsletter.

“New drug treatment programs for chronic offenders”, are a specific Civil City strategy that Eby thought needed more discussion. New approaches to drug treatment will include, if Mayor Sullivan has his way, an expansion of NAOMI, a drug maintenance program on the Downtown Eastside which a couple of years ago began dispensing free heroin to addicts. But City Councilor Raymond Louie, who lent his name to the Civil City Slam brochure as an endorser, says opening a “pharmacy” for the city’s 700 chronic offenders would be irresponsible, without integrating them into the community. Eby’s concern about the focus on chronic offenders, he told spectators at the Slam, is the possibility that, “If you want to get into this innovative drug treatment, first you have to get arrested, and you probably have to plead guilty.”

Institutionalization of the very mentally ill is yet another goal of Civil City, Eby told the crowd. But here’s the problem, he said: “There is no real definition of who the very mentally ill is. I suspect there could be a very broad interpretation of that.”

When it comes to employing a very broad interpretation of mental illness for institutionalizing people, though, some of the “progressive electeds” who endorsed this Civil City Slam in promotional literature – Vancouver School Board trustees Allan Blakely and Allan Wong, for example — are in no position to point fingers.

With Blakely and Wong as trustees, the Vancouver School Board had been accused of political psychiatry, using an interpretation of mental illness broad enough to muzzle a political adversary. The Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog has obtained a police and psychiatric report in one well known case in which a political adversary was targeted by the Vancouver School Board. It was a case in which the Vancouver School Board arranged to have a Downtown Eastside resident targeted for an “assessment for apprehension” immediately after that resident expressed in writing an intent to campaign in the School Board election, then just 3 weeks away. This resident and several others on the Downtown Eastside were were fed up after independently lodging complaints against a verbally and physically abusive teacher, only to receive evasive and at times hostile responses from the VSB.

The Vancouver School Board, dominated by left wingers at the time who knew that they were about to lose their elected majority, hastily arranged to have the notorious police “Car 87” – a police car containing a constable and a psych nurse – visit and assess the prospective campaigner for “apprehension”. A letter in which the individual had stated an intent to campaign in the election, a letter which included a routine freedom of information request, was the sole evidence filed with police and the psych system to support this visit. In the accompanying psych report, nurse Don Getz entered the fact that this DTES resident had made “freedom of information requests” as the official reason for the assessment.

Just hours after the visit, VPD Sergeant Garry Lester admitted in a taped telephone conversation that he had emphasized to the VSB, when they were arranging the visit, that there was “nothing untoward” about this DTES resident’s letter.

In 2005, VSB trustees — including the few left wingers who had managed to keep their seats as trustees, Blakely (pictured left) and Wong — held an in-house review of the case and did not invite or allow input from the targeted individual. The targeted individual claims that political psychiatry instigated by the VSB shortly before the Nov. 2004 election has resulted in ongoing harassment, for which there is supporting evidence in the form of letters and voice mail from police.

Stories of political psychiatry perpetrated by members of the left wing establishment in the Downtown Eastside, which has been dubbed Canada’s “socialist experiment”, are rampant. Carnegie Centre, which sent a representative to sit on the panel of the Civil City Slam has been accused of at time favoring a politically convenient, broad interpretation, of mental illness. During a “Never trust a nurse” poster campaign on the Downtown Eastside in 2005-06 to fight alleged nurse involvement in political psychiatry, an allegation specifically against the Carnegie Street Nurse Program of collusion with political psychiatry surfaced and has yet to be resolved.

Even former mayoral candidate, Peter Haskell, recently alleged that he had become the target of psychiatric tactics at Carnegie. He told Vancouver's Republic newspaper that when he expressed opposition to user fees at Carnegie, a staff person telephoned his mother and recommended that he be put on medication.

Andy Yan: Civil City is based on the “broken windows” theory in the U.S.

Andy Yan, a chubby Chinese-Canadian man in his late twenties or early thirties, works for the Carnegie Centre Action Project which has an office on the Downtown Eastside. Yan told the crowd at the Slam that Civil City is based on the “broken windows” theory in the U.S. which Carnegie sees as the wrong approach to addressing street disorder. What has actually been proven to work in both the U.S. and Canada, Yen said, is “permanent homes as opposed to shelter beds.” He also wants welfare rates increased by 50% from current levels (the basic welfare rate has recently been raised by $100), and an elimination of barriers to getting welfare such as the 3 week waiting period. The position of the Carnegie Action Project, Yan said, is that we can “eliminate the symptom of homelessness by eliminating the causes.”

It came as no surprise to Downtown Eastside residents that Yan focused on housing for the homeless, not civil liberties for the homeless. Carnegie Action Project staff work out of the Carnegie Centre – Libby Davies’ organizing base – which has gained a reputation for trampling the civil liberties of the homeless. In January, homeless man Bill Simpson was barred from the Carnegie Learning Centre, accused of blogging about political issues at Carnegie. He was found guilty of blogging by Board members and staff during a ’star chambers’ hearing to which he was not invited.

Although Simpson’s case was the most publicized, there have been other cases of disrespect for the civil liberties of low income people at Carnegie. Staff in the Carnegie Action Project office at Carnegie called security guards on a Carnegie volunteer, Frank, and had him escorted from the premises, after he stopped by to tell Carnegie Board member Bob Sarti that it was wrong to bar Simpson for freedom of expression.

During the hunt for bloggers at Carnegie, a volunteer at Carnegie revealed that he had been questioned by Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty and Learning Centre Co-ordinator Lucy Alderson about a low income person under suspicion of blogging about Carnegie politics.

Even the Vancouver Network of Drug Users, which had a representative sit on the same panel as Carnegie at the “Civil City Slam”, had once had a lawyer threaten to take legal action against Carnegie for violating the civil liberties of marginalized people.

Sara Kendall: “racialized youth”, “neo-liberal agenda”, and other buzz words

Sara Kendall, tall, slim, with super short brown hair, a youth worker with the Vancouver Network of Drug Users – one of the groups that pushed for North America’s first Supervised Injection Site just two blocks west of First United church – also spoke on the panel at the “Slam”. But it was difficult to hear her message through her buzz words and phrases — “racialized youth”, “neo-Liberal agenda” “queer youth”, “culture of violence”. She even spoke of people “reaching out to another person from their place of need” — in plain English, that’s panhandling.

Kendall did manage to explain a form of street clearing that youth are being subjected to by police: “relocation”. That’s when police pick up a young person on the streets and drive them to another neighborhood and dump them.

Kendall identified government “cuts to public services” as part of the problem. She had worked for the City until the last election when the left wing Council lost power and the newly elected Mayor Sullivan axed her job.

Michael Vonn: “Olympics are a downhill event”

Michael Vonn – that’s a woman – Policy Director at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association also sat on the panel and told the crowd that from a civil liberties perspective, the “Olympics are a down hill event.” Vonn, in her late 30’s, slim, with shoulder length curly brown hair, announced that a stated goal of Project Civil City during Olympic preparations is to address “quality of life crimes.” “Oh please!”, she added. What the Mayor’s Civil City initiative really comes down to is “street sweeping the poor”, Vonn said.

A stated goal of Civil City is to “reduce aggressive panhandling by 50%” but, Vonn says, “we have no idea what the current base rate of aggressive panhandling is.” The same goes for homelessness and drug peddling which the goal of Civil City is to reduce by 50%. “The evidence doesn’t matter,” she told the crowd.

It’s people’s “perception of being at risk” that matters, Vonn explained. Police could potentially “charge someone for being the object of someone else’s fears.”

Apparently eager to assure the crowd that she was one of them, Vonn quipped, “Blue is not a good color on me.”

Dag Walker: “There are no consequences.”

Blue is a good color on Dag Walker who, like other members of the Vancouver Chapter of the Blue Revolution, wears a blue scarf to his meetings. Every Thursday evening Walker, in his early fifties, walks downtown to the Vancouver Public Library where their meetings are held and sees the public disorder on the streets.

Walker does agree with some issues raised at the “Civil City Slam”, like the fact that giving police power to directly lay charges is a “slippery slope”. But he also believes that leftists in Vancouver tend to downplay how serious the problem of public disorder is. “It’s out of control,” he says. People are fed up with the panhandlers who hound them day after day in coffee shops and on the streets, panhandlers whose “place of need” is, in his view, more often than not a crack addiction.

“When I was at London Drugs a few weeks ago”, he says, “somebody had shit on the sidewalk.” He actually saw it happen; a woman whom he suspects was on drugs defecated in broad daylight as pedestrians walked around her. And he points out that some streets smell like urine, “People piss everywhere.” He doesn’t share the left’s view that social conditions cause this public disorder. He attributes it to the fact that, “There are no consequences.”

Former Attorney General appointed to new position of Civil City Commissioner to tackle public disorder
It may not be a coincidence that the left held their Civil City Slam just a week after former B.C. Attorney General, Geoff Plant, was appointed to the newly created position of Civil City Commissioner in Vancouver. Plant’s appointment was seen as a coup for Mayor Sullivan but a set back for Vancouverites on the left arguing that more money for the social safety net is a solution to street disorder, not “criminalizing poverty”.

Plant’s appointment, lawyer David Eby told the crowd at the Slam, signals that Project Civil City will emphasize a “law and order” approach. But at the press conference announcing his appointment a week earlier, Plant hinted at a multi-pronged approach, “I am committed to tackling the underlying root causes of Vancouver’s challenges, while also dealing with some of the more straightforward, public disorder issues that we are experiencing.”