Red faces all round on Doyle’s report on Legislature finances

B.C. MLAs haven’t been in a rush to talk about the embarrassment of Auditor General John Doyle’s report (discussed here on the weekend) on legislature bookkeeping, and no wonder.

“If the Legislative Assembly were a public company, it would be delisted,” Doyle wrote in his 17-page report.

And now it’s become an issue not simply of a committee with poor accounting habits in operating the legislature, but one of transparency in the expenses of individual politicians.

Damage control efforts have been minimal thus far, and the pain could spread beyond those who are running the shop in Victoria.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has weighed in. “That’s our money Doyle is talking about — taxes paid by British Columbians in good faith that they would be used efficiently, effectively and accountably,” the federation says in a media release.

“MLAs have no one to blame but themselves for this public spanking,” says the CTF, calling for release of detailed expense records.

The CTF then raises the spectre of past spending scandals involving the use of tax money to dredge castle moats in the U.K. and to buy video games in Nova Scotia. “Is this happening in B.C.?” demands the federation. “Who knows?”

That seems a bit much, since there’s no evidence of it happening here, but there’s plenty of evidence of shoddy bookkeeping. And, the level of disclosure by our politicians is wanting.

The requirements at both the federal and provincial levels are pretty scant. Some MLAs and MPs voluntarily give up more information about their expenses than they’re technically required to, but even then it often doesn’t amount to much.

Of the three levels of government, municipal politicians are the most transparent. The CTF points out that, in Toronto, the mayor and council post every receipt of every expense they charge to taxpayers.

“One can see, for example, that Mayor Rob Ford’s office spent $80.88 on three black ink cartridges on Aug. 9, 2011.”

It’s true civic politicians are subject to high standards of disclosure. Mind you, being too detailed can get you in trouble, too. I once submitted a receipt for a chocolate-chip muffin I bought at the Calgary Airport during a connection to Ottawa on City business.

In my mind, shelling out a couple of dollars for a muffin instead of 20 or 30 bucks for a steak-sandwich lunch demonstrated pretty good value for the taxpayer. Back home, however, some in the media wondered whether I was a cheapskate, turning in a receipt for a muffin instead of just paying for it myself. They probably made a good point.

The only party to come out swinging is the B.C. Conservatives, demanding Monday that Speaker Bill Barisoff, who also chairs the Legislative Assembly Management Committee, resign.

“Especially troubling is the disclosure that Speaker Barisoff specifically requested the auditor general to not examine the $119,000 annual constituency office allowance provided to each MLA,” said Conservative leader John Cummins.

As I mentioned in Saturday’s column, Doyle has pledged to do that audit later this year.

Given the fact the Conservatives don’t have any MLAs — with the exception of John Van Dongen who used to be a Liberal — to be embarrassed by the matter, it’s easy for them to be morally outraged.

Barisoff’s committee is scheduled to meet today to talk about Doyle’s report. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that meeting.

Running the peanut stand at the Legislative Assembly

It’s hard to know what to think about B.C. Auditor General John Doyle’s report on the keeping of books at the Legislative Assembly.

The report was released late Thursday and is, deservedly, causing quite a sensation, for Doyle doesn’t mince words about what he thinks of how our MLAs manage their own peanut stand.

Even the title on his press release read more like a newspaper headline than a simple announcement: “Auditor General reveals messy finances at the Legislature,” it said.

John Doyle.

The press release goes on to say that his report, called Audit of the Legislative Assembly’s Financial Records,” shows “substantial irregularities regarding the Legislature’s financial accounting, in addition to poor governance.”

He urged immediate steps to fix the problem, pointing out that his office first raised it in 2007.

“Unfortunately, I have not been provided an opportunity to discuss any part of this audit with the governing body of the Legislative Assembly,” wrote Doyle.

“And, while Legislative Assembly management has provided responses to the management letter recommendations arising from this audit, neither their responses nor their action plans adequately address many of my concerns.”

That’s the short version — the report itself is only 17 pages long and well worth the read. Going back five years, Doyle’s office identified problems with general accounting, internal controls, data management and public reporting.

Had the Legislative Assembly followed his recommendations then, he says, the books would be in better shape today. Instead, the Assembly “is clearly falling well short of these basic expectations.” Deficiencies are “numerous and pervasive.”

To step back for a moment, it works something like this — the Legislature needs money to operate. It does so separately from the rest of the provincial government under a legislative comptroller.

The comptroller keeps an eye on how money is spent, while the House speaker is responsible for “day-to-day administration” of the Legislative Assembly. In addition, the speaker chairs the Legislative Assembly Management Committee, which includes representation from the government and the opposition.

Many people probably don’t even know such a committee exists, but it does, and it has a $63-million budget to run the legislature.

Doyle goes into some detail on the particular deficiencies in the bookkeeping of the Assembly, and then cites what he sees as lack of management oversight, lack of supporting documentatiopn for expenses, and lack of disclosure of MLAs’ payments.

Much of it will be of interest to accountants; to the general public, the main question is, “does anybody in Victoria know what the hell they’re doing?”

There’s not a kind word for the management committee in the entire report. There will be, of course, much finger-pointing. Already, House Speaker Bill Barisoff is on the defensive, offering re-assurances that his committee is on the case.

To which Doyle has responded, “I think the Speaker might not appreciate the gravity of the findings and hasn’t yet quite worked out what this means properly, and what his responsibilities are.”

Doyle isn’t going to ease up , either. The report doesn’t include an audit of the $119,000 constituency office allowance provided to each MLA, “except to the extent to which it was used to pay the salaries of Constituency Office Assistants and to ensure that no more than the maximum annual allowance was paid to each Member.”

But before the year is out, he intends to do a full audit of constituency office records and payments.

In defence of those who work at Royal Inland Hospital

CT Technologist Tina Rybachuk prepares the scanner bed at RIH for the next patient. The scanner is used about 50 times per day. (Daily News photo)

We get a lot of letters to the editor about Royal Inland Hospital. The ones most of us remember are from people who have had a bad experience there.

They’re from people who didn’t get a parking space quickly enough, or a bed quickly enough. Or maybe they had to deal with a health-care professional who was having a bad day and didn’t seem to care enough.

We also get a lot of letters in defence of RIH. These are the people whose pain has been relieved, whose worries have been eased, and, often, whose lives have been saved.

They know firsthand what it takes to help people in medical distress day after day. They take it personally when someone criticizes those to whom they owe a debt of gratitude.

There are many things wrong with health care in this country, and a lot that needs fixing at RIH. But I wonder if the critics would be so quick to condemn if they went into the emergency ward waiting room or, even better, into the emergency ward itself, or to any of the various departments that diagnose illness and then do their best to treat it.

And just listen. Because there, they could hear real-life stories of people who desperately need, and receive, timely and professional help.

In the next bed, a man might be asking a doctor, “How long have I got?” after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

They might overhear the consultations between nurses and doctors of various disciplines as they map out a course of action for each patient.

They could admire the calm efficiency with which ER personnel respond to a PA heads up that a trauma patient involved in a motorcycle crash will arrive in an ambulance in 10 minutes.

They might be saddened by the acknowledgement of a patient that her disease is progressive and that she will be in pain until the day she dies.

In ambulatory care, they might be impressed with the gentleness and good cheer of health-care staff whose job it is to administer tests that are often uncomfortable, embarrassing and frightening for the patient.

And they might think, “These people are damn good at what they do.”

Then they might think about what it takes to work in that kind of a place. To watch patients trying to be brave, to listen to them confiding about life’s woes because, on that day, they have someone they can talk to and who will listen.

It’s a calling that can be answered by few because those who are in it must constantly balance successes with failures, focus on the good and somehow set aside the bad.

Those who are the beneficiaries are grateful for the rest of their lives, and they won’t allow anyone who questions the dedication and caring service of those who provide it to go unchallenged.

Health-care givers should keep that in mind whenever they see a letter of complaint, and the complainers should remember that those who work in the system are just as frustrated as anyone when something doesn’t go the way it should.

After all, on any given day at RIH, there are a million things that go right and never get noticed — it’s the one thing that goes sideways that too often gets remembered.

Debate over Ajax models — let’s keep our eyes on the ball

The ‘Mader’ model of the proposed Ajax mine (Daily News photo).

As predicted, the debate over the “dueling” Ajax models has begun in earnest. Poor KGHM is being raked by mine opponents for supposedly trying to make it hard to figure out from the model what the mine will actually look like in comparison to the built part of the city, and for supposedly trying to make it hard for the average working stiff to even get a look at the model.

I maintain that both models are useful. The Mader model is prettier and more realistic, but the KGHM version is worthwhile as well because of — not despite — its simplicity.

So instead of wasting a lot of words condemning or celebrating one or the other, let’s make the best use of them.

It will be interesting to hear the impressions of City council members, if they dare to actually express opinions. City CAO David Trawin tells me administration doesn’t intend to make any comments of its own about either model to council, nor to make any recommendations. Staff will leave it up to individual councillors to look for themselves, and up to council as a whole if it wants to have a discussion about them.

He hadn’t yet seen the KGHM model when I talked to him, but did offer the opinion that the Mader model is “pretty close,” though it will depend on what information was used to create it.

Meanwhile, both models will be making the rounds to various venues in the city so the public can have a look, so stay tuned.

 

We’re doubly blessed with models of Ajax project

Norm Thompson with KGHM’s model of the Ajax project (Daily News photo).

“It’s not the Shanghai model,” Norm Thompson quipped yesterday as he showed me KGHM’s brand new model of the Ajax mine.

He was referring to the sprawling scale model of central Shanghai on display in that city’s governmental offices, and which I wrote about a few months ago when the issue of creating a 3-D rendering of the mine came up.

The Ajax model is only a few feet square, but it’s an important piece of the puzzle facing Kamloops residents as they try to figure out the visual impact of the proposed mine on our community.

Coincidentally, a different model was unveiled only a few days before by a group of private citizens. I got a look at that one yesterday, too. Though it involved quite a few people, I’ll call it the Mader version after architect Hazel Mader (no relation to Christina) who “quarterbacked” it.

It was on display at the Farmer’s Market on the weekend, and plans are to set it up there again. In the meantime, it’s being stored for a few days.

As the two models make the rounds, they’re sure to generate big interest and discussion. Thus begins what promises to be the newest debate in this controversial and contentious project — which model better illustrates how the mine will aesthetically affect the city?

Which one best shows the topography? Which one more accurately illustrates the scale of the project? Which provides the better picture of sightlines between the mine and town?

And, no doubt, there will be speculation — based on little more than suspicion — about misrepresentations and conspiracies to camouflage the positives and the negatives.

The two models represent slightly different snapshots in time during the life of the mine. They’re done to slightly different scales, and were created with different technologies.

Somewhat surprisingly, the KGHM version was cheaper to produce than the “independent” one by a couple of thousand dollars. It was contracted out to a Vancouver firm, which took a big chunk of Styrofoam, keyed the topographical and mine stats into a computer, and lasered it out.

Mader also used computer programming, but created it out of layered cardstock.

Thompson, KGHM’s community liaison guy, says the corporate model is based on what the mine will look like roughly a year before the end of its lifespan. But he thinks it fits the bill for what City Hall requested.

The Mader model looks quite different. They’re a bit like two artists rendering a likeness of the same subject — like Claude Monet and Andy Warhol squaring off over a landscape.

KGHM’s would be the Monet, soft colours and images: the Mader would be Warhol, contrasty, sharply defined.

Which is better?

The Mader, in my view, is more visually interesting, in part because it uses aerial photo imagery to represent the built city. On the other hand, the simplicity of KGHM’s model has its own advantages if one of your main concerns is the differences in elevations between the minesite and city.

KGHM deserves some credit for reacting to the public’s wishes, and the Mader group deserves thanks for putting in two months of hard work to do the same.

Overall, the two models complement each other. Rather than wasting too much time debating which one is “better,” it would be more productive at this point to learn from both.

Big oil, big pipes — Would the end of growth be such a bad thing?

Protesters against Enbridge project rally in Kamloops. (Daily News photo)

While we seldom look past the gas-bar marquees (a litre of regular is priced at $1.23.9 in Kamloops as this is written) to the details of oil-industry machinations and their impact on the global economy, they became a local news story last week.

A few dozen people rallied to protest Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline project that would take tar sands product across northern B.C. to Kitimat and from there by tanker to Asia and the U.S..

The route is a long way from Kamloops, but the environmental importance of it was driven home in a follow-up story about a study headed up by TRU professor Shane Rollans that calculates there’s an 87 per cent chance of a tanker spill in our fragile coastal waterways sometime during the next 50 years, should the pipeline go ahead.

If you were to ask columnist Rafe Mair, his answer would be that the percentage is low — he’s convinced there’s 100 per cent certainty of a spill, and probably within a much shorter timeframe.

Those who oppose pipelines and oil tankers generally take the view that it’s all about greed. If only oil magnates weren’t so greedy, our environment would be safer.

True, but greed is simply the motivator for risk-takers to fulfill our voracious appetite for oil. As Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) indelicately put it in his famous line from the 1987 film Wall Street, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works.”

I’ve been reading a fascinating book by former CIBC World Markets chief economist Jeff Rubin that came out earlier this year. It’s called The End of Growth and suggests our problem isn’t lack of oil, but lack of cheap oil.

The availability of “easy” oil is running out. There’s plenty left in hard-to-get places — such as offshore, the Arctic, and Alberta’s tar sands — but it’s a high-stakes game. Rubin concludes that, in the not-too-distant future, we won’t be able to afford to extract the oil that’s left.

And if we think we can simply replace oil with other forms of energy, forget it — we’re nowhere close to finding those answers.

A couple of nights ago, I got to the part of the book that discusses Enbridge. While the Northern Gateway project has plenty of hurdles left, it received a big boost when U.S. President Barack Obama put off a decision on the Keystone pipeline that would run from the tar sands south to the Gulf of Mexico.

“When supertankers are navigating the narrow inlet into Kitimat,” Rubin writes, “I wonder if the environmental lobby will regret that Keystone didn’t find an acceptable route through the network of highways and byways that already exists from Montana to Texas.”

Rubin’s book outlines a convincing argument linking the price of oil to our boom-and-bust world economic cycles, but he questions the traditional wisdom that a bust will always be followed by a boom.

He goes so far as to suggest that the only sure thing that can save our environment from destruction is for economic growth to end due to soaring oil costs; further, that the end of growth might not be such a bad thing.

“Maybe we all need to slow down and take a moment to breathe,” he says.

That sort of talk is akin to treason in economic-development circles, but it’s a topic for another day.

Being mad as hell isn’t quite enough

Peter Finch as Howard Beale in the movie Network.

“All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’”

— Howard Beale in Network, 1976.

It was a small news item among the several we receive every day in the form of reports from police — a man had nailed a trio of vandals with his pellet gun.

He’d found them graffiti-tagging his garage one Sunday afternoon and took aim with his .177-calibre air gun from a distance of nine metres.

Two of them high-tailed it, a third wasn’t far behind.

No charges were laid against the teens, and none against the marksman, either. The shooter said he was sorry.

It’s unclear why the taggers weren’t charged, since the first rule of laying charges against vandals is that you catch them in the act.

A kid showed up at Royal Inland Hospital soon after the incident sporting a sore lip — pellet wound. His explanation, apparently, was bullet proof — “The youth had allegedly told the medical staff that he was just walking down the street when the pellet struck him,” Staff Sgt. Grant Learned explained during a police briefing.

Happens every day.

The outcome of this incident, while it has its mildly amusing sides, is troubling on two counts.

One is that graffiti vandalism costs businesses and residents many thousands of dollars a year, and taxpayers well over $100,000 annually trying to control it, and it forms one of the thickest files of unsolved cases at police headquarters, yet no attempt was made to prosecute.

The other is that this particular incident of raw street justice seems to have been regarded somewhat cavalierly. If the kid with the sore lip had shown up with a pellet in his eye, would the legal system have viewed it differently?

Sure, some might applaud a homeowner who, in true Howard Beale fashion, decides he isn’t going to take it anymore.

There’s not one among us who doesn’t understand the frustration of Mr. Homeowner upon seeing those three dumb-asses vandalizing his garage. There’s far too much of that going on, and defending one’s castle is instinctive.

But in this country the law frowns on the use of deadly force in protecting our possessions. In Texas, of course, it’s different. There, you can legally kill anyone you think is going to burgle your house or who’s running away.

Here in Kamloops, yelling at a trio of miscreants spray-tagging your garage would likely have the same effect as shooting at them with a pellet gun, and would be much less dangerous.

Pellet guns aren’t toys. They’re commonly advertised for pest control, “plinking” and target shooting. A .177-calibre pellet gun actually has a higher velocity than a .22-calibre rifle, though it packs less power.

It’s good that the homeowner recognizes the problems associated with his gut reaction to having the sanctity of his home violated. And it’s good that no one received life-threatening or life-altering injuries.

But it shouldn’t be treated lightly.

Stuck on the merry-go-round at RIH

There are two interesting footnotes to last week’s conversation around funding for the Royal Inland Hospital master plan.

One is on the public flogging administered to His Worship Peter Milobar for saying parking is a priority at the hospital.

Retribution was swift, to the effect that it’s ridiculous to even discuss parking when there are so many real healthcare issues.

It seems the poor man can say nothing right on the subject of parking. When he wanted to build a parkade in Riverside Park that very few people wanted, it almost cost him his job.

Now, when he talks about parking at the hospital — which everybody in town has been begging be fixed for years — he catches hell for that, too. No wonder he gets cranky.

In my book, Milobar is right when he puts parking in the context of accessibility to healthcare. The best healthcare in the world is of no benefit if you can’t reach it, and you could fill a phone book with the names of those who have had bad experiences trying to park at RIH.

The sorry state of access to the hospital is emphasized by the fact that patients making appointments for medical tests are now advised to arrive at least one hour before they’re scheduled to be at the admitting counter, so that they can get a parking spot.

That’s right — one hour.

The only option is to drive around and around the parkade and grab the first spot that opens up. If all goes well, you’ll find one in about an hour.

But if you have a pickup truck that doesn’t fit under the parkade’s height bar, be prepared to wait even longer for a space to become available in the tiny over-height lot.

I’d like to see an estimate of how much gasoline and diesel is burned in a day by people caught in the RIH parkade merry-go-round.

Anyway, the front-page fracas over Clark’s announcement was a bit of a tempest in a teapot, as she smartly included improvements both to parking and to health services in her promise of $80 million in funding for the first phase of the expansion.

Of course, none of it starts, conveniently, until after next spring’s election. In the meantime, let’s cut the mayor a little slack — he’s determined to get on the right side of a parking issue somewhere.

The second footnote of interest is that you won’t find a City councillor — especially the mayor, who even included RIH in his campaign platform last fall — who doesn’t have an opinion on RIH and who isn’t happy about the announcement.

But the same council has, thus far, steadfastly resisted taking a position on the Ajax mine.

One reason is, purportedly, that all the facts on Ajax aren’t in. Another is that council has no jurisdiction over mining.

Here’s a news flash — all the facts aren’t in yet on RIH either. The master plan is conceptual. And, council has no more jurisdiction over healthcare than it does on mining.

Maybe there’s an internal policy manual somewhere in city hall listing those issues over which council has no jurisdiction that it will express an opinion on, and those it won’t. Posting it on the website would be good.

Todd Stone’s Liberal party roots run deep

Todd Stone and wife Chantelle at his official announcement Tuesday that he’ll seek the Liberal nomination for Kamloops-South Thompson (Kamloops Daily News photo).

If the B.C Liberals want a candidate who can follow in the footsteps of the departing Kevin Krueger, that is, if they want someone as fervently loyal to the party, as staunchly convinced the NDP is a political disaster waiting to plunge the province into economic ruin, they need look no further than Todd Stone.

On the eve of Premier Christy Clark’s trip into town to announce good things for RIH, Stone was announcing he wants to succeed Krueger. Aside from keeping the NDP out of office, he cited RIH as a priority.

As MLA, Stone would be, perhaps, more measured than the famously bombastic Krueger, but they share a similar disdain for the left. He is a true Liberal blueblood, a purebred Campbellite, loyal to the party since his high school days more than 20 years ago.

Once a Campbell aide, later a president of the federal Liberal riding association, and campaign manager for Krueger at the age of 28, he was appointed to the TRU board of governors by Campbell after the Liberals turfed the socialist horde at the polls and purged the board of NDP appointees. He’s also been on the ICBC board and several community groups.

When Campbell left office, Stone hopped on the Christy Clark bandwagon, working the phones to help get her elected as leader.

Oh, and he has a painting of Barack Obama – a gift from wife Chantelle – hanging in his living room.

So it was no surprise that 50 or so Liberal supporters, many of them from the business community, showed up at the offices of Stone’s iCompass Technologies on Tuesday for his announcement that he was making his candidacy for the nomination official.

Stone reassured them he’s a free-enterpriser and that an NDP government would be a bad thing for free enterprise. He also acknowledged that the polls show the Liberals are in a deep hole, but he’s optimistic they can dig themselves out.

This isn’t the first time he’s taken a run at public office. Back in 1999, he was briefly a contender for the Liberal nomination that was eventually won by Claude Richmond.

Richmond, who was then manager at the Kamloops Airport, was a late entry. Until then, Gur Singh was seen as the front-runner, having narrowly lost to the NDP’s Cathy McGregor in the previous election.

Stone and Jim Harker (the latter not yet a City councillor) worked for months to sell Liberal memberships building their own support.

Just how many is a bit murky. A Singh campaigner said her guy had a thousand new members. Stone said he had 400, and that there were 1,400 in total among the three.

Anyway, Stone bowed out, citing the need to keep his attention on his business. He was quoted as saying then that his supporters wouldn’t back either Singh or Richmond – “There’s a huge appetite for someone different, someone fresh. Claude doesn’t represent that and Gur doesn’t represent that.”

Those remarks didn’t go down well with some local Liberals, but time heals. Thirteen years later, having just turned 40, Stone is still “someone fresh” as far as public profile is concerned, but he’s no political freshman.

Should he win the nomination – and there’s no reason to think anyone else will even run against him – Liberals are hoping he has a good shot at holding the riding.

Attack of the mozzies is well underway

I knew we were in trouble when the cat suddenly became airborne – ascending at least 20 metres off the ground – and headed east.

Mozzies.

I was tooling along on the yard tractor Saturday evening when it happened. I heard it first, then glanced up and saw a cloud of the little blood suckers as thick as a Motivo’s espresso (and I kid you not) hovering overhead.

Throttling up the John Deere 304, I booted it for the house, passing the cat on the way.

“We almost put out 33-per-cent more helicopter time . . . and have blown every record for the amount of larvicide put out,” mosquito control contractor Cheryl Phippen said in a Daily News story last Friday.

“Maybe it worked. I’m cautiously optimistic.”

Sorry to mess up your day, Cheryl, but it’s not looking good.

Though I often complain about the North Thompson, it’s a great river in many ways. Mosquito season is not one of them.

This year, as everyone knows, is far worse than usual. The river has crested and fallen not once but several times, and only now is starting to drop, slowly. It will take time for the thousands of prime mosquito-breeding pools to dry up.

Meanwhile, anybody within a mile of the water is raw meat for the mozzies. There are too many of them, and too few of us. They’re so desperate for blood they don’t even bother with sneak attacks; they begin their fiendish zzzzz at the first scent and hone in on any skin cell that isn’t drenched in DEET.

If they can’t find that, they’ll drill through your clothes. I ventured out the other night in a snowsuit and they were undeterred. I felt like King Kong on the Empire State Building fending off the airforce.

Alright, I exaggerate, but Cheryl Phippen’s words played in my mind like a scratchy phonograph record as I haplessly swiped away at the attackers with my ballcap.

“We’re going to hold our breath for another week,” she’d said. Any widespread assault would take place in about 10 days, she’d said.

Tell that to the dog, who, out for his evening constitutional, instead curls himself into a ball and covers his tender nose with his paws in a fruitless attempt to avoid the onslaught.

Tell it to the horses — without benefit of a $60 jug of insect repellant, they’d soon become tired of running in circles trying to escape.

I’m given to understand that stores are doing landmark business in repellant for humans, as well. Merchants carry everything from candles to spray cans to little gizmos that attach to your belt, but none of it can withstand mosquitos as big as condors and as nasty as killer bees.

Provincial funding cutbacks have reduced the Thompson-Nicola Regional District’s mosquito-control program. Only a politician would see logic in cutting a program that was supposed to stop the progress of West Nile disease – at exactly the time West Nile disease is almost on our doorstep.

So, while the mosquito contractors are doing their best by amping up their spot treatment, they lack the guns to get the job done.

Instead of stepping up and filling the funding gap by resetting its own budget priorities, the regional district has shrugged.

Meanwhile, the cat and the dog have been staying inside.