Elections Canada mailing mix up leaves Oliver without voter cards

Voting is supposed to be simple but that hasn’t seemed the case for many Oliver residents who have received reminder cards from Elections Canada but not their voter information cards. One such person, who asked to remain anonymous, said that after phoning the Elections Canada number on the reminder notice and after many attempts at various times of the day still not being able to access a live person, she finally called the Town of Oliver and was given a local number to call.

The local call gave her the answers she was so desperately seeking.

"It was extremely frustrating. We tried calling that toll free number on different days at different times and never could access someone to talk to about the fact that we hadn’t received our voting cards. They had no trouble finding me for last year’s federal election, but not this time."

She said the call to the Elections Canada sub-office, which is located in the basement of the government building where the health offices used to be (just west of the post office), gave her the answers she needed.

"Apparently Elections Canada blended the street and mailing addresses which left Canada Post in a quandary – they couldn’t be delivered in Oliver without extra sorting," she explained

Elections Canada field liaison officer Bruce Forward said via his cell phone just outside of Abbotsford late Monday afternoon, January 9, that what the lady had said was fairly accurate regarding the mailing mix up but he didn’t agree with the phone number being a problem.

"The phone line service is monitored and checked in half-hour increments – a computer generated report is sent to me daily from Ottawa and it lets me know if more than 30 per cent of the calls are missed. I haven’t seen anything where three calls of 15 have been lost – I believe that we are doing OK on that count."

But when it comes to the mail out he explains, "When Osoyoos changed its mailing addresses to all residential addresses from the rural system of site and comp numbers these two addresses were blended for Oliver as well. Canada Post set them aside to be handled separately and they should be arriving for Oliver residents within the next two days."

Forward, who is one of three field liaison officers for BC, said that what probably alarmed voters here was getting the reminder cards when they hadn’t yet received the voter cards. But he assures voters that they are on the way, "the cards are [at the post office] they just have to be sorted and delivered."

The woman who first called the Chronicle summed it up from her perspective, "they talk about wanting us to vote but this sort of thing doesn’t help – they’re not thinking," she said regarding the address mix-up, "they aren’t using their heads."

Seminar for seniors offers vital info about care homes

Pastor Henry Wiebe has his finger on the pulse of the senior community. As the volunteer pastor for seniors at the Oliver Alliance Church he is aware of the problems that are uniquely theirs and often takes proactive measures to help them avoid future difficulties.

One of the ways he accomplishes this is through information seminars, sponsored by the Prime Time Fellowship of the Alliance Church, that are open to the public as well as church members. Pastor Wiebe has arranged for talks on safety for seniors, writing wills, pensions and elder abuse and most recently he contacted Interior Health to provide a talk entitled ‘Transitioning into a Nursing Home.’

Charis Sweet-Stevens, Registered Nurse and long-term care assessor with Interior Health will be speaking at the Oliver Alliance Church on Tuesday, January 17 at 10:15 a.m. She also has her finger on the pulse of the senior community but in a specific way. She has a deep understanding of what caregivers, family members and clients go through when independent living is no longer a safe alternative and moving into a nursing home becomes a necessity.

Sweet-Stevens speaks from her bright office in the new health centre located at the south end of South Okanagan General Hospital. She is excited to give this presentation, one that she believes is important to everyone involved.

"Oliver has a high senior population and the issue of long term care needs to be understood. A lot of the old rules have changed when it comes to getting into a facility. It used to be that an individual or couple would be able to book a spot in a place like Sunnybank. They would get to the stage where it was too much to care for their home and yard and they could put their names on the waiting list and get rooms there."

But this no longer applies. Now you have to qualify and that is where assessors like Sweet-Stephens come in. "Our objective is to allow the individual to stay in their own home or with family as long as possible and we access as many resources as we can to do this." Services such as home support, social workers, nutritional monitoring, caregiver stress groups and in home respite for caregivers are available.

"We also can make referrals for a physio therapist to come into the home; arrange for wheel chairs, safety items such as rails in the bath, physical assistance with bathing and dressing and when it is not safe to bathe at home we provide access to community facilities."

While all this assistance is available, Sweet-Stevens says they first try to enlist as many family members, neighbours and friends as possible, but this isn’t as simple as it once was - extended families are dwindling and most couples work outside the home.

Regardless of resources, she says there is a point when a person is no longer safe at home and a care facility must be considered.

"People need to be educated and get to us early enough before it has become a crisis situation. We can get them in place [through assessment] and this allows us to prepare the family and the client for the possibility of living in a care home."

Anyone who has concerns about a frail senior can call on the long term care office. "This could be the person themselves – you can self-refer – or family, neighbours, even people who deliver meals on wheels have called," Sweet-Stevens says. The key is to be proactive, something her seminar will discuss, "a person should have a plan for the future."

Her office is always available to help with broaching the subject. "We can get a community social worker to help and we go out a lot to talk with families – it can be very frightening for some people and we want to make the transition as safe and enjoyable as possible. They are not being ‘put away.’"

Sweet-Stevens adds that talking to your spouse, kids, mom or dad, "finding out how they feel and what they want for themselves" helps everyone to prepare. "That’s what this talk is about. Information is power and we want our seniors to be empowered – we want them to be in control of their destination."

Growers voting on the continuance of SIR program

For 2006 growers have been handed another straw. They are being asked to pay $122 per acre to help fund the ongoing Sterile Insect Release (SIR) program, up from $101 per acre last year. As straws go, the $21 parcel tax increase is a big one because of its bad timing, and it might be just enough to break the camel’s back, where SIR is concerned.

As a result of the increase and the increasing round of grumblings it has engendered among apple orchardists hurting financially after two poor market years, the BC Fruit Growers Association (BCFGA) has mailed out ballots to its members, asking them to vote on the continuation of the program used to combat codling moth in Okanagan orchards.

The moth is the region’s biggest pest in apples and pears, and SIR has greatly reduced its costly incidence in the South Okanagan, by releasing sterile codling moths into orchards to mate with its wild counterparts, thereby disrupting the insect’s propagation cycle and reducing the need for repeated toxic pesticide applications each year.

The environmentally-friendly program is funded provincially through the Ministry of Agriculture and federally by the Investment Agriculture Foundation, as well as through municipal and rural tax rolls in the five regional districts in the SIR service area.

The vote is a gamble but BCFGA president, Joe Sardinha, said the move was something the association’s executive considered imperative for a number of reasons. One, the increase flies in the face of a resolution approved at the BCFGA’s annual convention last January: Resolution #23 called for a cap at the current rate of the parcel tax for the program. Furthermore, Resolution #22, which called for the regional districts to maintain the municipal ad valorum rate at the current level, has not been honoured either by the SIR Board. The regional districts’ funding portion has been decreased and the resulting shortfall has been added to the parcel tax.

Said Sardinha about the situation growers are facing, "They are coming off a tough, tough year where all kinds of things have conspired against them. They didn’t receive any income throughout the year for their 2004 crop and yet they had to deal with all the expenses of growing the 2005 crop."

As well, the continuing inadequacies of the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization (CAIS) program being managed from Winnipeg are leaving many growers waiting for months at a time before their requests for income assistance even reach the processing stage.

And he could not fault growers for complaining that municipalities are part of the problem—untreated backyard trees often harbour codling moth that subsequently infect clean orchard blocks—and therefore they should bear the costs proportionately.

So ballots have gone out to the 1,040 association members with a simple question: Based on your own experience and having reviewed the [enclosed] SIR bulletin, are you in favour of the continuation of the SIR program, yes or no.

The ballots will be counted in time for the BCFGA’s annual convention at the end of this month and the results will be binding on the executive. A ‘no’ vote of 50+1 would mean going back to the SIR Board and advising its five regional district directors that the growers have turned down the continuation of the program.

That possibility worries Area C director, Allan Patton, himself an orchardist and a long-time proponent of the program.

"It is democracy in its ultimate form, but referendums are a scary beast. We might lose the SIR program if the vote doesn’t go our way and that would be a real tragedy. I’m afraid growers might vote against it, not because they don’t approve of it but because they can’t afford the parcel tax increase."

As the newly-elected director of Area C and one of the newest members of the SIR Board, Patton is coming to the issue at the board level late in the game, but if the vote turns negative he would push for a reduction in the parcel tax and urge the BCFGA to hold another vote if he succeeded.

Colin Day, vice-chair of the previous SIR Board, made it clear the current board is in a transitional stage and has yet to meet, but said he would be willing to revisit the taxation issue if necessary.

Acknowledging the program has had its share of detractors over its extended lifespan—from growers who decried its cost and municipalities that railed against paying for something they perceived benefited orchardists exclusively—Day said the discontent is understandable. Initially outlined as a five-year-plan in 1992, joint government funding is slated to end in two years and the program must be sustainable in 2008 and beyond.

"The program has gone on a lot longer than originally anticipated, largely because it is leading edge technology and when you are on the leading edge you are on the bleeding edge, because things don’t always turn out the way you planned it.

"There are so many people involved—provincial and federal governments as well as all the technical people—that trying to keep everyone on the same page at the same time and keep them informed on what is happening is a challenge."

As for grower discontent, Day offered, "If there is any way that we can even re-look at the numbers ($122 per acre versus $101) to try and help them out through these times of real low income, we are certainly open to that, but that would have to be a whole-board decision.

"I fully intend to approach the subject and see where it goes to try and take a bit of the pressure off the growers."

SIR’s total operating budget for 2006 is $4.2 million, with governments kicking in $1.3 million, both this year and next. The regional districts’ portion is valued at $1.54 million and the parcel tax charged to growers will see $1.37 million added to its coffers.

The Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen’s (RDOS) portion for 2006 breaks down to $292,000 for the land tax that is charged to all landowners within the SIR service area, and $634,000 for the parcel tax.

Those numbers may change slightly when the assessments are in, said Cara McCurrach, general manager of the SIR program. Those figures came from a financial plan submitted to Investment Agriculture and were based on the 2005 tax roll.

What a silly mess. Oliver voters all received an unaddressed reminder from Elections Canada telling them to contact this government body if the voter hadn’t received a voter’s card. No one in Oliver had received the voter’s card because of confusion over the form of the address on the card.

What we find hard to understand is why the post office, knowing they had a problem delivering the original voter’s card would have allowed the follow-up mailing to go forward. The writer of this editorial was one of the many Oliverites who called Elections Canada and spent far too much time on the phone being transferred or referred to other phone numbers to verify his place on the election roles.

It isn’t a major foul up and most of us will have our cards by the time the election rolls around. What it does is remind us that government services are more rule-oriented than service-oriented. The rules were no doubt followed but no meaningful or helpful service was provided. Instead, we have the opposite with a number of Oliverites inconvenienced and unnecessarily made to feel concern.