Village Gamer

I don’t often use this site for political rants and comments, but as BC draws closer to the date where those of us who are BC Liberal party members will choose a new leader – and the next Premier of our fine province, the choice has not gotten any easier, at least for me. I say this is a disjointed look at the leadership race because there are many issues which concern me, policies that I stand for and change I want to see in all levels of government. It’s not easy for me to hold one line of thinking, but hopefully my disjointed thoughts will get some of you thinking, and perhaps we can then have a conversation and form even more thoughts, and there are probably lots of areas that I meant to comment on but missed due to seeing something shiny on another web site.

I sent an email to each of the candidates over a week ago – all were copied on the same email so that they had an equal opportunity at the same questions and points I was raising. Not one replied. Someone named Corrie did reply from Kevin Falcon’s team – to say that this was not a “normal election” and as such the candidates were not answering “questionnaires” as they didn’t have the time or resources to do so.

All of the candidates can take the time to send an almost constant flow of emails, they can speak with the main-stream press, and they can have their teams constantly call our house – but they can’t use travel time between rallies to express their thoughts on my points and questions. I even stated they didn’t have to answer all of the questions, just provide some idea of where they stand, and in that they failed, because they do not adequately address all of the issues on their respective web sites. I had the hardest time with Mike de Jong’s web site, as it was very difficult to find and compare his proposed policies with those of the other candidates, whereas the sites for both Christy Clark and George Abbott are nicely done.

The reply from Kevin Falcon’s team and a complete lack of reply from the others implies that the issues aren’t important enough, my one vote is not important enough. I may only have one vote, but I have my own platform from which to speak, and speak I will. The invitation to reply to my email is still open to the four remaining candidates.

I have many areas that I want to cover, and I imagine that this will turn into an expression of all the frustrations I have with several levels of government, not only pertinent to the digital media sector, but to many sectors which all tie-in to the issues we as voters from all walks of life will be taking into consideration not only for the two leadership races underway in BC, but also in the inevitably approaching next provincial election – and possibly even the next federal election. Hopefully politicos are paying attention, because I know I’m not the only one with an opinion on the state of things in this municipality, province and country. I’m quite sure that these issues also apply to those who are NDP supporters, what with the leadership of that party also being decided in the coming months. Maybe I will send my questions to those candidates as well and see what kind of replies I get.

Where do the candidates stand on improving our education system, because quite frankly it’s not the Industrial Revolution age any more – in case you hadn’t noticed. There are currently two high schools that I am immediately aware of in BC who are taking the steps to offer students the opportunity to learn skills that will give them a head start on a post-secondary education for the digital media sector. I want to know where our candidates stand on educating our children for the future instead of for a world that no longer exists.

All of the candidates have pointed out how important family is, and how government needs to put in place the tools and opportunities for families to get ahead. They all raise the issue of affordable daycare. I find this incredibly ironic, because one of the first things the Liberals did when they won back the Legislature from the NDP, was to axe the NDP’s excellent daycare programme, immediately causing daycare to be unaffordable for low income wage earners and single parent families like my own.

While I no longer require the services of a daycare, I did experience first hand trying to talk to the Premier early in his tenure at a fundraiser event for MLA Rich Coleman. He politely nodded and smiled as I expressed my concerns to him about the daycare situation created by his party’s desire to stamp out anything done by the NDP. He made empty promises to have someone from the appropriate ministry contact me to discuss the issue further, as he felt that my arguments at the time had merit – and that time the daycare issue was front and centre for me. No one contacted me, it was an empty promise. There were no improvements forthcoming for the affordability and availability of daycare at that time. For the record, I am not an NDP supporter, but every so often they do come up with some really good programmes, and the daycare subsidy programme was very well done.

You may be wondering why I am bringing up the issue of daycare – unless you are a woman working in the creative industry sector. In making it easier for parents to find employment, daycare is a huge issue.
I did put out the call to a few women who work in various Vancouver area studios, but being a beautiful sunny Sunday morning, I am not expecting speedy replies. I found out via Google that Electronic Arts, one of the biggest creative employers in our area, does support daycare as a matter of corporate policy, but offerings differ by studio and apparently this is one area that is under discussion at the EA Canada campus. On their employment benefits page, this is what Electronic Arts has to say:

“Some designated EA offices offer child daycare onsite. Also varying from location to location, EA supports childcare through other channels as well, such as childcare vouchers and the Back-Up Child Care program (USA). In addition, and likewise depending on location, EA provides financial assistance for adoption. This program provides assistance towards agency placement fees, court costs, and legal fees associated with adoption.”

In searching out information about Canadian tech companies and daycare, I came across an extremely informative site that may be of help to many involved with child care on both sides of the 49th parallel, and is well worth reading through. ChildCare.net is rich with resources for both parents searching out childcare and those who would like to start a childcare facility. A particularly excellent page is the one that lists the many corporate programmes available which assist daycare centres across the continent.

I continued off on my research tangent about family friendly companies – don’t worry, I’ll get back to the Liberal candidate race in a minute or two, and checked who was topping the lists of Family Friendly corporations across the country. On the Top 100 site, Next Level Games made the list in 2008, 2009 and 2010. In an article on Suite101 from last April, Next Level Games, Webnames.ca and the Microsoft Canada Development Centre were named as being among the Top 100 family friendly companies in 2009 by the Progressive Employers of Canada List. I did go to the Progressive site to see what other information was offered, but that site appears to be a link and ad farm now.

So, to tie in the Liberal candidate platform promises, it would be very easy for any of the four candidates to promise improvements to the daycare situation in this province, because right now the available services are expensive and there is a high demand for more spaces. Perhaps this is a part of the reason why younger couples are not starting families – because they would have to give up the income needed to survive in this province as daycare options are very limited. Not an easy choice – afford a home or have a child. Both are expensive choices in this province.

The next issue I would like to look at is education. I have one child who successfully completed high school, and even though it took her until Grade 12 to realize that high school was not a social event, she still got that all-important certificate. My youngest, however, is a different story. He is very talented creatively, but high school was a complete let-down for him. He wanted to study digital arts, but there was no digital arts programme at our high school. The digital lab at that time was very poor – using evaluation copies of software, offering the wrong types of software, and instructors were not well-versed in digital media.

If he had wanted to study a traditional trade like automotive mechanics, metal-working, wood-working or hairdressing, he’d have been fine. He would have also been okay if he was interested in a traditional science field – chemistry or biology. While he does have a strong interest in archaeology and history, he wanted to tie those in with digital media, and couldn’t. He ended his high school education at the Grade 10 level, giving up in frustration because being shut into a box all day listening to teachers talk was not conducive to his learning style. Yes, I know – many of you would’ve said “suck it up buttercup” but I too struggled through school, and the only classes I truly enjoyed when I was in high school were history, law and English – probably because I have an addiction to researching things and I am a voracious reader. But again, I digress.

As the Cavechild did not graduate, getting into a post-secondary environment is at best difficult. He does not qualify for scholarships, and we certainly can’t afford the thousands of dollars it would cost to put him through a full digital media programme, whether it’s one at the University of the Fraser Valley, BCIT or Vancouver Film School. In fact, we really can’t afford any programme at any post-secondary institution, no matter the content. On top of the course expense, he’d have to remain living at home, because he doesn’t have a job, nor does he have a vehicle, and the transit service in our town is less than poor, even though we get to pay all of those transit levies imposed on us by Translink and Government. This is also a barrier to him being able to obtain employment, unless he wants to work at one of the fast food outlets within walking distance of our house.

The bus line does not service Gloucester Industrial Park, which is the biggest area of employment in our fine town. In fact, it barely offers a service in town at all. High school students can’t even make use of transit to get to the school because there is one route into town and a different route out, there is no two-way line until you get west of town, where the bus comes into and exits Aldergrove at the junction of Highways 13 and 1A. Oh, and it’s too far to walk to Gloucester, especially along poorly light rural roads with no sidewalks. I guess we could buy him a bike, I’m sure he would enjoy the 5+ mile ride in our fine west coast weather, providing he doesn’t get run off the road by irresponsible drivers.

So really, I’ve raised three issues in the previous few paragraphs – education, employment and transportation. Kevin Falcon has stated his position on education. He recognizes that our schools must move forward to prepare children for the changing employment landscape, and while he does address the issues of special needs education, additional options for learning foreign languages as well as mention our digital world, he does not speak to improving things like access to learning materials or taking advantage of the innovation available to the education system through the use of current and future technologies.
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