Health -- Issue No. 31 -- Tuesday, May 25, 2004 a.m.

2004 Legislative Session: 5th Session, 37th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH
MINUTES AND HANSARD

Present: Val Roddick, MLA (Chair); Val Anderson, MLA; Jeff Bray, MLA; Gordon Hogg, MLA; Blair Lekstrom, MLA; Harold Long, MLA; John Nuraney, MLA

On Conference Call: Blair Suffredine, MLA (Deputy Chair); Walt Cobb, MLA; Randy Hawes, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Elayne Brenzinger, MLA; Joy MacPhail, MLA; Ted Nebbeling, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 10:07 a.m.

2. Resolved, that the Committee meet in-camera to interview the candidate for the position of Consultant to the Committee. (Jeff Bray, MLA)

3. The Committee met in-camera from 10:12 a.m. to 11:48 a.m.

4. Resolved, that the Committee offer Anne Mullens the position of Consultant to the Committee. (Jeff Bray, MLA)

5. It was agreed that the Chair and Deputy Chair would work with the Office of the Clerk of Committees to prepare and finalize a contract for the position.

6. The Committee recessed from 11:59 a.m. to 12:44 p.m.

7. The Committee discussed its preliminary work plan and timelines.

8. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 1:31 p.m.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
HEALTH



CONTENTS

		Page

Committee Vision, Mission and Goals		925

Committee Meeting Schedule		927

Committee Vision, Mission and Goals		929

Chair:	* Val Roddick (Delta South L)
Deputy Chair:	* Blair Suffredine (Nelson-Creston L)
Members:	* Val Anderson (Vancouver-Langara L) * Jeff Bray (Victoria–Beacon Hill L) * Walt Cobb (Cariboo South L) * Randy Hawes (Maple Ridge–Mission L) * Gordon Hogg (Surrey–White Rock L) * Blair Lekstrom (Peace River South L) * Harold Long (Powell River–Sunshine Coast L) Ted Nebbeling (West Vancouver–Garibaldi L) * John Nuraney (Burnaby-Willingdon L) Joy MacPhail (Vancouver-Hastings NDP) Elayne Brenzinger (Surrey-Whalley Ind L) * denotes member present

We need to go over the agenda, if I can find it — review the meeting agenda. Our candidate is in the precinct, as they say. When we're ready, she will come before us.

I think you all should have, hopefully, the package of the résumé, some sample questions. That doesn't mean that you can't have original thoughts of your own. Please go for it.

Then there are the vision, mission and goals, which we will address later, plus the 2010 LegaciesNow society final report, July 2003. Have any of you…? Yes, you do. Good. The Cost of Physical Inactivity in British Columbia is positively terrifying. If you don't have it, I will make sure that you do have a copy of it.

W. Cobb: One thing that wasn't in that list of stuff was the mission statement. I thought we had made a bunch of changes, so I didn't bring mine home with me here.

V. Roddick (Chair): Okay, what's your fax? Can you operate a separate fax right now?

W. Cobb: Yeah, that was me. I didn't find it in the e-mail. I find The Cost of Physical Inactivity and the LegaciesNow and….

W. Cobb: Do you think I got an e-mail with it all in it? Just let me check again, and I'll make sure.

W. Cobb: Okay. I've got it here on my computer, anyway, so you don't need to bother faxing it.

V. Roddick (Chair): Walt, Blair and Randy, Hansard really needs you to say your name clearly — and I'll try and repeat it — every time you speak, because it doesn't connect. So if you could do that, please.

All right. Now that we've got that solved, are there any questions on the material that was included? Can we go forward with the interview? We would like to move to go in camera for that.

V. Roddick (Chair): Okay. We're on air, and we're being recorded. We have unanimously accepted Anne Mullens as our consultant. It has been discussed that myself, as Chair, and Blair Suffredine, as vice-Chair, will work to put together a contract for Anne Mullens with the committee.

J. Bray: Madam Chair, I see that the next item is item 4, which is a review of the revised committee vision, mission and goals. I'm just wondering whether or not…. Although we kind of had a theme that we came to last time, we're still all over the map. I think what would be most useful for this committee would be to actually have a specific workplan that we are deciding on rather than…. We've got lots of minutes of all of our input as to what we think about our terms of reference, but we could spend three hours and be no closer to where we're going to go.

I would suggest that our consultant put together a preliminary workplan based on those minutes with the areas of focus she thinks we have been articulating — and that that's the document as opposed…. I mean, the visions and stuff are wonderful, but what are we actually going to talk about? Are we going to

talk about kids or seniors? I propose that we have Anne put together a draft workplan and that the committee convene at that time to review that workplan and decide whether that's the direction we want to go.

V. Roddick (Chair): Yes — as discussed, we can certainly do that, and we'll do that.

J. Nuraney: I think she wanted some guidance from the committee as to what kind of a workplan it should look like. In my mind, I think I now have three clear points that we can perhaps tell her — that this is the framework we would like.

The first one is the excellence of personal goals as tied to the 2010 Olympics. The second is social capital as reflecting health economics. I think the point that Gordon made is very valid. It's a very important dialogue to have. Social capital does definitely have an impact on people's lifestyles and health outcomes.

The third, in my mind, that I would also like to incorporate is this holistic approach to changing lifestyles and health care, where alternate medicine, as against the conventional medicine, should also be looked at and fostered — that the government have an open mind in regards to alternatives that are available.

J. Nuraney: These are the three critical points that have come through, in my mind, as our direction — unless there is something else.

B. Lekstrom: Going back to our terms of reference as given to us by the Legislative Assembly, I don't think we want to lose sight of that as a committee either. One is to report on the recommendations from the Select Standing Committee on Health reports of '01 and '02.

We have to look at "other successful health promotion campaigns in other jurisdictions." This lays it out pretty well. We're now talking about how we're going to try and achieve this — that's my understanding of what we're talking about here — through the social fabric of our province and so on. I think that goes without saying. It can promote a healthier lifestyle.

There's also the issue of incentives and disincentives, which I think are going to be key to this report if we're going to look at that, as we've been asked to by the Legislative Assembly. The other, which I think is going to be very hard to quantify, is potential financial savings for the health care system. I don't want to lose track of those key issues under….

V. Roddick (Chair): I think that fellow Anne mentioned, from McMaster University and Western university…. Actually, I don't know that she mentioned a fellow. It was a preventive dividend program that someone was working on from McMaster U and Western which was trying to quantify…. We can take that into consideration.

G. Hogg: We're talking about asking Anne to develop a workplan at this stage based on the meanderings of our three meetings. I think it would be skill-testing and challenging, at best, to develop a workplan based on that. I would probably propose that we actually do a bit of a workshop around what we want to do and have her there and then develop some workplans out of that. If we're going to ask her to do a workplan, maybe we have to look at it on a continuum and say: "Do a workplan around the vision that we have there, and then do a workplan at the other end of the continuum, which may be around some of the social capital stuff, and put those together." I'm not sure how helpful that is. If we were in a workshop right now or trying to vision it a little more….

V. Roddick (Chair): Well, we have time. I mean, I know everybody is antsy, but we have till 3 o'clock this afternoon, actually.

G. Hogg: One of the things that I think I would say is: if we follow the traditional method of bringing these experts before us to say things and then write a report, then we will have done what every other Health Committee has done. Maybe that's what we want to do. I don't think we are in a position to be any more influential than…. We're far less influential than Perry Kendall is, and Perry does that. Every university that does research out there does all of those things. I don't find it particularly useful for us to try and replicate what they're doing.

I think we have some unique abilities and skills as a select standing committee that let us look at some other things. One of them might even be the notion of social capital. We use a pilot project in an aboriginal community and say that we want to run a pilot project there to show this province what you can do with social capital. Or you do it with the James Bay Community Centre, which has a whole bunch of unique things about the way that it does…. You build on that so that you can actually say: "Here's a model that is being applied and looked at that is utilizing those." That's sort of a tangible thing you can do.

I don't think I have a big interest in sitting and interviewing a whole bunch of experts who've done a whole bunch of things out there that we're not going to be able to have any particular perspective on, other than those that have already been provided. I think there are some creative things we can do outside of that that we are uniquely positioned to do. I don't think responding to expertise is one of the things that we have the knowledge and ability to do.

V. Roddick (Chair): I can certainly talk to Anne. Blair and I can both talk to Anne on that specific issue and see how she feels. I think she got the right feeling

from how you were speaking — that we didn't want to just talk to report-writers. We wanted to talk to people in the community who were knowledgable about certain issues that we could draw from.

The first report, actually, as she said, about thoracic is really interesting. That was definitely acted on. In fact, 70 percent of what was recommended in that report was acted on and utilized. I think that if we work cohesively — I understand what you're saying, that we're all over the map, but I think we can become cohesive here — we can produce the same type of report as that first one — i.e., people read it and people acted on it. The second report was really a report card. What we want to do is tie in from the first to the third.

V. Anderson: I would like to recommend we break and come back. We've been here for two hours. We've heard a lot of stuff, and we need time to adjust and come back and work after we've broken for a few minutes.

J. Nuraney: Before we break, is it possible to get her back again in the afternoon so that she can take part with us in these discussions? Then she can go away and make the workplan.

V. Roddick (Chair): We can certainly provide her with all the…. She takes all the Hansards.

J. Nuraney: It is critical for her to take part in the discussions so that she can get a feel of what the committee is thinking about.

V. Roddick (Chair): She actually does. She's very good at getting a feel from reading Hansard. She did that in the other two. She's excellent, actually, at that.

V. Anderson: I think we need to set a time for the people who are on the phone.

V. Roddick (Chair): Okay. It is 12 o'clock. We'll come back — why don't we do it for half an hour? — at 12:30. Is that all right with you, Walt and Blair?

W. Cobb: Yeah, I'll just redial when I get back in. It might be a little bit more than half an hour. It depends how fast the restaurant is around here.

B. Suffredine (Deputy Chair): This is Blair Suffredine. I may not be back, because I've got some conflicting things going on this afternoon. But thank you.

V. Roddick (Chair): Okay. Well, try if you can, Blair. We actually were booked in till 3 o'clock.

B. Suffredine (Deputy Chair): I know. I've got a minister visiting in the riding, though, and that may create a little bit of conflict in the schedule.

V. Roddick (Chair): We're into the afternoon session, which, hopefully, we can get through here. We've got a draft business plan and a consultant workplan draft. We thought that if we could cinch things in a bit this afternoon and come up with some good, succinct issues to work with the consultant on, I can relay those to her myself with Blair and via Hansard. Then we can proceed.

There are time lines. While they're still trying to hook up here with the technicalities and we're awaiting the phone hookup, could we start with the committee time lines? That's the Select Standing Committee on Health draft business plan, page 2. Does this look reasonable to the committee members? As you can see, we've got three meetings — two in June and one in July.

Now, the one thing about June 9 is that it is a Wednesday, and I understand that's difficult for people travelling. You would prefer that it's either a Monday….

V. Roddick (Chair): I know it's difficult, but I think we'll have to try and…. You can't come, Blair?

V. Roddick (Chair): If you could see at the bottom of page 2…. Those are the three days — the 9th, the 22nd and the 7th. How does that fit with…?

V. Roddick (Chair): We could e-mail it out, then, and see whether it's the 8th or the 9th where we can get a better response.

V. Roddick (Chair): I think we should do that, because I think we might need…. How does the committee feel re these three days — trying to get background work done so that when we start in earnest in September with the consultant, we've got some real focus and some information under our belt?

G. Hogg: On the 9th we would have the consultant and talk about what our issues are, where we're going….

V. Roddick (Chair): No, we wouldn't have her…. Well, we could, if she gets the information to us. We could have her here for an hour.

G. Hogg: Even if she just sat and listened to us talk and participated, it would help her develop a workplan out of that.

V. Roddick (Chair): Okay, the 8th or the 9th. We'll have to canvass and see how many people we can get.

V. Anderson: If she can bring some of her references as probable expert witnesses to that meeting, we can go through them.

H. Long: We should hold the meeting right up at our retreat right after our thing. We're all out at the retreat. We might as well hold the meeting there.

H. Long: It's a few days: the 16th, 17th and 18th. Surely to God, we could work something in at that time. We're all going to be there.

V. Anderson: The caucus starts on the night of the 16th. We check in. There's no meeting, I don't think, is there, at night? Don't we just check in that night?

V. Roddick (Chair): Yeah, If we could get Blair — and he will be there — to do that…. Everyone else will be there except me, and that's not an issue.

V. Roddick (Chair): Yeah. I mean, Anne wouldn't be there, obviously, but….

V. Roddick (Chair): Oh, we can't do that, because other people aren't…. And we don't have Hansard.

H. Long: I mean, I'm not talking about holding it within our own caucus. I'm talking about after, and she could very easily come to that location.

V. Roddick (Chair): Then you have to get Hansard and all that sort of stuff. It's not….

V. Roddick (Chair): We'll do it the 22nd. What we'll do is e-mail out to everybody to see the most who can participate on the 9th, the 22nd and July 7. We will have Anne put in an hour at each meeting so that if we have questions, obviously, from what she was talking about…. She could do that. She said she would be available for that.

I feel that we should, after those three meetings, be able to be front and centre, ready to go on September 15 for a full onslaught of…. By then we will have decided who we want to see, hear, interview, go — whatever.

G. Hogg: For the meeting on the 9th, if we could have Anne for more than hour…. If our meeting is for two hours, we could have Anne and go through all the things we want to talk about, try and focus it down and then have her come back to the following meeting with a workplan based on that. For me, that would make more sense than her just being there for an hour and then going away. I'm not sure what we are going to say that she couldn't be or shouldn't be a part of. If she's going to take our discussion to try and develop a workplan out of it for us, then I think it would be helpful if we meet for whatever it takes — maybe two hours. Hopefully, we can do it in two hours.

We can come prepared to look at and focus on those issues. She can take the information away, based on the minutes of the past three meetings; it would be at that point. She can help contribute to the conversation and then come back with a workplan for us on the meeting of June 22. Hopefully we can approve that workplan or ask for the changes to it. On July 7 we can see the final draft, approve the final draft of the workplan and start setting up who we're going to meet with in order to address that workplan, and then move into it in September.

V. Roddick (Chair): No. Blair, what we're discussing right now are the meetings on June 9 and 22 and July 7. You might have it in your papers. It's the draft business plan, May 2004. It's the preliminary meeting schedule.

B. Suffredine (Deputy Chair): I'm sorry; you said June 9 and 22 and which other date?

B. Suffredine (Deputy Chair): All of those work for me, with a note on the 9th. It's probably a local commitment, so the 9th is the only day that is a bit of a problem.

V. Roddick (Chair): Okay. Well, we'll be e-mailing these out, and we'll just see.

B. Suffredine (Deputy Chair): June 8 — yes, I can. In fact, I'm in Victoria on the 9th, in any event, so it's not a problem.

K. Ryan-Lloyd: Blair, we are looking at two draft documents: the draft consultant workplan and a draft business plan. If you are in your constituency office, we can have those faxed to you now.

V. Roddick (Chair): Val Anderson had requested that we have an ability to use an electronic flip chart to go through some of the issues and try to narrow down our vision, goals and mission.

Earlier John Nuraney had listed: (1) personal excellence with the 2010 link; (2) social capital or health economics, the social fabric of the province; and (3) holistic or wellness approach. Is that the right way…? Have I captured what….?

V. Roddick (Chair): I thought that we could start with that and see whether or not we have any comments on it and whether it did encapsulate how we could get…. As Gordie said earlier today, we were all over the map. We need to try and focus in.

V. Anderson: I was going to comment particularly on two things that came up here. First, health is related between community and individual. The link's there at some point.

The other one, on the holistic approach, is that I think we really need to deal with the multicultural orientations for health. In my community it's 50 percent non-western at this point. You've got a whole health system operating and being used that they brought with them, which is good. Then somewhere along the line, the community is asking about where chiropractors and physiotherapists and all of these fit in. They're part of "western medicine," but they're not part of those which are supported in our health system.

I think if we're going to holistic, we have to bring both of those dimensions in, because there's a whole different approach in western and non-western health approaches.

V. Roddick (Chair): I mean, I don't know how other members feel, but that's sort of getting into treatment now. I thought this was….

V. Anderson: Multiculture is not treatment; it's just a different lifestyle of being healthy. It's a different lifestyle.

V. Anderson: Yeah. I'm not thinking of treatment. I'm thinking of a lifestyle of being healthy. It's philosophical input, which is quite unique, important and different.

G. Hogg: Back in the days when I used to work for a consulting firm, we used to do full two- and three-day workshops on how to evolve your mission statement and develop the workplan out of all those things. While we didn't ask Anne about her skills as a facilitator in terms of that, perhaps we could ask her to review the discussions we've had to date and come to the next meeting prepared to lead us or facilitate us — moving through those and looking at what a tangible workplan might be, what an appropriate vision would be, further articulating the work we have already done and helping us develop the values, principles and beliefs we have and the workplan which flows out of those.

I think we can have lots of discussion here and throw out lots of ideas around that, but until we start narrowing it down through a structured process, we'll have difficulty doing that. I think the best way to do that is through sort of a mini-workshop format or structure. If Anne is willing to look at it and do that and provide some of those skills, I think that's appropriate. Then we can have all the ideas we've talked about and start narrowing them down. I don't think we're going to develop a process here, as we each talk about those, to start finding enough commonalities to do it without a bit of a process and structure to enable us to move to some conclusions.

V. Roddick (Chair): Would you like to — what do they call it? A motion — that's it.

V. Anderson: I would agree with that. If, by chance, it may not be her particular skill to do that, then I would recommend we find someone else to come in and do it but still have her here to share that discussion. There are good community workshop leaders around. Having someone come in will save us time and energy in the long run.

J. Nuraney: An excellent idea. Another thing that could happen through that exercise is that Anne would know what has already been covered in the past that we would not want to replicate. That would be a good thing to have.

Is it the committee's wish that the Clerk and myself connect with Anne and organize that for the 9th or 8th of June?

J. Nuraney: At the same time, to formulate some of these ideas we've been talking about so that the members have in front of them what they've already discussed, and if they then want to focus further on some of the issues….

G. Hogg: I think our responsibility in coming to that next meeting will be for each of us to have thought about what the end product is that we want to have. What is it that we think will have the greatest and most positive impact on the people of British Columbia?

V. Roddick (Chair): We're getting to the stage now where we have to make a decision here and formulate.

G. Hogg: If we can focus on what that end product is and then work our way back to here, then we can look at the process that will lead us to that product. We obviously have to start focusing on what the target population is going to be and whether or not the role of excellence in terms of the discussion of the Spirit of 2010 fits into that — whether it's organizations or individuals. There are a number of principles. Then she will have to lead us, through our facilitator, around what the principles are that we want to reinforce in that time and what the outcomes are that we want to get to. Then she can develop a workplan out of that.

If we do that actively for a couple of hours, and she comes back with a proposed workplan at our following meeting — on the 22nd, is it? — then on July 7 we can

V. Roddick (Chair): I would like, if it's possible, to have made a decision on the 7th if there are certain people that we want to have…

V. Roddick (Chair): …so that when we reconvene in September, those people are all lined up. Everybody has got schedules booked years in advance, so we're going to need to make sure we've got enough lead time for these people.

G. Hogg: While we're asking her to do this workshop model — or whoever is going to do it — one of the things that interests me is, again, the notion that information doesn't mean change. I was aware that we've talked about the publicity or the research that was done on adolescent drinking and driving, and how they tried to reduce that. What actually worked in that was despite the fact, as I said, that eight out of ten adolescents knew people who had died or been injured in drinking-driving accidents, they couldn't relate it to themselves.

You probably remember the commercial on TV where they used to have a fast car with a drunk driving, and it fades to black. That had no impact on adolescents. They went back to them and said: "What would be really bad?" The first kid said: "It would be really bad if, like, I was drinking on a date, and I threw up on my girlfriend. That would be really bad." That's something they could relate to, but they didn't think they could make a commercial out of that.

The commercial they made was a Chevy up against a telephone pole, steam coming out of the hood, red lights flashing in the background and a father getting out of a taxi in his pyjamas, going up to it. That played forever. You've probably all seen that commercial. That had the highest impact of any commercial they made in terms of being able to impact and affect youth.

The issue is how to relate, how to use focus groups around youth. Whoever the group is we're trying to impact, how do you develop a focus group and test that around them so that it has the issues? What they found was that instead of using experts to get that information, what they started to use were experts in communications. They used experts in terms of commercials. Instead of having the doctors saying, "Here's what you should be doing," they went to the people who were in public relations and commercials and said: "How can we get a commercial that makes sense with this?"

G. Hogg: That's the notion of how you move from information, which doesn't mean change, to being able to have it a visceral response so that it actually has an impact on change.

V. Roddick (Chair): I know the Delta police have done that. They actually took a young lad who was paralyzed from the waist down and how that would affect him as a man. It hit home to every single guy in one heck of a hurry — every single young man. That's the same idea as what you're talking about, and that really is the case.

V. Anderson: Following up on that, I think that at any age peer communication is much more effective than expert communication, whether it's seniors or young people or anybody else. It's in a common language and relates to where they live in the community. I think it's important that we try to write our report in that language.

V. Roddick (Chair): That's right, and that's exactly what the first report that was done was geared to — for everybody to read it and genuinely understand it.

V. Anderson: The other part of that, which I think we've mentioned a number of times, is recognizing that health has physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions and that we need somehow to be inclusive of all those dimensions in what we do.

You said it's got to be readable and understandable, so what we'll do is use Anne's expertise and our own ideas as much as humanly possible to try and really focus in so that we've got something that makes sense out there. I mean, you can see how easy it is just to go off into the ether. That's what we've been doing here. It's all interesting, but you know, we've got to really produce something here.

V. Anderson: A point on that is if you go to your doctor, it's the emotional connection you have with your doctor, not his expertise. You can go to somebody who has the same expertise, but if you don't relate to them, you're ignored. Or if you're a hockey coach, if you've got to coach….

G. Hogg: Does our report have to be a written report, or can we produce a video as our report?

G. Hogg: Or a DVD you could send to schools that's going to attract — depending upon what our focus is.

V. Roddick (Chair): Perhaps. Actually, that's something that we could discuss with Anne. We are under the confines of the select standing committee legislative report, so we do actually physically have to have one of these little jewels that we produce and hand in.

V. Roddick (Chair): We could think about that and discuss that. That might be the new innovation.

G. Hogg: You could just hand a DVD in. There's the submission. We can be the first to move into the new era.

V. Roddick (Chair): Yeah, it's interesting. Somebody gave me a children's book the other day, and that's exactly what is in there. I mean, there's the children's book, and then there's the DVD deal, or whatever it is — right?

G. Hogg: Ten years from now there won't be written ones. It'll all be DVD, and if we could do a DVD….

V. Roddick (Chair): We might be able to break ground here. We'll have to ask the experts, but that might be a really good idea on how we use these communications and get it out there.

V. Roddick (Chair): Really good idea. If we sit around here and chew the fat long enough, we do come up with good ideas.

It's quarter after one now, and we are booked in here till three. I don't want to hurry anybody, but if you have anything….

V. Roddick (Chair): Well, now we've decided that…. Sorry. My understanding was that we've acknowledged that we should get Anne in here to facilitate for sort of a workplan mini-workshop structure and that we'd go through it then. I've encapsulated that correctly?

B. Suffredine (Deputy Chair): I've actually been having you on mute here. Were you were talking to the other Blair?

B. Suffredine (Deputy Chair): Sorry. As I said, I've got you on mute so I don't cough or something and make noise at the meeting.

V. Roddick (Chair): That's all right. You're allowed to cough. The rest of us do.

V. Anderson: The other thing I think Blair brought up this morning is the actual wording of the charge we were given. It's done in a very formal kind of thing. Our vision tried to pick those up, and yet it's not too easy sometimes to see the connection between A and B. Maybe we need to review the vision and the ideas we're developing against the mandate.

V. Roddick (Chair): Actually, the Clerk and I were discussing that. The thing — "promote 'healthy lifestyles'" — is totally broad. I mean, everything we've discussed here can be brought in under that. Then once we have done all that, to consider the potential financial savings, and I did comment on that prevention dividend program from McMaster and Western universities seemed to be…. According to Anne Mullens, that's what that particular thing is doing. We can tap into that, hopefully.

V. Anderson: Another dimension of that, it seems to me, is that there has been a fair bit of conversation by business organizations on how they build healthy lifestyles and family support groups into their business practices. Not only is it good for their employees, but it's good for their morale. I think studies have shown it makes better business.

Maybe there's some way of…. For instance, we've suggested that day cares might be done either individually by larger businesses or by a group of businesses in a community working together. The community is partaking with the non-profits and whatever other groups are doing that. That kind of interaction between business, non-profits and government is a three-way process. I think we're looking at how we implement this in the community. It's a process we could highlight. It's not the job of business; it's not the job of government; it's not the job of the family. It's an integrated approach.

V. Roddick (Chair): It's a community job, and I think that's part of the whole thing — that it is a community issue. I think that came out quite strongly this morning.

G. Hogg: I may go off on another tangent, so I'd better stop. I'm ready to run off in another direction.

G. Hogg: Quickly, talking again about youth, I think that over the past 30 or 40 years there have been some pretty dramatic shifts in the way we raise our children and bring them into society these days. The familial ties or connections have changed dramatically.

I think the three things that have most significantly influenced that — given that all cultures, all societies, use play as a process to teach their children about the values and mores of their societies…. The processes of play have changed dramatically in our society over the past 40 years. The processes of play, given that video games and television have dramatically taken away from the interactive quality of play…. The toys have changed dramatically so that they're much more real now. They use toy guns to rob banks, whereas back when Val and I were kids, we used to use a stick and say bang. You sort of engaged in that.

That's changed dramatically. We have so many single-parent families and two-parent families with both parents working. That's changed the way we raise children as well.

The early lessons — the lessons that need to be learned in the first three years of life — aren't being taught in the same way so that you get the same sense of fascination. The process of play is to bring about the spontaneous sense of joy and fascination with the world, and we don't have that anymore. Learning has become so much more extrinsically motivated. Children get bombarded. They'd much rather learn the alphabet from Big Bird than they would from a teacher. A teacher has to be an entertainer before they can be a teacher, because we've been raising children in the first three years on this whole bombardment of information.

It's extrinsically motivated, whereas prior to that, I think there was much more intrinsic motivation, which meant that there was much more fascination with the world. We start creating generations of people who are dependent upon external things to impose upon them. I remember when my son was three years old, sitting on the bedroom floor, covered with Fisher-Price toys, saying: "Dad, I'm bored. There's nothing to do." I remember that when I was the director of the youth detention centre, there were 16-year-old kids coming in, and the most common response when I asked them, "Why did you commit an offence?" was: "I was bored. There was nothing to do."

What's the difference between the three-year-old and the 16-year-old? What happens in that period of time that talks about how do you engage in and take responsibility for…? I think that our society is drifting more and more away from that.

That connects back into the notions of social capital. It connects into the notions of the strength of our society because it's a multicultural society — the strengths of looking holistically at social, emotional, psychological and spiritual essences in terms of how those things tie together.

Also, I think it goes back to early childhood–rearing practices and a society that's speeded up so much and so quickly that to be motivated, kids have to have Big Bird dancing around screaming and yelling to get their interest so that they're going to be engaged in and a part of the learning process. It used to be that kids were fascinated for a day by a grain of sand. Now they have to be…

G. Hogg: …entertained. There have to be guns shooting, cars rolling and spinning, or Big Bird singing, even at younger ages. All of those things have to happen to get them involved. What is it that's changed societally around that?

G. Hogg: Those are all of the things which, for me, are the principles upon which all of the things we're talking about emanate. How do we start to recognize there have been some changes? How do we help parents to understand that? How do we help society to understand that? Once we understand that, how do we start doing something about it?

Information doesn't mean change. Information is the first step to change. Awareness is the first step towards change. If we're going to talk about it, we have to get awareness. Then, how do you engage in and get a visceral response to effect some type of change? There are a whole bunch of awarenesses which I don't think we have looked at.

V. Roddick (Chair): That's all right. That's what we're here for. That's why the time was booked.

V. Anderson: I'll follow up on that tangent as a minister dealing with people in marriage. At one point we used to find that people came from two different brands of Christian religion. So as not to force their brand on the other, they stayed away from any church, so they lost both heritages that they had. Now in multicultural communities, you bring two cultures together. Again, so as not to force their culture on the other, they kind of stay away from both. They lose their own heritage to practice, and their children come up without one. There's no heritage that's passed down.

A lot of children today are confused. We've had a lot of trouble in Vancouver over that. They don't get a heritage, either a new heritage or an old heritage. They

just end up with nothing. That's the vacuum that confuses them, and they don't know where to go with it. That affects their whole well-being, their family relationships, their health and everything else. The cultures are the basis for health. The traditions that make you healthy are tied to your culture.

G. Hogg: So the peer structure becomes that much stronger. The peer structure at adolescence…. Youth tend to grow up listening to and being a part of their family values and mores. It used to be that when you became a teen, the peer structure became more important in terms of the evolution and development of self and ego boundaries. It's getting younger and younger now. Still, the reversion back to the traditional family values and mores usually happens in the late teens or early twenties.

Because of all of those phenomena, we're seeing much more of the impact of the peer structure. Children don't know where their boundaries are anymore. You don't have that intrinsic sense of: what are my values in terms of how I relate to the world? I get those extrinsically because of television and those other factors, so all of a sudden, I don't know where the boundaries are. If something starts happening, there are not those limits that are put on traditionally by a set of values or beliefs or principles that say here are the boundaries.

We see that when the contagion effect starts to take place, it goes running. It's the Abilene paradox that I talked to you about before, Kate. It takes over. There isn't a set of principles that jump in. People become moral vacuums in terms of not knowing where the limits are. They have to be imposed externally rather than developed internally out of a sense of moral fibre in terms of relating to the world, so I relate this way rather than having it relate to me in that fashion. We have more and more children doing that. We're seeing less and less their ability to stand up and say: "This is what I believe in, and this is what I want to do." That's a vacuum.

V. Anderson: Another dimension of that is that in the school system, where you have multicultural communities, the experience is that a multicultural community finds the school is the one organization in the community that they trust and know, because they get to know the teachers. For a time we had multicultural workers in the schools to help to bridge that misunderstanding between parents. The children were learning new ways, and the parents weren't, because they weren't in school. We were building in a cleavage in the family.

Then community schools have grown up in some communities whereby all the parents are involved in and become part of the school life. Then when resources are cut, they tend to be threatened. It's the kinds of things that would interrelate families and parents and changing cultures. We, under financial "pressures" — I'm not sure that's the reason, actually, but that's the excuse — tend to cut those bonds, so we create the tensions and, again, the uncertainty. Can I talk at home about what I learned at school, because they don't understand what I'm saying.

Those are part of the wholeness of the wealth of both the kids and the parents. Then you have the working parent from another culture who goes and learns English at work. The parent who stays at home never learns English. There's a gulf between that couple which then reflects upon the children and on the community relationship. These are all part of that wholeness.

J. Nuraney: Madam Chair, I think these are some excellent discussions. All, in my opinion, relate to our mandate, which is lifestyle. These are what Gordon and Val have just said. To my mind, these are the new deficits in our society through an evolution process of sorts, because of the blending of different cultures that is taking place here in British Columbia, the growing-up process with the advent of video games. We are seeing these deficits that are now self-created by society and that impact healthy lifestyles, healthy carryings-on.

I think this should become a preamble to our efforts of what we are seeking because of this new phenomenon that has now entered our lives. How do we address it? Because that does eventually have that impact on health. We have dysfunctional families; we have dysfunctional youths. Out of boredom they commit all those different crimes. It's not only a social burden but also in terms of health.

V. Roddick (Chair): It isn't just a youth thing; it's right through the whole society. It certainly includes the seniors as well.

J. Nuraney: I think this is an excellent preamble to our mission — that this is a new phenomenon that has entered our society, creating all these deficits. I think it's a superb preamble to visit, again tying it up to the Olympics theme. The phrase that entered my mind as Gordon was speaking was let's become a personal Olympiad. Let us become the Olympiad by coming into doing things on our own, now that they are intrinsic values rather than the extrinsic.

V. Anderson: I'll follow up on that again, if I can. The other is that there's a major philosophic difference to the way we think. In the western world, out of our Greco-Roman tradition, we think in good-bad, black-white, right-wrong — in opposites. That's been great for scientific development.

V. Anderson: In the eastern world it's complements. It's yin-yang. White and black are not opposites; they're complements of each other. Two sides of a coin are not opposite; they're complements of the whole.

The thinking process is totally different with these two styles. When we come against them, then we confuse them unless we become aware that's there. We talk by each other. We miss each other in misunderstanding. We're both very sincere, but because our thinking process is different, we have to become very much aware of that.

J. Nuraney: This brings the world the stress that everybody talks about in society today — right?

J. Nuraney: That stress emanates from all these deficits we are hearing this morning.

V. Anderson: It's a stress that you don't know where it comes from, so you can't deal with it. You're just uneasy all the time. If you know what it is, you can deal with it, but if you don't know what it is, then you become suspicious.

G. Hogg: I guess, just picking up on some of that, I think that the eastern and western traditions are interesting in their differences. The eastern traditions tend to believe that knowledge does not exist independent of its possessor, whereas we believe that knowledge does exist independent of its possessor. The moment you do that, you don't recognize the relationship that knowledge has to its possessor and, therefore, the impact that it has on stress.

I think stress goes through at least three stages. The research is pretty clear that the first stage tends to manifest itself in a physical presence, so you tend to have a cold or something. The second is an emotional stage, and third is a spiritual stage. The spiritual stage ultimately ends up in death. All of them are typified by a notion of a sense of hope. If there's a sense of hope, you can work your way through all of those and see something greater than the self. That is what allows you to continue, whatever or wherever that might be or manifest or present itself.

Going back to the extrinsic-intrinsic, those people that believe, "I'll be better when the world changes," don't get better. Those people who say, "I'm going to make some difference and take charge of it," do make a difference. The old way of dealing with…. The old phrase you used to hear — which the Canadian Mental Health Association used to use with depression — was: "Leave me alone. When I feel better, I'll do it." The actual, in terms of being able to get better, was: "I'll do it and then I'll feel better." It's not the emotional change that happens first; it's the action which results in the emotional change. There are a bunch of impacts in terms of that process. All of those, again, tie back to that notion of intrinsic-extrinsic responsibility, and whether it sits with the individual or with the state, it's a whole different cultural thing. Eastern traditions where….

We hear people very critical of doing business with China because "you can't trust them." There's a culture that's over 6,000 years old that has built on relationships. We've built ours on rules. Who's to say it's not better to have a system that works on relationships rather than on rules. Yet our western approach to it tends to be very critical of the Chinese way of doing things because it's all relationships. I think there are lots of people who think relationships are more important in terms of being able to do that and are perhaps a healthier way of doing it, but it has created great conflict between the western world and the Chinese world or the eastern worlds in terms of being able to do business, because there's a whole different format and structure of doing it.

From the days of Aristotle we've been in those causal relationships and scientific methods of doing things — this happens and therefore this happens — so we've developed ourselves extremely well in a scientific way, but we haven't developed ourselves in a social, emotional way. That's why, going back to social capital and intrinsic ways of looking at things, I think they have the broad-based impact. I don't know how we change the world in terms of doing and looking at that, but I think awareness is the first step to saying: "Is there something we could or should do with it?"

V. Roddick (Chair): I think that's a wonderful tangent. The fact that you said, when you put your hand up like that…. That was absolutely incredible, because that's exactly what so many people tend to do, "Stop right there, and I'll change when you change," sort of thing, as opposed to working together and figuring out how to do it.

V. Anderson: Following that, we were talking about the aboriginals earlier. The aboriginal people are eastern in thought process and format, and therefore they've been on the edge because we would meet them on their level. Now that we've become a multicultural community and we're meeting the whole world on that level, then suddenly we understand what the aboriginal people have been trying to tell us for generations — that it's a relationship world, and within those relationships, things will evolve. The aboriginals were way ahead of us in being able to enable us to be aware of the other cultures of the world.

V. Roddick (Chair): I think, on that note, maybe we should make sure she has all these notes, and we will adjourn and meet again — hopefully, either on June 8 or 9.

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Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Committee Staff:	Robert Parker (Committee Researcher)

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