Wednesday August 29th
11:30am EST | Libby Znaimer
12:15pm EST | Dr. Zach
GUEST – Libby Znaimer, VP News & Information / Producer / Host / Columnist
TOPIC – Progress with walk & money raised for – The Shoppers Drug Mart®Weekend to End Women’s Cancers™ benefiting Princess Margaret Hospital & donating to Team Zoomer.
INFO – The Shoppers Drug Mart® Weekend to End Women’s Cancers™ benefiting The Campbell Family Institute at The Princess Margaret Hospital is a Weekend you’ll never forget. It’s a Weekend to remember those lives we have lost to breast or gynecologic cancer and a Weekend to celebrate the lives we are saving. This is a Weekend creating hope for every woman’s future.
This year, we are kicking off Ten Years Strong in the effort to end women’s cancers, by asking: Are you a 10? A 10 is anyone who is walking with us in the 2012 Weekend to celebrate 10 years strong. Join us to commemorate the monumental decade of difference we’ve made for all women.
With over $120 million raised, The Weekend has made groundbreaking strides in the fight against women’s cancers and thousands of lives have been saved along the way. So this year, we are rewarding the commitment of our longtime participants and the efforts of those who go above and beyond to fund raise for the cause with the creation of our brand new 2012 Diamond Club.
We walk in honour of those we’ve lost and the lives we’re saving each day. We’re recruiting old friends and making new ones in a joint effort to expand The Weekend Family and end women’s cancers once and for all. Some of us have been walking since The Weekend’s inaugural year in 2003, while others are just beginning their Weekend journey.
Whether you’re a Survivor yourself or walking for a loved one or walking for all women, it doesn’t matter. Now is as good a time as ever to discover your inner 10! So be a part of our celebration on September 8-9, 2012 and customize the best Weekend experience for you. Choose to enjoy the full 2-Day, 60km distance for maximum impact, or try the 1-Day 32km distance. Walk with us in 2012. BE A 10! www.endcancer.ca
GUEST – Dr. Zach, GFB House Doctor
TOPIC – Cardio vascular risks including high blood pressure, hypertension & diabetes.
INFO- Dr. Zach with focus on the prevention and treatment of these health concerns for Zoomer, and as usual take other health related calls.
Thursday August 30th
12:15pm EST | Erin Weir
GUEST – Erin Weir, Economist & Research Associate, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
TOPIC – Prebutting the Fraser Institute’s Labour-Market Ranking.
The Fraser Institute is set to release its annual report, Measuring Labour Markets in Canada and the United States, Thursday. It will attempt to argue that public-sector employment, minimum wages, unionization, and labour laws that facilitate collective bargaining damage labour-market performance. However, its “Index of Labour Market Performance” measures the quantity of jobs with almost no regard for quality.
Imagine that, within a given GDP, wages were cut in half but employment increased by one-tenth. The Index would show a significant increase in “Labour Market Performance” but almost all workers would, in fact, be worse off. The Fraser Institute’s credo is “if it matters, measure it.” Apparently, wages don’t matter.
Public-sector employment, minimum wages, unionization and progressive labour laws help to improve pay, working conditions and job security. But the Fraser Institute’s “Index of Labour Market Performance” excludes those factors from consideration.
Additional reading:
Here is a critique of the Fraser Institute’s methodology based on a previous edition of Measuring Labour Markets in Canada and the United States:
Erin Weir’s op-ed in the Regina Leader-Post proposing a higher minimum wage in Saskatchewan:
Friday August 31st
11:30am EST | Barry M. Fish
12:15pm EST | Doug Melville
GUEST – Barry M. Fish, Barrister and Solicitor, Fish & Associates Professional
TOPIC – Comment on the mental incompetence and powers of attorney issues involved in the case of senator Joyce Fairbairn.
INFO – OTTAWA: Three words stand out in a letter describing a Liberal senator’s worsening Alzheimer’s disease, but they are so devoid of context that even experts cannot decipher their meaning.
Those words — “declaration of incompetence” — got a lot of attention when they were discovered in a letter Patricia McCullagh sent to Senate officials about her aunt, Liberal Senator Joyce Fairbairn, 72, earlier this month.
The Aug. 13 letter, obtained by the Star on Monday, said Fairbairn’s geriatric psychiatrist had signed the declaration in February and that in April, McCullagh and Leonard Kuchar, chief of staff to Liberal Senate Leader James Cowan, had co-signed a “power of care” to be joint agents for Fairbairn.
The letter, which informed the Senate that Fairbairn would not be resuming her duties in Ottawa next month, did not include copies of either document.
McCullagh said Wednesday she does not want to discuss the “very personal and private matter” at this time. Kuchar has not responded to a request for comment.
What, exactly, does a declaration of incompetence mean and what relevance does it have to the fact that Fairbairn continued to sit in the Senate — voting a dozen times along party lines after it was signed — until the end of June?
Without being able to see the document or speak to Fairbairn or her joint agents about it, the declaration can mean any number of things, including very little.
Mary Schulz, education director at the Alzheimer Society of Canada, said the first thing to remember is that dementia does not affect every aspect of life all at once.
“Having a diagnosis of dementia doesn’t mean that you are suddenly unable to do anything. . . . A person can be competent in some areas and incompetent in others,” Schulz said, adding that competency can change from one day to the next.
“Ultimately we’re going to be incompetent in every way, but it’s an insidious process, it’s a complex process and it’s not a black-and-white process,” Schulz said.
The declaration of incompetency that a psychiatrist or other qualified assessor would sign in Alberta, where Fairbairn currently receives round-the-clock care at her Lethbridge home, takes these varying degrees and areas of incompetency into account.
Someone can be found not to have the capacity to make decisions about health care, accommodation, who they live or associate with, social activities, education, employment, legal matters or other issues, but not necessarily all of those things at once.
That means the geriatric psychiatrist mentioned in the letter might not have checked the box relevant to Fairbairn’s ability to continue performing her duties as a senator.
“Unless you actually see the actual document it’s difficult to know, but quite often if a person is incompetent, they are incompetent in most of those areas,” said Donna Gee, a lawyer and registered nurse from the North Calgary Legal Centre, where she practises elder law.
The declaration of incompetence would also bring into effect a personal directive giving previously named agents — such as McCullagh and Kuchar — the power to make non-financial personal decisions in the areas where the person was deemed incompetent, such as how McCullagh decided Fairbairn would go on sick leave.
It remains unknown whether the declaration was signed in Alberta or in Ontario, where the rules are different.
Judith Wahl, a lawyer and executive director at the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, a Toronto-based legal clinic for low-income seniors in Ontario, said a declaration of incompetence signed by a geriatric psychiatrist does not automatically carry weight.
“A psychiatrist could give the opinion that my client is not mentally capable, and I would go, ‘That’s nice.’ It doesn’t necessarily mean much. It’s an opinion,” said Wahl, who was speaking about Ontario law, although a doctor does have the right to turn to someone else for decisions concerning medical treatment if he or she believes the patient is incapable of providing informed consent.
“They do have that authority, but lots of times there are opinions about capacity that don’t have specific effect or impact right away,” Wahl said.
GUEST – Doug Melville, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments
TOPIC – Jim Flaherty’s plan to overhaul the banking industry’s dispute-settlement regime.
INFO -OBSI was created in 1996 by the country’s banks, under a threat from Ottawa to impose a federal arbitrator. Initially the Canadian Banking Ombudsman, its mandate later expanded to include the investment industry.
Two banks have already bailed out of OBSI because they didn’t like the decisions it was making – Royal Bank of Canada in 2008 and TD last year. Both now use ADR Chambers, a private company that proudly promises on its website “fast and cheap” dispute resolution by retired judges and lawyers.
Federal Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty could have ordered RBC and TD back into the OBSI fold. Earlier this year, outgoing OBSI chairwoman Peggy-Anne Brown begged Ottawa to stand up for an independent and impartial national dispute arbitrator.
Instead, Mr. Flaherty has introduced regulations that formally allow the remaining banks to go the fast-and-cheap route, with the potential for conflicts of interest when banks can hire and fire their own mediators.
It all begs the question: what does an effective system for resolving banking customer complaints look like?
