The people who make a virtue of ignoring the differences between us are at it again. This time, they’re attacking the provincial government’s plan to create “model schools.”

Model schools are the latest plan to give parents more choices. Education Minister Shirley Bond says she will build provincial schools — not ones run by school boards — that will cater to specific needs.

She imagines a school for children with autism. She’s also suggested an aboriginal school.

The idea has some fans. It also has some powerful opponents. The New Democrats and their allies in the BCTF were first out of the gate.
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There’s a house for sale on San Remo Drive in Los Angeles for $22 million.

It’s a fabulous street. Leslie Epstein wrote a book about growing up there with Liz Taylor swimming in his pool and Gregory Peck next door.

I also used to live on San Remo Drive, but not the one in L.A. I lived on the one in Port Moody.

I bought my house there for $250,000. My neighbours were teachers and retirees.

My house looked almost exactly like the other 39 on San Remo — tall, skinny and jammed so close together that you couldn’t get between some of them.

No one has a real front yard. They don’t need them. Across the narrow street in front is a swath of public land that rolls down to the ocean.

I loved that street.
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I consider our publicly funded health-care system a national achievement. I worry that the growth of private health care could erode what a generation built.

If you believe the pollsters, lots of Canadians agree with me. So let’s fight for public health care. Let’s make it harder for some of those private facilities to thrive and multiply.

There are two ways to do that: the sneaky way or the honest way.
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Everybody lit their hair on fire when the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority announced it was cutting back on surgeries to save money. The provincial government even fired the chairman for it.

I wonder why. The province couldn’t have been too surprised. It’s their funding system that forces hospital management to make ridiculous decisions like that.

They give hospitals their budgets at the start of the year. Hospitals work like crazy to stay within them. Then, at year end, if they can’t meet their bottom line, their only choice is to do less.

Vancouver’s decision was a dramatic, very public one. But decisions to ration health care go on in smaller, less dramatic ways every day.

Hospitals keep their costs down by limiting the number of operations they do. That’s why we have long waiting lists.
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