They used to all be hippies

I'm talking about staff at Central Mortgage and Housing Corp., where I worked when I ran 'The Vincent Massey Awards for Excellence in the Urban Environment' -- one of the many hats I have worn during my varied career.  Lets' see, what were they?

• IBM Canada, first job in communications,
• Maclean Hunter
• The Financial Post
• Chatelaine
• Miss Chatelaine
• Home Goods Retailing
• Office Equipment and Methods
• Dupont of Canada,
• Central Mortgage and Housing Corp. (see above, i.e., awards program),
• Speech writer for several of Trudeau-the-Elder's ministers,
• Supply and Services Canada,
• Public Service Commission of Canada,
• IPAC conference (where I met B, who was running it),
• EXPO '86,
• Comptroller General of Canada,
• Customs and Excise
• Free Trade Task Force
• GST Task Force, and finally
• The Canada Revenue Agency.

Yep, I got around, as they say.  But my favourite job was at Maclean Hunter, where we all enjoyed the hedonistic 'Mad Men' world and all its  glorious and naughty indulgences.  However, I admit I also enjoyed flying all over the country on Challenger jets when I worked for ministers.  All this to say, I had a lot of fun -- some innocent, some not so.  But back to the hippies at CMHC.

Apparently, the 'Thunder Woman Healing Lodge Society' says it is $2 million short of the total needed to construct a seven-storey, residential complex to house federally-sentenced Indigenous women.   

Turns out, CMHC has been the funder for this project, which doesn't surprise me.  The hippies I worked with in the seventies were always pushing demonstration projects and coop housing for the less-fortunate among us.  These granny-spectacled, bearded do-gooders grabbed onto every fad going and healing lodges -- especially for women -- would certainly fit their agenda.

The Lodge Society claims that Indigenous-led ceremonies, classes and therapy reduce rates of recidivism, but I doubt it.  Currently, one out of every three federal inmates is Indigenous, which is outrageous when you consider natives comprise only six percent of the entire Canadian population.  That's 42% of all female inmates are Indigenous.

Googling who is the president of CMHC, I learn it is someone named Romy Bowers.  A woman, with an MA in Finance from the U of T, Bowers may have a clue that another $2 million, on top of the $20 already forked over, might be in jeopardy.  Evidently Bowers' gender is not swaying her.

The Commissioner of Corrections is also a woman, but one with a long career in corrections, dating back to 1983.  Anne Kelly's vast experience in offender programs and reintegration gives her the background needed to assess where money should, and should not, be thrown.  Under section 81 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, CSC funds healing lodge beds on a per diem basis to the tune of $180 per resident.  That seems awfully high, but apparently the average daily cost for prisoners across all CSC institutions is $330. 

What puzzles me is why the CSC is not kicking in more money if lodges are cheaper?  The answer that jumps to my mind is because they don't work.  Thunder Bay -- a city mired in ruinous Indigenous crime -- established something called the "Indigenous Peoples' Court" (see, Not Working, Feb. 1, 2021) run by native, community elders.  The remedies and "punishments" consist of smudging, healing circles and counselling.  In one case, the offender was told to try harder and then sent on his merry way.  Naturally, he re-offended and was eventually sent to jail by a regular court.

As I just said, the lodges go unused because they don't work:

So, while Patti Pettigrew, founder of the Thunder Woman Lodge, claims CSC and CMHC are, "nickel and diming us to death," I think Kelly and Bowers are on the right side of this.  The other option for Ms. Pettigrew is to seek funding from the HUGE Indigenous bank reserves, built up over many years into the billions.  I have blogged about this before, but in 2019-2020, transfers for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada amounted to:

$2,680,395,430.  Yes, folks, that's more than $2.6 billion in one year!!!!  The question is, where is it and who spent it??!!!  Since 1946, the Canadian government has spent $3,300,000,000,000 on Indigenous peoples with no discernable result.  That's $3.3 trillion!!!!!

On the other side of this fantasmagorical ledger, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal just rejected a....wait for it....breathe.....sit down.......$40 billion claim for residential school children.  Yep, they were asking for another $40 billion!^&#$%$#@&*?!!!  At last some semblance of sanity and balance has prevailed somewhere on this file.  A couple of people finally said "No".