Canada Moms Blog

Cuts to BC Healthy Kids Causes Backlash From Critics (and me)

I have a mouthful of teeth that I wouldn't want you to look at. Seriously, I can't smile with my lips parted because I may possibly believe in those lens-cracking myths that rolled around forever ago.

Why am I so ashamed of my dental reality? I haven't been to the dentist since I was 15 years old, the last time that I was privy to affordable and/or free dentist visits.

Just in time for our basement neighbours to be applauding (or disliking) their upcoming health care reform, B.C. is tearing down a little bit of ours by reducing funding to the Healthy Kids program, one that provides free dental services to children under the age of five from low-income families.

I've come to realize that some Americans think that Canadians have free dental. Many of the people I've come to know, via blogging and writing, have been under the assumption that all services, whether specialty, general physician, surgical or dental, were covered by a single, massive umbrella, made of the word free. Not so!

Workforce Wellness: Another name for don't ask, don't tell?

Way back when, before I learned my lesson, and before I came into the knowledge that freelancing was a viable option, I was a corporate shill. But I was a good little shill - I showed up early, and I billed out a staggering amount of hours. What's more, I worked a staggering amount of hours for free, all as a means of keeping on top of the ever-growing pile of capitalistic success. For my clients. I made, like, $30K annually.

It was for two reasons that I sometimes billed 65 hours a week and worked an additional 15: I was asked to do the work, and then, I was relied upon to do the work. Once I had been assigned a new area of responsibility, magically, no one else was able to take it on, and more and more weight was added to my lucky-to-be-employed shoulders.

A few years of that, plus some borderline abusive employers produced anxiety attacks. And now, five years after I've been out of the game, no longer finding myself clutching my chest and gasping for air, Steven Harper's government is rolling out a program to promote 'workforce wellness'? I don't buy it.