Centre For Local Research into Public Space (CELOS)


See also Site Map

Citizen-Z Cavan Young's 2004 film about the zamboni crisis

Contact

mail@celos.ca

Search


Custodians:

The playgrounds “safety” story and its commercial links:

draft excerpts 2007

Jutta Mason

.....What was missing in detail and in completeness in the new government data after 1990 was soon filled in by extrapolation and guesswork. Sally Lockhart wrote on Health Canada’s web site, “Each year, more than 10,000 Canadian children are injured on playgrounds. Many of these children require hospitalization, and, tragically, some die.” This number was based on yet another, unnamed Health Canada staff person’s “personal communication.” The same number was repeated by insurance companies for a few years, including the Ontario School Boards’ Insurance Exchange (OSBIE), which suggested that possibly all these 10,000 children “required medical treatment.” Then in 1998, OSBIE put out a special bulletin with a new number. The insurance exchange had “received approximately 28,000 playground incident reports in 1997 for Ontario [school playgrounds].” Did this number include scrapes requiring a bandaid? No details are given. OSBIE guessed that of the 28,000 school reports “an estimated 1,200 would have been serious enough to require medical attention.”

28,000 is a more impressive number than 10,000. In 2000, that Ontario schools incident-reports number may have migrated over to a Sick Children’s Hospital’s organization called Safe Kids Canada, and slipped into their booklet of advice for parents. The booklet gave the Canadian playground injury number as “more than 28,500 each year.” It cited Health Canada program consultant Tammy Lipskie as the source, but she couldn’t pin down further details when questioned later by playground advocates. In 2001, a Health Canada staff epidemiologist, Susan Mackenzie, told Today’s Parent magazine that the annual number of playground injuries might be 25,000, “estimating in a really crude way.” And in May 2005, when the Globe and Mail gave the Canada-wide playground injury number as 25,000 and the National Post said 28,500, the newspapers themselves came up with these calculations, multiplying some Ontario hospital data to make a national number.

As any first-year statistics student learns pretty fast, making up data by simple multiplication, without telling, will not get you a pass on the final exam. But this numeration was not about reputable statistical practice – this was about getting a number big enough to be a quick-click icon, to turn into a banner under which playground safety advocates would then march across the land, taking out swings, climbers, slides, and whole playgrounds on their way.….

Insurance

The Frank Cowan Insurance Company, whose head office is in Waterloo, Ontario, specializes in municipal insurance. It has a publishing department, which puts out a monthly newsletter of helpful information for the towns and rural municipalities which it insures. In June of 1991, the newsletter carried big news: A 17 year old boy, somewhere in Canada, “was riding his bike across a vacant property when he fell into a 3-foot wide by 6-foot deep drainage ditch.” Not only was there a park located 10 feet from the unfenced ditch, but the ditch – located on an adjacent municipally-owned property – had been “identified as a hazard” for two years already. But everybody in this unnamed town seems to have passed the buck about fixing it. The boy must have been badly hurt: damages awarded were $16 million. The nightmare of insurance companies and their shareholders had come to pass: the court-ordered, giant settlement.

When big payouts are ordered, the industry sets about doing what insurance companies specialize in – putting protections in place to avoid having to pay out any more giant settlements in remotely similar circumstances. In this case, the injury happened 10 feet from a park, and that may have influenced the court judgment. Parks are supposed to be safe for children. Children go there to play. Play is supposed to be fun, not a serious business for insurance companies. But when an insurance company looks more closely at parks with a view to avoiding painful claims payouts, it sees one alarming thing after another. Children climbing – on trees, park sheds, and playground equipment; children swinging high up into the air; children sliding down slides, the faster the better; children of many different ages, running around all together, chasing each other, banging into each other or banging into fences or trees or tire swings, falling down, crying, getting up and running around some more. Playgrounds are lawsuits waiting to happen. The best protection for insurance companies is legislation. The very best is legislation that disallows legal action altogether (such as the Workers Compensation Act). The next best is specific legislation that involves many detailed regulations which can be shown – in court – to have been followed. Proof of compliance with regulations can limit insurers’ liability in a way they find attractive.

But for public playgrounds there isn’t any specific legislation. That leaves the clients of insurance companies completely exposed to the provisions of the Occupiers’ Liability Act, which puts broad and sometimes unreasonable responsibility on the property owners – in this case, the insured municipalities – to anticipate any possible kind of danger anywhere on their property. Under this Act, insurance companies feel too dependent on the interpretations of judges or juries, without the protection of being able to show their clients’ compliance with a specific set of rules.

So the Frank Cowan Insurance Co., and many other municipal insurers, got busy trying to fix up what they called “the play environment.” The Cowan newsletter deplored to the absence of binding regulations to protect municipalities against lawsuits (and insurance companies against pay-outs): “If the goals and objectives [i.e.safety from claims payouts; ed. note] are to be achieved, those who contribute to the play environment must be obligated to its recommendations.” In the meantime, the newsletter drew attention to the 1990 manufacturers’ guidelines of the Canadian Standards Association, and urged their municipal clients to set up an inspection program based on those guidelines, for the present. They recommended three reputable sources to help set up a playground inspection program: “Your insurance carrier, a well-established playground manufacturer, or one of the many recreation related associations.” Advice taken: as it turned out, those would be the three main players in setting the stage for an epic of playground destruction whose cost would far outstrip any insurance settlements for injuries.

A few months after the first warning, the Cowan Insurance newsletter expanded its cautions, urging every department of every municipality to have a risk management program: “There is ongoing risk in every department, with more emphasis, of course, on those departments that deal with and provide services to members of the public.” Risk management was a task with unlimited growth potential.

By October 1996, the Cowan newsletter reported that in the previous year, Cowan Insurance had presented 187 seminars to municipal clients about risk management: “...we have assisted many of you in developing sound Risk Management Programs….efforts in this area are beginning to pay dividends. Where in the past plaintiffs received awards because our clients could not produce proper documentation of their activities, we now find situations where courts praise the record keeping of our client and send plaintiffs away empty-handed!…we are beginning to stop the pendulum from moving any further along its unreasonable course….You are targeted by plaintiffs more now than at any time in our history and we are pleased that together we are able to level the playing field.”

Insurers are generally very closed-mouthed about their claims pay-outs, so they gave were no specific examples or case studies of the unreasonable targeting of municipalities by plaintiffs, nor of the awards that resulted from a lack of the kind of documentation that courts might praise. The newsletter’s one actual example relating to parks – the 1991 claim resulting from the deep, unprotected drainage ditch, next to a park, a ditch that was not covered over despite years of warnings – hardly needed a “risk management program” to be obvious. And the claim on behalf of the boy, perhaps paralyzed and brain damaged and needing lifelong care, was maybe not unreasonable. This case had no direct connection to playgrounds, but it wasn’t long before the Frank Cowan Insurance Company, hunting for risk, made the jump to the part of parks that had most of the children. They took on the task of cleansing playgrounds of risk, and promoting standards of design and maintenance that could be used to shield their clients in court. Their efforts were joined to the Ontario School Board Insurance Exchange, and to the ramifying net of ‘risk management professionals’ in and out of government who were hanging out their shingles for this promising new long-term occupation.

The mix would result in the tearing out of playgrounds all over Ontario. So who were the players?

The Canadian Standards Association

In an article about the Toronto schoolyard playground demolitions published in March of 2001, Today’s Parent Magazine described the Canadian Standards Association International (CSA) as “an independent, non-profit organization that develops standards for a wide variety of products, from bike helmets to carbon monoxide detectors.” It could more accurately be described as a manufacturers group that included a small number of government and school board members as well. In 2003, the CSA membership was: Commercial: 938; Government: 53; Trade Associations: 25; Crown Corporations: 18; Educational Institutions: 11; Licensing and Certification Bodies: 2 – for a total of 1047 members. Despite the association’s name, in 2004 only 572 of the members were actually Canadian (55%). The remainder (475, or 45%) were foreign companies, from the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Hence the qualifier “international” in the name. The CSA had then and still has, quite logically, the promotion of international trade as one of its primary goals.

CSA International was therefore a manufacturers group, barely over half Canadian. And even the companies listed at Canadian addresses might not have their head offices here. For example: Little Tikes, listed in Canada (with an office in Paris Ontario), had its original head office in Missouri, but was in turn owned by Playpower, which was bought by Investcorp in 2002, with a head office in Bahrain, branch offices in London and New York.

CSA had released an earlier version of playground recommendations in 1990, which it merely called “guidelines.” They let it be known in early 1997 that their playground committee was working on a new set of playground guidelines, much more rigorous than any previous ones, and meshing more tightly with the playground guidelines of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). This would help Canadian playground manufacturers to gain American customers. The CSA named the new 1998 version “standards,” and the document was interpreted – by many civil servants – as requiring compliance, as though they were dealing with a new law.

The committee writing the 1998 standards was called the “CSA Playspaces Technical Committee,” which the CSA web site says is “composed of volunteer members representing stakeholders likely to be affected by the standard, including representatives of the Canadian Child Care Federation, Health Canada, Canadian Parks and Recreation Association, Safe Kids Canada, Ville de Montreal, as well as various manufacturers and municipalities across Canada.” One of the more hands-on playground manufacturers on the committee was Bryan Belair, a former Henderson Playground Equipment salesman who had formed the Belair Playground Equipment Company. Belair’s son Scott Belair, also on the playspaces committee, had his own playground inspection company. Another CSA committee member was Peter Kells, also a former employee of the Henderson Playground Company. Kells became a freelance playground inspection consultant and went on to set up his own training program for playground inspectors. The Henderson brothers, who by then had bought the Peterborough Children’s Playgrounds Company, were on the committee, and so was Mike Hayward, then assistant general manager of Paris (Ontario) Playground Equipment, Inc. That company was actually owned by Little Tikes, which was in turn owned by an investment giant in Bahrain. All of these people put their heads together to write the new safety standards. Missing from the table were people who work with children – teachers, daycare staff, recreation workers – as well as parents. But all three levels of government were either part of the conversation, or keeping a very interested eye from the sidelines.

Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA)

The Canadian Playground Safety Institute’s playground inspection course, only one day in length at the outset, was run under contract to the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA). This is an Ottawa-based national professional association that was at that time getting its funding from membership dues, from its annual trade show, from running courses, and from government grants. Health Canada gave the CPRA four years of grants for running a “playground committee,” perhaps to do the follow-up from the first insurance meeting in St. John’s. The playground committee grant brought in a significant income. In 2000, for example, the Health Canada grant was $82,602, whereas the income from membership dues was only $71,820. But the playground safety course brought in even more: (2000: $220,814 gross, $81,205 net; 2001: $278,816 gross, $109,637 net; 2002: $335,024 gross, $122,766 net.).

Despite this income, the CPRA ran a deficit every year. The playground inspection courses were lengthened from 2 days to 4 days, and the fee therefore went up to $800. The deficit shrank but didn’t disappear. Moreover, some of the municipal CPRA members got angry. A minimum requirement of 50 playground inspection students per class meant a larger income per session, but the Maritime members threatened to withhold their dues if this 50-minimum rule persisted. Some provinces’ parks associations accused the CPRA of milking the courses by padding the required course length to 4 days, and of failing too many people, thereby doubling the cost for the municipalities who had to send their staff to do a repeat. The Ontario Parks Association (OPA) eventually persuaded the municipality of Toronto to drop the CPRA playground course and switch to a shorter, more straightforward course offered by OPA . (This switch happened around the same time that the OPA president was promoted in his City job – to being one of the directors of Toronto Parks and Recreation).

In 2003, when many school and park playgrounds had already been destroyed, amid strongly negative public outcries, the Health Canada playground committee grants seem to have stopped. The CPRA wrote in its annual report: “The shift away from multi-year and core activity funding to program funding is threatening the viability of this sector.” So CPRA undertook to build itself a new strategic vision, “positioning the field of parks and recreation sector [sic] as essential to individual, family and community health and well-being. Strengthening and creating strategic business relationships with members, partners, governments and allies,” they expanded their portfolio beyond playground safety, into “poverty, population health, crime prevention, and healthy child development…. [and] related issues such as sustainable communities, social capital, youth, obesity, and environmental stewardship.”

Soon after the portfolio expanded, CPRA got program money from Health Canada, the National Crime Prevention Centre, and Human Resources Development Canada. The tap had been turned on again.

But private sector “partnerships” were also essential. The biggest point of entry for close relationships with business was the annual CPRA Conference and Trade Show.

Business was wooed with sponsorship brochures like this one for the 2004 conference in Halifax, headlined:

“Buying Power: Municipalities in Canada spend over 2 billion dollars on products and services in the parks and recreation sector alone!”

For commercial members of the CPRA, or non-member companies who were drawn to this opportunity, the brochure listed various ways they could get involved with the “buying power” represented at the annual conference.

1. They could buy an exhibit booth at the trade show, which cost $891.25 for members or $1121.25 for non-members. At the Halifax conference, playground manufacturers had 28 of 64 exhibitors’ booths.

The non-commercial CPRA members were encouraged, in their conference material, to visit the trade show “and support the businesses that provide our programs and municipalities with the tools and products necessary for our daily work.” The trade brochure, for its part, said that the trade show “offers conference participants exceptional business development opportunities, and the ability to network with corporate suppliers….Corporate and organizational exhibits will demonstrate the latest in developing products, from A to Z.”

2. For $10,000, a company could buy the right to sponsor one luncheon or keynote address, plus one refreshment break, plus the standard sponsorship privileges: their logo and link on the conference web site, their promo material in the delegate package, and a copy of the delegate mailing list.

3. For a cheaper price – $5000 – a company could buy sponsorship of one program session, and most of the rest of the sponsorship privileges. If a company sponsored the presidents’ reception, it got to give a little talk to the whole group, plus all the other perks. If they sponsored the opening ceremony and keynote, they got to introduce the speaker and conclude the address, plus the other privileges; same if they sponsored any of the other keynotes.

From the Sponsorship prospectus: “Connecting with parks and recreation decision makers in more relaxed and informal settings makes good business sense….These opportunities make it easy for you to make a personal connection beyond your exhibit…..”

4. Beyond those three opportunities, there was a page in the trade show brochure called “EXTRAS.” Prices were not listed. The page offered a position at the front of the line: “First opportunity to select sponsorship opportunities,” and/or in the innermost circles: “Invitation to private receptions.” These commercial members could even receive a conference “call for papers,” and help structure a program session.

So it seems that commercial sponsors could set the agenda of the annual Canadian Parks and Recreation Association’s professional conference in many ways beyond merely exhibiting their wares. In the case of the playground manufacturers who were the “corporate partners,” this could include not only buying lunch or dinner for a banquet-hall full of appreciative potential customers, but even buying the right to present learned professional papers on the dangers to be found in existing playgrounds and the best way to replace them.

Sponsorship arrangements between professional associations and companies interested in selling their wares are very common even when the optics are dubious all over. (For example the Taser Company sponsored the 2008 Conference of Canadian Police Chiefs.) But the extent to which the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association felt it had to go after funds from both government and industry makes it evident that by the end of the twentieth century, such a professional association operated much like any other fee-for-service consulting company. The main difference was that – given business members’ overlap with the municipal Parks and Recreation employees who gave out the contracts – business people who gave money to the CPRA had open access to the inside track. This circle of connections neatly brought government staff together with people who had an interest in selling them goods or insurance policies or training courses – including courses leading to playground demolition, and the purchase of millions of dollars of new equipment, to replace the structures that the bulldozers crushed.

A contractor friend who took the inspector course just to see what they were saying, told me that after taking the course he began to receive almost daily brochures from playground manufacturers, who get the student mailing list from the course instructors. “The fox is in the henhouse,” my contractor friend said, “and he’s got all the eggs.”


Content last modified on November 19, 2017, at 12:37 PM EST