Senator Larry Campbell’s Weblog

What a difference a day makes.  A song from the past but so fitting for today.  In the lyrics it continues with “twenty four little hours.”  Suddenly, Mr. Harper has had an epiphany and is concerned about the Canadian economy.

Up until today, according to him, Canada was a virtual calm in the middle of a world wide storm.  Mr. Harper is an economist and after all, he would know more about this than most Canadians.  I always found this difficult to believe since he has never held a job outside of politics or agencies pushing neo Conservative agendae.  He has never faced the loss of a job, loss of a house, or dissolution of complete industries.  Canadians know this pain and have been feeling it in all parts of the country including the manufacturing sector in Ontario and the forestry and resource sector in British Columbia.

Instead, the song Mr. Harper has been singing is “Don’t worry, be happy.”  Suddenly, he realizes that Canadians do not believe or trust this song.  And so, we now see a gradual strip tease by the Conservatives.  Don’t show too much policy or it will look like back peddling but show enough to try and convince the party that you actually have a plan.  

And who are we going to have in charge of this plan.  The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Harper, Flaherty, Clement and Baird. If you live outside Ontario you may need to be reminded that the aforementioned three were members of the ill fated Harris government in Ontario that was defeated and left a six billion plus deficit to be cleaned up. They form the inner sanctum of the Conservative cabinet.

Many Canadians will remember the last time we trusted the Conservatives.  Brian Mulroney lead us into a debt that placed us in the company of third world countries financially.  It took the Liberals with Prime Minsters Chretien and Martin to put the country back on a sound footing.

Oh, and the balanced budget the Mr. Harper crows about.  Well, he inherited the balanced budget, promptly blew 17 billion dollars on ill advised pay downs and petty tax cuts and now has an empty cupboard.  I suspect that by the end of this fiscal year, if we elect Mr. Harper, we will find out exactly what a deficit looks like.  If previous Conservative governments are any example, it will not take long for it to be the trade mark of their regime.

http://www.harpernomics.ca/

Harper claims to be an economist. What economic theory holds that in a time of documented financial crisis you do nothing?

Harper has never, ever held a “real” job so how can he possibly understand the threat of losing a job, losing a house or suffering financial ruin?

Harper, Howard, Bush and Iraq
http://www.liberal.ca/video_e.aspx?channel=3

Intellectual honesty is of course important. The bigger issue from my point of view is that Harper was prepared to take Canada into the Iraq war.

Liberals made the right moral decision and kept our young men and women from getting killed in what has turned out to be a tragic debacle. My worry is that Harper has lied about so many issues, how can Canadians believe him when he says we will be out of Afghanistan by 2011?

Fiona Hughes

Vancouver Courier
Wednesday, October 01, 2008

http://www.canada.com/vancouvercourier/news/opinion/story.html?id=b3153806-f17c-481e-b9b6-e199c3a2022b

Lacking charisma. A weak leader. Incoherent English accent. Feckless. A schlemiel.

The criticisms levelled at Liberal leader Stéphane Dion (the harshest words coming from the Canadian Alliance, er, Conservative Party) started soon after he won the leadership of the Liberal Party in 2006 after defeating Michael Ignatieff on the fourth ballot and they’ve continued unabated. (”If Mr. Dion were any weaker, he’d need a blood transfusion,” screeched the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente last week. Ouch!)

I beg to differ. Consider this a shameless plug for Dion.

His convention win surprised many, none probably more so than former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae and former Harvard professor Ignatieff, both of whom may have felt entitled to the job simply because they are more eloquent English speakers. But Liberal party members chose him for a reason. Perhaps it was his integrity that inspired them. It’s certainly what gives me the smallest of hopes in this unwanted federal election and why I’m voting Liberal in my riding of Vancouver-Kingsway.

What I recall from watching the Liberal convention on TV (for the record, I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the Liberals or of any political party) and previously seeing Dion in action in the Jean Chrétien government was a man who has the country’s best interest at heart. He’s genuine, whip smart and, best of all, a humanist, who believes in a better country and a better world and who’ll work tirelessly to achieve his goals without trampling anyone’s rights.

And folks should just deal with his French accent. He’s completely understandable. If all Canadians were bilingual like Dion perhaps we wouldn’t have to endure endless Quebec referendums.

But the criticisms of late are almost awe-inspiring in their nature. You’d think Dion was a blubbering, spineless, cowering man who wouldn’t know how to defend an elephant against an ant. Yet he is the man who ably defended Canada and fought the separatists on their own turf. He left a safe academic career to take on the most volatile portfolio in the government–setting strict terms for negotiating Quebec separation. Feckless? Hardly. Heroic is more like it. The Clarity Act was long overdue. To Quebec separatists, predictably, he is a traitor, or “vendu” as they like to say, one of the harshest insults you can lob at a Quebecker (a French-speaking one because anglo-Quebeckers don’t rate). Dion shrugs it off.

Dion may have one iota less charisma than the ideologically driven Stephen Harper and broken-record Jack Layton, but in this election integrity trumps charisma. Dion is no Pierre Trudeau but well, who is, and not everyone liked him anyway. I trust Dion. I trust him to keep the economy on track. I trust him to tackle the environment–now, not later. I trust him to keep Insite open. I trust him to support the arts. I trust him not to muzzle his candidates. I trust him to be a good representative of Canada on the world stage. I trust him to make decisions based on facts and reputable science–not personal morals. I trust him to answer questions directly. I trust him not to plagiarize other leader’s speeches. I trust him to be just.

And frankly, a majority Harper government makes me lose sleep at night. Look at B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, who in all his glorious arrogance, cancelled the fall legislature simply because he could. There’s no telling what Harper–who, remember, has a cabinet member who think humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time–would ram through with a majority. Be afraid, very afraid.

Harper has simply reneged on too many promises (fixed election dates, taxing income trusts) and he relies on simple solutions for complex problems. Lowering the GST to five per cent has done nothing to improve my family’s finances. A couple of hundred bucks a month (taxable dollars at that) for my two children barely covers three days of daycare.

Then there are the twin Conservative themes–the Liberals’ supposed reckless spending combined with lax criminal justice–that don’t square with reality. The Liberal Party repeatedly brought in surpluses and the crime rate has dropped across the country. Longer jail sentences are not a solution to youth crime. Prevention is the solution. It’s called early childhood education. (I’ll save that for another column.)

If you want a forward-thinking, open government, the choice is simple. Vote for Dion.

fhughes@vancourier.com

© Vancouver Courier 2008

hyp·o·crite : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. 

Health Minister Tony Clement wrote in a recent article that the research findings surrounding Insite (Vancouver’s supervised injection site) are “mixed”.  He claims to be guided by science.  This makes one wonder why he would ignore the recommendation of his own expert scientific panel and twist positive findings into negatives.

So what is the government’s best “evidence” against Insite?

1)  Insite is dominated by 500 regular users
Presumably the Minister would rather have those 500 individuals on the street injecting in back alleys and on the front steps of local businesses.  Do they really want addicts getting abscesses and septic infections and using up vital hospital beds?  Do they want an increase in needle sharing and improper disposal of dirty needles?

Would the Minster also support the removal of counselling and medical services for the other “non-regular” clients who may have just started to inject drugs and are looking for a way out through the services offered at Insite, and the attached treatment center, Onsite?

In the Downtown Eastside, Insite is one of the only means of accessing a health professional and is the first point of contact for counselling and entry into drug rehab programs. 

Drug addicts must acknowledge that they have a problem and want something different before they can change.  Insite allows them to live long enough to make that choice, while helping them keep free of diseases which lead to hopelessness, acerbating treatment attempts.

2) 97% of injections occur outside of Insite. (4.4 million each year)
Considering the size of the Vancouver drug community, it would be unrealistic to believe that a single facility with 12 injection bays could accommodate the entire Vancouver injection drug community.  The Minister’s own advisory committee noted that per year “more than 220,000 clean injections have taken place at INSITE and for a population with these characteristics this is a significant achievement.”

Many of the addicts are suffering from mental health issues, others are afraid or unaware of the service, and still more become disengaged when forced to deal with the up to 45 minute wait times to get their fix.  This is not an argument for shutting down the supervised injection site.  It clearly indicates that the facility needs to be expanded to meet demand.

3) There have been 50 overdose deaths per year in the Downtown Eastside.
The fact that 50 people have died in the last year from something that is entirely preventable is staggering and atrocious.  The good news is that even though there have been overdoses at Insite, almost 1000 cases to date, there have been no deaths at the facility.

Using the Minister’s own numbers to extrapolate, we find that the 4.4 million unsupervised injections led to 50 deaths. Since Insite has conducted over 1 million injections, the supervised injection site has saved the lives of approximately 12 individuals.  This does not include the benefits derived from a reduction in infection rates from HIV or Hepatitis, which can lead to death and extreme long-term health, medical and social costs.

The expert advisory committee concluded that when reduced infection and overdose rates are combined, every dollar spent on Insite returns up to 4 dollars in savings. Keeping Insite open saves taxpayers 9 million dollars in health care and related costs.

The Conservative government has finally, after 30 years, realized that locking addicts up in prisons, where drugs are readily available, is not the solution.  I sincerely hope that that it does not take another 30 years before they stop deluding themselves and realize that supervised injection sites are the first step to reintegrating addicts back into society.  By providing victims of substance abuse with a health care professional and giving them access to the counseling services provided at Insite, addicts begin to deal with their problems, incorporate back into society and start down the road to recovery.

If Minister Clement really cared about addicts and scientific proof, he would be supporting and expanding programs like Insite and providing a seamless transition from supervised injections into treatment.

Unfortunately, playing politics with peoples lives and fighting court cases with money that would be better spent treating addicts appears to be more important. 

In spite of the rhetoric spouted by Stephen Harper that the Conservatives are working on behalf of all Canadians, a closer examination of the facts reveals that this Conservative government is absent in their responsibility to protect the rights of women in Canada. Truth be told, through their ideological prejudice the Conservatives are deliberately targeting and cancelling programs that protect the rights of Canadians and promote gender equality in our country.In the most recent example of this, the Conservatives cancelled funding for the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL). After years of providing legal reforms and lobbying for stronger laws to prevent rape, deal effectively with workplace harassment, improve custody arrangements, promote access to abortion and strengthen criminal harassment legislation, the Conservatives have unilaterally decide that women are “equal enough” in their eyes and that making better laws to protect women is passé.

As published in The Hill Times, July 16, 2007

If politics is supposed to lead the nation in debate, we’re being taken for quite a ride when it comes to pot and the law.

Discovering that in 2006, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Halifax experienced up to 50-per-cent increases in cannabis-related arrests is like walking backwards into a wall. 

I hold the former Liberal government responsible for not introducing their decriminalization bill earlier just as much as I blame the Conservatives for killing it when they came to office.

It was the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs that in 2002 determined that pot was not a gateway drug and “should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue.”  Many police officers turn a blind eye to criminal enforcement because resources are best used elsewhere.  Courts are clogged because marijuana cases slow down prosecution for more serious crimes.

If the charges are likely to never involve jail time or be thrown out altogether, I cannot for the life of me understand why we can’t make simple possession a fineable offence.

Critics of such a policy change often cite the opinion that it represents an attitude that’s soft on drugs.  What these voices fail to recognize is that the recreational pot user has little to do with the traffickers who barter for cocaine from the U.S.

I think that when it comes to the law, practicality has to be a guiding light in both design and enforcement.  And accordingly, there is absolutely no reason that a 15 year old high school student experimenting with marijuana for the first time should face the prospect of a criminal record.

This isn’t to say that we should be encouraging our kids to become users.  On the contrary, anti-drug campaigns that provide access to information and education have been the driving force behind a 38-per-cent decline in cannabis use among Grade 12 students in the U.S. between 1979 and 2006, and a 19-per-cent decrease in use by Ontario high school students between 2003 and 2005 was also noted.

Do the over 600,000 Canadians who currently have criminal records for cannabis possession really deserve such a label?  This number represents teachers, lawyers, doctors and parents who make daily contributions to our society and yet are labeled as unsavoury when they cross the border.  These “criminals” also live their lives with the frustration of knowing that violent offenders often escape prosecution entirely within our legal system.

I have yet to see the study or expert that can directly correlate marijuana use with other more serious offences like robberies, house breaks, assaults or mischief.  Such assertions spread a wide net over the 9.8 million Canadians aged 15 and older who have broken the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act at one time or another.

Once again, rather than being an advocate for the use of marijuana, and I am simply a believer in the fact that personal choice and proper parenting should be the parameters for a substance that is clearly less harmful than alcohol, which is of course legal and easily accessible.

According to recent crime statistics, it is estimated that the federal and provincial governments spend between $300 million and $500 million a year enforcing the law against simple possession of cannabis.  Now maybe Canadians have become used to hearing about such amounts of money, but I know that a lot of communities, particularly those where our Aboriginal peoples reside, could make much better use of such funds.

It’s about time that we get over the stigma associated with many of the false assumptions that dominate this debate, and pragmatically move forward on eliminating pot prohibition.  As someone who has both walked the streets as a member of the RCMP’s drug squad and examined legislation for passage into law as a Senator, I have a sharp understanding of what constitutes a criminal.

Those that use pot just don’t fit the profile.

As published in The Hill Times, June 18, 2007

“We cannot engage in a consultation process between premiers. To me that’s outrageous.” – Conservative Senator Raynell Andreychuk

Far beyond the boundaries of my usual confusion with the Conservatives’ style of governance (a never-ending love affair with everything American, an insistence on being referred to as “new” nearly 17 months after taking office, obedient puppets appointed as Ministers) lies Peter Van Loan’s most recent political outburst, which is blinding in its hypocrisy and confusion.

This past Thursday, Van Loan stated that Liberals were “provoking a constitutional crisis” by blocking the passage of his government’s Senate Tenure Bill.  The bill proposes capping the term of a new Senator to eight years, and was quickly shelved by the Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee.

Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, stated that the Senate was to be a place of “sober second thought” so that legislation would receive proper, careful consideration before finally becoming law.  In this situation, the advice offered by the committee was quite reasonable: put the bill on hold and refer the matter to the Supreme Court of Canada to determine whether it’s constitutional for Parliament to impose term limits without provincial consent.

In addition, many of my Senate colleagues felt that an 8 year term would allow a Prime Minister to stack the Senate with a group rubber stamping lemmings appointed for temporary political convenience.  It is for this reason that I am more partial to a 15-year term, which would provide Senators with an institutional understanding of the system and the public with a safeguard against irresponsible, politically motivated legislation.   

In typical Stephen Harper fashion, however, the thought of any of his directives being openly questioned is paramount to blasphemy.  Harper has classified this amendment as “minor,” and thus has deemed the acceptance of the provinces as irrelevant for his purposes. 

In consideration of the fact that the premiers of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and now Newfoundland and Labrador (representing nearly two thirds of Canada’s entire population) are all fiercely opposed to unilateral constitutional reform, however, Mr. Harper’s belief in absolute power is in direct conflict with the will of the people.

If real reform is really what the Conservative government is looking to achieve in the upper chamber, they would be well advised to treat the process a little more seriously.

Prince Edward Island, with a mere 0.4% of the country’s population, has four Senate seats, while my home province of British Columbia has six seats for a population that is 33 times larger.  Where are the proposed updates to this institutionalized inequity?

The answer to this question is simple.  Any such changes would require the approval of Parliament  and the legislatures of at least seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the population.  And, as has become clear from his public utterances, any reforms that might include the provinces in the process are not of interest to Stephen Harper.

According to Professor Roderic Beaujot, one of Canada’s foremost demographers, by 2031, the population of British Columbia will have increased by 29.3% and that of Alberta by 27.3%, while growth in Atlantic Canada is projected to lag far behind the national average. 

This means that the current inequalities in the Senate are only going to become steadily more severe over the next 25 years if left unaddressed.

As an already existing Senator, I have no vested interest in Mr. Harper’s proposed amendment.  I would not be subject to an eight-year term should such legislation eventually come to pass.

Where my interests do lie, however, are with a Prime Minister so hell bent on power that he attempts to callously usurp the constitutional powers of the provinces.

I look at the current political landscape and see Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador feeling ripped off with regards to their natural resource revenues, Ontario and Quebec up in arms with Stephen Harper’s “fix” for the fiscal imbalance, and British Columbia and Alberta fighting to have their growing importance within the federation acknowledged and respected.

In my humble opinion, the true provocateur of the current constitutional unrest in this country is the man who serves as Prime Minister, but really aspires to be President.
 

 Re: ‘blow up’ dysfunctional Senate (Ottawa Citizen Article May 18, 2007)

It’s amazing how defensive a child can get when they are caught with their hands in the cookie jar.  As can be seen by Senator Stratton’s recent comments in the Ottawa citizen in response to the findings of the Senate Internal Economy Committee, which declared that the actions of Jeffrey Kroeker (former aide to Marjorie LeBreton, Leader of the Government in the Senate) were “inappropriate and unethical”, aging conservatives indeed revert to their childhood when dealing with complex challenges and issues of ethics. 

The situation surrounding the Kroeker Affair began  with the Senate Standing Committee on Security and Defences’  (SSCSD) trip to Dubai Ports and Afghanistan which was agreed to, costs and all, by the Senate as a whole. Members of the SSCSD were authorized to travel to Dubai Ports and Afghanistan, and report back to the Senate on both. 

The Senators made it to Dubai but were denied entry in to Afghanistan.   Apparently you can take the Stanley Cup and 19 former NHL players into the war zone, but the Conservative government won’t let Senators of Canada’s Parliament review the handling of the mission.  The Conservative government, in a partisan attempt to block any constructive discussion of the issues (which I am sure in some backwards way will try to link with supporting the troops), created the situation that made the trip seem less worthwhile than the Senate had planned.  The costs of the trip were gathered and “leaked” by Mr. Kroeker in a puerile attempt to discredit the Senate and its Honourable Members.   So what has the Conservative Government done to dissuade others from acting in a dishonest and unethical manner? In the words of Mr. Kroeker “…I accepted a promotion”!  

So why has Senator Stratton thrown this latest tantrum? Well apart from possible feelings of guilt, which he should have for his party’s actions, could it also be about his frustration at his ineffectiveness as the government Whip in the Senate, and his inability to formulate consensus with fellow Conservative Senators? Could this be a schoolyard attempt to get back at Liberal Senators after incompetently failing at a maneuver to filibuster the Kyoto Accord as it moved to Third Reading in the Senate?  If one truly understood the mandate of the Senate, they would know it is a place of sober, and mature, second thought, not the place for juvenile histrionics.

If we are going to argue the benefits of harm reduction policies, and specifically the Insite Facility in the Downtown East Side of Vancouver, we need to be intellectually honest and not be guided by overblown rhetoric or ideology.  Conflicting ideas are beneficial and often lead to insightful debate and discussion. The mistake which is made by the media in their attempt to provide debate is to treat all opinions as equal regardless of the depth of study or content.

A recent article published by the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice in partnership with the Drug Prevention Network of Canada has been touted by various media sources as a demonstration of the failure of Insite. The fact that this article clearly states that the views expressed are strictly those of the writer and have no basis in scientific review or any other peer review, demonstrates a glaring imbalance which the media has failed to recognize.

Even the briefest review of the Journal would reveal their lack of credibility. Funding for the organization clearly outlined in the “about us” section of the website shows that the Journal of Global Drug policy is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.  In addition, the Canadian branch of the organization, the Drug Prevention Network of Canada specifically states its dedication to abstinence-based drug approaches and its opposition to legalization, even when legalization would save lives or ameliorate drug related problems. 

These facts alone should raise serious concerns about the validity of the claims, especially when we compare those claims to the long-term peer reviewed studies conducted by organizations such as The British Medical Journal, The Lancet, The Canadian Medical Association Journal and the American Journal of Public Health, all of which tout the benefits of the Insite facility.

Insite is not meant to be a solution in and of itself.  The Four Pillars approach is still very much the ideal, and along with harm reduction it is imperative that there are fully funded programs which promote treatment, enforcement and prevention.

With 24 hour news and increasing pressure on media to formulate instant stories and editorials, editors and writers are being forced to trust unreliable sources and are increasingly being influenced by small interest groups who can professionalize tabloid stories.

When peoples’ lives are on the line, it is vital that we look at facts and do not allow ourselves to be bound by stereotypes and personal accounts. Instead, we must be willing to study alternative solutions to societal problems.