Have a Heart, Harper

I’ve been thinking of how heartless the Harper Administration can be; how totally indifferent they are to the harm their ideology causes—the waste of hundreds of millions of dollars on enforcing the ‘war on drugs’ instead of treating addicts, and regulating and taxing marijuana; their refusal to assist Canadians in trouble overseas, indeed, to make their predicament worse as with Omar Khadr, Maher Arar, Abousfian Abdelrazik, and others; the despicable conditions they’ve allowed to continue on Attawaspisak and too many other aboriginal reserves; the lies they tell—e.g. that MP Irwin Cotler was resigning, when he wasn’t—which they then have the effrontery to defend as free speech; the disgraceful way they treat wounded members of the Canadian Forces, fobbing them off with a paltry one-time payment instead of a decent pension—these are the actions of a heartless regime led by a man who cares only for power and money, and nothing for anyone who doesn’t blindly support him.

So I suggest that this Valentine’s Day we each send Harper a heart of our own devising, with our own message to demonstrate that we care, even if he doesn’t. I'm going to send mine in hard copy; it doesn't cost anything, and makes more of an impression than e-mail. Below is an example of a postcard I'm working on.

Inspired by Michael Campbell

I listen to Michael Campbell (an investment adviser, and the ex-Premier’s brother) give his personal business opinions on CFAX 1070 nearly every weekday morning. I get my daily shot of righteous indignation, and it makes me think, refuting him helping me to clarify my own position on economic matters.

For Michael Campbell, business/capitalism is always right; while government (with the possible exception of the B.C. Liberals and the Harper Administration), the ‘left’, unions, the media (except for Mr. Campbell, of course) and the Canadian public are always wrong.

This morning Mr. Campbell was going on about pensions—how large they are, how under-funded, how taxpayers will have to fill the gap. While acknowledging that adequately-funded pension plans are preferable, the fact remains that whatever money we tax-payers inject into pensions will help support considerable purchasing power, which in turn will help support economic activity of all kinds. Far too many business people seem incapable of seeing beyond their immediate costs to how maintaining purchasing power benefits them all, whether by raising the minimum wage, increasing social assistance rates, or supporting pensions.

Thinking about pensions got me thinking about social assistance rates. If they were more far-sighted, small businesses would be lobbying the government to substantially increase them, including those for the disabled, as this would boost the revenues of local businesses across the province.

I suggest that in B.C. the rates be doubled (for example, from $610 to $1220 per month for a single employable person, which would still be under the poverty line); that every recipient be allowed to keep at least $1,000 a month of any money earned ($1,500 for families with children) before their social assistance cheque is docked; and that the artificial division between rent support and all other costs be eliminated.

(I do not understand the mind that stipulates that if a recipient of social assistance should, by some miracle, find a place to rent for less than the present allowance of $375, they should forfeit the difference, instead of that saving being available to cover other costs.)

Allowing an earnings exemption of $1,000 would provide a strong incentive to find work, while doubling the rate to $1220 would help provide the means—a place to live, a phone, a bus pass, decent clothes—all of which are necessary for finding a job.

Although a doubling of rates would double the provincial budget for social assistance from $1.6 billion to $3.2 billion, the multiplier effect would increase economic activity even more, while doubling the bang we’d get for our buck—significantly-decreased poverty and significantly-increased economic activity.

At the moment, we’re spending $1.6 billion to keep people in poverty; double the rate, and many recipients will finally have a realistic chance of getting off social assistance for good, in the long run saving us considerably more than the original investments.

BC Supreme Court Ruling Re Polygamy Upholds Bad Law

I am an a-religious person with no ties to any polygamous household.

The court’s decision was a triumph of moral indignation and bad law.

Everyone ignores the fact that all of the harm caused women and children in polygamous households has taken place even though polygamy is illegal. Where is the evidence that this law has saved one woman or child from harm?

The criminalizing of polygamy may actually increase the likelihood of harm because it encourages closed communities like Bountiful where it is extremely difficult to discover what is going on.

We need civil laws to protect women and children, such as one providing that all spouses (formally married, or common-law) have an equal share in the matrimonial home and assets. Under the present law, wives are dependent, at least partly because they have no matrimonial property rights in their home or household income.

The distinction between ‘poly-amorous’ and polygamous households is totally phony. It means that a man may live with as many women as he wishes, unless he marries them, whereupon he’s committed a crime. That’s ridiculous.

The automatic assumption that every woman in a polygamous household is a victim is insulting to them, and all women. The decision and the arguments upholding it are rank paternalism dressed up in the sheep’s wool most people pull over their eyes regarding forms of marriage they do not wish to recognize.

A Citizen's Response--Part 1

A Citizen’s Response to the Supreme Court of Canada’s Decision Re the Government’s Right to Criminalize the Possession of Marijuana

Part 1

On December 23, 2003 the Supreme Court of Canada declared that it is not a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for the Government to criminalize the possession of marijuana. I am writing this response, not because I expect the Court to pay the slightest attention to it, but to open a debate with my fellow citizens as to the kind of laws we should be governed by, and our means of holding the Government to its responsibility to enact fair, effective laws. In Part 1, I will address some specific points of difference with the Court’s judgment; in Part 2, I will discuss some tests which should be applied to laws which limit our rights, and inflict harm (punishment) on us.

The point of view of the Court throughout is that of the state, and not the citizen. For example, it writes of the state’s “. . . interest in the avoidance of harm to its citizens” (p.3), rather than of the citizen’s interest in the avoidance of harm from our state, and seems not to have noticed the contradiction in the curious notion that to avoid citizens harming ourselves, the state has the right to inflict harm on us instead.

The Court seems not to take into account who the state (or more accurately, the state’s agent, the Government, through Parliament) is: ordinary women and men elected by their fellow citizens to serve us—not to set themselves up as our moral superiors, nor to punish us simply for behaviour of which they disapprove. Singly, or together, the state, Parliament, and the Government, are not our parents, our guardians, or our masters; they are our servants, and the primary function of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to keep them in their place. The Charter belongs to us, not to our institutions, and its proper function is not to benefit the Government, but to protect us from its excesses, and to set a standard against which laws which limit our rights can be measured.

In particular, I differ with the Court regarding a) its denial that the ‘harm principle’ is a principle of fundamental justice; b) its standard of ‘gross disproportionality’; c) its denial that the Government’s use of the Criminal Code for some recreational drugs and not others is arbitrary; d) its position that the end justifies the means; and e) its practice of denying citizens access to Section 1 of the Charter, unless we can first prove an infringement under other sections.

a) The ‘harm principle’

The ‘harm principle, as expressed by J. S. Mill in On Liberty, and quoted by both the appellant and the Court is “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”. The Court’s denies that this is a principle of fundamental justice.

My position is that the question of harm caused to others by the citizen vs. harm inflicted on citizens by the state is one of fundamental justice. However, I would not define the principle as broadly as Mill does. The issue is not whether the Government has the right to exercise some power over us; obviously, it does, or it couldn’t function at all. The issue is not even whether the Government may use the Criminal Code to deal with some problems; the issue is whether the Government is justified in using the Criminal Code (an especially severe exercise of power) to punish actions which in and of themselves do not harm others in a criminal way. (I will deal with the distinction between criminal and other harm, and related issues, in Part 2.)

The Court probably would not agree with me, either. It argues that to be a principle of fundamental justice “. . . for the purposes of s. 7, it must be a legal principle about which there is significant societal consensus it is fundamental to the way in which the legal system ought fairly to operate, and it must be identified with sufficient precision to yield a manageable standard against which to measure deprivations of life, liberty or security of the person.” (p. 34)

I suggest that we have had such a standard for thousands of years: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. This means not only that one is allowed to exact an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth, but further, that one cannot exact more than an eye for an eye. Since this dictum is found in writings which are part of the heritage of three of the major religious groups in Canada, I suggest there is ‘significant societal consensus’ that the harm principle is one of fundamental justice.

As for providing a manageable standard, take the following illustrative example: A citizen is sitting quietly at home, alone, smoking a joint, harming no one. The police arrive, and 1) break down the door, 2) ransack the house, 3) cart away everything from pipes to computers, 4) handcuff the citizen’s arms behind their back, 5) take them out to the squad car before the eyes of the assembled neighbourhood, 6) lodge the citizen in jail (perhaps 7) for a couple of nights, if the arrest occurs on the weekend, perhaps for even longer, if they can’t raise bail), and 8+) begin the long, involved, expensive process which will cost the citizen inordinate amounts of time, energy, money, and reputation, even if they are acquitted, and cost every one of us inordinate amounts of taxes. Harm by the citizen—0; harms to the citizen—7, and counting; harms to society—numerous (see Part 2 for a list). Although the harms in the example may seem relatively minor (until you actually experience them yourself) they are only the beginning—and already at least a tooth has been taken, for a fingernail paring. Which leads me to my second point,

b) the Court’s standard of ‘gross disproportionality’.

The Court holds that only harm that is ‘grossly disproportional’ to the offence is an infringement of the Charter. The treatment described above, or much worse, is not ‘grossly disproportional’ because ‘gross disproportionality’ to the Court means, “punishments that are more than merely excessive” [emphasis added]; punishments “. . . that Canadians would find . . . abhorrent or intolerable”. The Court’s view seems to be that, ‘merely excessive’ punishments, and other drawbacks of the law, “. . . are part of the social and individual costs of having a criminal justice system.” (p.42)

To some extent, this is true; no system of justice will be perfect, but that does not mean that the costs listed above are unavoidable, or acceptable. At the very least, in order to impose such costs, the Government has a commensurate responsibility to a) provide real benefits for those very real costs beyond merely having ‘a justice system’, regardless of its actual quality and efficacy; b) not to impose such costs without justifiable reason; and c) to limit those costs as much as possible. We do not live in ‘a free and democratic society’ if citizens must bear the costs of arrest, imprisonment, legal fees, and on and on, to support bad laws, or an unfair, ineffective justice system.

The Court has set the bar of disproportionality so high that the Government is largely free to harass and punish us for any behaviour of which it disapproves, regardless of the actual efficacy of its laws, or the harm they may inflict on citizens, and society as a whole. I do not accept that the Government should have that kind of power over me, nor do I agree that such power falls “. . . within the broad latitude within which the Constitution permits legislative action.” (Interesting that here the Court uses ”Constitution” and not “Charter”.) In my reading of Section 1 of the Charter, the fact that the Government must ‘demonstrably justify’ the reasonable limits it places on us, indicates that its latitude is not broad, but quite narrow. I will return to the requirement of demonstrable justification a little later.
c) arbitrariness

The fact that someone indulging in an equally, or even more, harmful drug (alcohol, for example) is not punished, while someone using marijuana is, is not, in the Court’s view, an arbitrary distinction, but merely the Government exercising its right to make criminal law as it sees fit. The Court reasons that criminalizing some drug use, but not others, is not arbitrary because the state has, as mentioned, an interest in “. . the avoidance of harm to those subject to its laws” (p.3), and “. . . . a particular interest in acting to protect vulnerable groups”, (among whom it includes pregnant women, and those with pre-existing diseases), stating that this is, “. . . also consistent with Charter jurisprudence affirming the state’s power to intervene to protect children whose lives are in jeopardy and to promote their well-being” (p.38). In the Court’s view, we are children upon whom the Government, whenever it apprehends a possible harm to us, has a general right to inflict even more harm to ‘protect’ us. Curious reasoning, to say the least.

We are not children. Pregnant, chronically ill, or not, we are adult citizens who are perfectly capable of deciding for ourselves whether or not to use any particular drug, and do not need the Government acting as our nanny.

Furthermore, in exercising its power to make criminal law, the Government has a responsibility to be fair and consistent. Since smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol are at least as potentially harmful to the user as heroin, cocaine or marijuana, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary (and in the teeth of the evidence that criminalizing drug use in fact encourages it, and supports the profits of organized crime), the decision to criminalize the possession of some recreational drugs and not others is purely arbitrary. In denying such arbitrariness, the Court takes the position that

d) the end justifies the means.

The Court declares, “For a law to be classified as a criminal law, it must have a valid criminal law purpose backed by a prohibition and a penalty,” (p. 3) and further, that “In particular, criminalization seeks to take marihuana out of the hands of users and potential users to prevent the associated harm and to eliminate the market for traffickers.” (p.38) [emphases added] In other words, the end justifies the means. In fact, as the laws which criminalize drug use amply demonstrate, bad means corrupt laudable ends. Rather than being eliminated, ‘the market for traffickers’, is created by the laws criminalizing possession, cultivation, and distribution. If marijuana (or any other recreational drug) were regulated, licensed, and taxed as alcohol is, the only black market would be one created by excessively high taxes. (There is a point beyond which citizens will not be pushed, and when the Government goes beyond this point, all kinds of undesirable consequences, such as black markets, smuggling, and increased violence, occur.)

Unfortunately, the Court does not allow citizens to make such arguments unless and until, we have proven an infringement of our rights under one of the other sections of the Charter, which, as has been shown, is extraordinarily difficult to do, given the Court’s standards and its bias towards the state.

e) Access to Section 1

Section 1, in its entirety, reads: “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

This is not some afterthought, tacked on at the end of the Charter to be used merely as a defence by the Government; this is the first section, the section which sets a standard for all which follow. It provides that any limits on our rights must be ‘reasonable’—not ‘grossly disproportional’—reasonable. And those limits must be ‘demonstrably justified’. The Government not only must have a good purpose in mind, it must also demonstrate that its means, in this case, the Criminal Code, actually delivers the desired results, in the context of ‘a free and democratic society’. Whatever else ‘free’ may mean to citizens, I’m sure most would agree that it begins with the right to be left alone by the Government, except for justifiable cause. (A right which, though not specifically mentioned, is protected by Section 26, which reads, “The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or freedoms that exist in Canada.”)

But the Court regards Section 1 merely as a defence to an infringement of other sections. This is too limited a view. Section 1 is first and foremost, a standard against which legislation which limits our rights should be judged, prior to any specific infringements of other sections being proved. Regarding recreational drug use, my position is that an infringement of Section 7 does exist, but even if it did not, citizens should be able to challenge laws directly under Section 1, and make the Government demonstrate that such laws are both needed, and effective.

But the Court sees it differently. Braidwood, J. A., of the Court of Appeal, summarized the evidence of the harm caused by the prohibition itself. The Supreme Court states, “In effect, the exercise undertaken by Braidwood, J. A. was to balance the law’s salutary and deleterious effects. In our view, with respect, that is a function that is more properly reserved for s. 1. These are the types of social and economic harms that generally have no place in s.7.” (p. 45) However, the Court concludes, since “. . . the accused have not established an infringement of s. 7, there is no need to call on the Government for a s. 1 justifications,” (p.4) thus arbitrarily denying us access to the single most important section of our Charter, the one which sets the standard for the rest.

In Part 2 I will discuss the tests which citizens should be able to apply under Section 1 of the Charter to determine if the standard of a ‘demonstrable justification’ of a reasonable limit to our rights has been met.

A Citizen's Response--Part 2

A Citizen’s Response to the Supreme Court of Canada’s Decision Re the Government’s Right to Criminalize the Possession of Marijuana

Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed some specific points of disagreement with the Supreme Court’s decision that the Government has the right to criminalize the possession of marijuana. The most important of these differences is with the Court’s position that Section 1 of the Charter comes into play only after an infringement of one of the other sections has been found; that is, the Court regards Section 1 merely as an opportunity for the Government to defend an infringing law.

I take precisely the opposite view, that Section 1’s primary role is to provide a standard against which any limits the Government wishes to impose on our rights can be measured, and must be justified. This means citizens should be able to challenge laws directly under Section 1, forcing the Government to justify criminalizing recreational drug use, for example, by passing three tests: Is the law necessary? Is it effective? and Does it cause less harm, to individuals and society, than the harm it is intended to address?

The law must pass all three tests to justify limiting our rights by criminalizing our behaviour. If it does so, then any specific infringements can be dealt with (either justified, or corrected); if it doesn’t, then specific infringements don’t matter because the entire law would be cast out. This process would enable citizens, the Courts, the Government, and Parliament, to work together to craft laws which do the job intended, without unnecessarily intruding into citizens’ lives.

Necessity

To justify using criminal sanctions the Government must show that, of and by itself, drug use causes problems for people other than the drug user, severe enough to be characterized as criminal behaviour—that is, the Government must demonstrate that real crimes are involved.
Real crimes are those acts by which one or more people inflict specific, direct harm on one or more other people—e.g. murder, rape, theft, fraud, libel, etc.. Phony crimes are victimless crimes, acts which have been outlawed because the government disapproves of them. They include, among others, soliciting for the purpose of prostitution, the possession of certain drugs, and (formerly) homosexuality.

The peaceful, private use of drugs hurts no one else directly. Negative side effects (second hand smoke, for example) may be suffered by others, but these can be dealt with through means other than criminal sanctions (bans on smoking in public indoor venues, for example). If a drug user commits a real crime such as impaired driving, there are laws already in place to deal with the offence.

Government cannot use the crimes that addicts commit to support their habits—muggings, burglary, etc.—as evidence of the harm drug abuse itself may cause others. Those crimes are the result of the high prices generated by criminal sanctions, and not the consequence of addiction per se. If addicts could go to their own doctor for treatment as for any other medical problem, they would no longer have to steal to support their habit because it would be covered by medicare (which would be a significantly cheaper and more effective way to deal with the consequences of addiction than is the present practice of hunting down, convicting, and jailing drug users, over and over again).

Even if users are harmed, the Government must demonstrate that it is necessary to apply criminal sanctions—that is, that no other, less severe, laws will do. Many other activities may cause harm to the person doing them—mountain-climbing, racecar driving, scuba-diving, to name only a few. It makes as much sense to subject addicts to the rigours of imprisonment to protect them from heroin, as it would to subject snowmobilers to imprisonment to protect them from avalanches.

Furthermore, the Government can’t justify the continued criminalization of drugs by citing mandatory helmet laws as examples of an acceptable limit on our freedom. Hemet laws apply only when one is riding in public, and those who go bare-headed are not charged under the Criminal Code.

On the evidence, criminalizing recreational drug use is not only unnecessary, but actively counter-productive, a point I will return to.


Effectiveness

Closely related to the question of necessity is that of effectiveness. Criminal sanctions, because of their severity, can only be justified if they solve the problem they were meant to solve.
Do criminal sanctions prevent or treat drug abuse? No. Do they ameliorate the medical or social problems attributed to drug abuse? No; they make them worse. Are they enforceable? No. Despite thousands of convictions for drug offenses every year, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians continue to use illegal drugs. Do sanctions act as a deterrent to drug dealing? No. In fact, instead of preventing drug abuse, criminal sanctions have increased it by supporting a lucrative black market for over 70 years.

The most successful anti-drug efforts have been those against tobacco and alcohol, both of which are legal. While tobacco companies may be held in low repute, they are under far more control than a black market in tobacco would be, and they pay taxes. The same would hold true for licensed purveyors of recreational drugs; the government would have much more control over them than it has now over organized crime, as well as access to an additional source of revenue. When a more effective and less harmful approach is available to the Government (legalizing, licensing, and regulating), a more severe and less effective law (criminalizing) cannot be justified.

Harm to Society

The government must demonstrate that criminal sanctions do not inflict greater harm on society than the use of drugs itself. The harm caused by sanctions includes, but is not limited to:

1) Most of the problems associated with drug use are the result, not of drug use per se, but of criminalization, which pushes up prices, leading to an increased risk of innocent people being mugged, burgled, or otherwise robbed by someone seeking money for a fix. Making penalties more severe tends to raise the price, leading to more crime to pay for it, and drawing more people into the market, rather than deterring them. The enormous profits gained by organized crime further increase the public’s peril as innocent by-standers can be caught in the crossfire between police and gangs, or between gangs fighting amongst themselves to seize or protect this wealth;

2) the threat to privacy from increased police prying. There being no victims, drug use is difficult to detect, leading police to use such questionable tactics as wire-tapping, surveillance cameras, undercover agents, and entrapment to obtain evidence. This is intrusive, and sets a dangerous precedent, for the Government’s appetite for scrutinizing us will only grow if we allow ‘the war on drugs’ to rob us of our privacy. And since the police can, and do, make mistakes, no one is safe from intrusion (to say nothing of the damage and expense suffered by the owners of dwellings the police have broken into looking for drugs);

3) the billions of tax dollars wasted every year finding, convicting, and imprisoning drug offenders; money which could be more usefully spent on education about, and treatment of, drug abuse, and for more neighbourhood policing using foot and bicycle patrols. Further millions are lost by not taxing the profits of drug dealers;

4) the infringement of the right to practice the religious ceremonies of our choice. Constitutional challenges to the drug laws, based on freedom of religion have failed on the grounds that that freedom does not include practices which contravene the Criminal Code—a reasonable limitation re any rite which inflicts harm on others (including animals), but an entirely unreasonable one regarding the peaceful ceremonial use of drugs by adults.

5) the increased threat to public health (and the public purse) from AIDS and other illnesses because, fearing the legal consequences, people are deterred from seeking treatment for drug addiction (or can’t get it, if they do try), and continue to engage in unsafe practices such as sharing dirty needles;

6) the denial to patients of reasonable access to the medical use of these drugs; heroin for pain relief, for example, or marijuana for nausea, glaucoma, and other ills;

7) the increased likelihood that children will be tempted to use drugs. Illegality itself is an incentive to experiment, and inflated prices encourage dealers to get young people hooked as early as possible. It’s probably easier for a child to buy a joint than a cigarette or a beer, but if huge profits could no longer be made, most dealers would leave the business, making drugs harder to find. Those who continued to sell recreational drugs could be regulated in the same way purveyors of alcohol and tobacco currently are.

Harm to the Offender

As discussed in Part 1, the Government must not inflict greater harm on a person than that person has inflicted on others, because to do so contravenes the long-recognized standard of (not more than) ‘an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth’. The laws against drug use cause far more real harm to offenders (and society) than does drug use itself. Criminalization, then, is the equivalent of taking an eye for a fingernail paring, and cannot be justified.

The Proper Role of Government

Where do we draw the line? When is the Government justified in interfering in our private lives? Regarding the use of criminal sanctions, the line should be drawn between those acts which intentionally (or through willful negligence) cause direct harm to others, and those acts which do not. The peaceful use of, and trade in, recreational drugs is not a real crime (or even a misdemeanour); impaired driving, whether due to drugs, alcohol, or fatigue, is.

The mistaken assumptions underlying the war on drugs are: a) that the Government has the right to inflict harm upon us to save us from ourselves, and b) that the best way to deal with an activity the Government deems undesirable is try to eliminate it by making it a criminal offence. But when phony crimes are created, the outlawed activities escape control completely by being driven underground, where they flourish. To enjoy a freer and more manageable society, we need to focus on encouraging responsible use (which can include non-use, in some instances), instead of merely setting and trying to enforce blanket prohibitions.

When the Government uses force to save us from ourselves, it oversteps itself. Citizens wish to engage in various kinds of activities deemed vices by others, and the law, as has been shown over and over again, is powerless to stop us. The Government’s proper role is not to act as our protector, or parent, or moral arbiter, but to provide the legal framework within which adults can enjoy the ‘vices’ of their choice in a peaceful and orderly fashion. The Government’s duty is to ensure, among other things, that drugs are pure, accurately measured, and correctly labelled (including appropriate warnings, if any); that games of chance are honest; that prostitutes are of age, and free of disease; that brothels are small, quiet, and co-operatively owned; and that all who profit from such activities pay their fair share of taxes.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court favours what it sees as the state’s “. . . interest in the avoidance of harm to its citizens”, as if we belonged to the state, instead of the state belonging to us. It is not the Government’s interests, but the rights and interests of citizens that the Charter is intended to protect.

The Court would probably argue that the proper venue for protesting the law and trying to change is Parliament and the political process. It is true that this course should be pursued; however, the political process works best when the Court is cognizant of the fact that elections are often not well-suited to resolving single issues. Quite properly, voters tend to choose their representatives based on a wide range of considerations, and not on one issue alone, which means that, even if they support the legalization of drugs, they may choose to vote for a non-supporter of that position for other reasons that are more important to them. This is a valid choice on their part (nor would it be good for the country if elections were decided primarily on single issues), but that choice ought not to leave their fellow citizens without recourse against specific laws.

If, in this instance, the Court had chosen to declare that criminalization was unconstitutional, and thrown the problem back to the Government and Parliament for another try at solving it, then citizens would be given a real hearing on this issue in the coming election because Parliament would have to address it. However, since the Court has ruled that it doesn’t infringe the Charter for the Government to inflict harm on us when no commensurate harm has been caused, the political process has been defused. Not only will candidates have less incentive to discuss the issue (beyond, perhaps, ‘decriminalization’ which will do nothing except to whitewash the status quo), they are all too likely to throw the Court’s decision in the faces of those who think our Charter rights have been transgressed.

To make the political process truly responsive to citizens, we need a Court that is willing to give our interests at least equal standing with the Government’s; not a Court which interprets our Charter exclusively from the Government’s point of view.

Summary

In 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision upholding the Government’s right to create victimless crimes reduced us from citizens to children, ‘protected’ by the people we elect to serve, not master, us—our peers, ordinary men and women in both Liberal and Conservative Governments who have elevated themselves above their station by acting as our nannies. From this falsely superior position, the Harper Conservatives justifies its rush to criminalize drug use even more severely, indifferent to the inappropriateness and ineffectiveness of their policy, its horrendous cost, and the harm it creates for citizens and society alike.

The Charter should protect citizens from such legislated abuse, but I no longer believe the Supreme Court can be relied on to uphold the rights of citizens against the desire of the Harper Government to act, in the most vicious way possible, in loco parentis to adult citizens. Loco indeed are the consequences, for we are saddled with laws which create far greater harm than the harm they supposedly address, and no end to this insanity is in sight.

Open Letter to the Christy Clark Government

Re: Your hypocritical poor-mouthing in general and the Juan de Fuca lands in particular

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Apparently, you’re in such desperate fiscal straits that you don’t have the revenues to fund treatment and housing for the mentally ill; you can’t afford reasonable-sized classes in our public schools, and there are so many claims for parkland that the Juan de Fuca Lands just have to take their turn—to name only three of the areas where you have failed to live up to your responsibility to further the public good.

Claiming lack of funds is pure baffle-gab. You guys always find money for anything you want to do—$8 million for your ill-advised attempt to save the HST; $600 million for a fancy new roof on a sports stadium—so don’t tell me you can’t find the money to buy the Juan de Fuca Lands; that spin won’t wash.

If you don’t want to increase your deficit you could a) persuade the Pacific Carbon Trust to do something laudable with the public’s money they receive through schools, by buying the lands, and/or b) reverse the unnecessary income tax cut your predecessor made in 2001. Without that windfall for the richest people in the province, you might not be in a deficit position today. It’s time your wealthy business backers started paying for the quality of life they enjoy here, including our wild lands. B.C. is a high-class place to live and do business; there’s plenty of tax room at the top.

Among the many bad decisions the Gordon Campbell Government made, releasing thousands of hectares from the protection of a Tree Farm Licence without appropriate compensation, was among the most gratuitously egregious. So unnecessary; so focused on the welfare of a private company at the expense of the public good, this lack of care and forethought by that Government has created an obligation for you—the Christy Clark Government—to rectify the error by buying the land and protecting it in perpetuity as a park. (The recent Raeside cartoon in the Victoria Times-Colonist showing the sign at the entrance to the park as—The Gordon Campbell Provincial Park—is an idea worth considering. Surely it would ease the pain of owning up to, and paying for, your predecessor’s mistake, to see the Opposition and other opponents squirm at the designation. :-)

You have a little under two years to work your way back into public favour; to convince citizens that you really do understand where your duty lies. Ensuring that the Juan de Fuca lands remain forever un-logged and undeveloped would be a good step in that direction, as well as a long-term investment in the economy of the region.

Think about it.

LAUNCH PARTY

Coyote--A Tale of Unexpected Consequences

Moka House on Hillside (at Shelbourne)

Thursday, October 20th

7:00 p.m.