Coyote--A Tale of Unexpected Consequences
Moka House on Hillside (at Shelbourne)
Thursday, October 20th
7:00 p.m.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
An Open Letter to Finance Minister Flaherty
The following is the text of a letter I've sent to Minister Flaherty.
Re Blancing the Budget
Greetings, Minister Flaherty,
Regarding your budget-balancing plans, in order to believe that you will cut government spending in ways which will cause the least pain to Canadians, I need to see that the first cuts you make are the following:
1. Instead of being ‘tough on crime’—but soft-headed about appropriate policies, why don’t you try being smart on crime, for a change?
Withdraw the omnibus crime bill, thus negating any need for more prisons—the most expensive and least effective means of influencing human behaviour, the last thing we need when municipal infrastructure (to take only one example) desperately needs up-grading.
To deal with the grievous over-crowding in prisons, you should see that a process is put in motion to release as many non-violent offenders as possible, under a variety of conditions—house arrest, half-way house, ankle bracelet, timely meetings with parole officer, etc—properly funded, thus obviating the need for more incarceration ‘capacity’, and saving millions;
2. Instead of buying an increasingly expensive untried fighter jet, replace the CF-18’s with a tried and true aircraft better suited to military, and search and rescue needs;
3. Remove all control of drug use and abuse from the Criminal Code and instead give the Health Ministry the responsibility of initiating a system of regulation, licensing, and taxation, adapted to suit different drugs. Marijuana, for example is safer than alcohol and can be controlled and taxed in all the ways that liquor is, while heroin would be available only by prescription.
You and the government of which you are a member, have a choice, Minister Flaherty: You can either persist with drug prohibition to the continuing endangerment of the citizenry, the waste of hundreds of millions of tax dollars, and the delight of criminal gangs; or you can regard drug use as, at worst, a medical problem, best dealt with outside the Criminal Code, and save hundreds of millions of tax dollars instead of, for example, gutting the environment ministry, which does work we really need.
Will you put the public good before your private moral view of drugs, Mr. Flaherty?
Unfortunately, I don’t believe you will, and the country will become meaner and nastier with every mean and nasty clause in your omnibus crime bill, and every additional prison cell.
Re Blancing the Budget
Greetings, Minister Flaherty,
Regarding your budget-balancing plans, in order to believe that you will cut government spending in ways which will cause the least pain to Canadians, I need to see that the first cuts you make are the following:
1. Instead of being ‘tough on crime’—but soft-headed about appropriate policies, why don’t you try being smart on crime, for a change?
Withdraw the omnibus crime bill, thus negating any need for more prisons—the most expensive and least effective means of influencing human behaviour, the last thing we need when municipal infrastructure (to take only one example) desperately needs up-grading.
To deal with the grievous over-crowding in prisons, you should see that a process is put in motion to release as many non-violent offenders as possible, under a variety of conditions—house arrest, half-way house, ankle bracelet, timely meetings with parole officer, etc—properly funded, thus obviating the need for more incarceration ‘capacity’, and saving millions;
2. Instead of buying an increasingly expensive untried fighter jet, replace the CF-18’s with a tried and true aircraft better suited to military, and search and rescue needs;
3. Remove all control of drug use and abuse from the Criminal Code and instead give the Health Ministry the responsibility of initiating a system of regulation, licensing, and taxation, adapted to suit different drugs. Marijuana, for example is safer than alcohol and can be controlled and taxed in all the ways that liquor is, while heroin would be available only by prescription.
You and the government of which you are a member, have a choice, Minister Flaherty: You can either persist with drug prohibition to the continuing endangerment of the citizenry, the waste of hundreds of millions of tax dollars, and the delight of criminal gangs; or you can regard drug use as, at worst, a medical problem, best dealt with outside the Criminal Code, and save hundreds of millions of tax dollars instead of, for example, gutting the environment ministry, which does work we really need.
Will you put the public good before your private moral view of drugs, Mr. Flaherty?
Unfortunately, I don’t believe you will, and the country will become meaner and nastier with every mean and nasty clause in your omnibus crime bill, and every additional prison cell.
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