BUCK PASSING - THE ART

This is not good news.

The federal government and Vancouver have turned to the province to co-ordinate government services for drug addicts, the mentally ill, the homeless and the poor in the city's Downtown Eastside, Canada's most notorious slum.

If anyone at any level has shown the greatest resistance to doing anything meaningful or substantive about these plagues it has been the provincial government.

The Vancouver Mayor is looking to Rich Coleman or some other wise man in Victoria to lead the charge.

This could not be described as clear thinking based on past evidence.

At what point has the Campbell government shown an interest in these issues?

Was I out of town that nano-second?

Oh, I know.

During my surgery on Jan. 23d, I was in an anesthetic-induced white-out for 105 minutes. That must have been the time when Victoria took charge of Our Shame and invested million in treatment and so on.