Vancouver is the bank robbery capital of North America. No one is even close. Congrats.
This is because of drug addiction.
Therefore...?
The safe injection site has accomplished what? Three Million a year.
Great governance by Coty hall and The Nutty One, by the warm-hearted, deeply caring Preem and the ever-distant Federal Sleepyheads.
Treatment, anyone?
Have I mentioned treatment?
Despite the protestations of Children & Family Minister Tom Christensen, it is clear that the Monumental Premier does not keep short people clearly in his sights.
No, he is busy with roads and bridges and ski runs and business-destroying transit lines.
Judge Thomas Gove made large and small and all-significant recommendations in his 1995 report.
Judge Ted Hughes did the same in 2006.
Both came to their similar conclusions after substantial expense of public monies; expenditures which would be welcomed if anyone bothered to listen or follow-up with that word so foreign to governments - "ACTION."
Now, May Ellen Turpel-Lafond. the province's new watchdog for children and youth, has issued an almost identical report calling for a new kind of attentiveness.
Of course, The Minister, who should have resigned last year when yet another child "in care" died, has said, "We welcome the report. It is consistent with the direction we are going in."
The Tom Christensens and Gordon Campbells of the world just never quite get it, do they?
Christensen rolls out all the numbers and dollars they are spending to improve matters. New bodies, new "systems."
But it's not about more money, more workers, more computer programs.
It's about getting the people on the front lines really, sharply tuned to the subtleties of working with families and children at risk.
What are the real issues? The real indicators of trouble? The real signposts of safety? Whom can be trusted? Whom cannot? When is the right time and where is the right place for intervention? Families or fosters?
Every situation is new, yet every situation holds some echo of the one before it.
This government continues to ignore children at risk. And when, in embarrassment and desperation in finally turns to the matter it hand, it inevitable responds with what it knows - throw more green at the problem, buy it off.
Maybe that works for ferry boats and lumber mills, but it doesn't work for the suffering child.
Will some Canadian government ever find the courage to rid us of Trudeau's most heinous legacy - The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Or, at the very least, amend it, so that it is no longer an instrument of avoidance for felons?
A career criminal - at the old age of 23! - pleads guilty to murder. His victim's shot up body is found in the murderer's trunk. He further admits to an undercover cop that he expects to get 25 years at least because he definitely killed this guy.
Result?
Court declares his Charter rights were somehow compromised and he serves two years for spitting on the sidewalk, or something.
Moments after his release from Kiddy Jail, he is found in his apartment with enough high powered weapons to begin a small revolution.
The Charter is a laughing stock.
Change it or chuck it.
CODA: The scoff's armament-filled apartment is in Yaletown on Homer Street.
I wonder if The Nutty Mayor has appealed to the Preem, "No shooting after 2 am, please!"
Not one of the people on the BC Ferry's board, all of whom voted themselves exorbitant pay raises, is skinny.
They are all managing quite well, thank you very much and they need another $50,000 and $1,500 per meeting like I need more polka music.
Jimmy Pattison is the role model here.
He ran Expo 86 day in and day out, counting which food stands did better and picking up candy wrappers, for $1. That's right, one dollar.
The already sufficiently comfortable heads of corporations who sit on public boards like the BC Ferry Corpulence should VOLUNTEER THEIR TIME.
End of story.
The morning news affords the usual opportunities - the unprecedented raid on Tory headquarters, Kevin Falcon's lame kvetch to the BC Ferry Board for their huge salary increases - but there is something else on my mind.
I've been thinking since yesterday afternoon about Public Spaces/Public Places.
Unlike every city and village in Italy (and France and so many countries in the world), we have have none here in Vancouver.
Every twenty paces or so, Venice offers if not a piazza, then at least a small neighbourhood campo, where children boot soccer balls, parents compare notes on the prices of real estate and groceries and grandparents sit on benches. I realize I am creating an idealized, romantic image of a society in harmony.
But of late this mud town has been carrying on from every direction at once the noise called "Civil Society."
The usual suspects were hauled in by the Sun to "edit" a special Saturday edition embracing this notion. I was spared these pronouncements from the Mike Harcourts among us by a timely visit to Winnipeg.
If there are no places to stop and chat, if discourse is unnatural and an interruption rather than a daily pursuit, how can we speak of a civility?
What would it take for us to build stopping places - public spaces, mini-parks, breathing places that might even include fruit and vegetable stands or stores and cafes - in this cold, unwelcoming community?
Is this a silly dream of transplantation?
Is this one old culture plopped will-nilly on a newer one?
I'd love to see us try.
One of my favorite targets for scorn rmeains the gigantic pharmaceutical industry.
Armaments, BigPharma, illegal drugs and oil - there are your Big Four World Industries.
One of the biggest and most immoral of the BigPharmas is Merck.
Today it was revealed in stories published in both the Vancouver Sun and the NY Times, among others, that Merck has been ghost-writing reports and studies on their products and paying doctors to sign their names to these "testimonials."
The case of Vioxx is particularly troubling as it resulted in many deaths, before the poison was removed from the shelves.
How innocent has Merck been in all of this?
Well, for some mysterious reason they have seen fit to pay out $4.5 BILLION in compensations to victims of their malfeasance. No doubt with non-disclosure clauses.
Read the NY Times coverage here.
Is Jimmy Carter a Hero or a Fool?
Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?
He places a wreath on the grave of Yasser Arafat.
He visits Hamas leaders.
Watch this video report and tell me what this man is doing.
This is an astonishing story.
The BC Human Rights Commission has come down heavy on the MacDonald's restaurant on South West Marine Drive in Vancouver, because they insisted that one of their employees wash her hands.
Madness. Read the entire Ezra Levant piece here.
Robin Shantz is a good friend who, among other things, reads and reviews all things sci-fi.
Check out his take on a new work with the delectable title, "The Yiddish Policeman's Union."
Note that I have also added Robin's blog to my lnks list in the right hand column.
Why do I have trouble buying into Premier Campbell's regular announcements of more homes for the homeless?
So Covenant House will get several million dollars and 32 new beds.
Alright.
I have the same credibility problem with Covenant House as I do with the premier.
I do know that from the get-go Covenant House has been masterfully marketed.
I do know that most of the "new" housing units are old hotel rooms.
I do not see the federal government and the provincial government joining hands to create entirely whole new living spaces.
I do see offensive foto ops.
I remember that cold winter day in Edmonton in 1975 when Horror-luck was re-elected mayor. He was a convicted crook. But Edmontonians loved him, I guess. They named parks after him.
I remember I could barley summon the will to get out of bed.
Now, history repeats itself on a grander, more operatic scale.
Berlusconi, a crook and a scoundrel of ever there was one, has been re-elected prime minister of Italy for the third time.
Whatever are they thinking over there?
Read the tragic story here, and weep for a beautiful country lost in the haze.
There was Early Warning (yesterday), and now there's early morning.
I have to leave the house very early this morning, so I won't get to post the usual madness until mid-day.
If you're a morning Tube watcher, I'm on Breakfast TV on City at about 8:15.
Cheers...
From May 20th - June 8th, I will be travelling in England, Scotland and Ireland.
I won't be posting the usual rants on this site.
But I will be posting a travel blog. Why not?
Here is the URL:
http://laughingintheisles.blogspot.com/
And here is a tiny preview:
Apparently the organizers of yesterday's Vaisakhi parade didn't get the message.
Or maybe they just don't rightly care.
Celebrate martyrs, show violence, what the heck.
Somehow, I am stuck back in the old adage, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
We are a great multi-cultural soup here in Canada. It is one of our few strengths in an otherwise B-movie of a nation.
Unlike some, I am not asking people to all become Canadian - whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.
By all means, honor and cherish the customs, folklore, history, tastes and style of your original homeland.
But when Canada says - as Surrey Mayor Diane Watts, so clearly said - we will not accept the celebration of murderers, try listening.
That means honoring and cherishing the customs, folklore, history, tastes and style of your new country too.
It may be true that the American convicted in the U.S. of a selling chemicals to make illegal drugs has committed no crime here in Canada.
But that doesn't automatically make him our best bet as an immigrant.
I have recently learned that there are presently 800,000 - absorb this - EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND - immigration cases in backlog!
One of my dearest friends has been waiting over two years to bring his partner to Canada. Both are highly skilled and law abiding first-class citizens.
He was advised last month that his case HAS NOT YET BEEN ASSIGNED TO A WORKER.
The immigration file is probably the worst in the federal government.
It is a great bleeding shame and disgrace.
The following is a comment on today's Bush/Iraq posting from our friend Robert. While I'm not entirely in agreement with the conclusions, the commentary is thoughtful and heartfelt and it deserves a full posting if its own:
Hmmm, things are [now] going fairly well over in Iraq. 30,000,000 Muslims have been freed from the clutches of a horrific, murderous tyrant. Democracy exists in another place in the Middle East besides Israel. This is something we should end?!
I realize that many reading the words above will think I'm off my meds and am some kind of right-wing war monger. If so, they'd be wrong.
Can we all agree that each person's views of the world are shaped by the experiences they've had to that point in their life? Mine involve being born into a family where my father & his siblings were little kids on the German side during WW2. He was vehemently against Hitler but was powerless to do anything about it. After the war he lived in refugee camps and then at a young age had to move far away from the family, picking potatoes 14 hours a day in order to send a little money back to them.
But what emerged from the tragedy that was Nazi Germany was a vibrant country, a true democracy, and big positive to Europe and the world.
So shall the same emerge in Iraq, given enough time and commitment. If many of you get your wish and the Americans pull out, Iran's tentacles will surely reach into Iraq and turn it into a bloodbath for a time and then a satellite state. In case you're not aware, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is directly funded by Iran. They're the ones who send suicide bombers into Israel to kill innocent civilians.
War is messy. The aftermath of war is often worse. But patience is the only course of action if you want a people to have the same liberty and democracy that you've enjoyed since birth; that you were given for doing absolutely nothing in return. And things that we're given with no expectations in return are almost always taken for granted, aren't they?!
