Conservative Party

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UPDATE: Canada’s Parliament approved the Conservative resolution with 221 Yea votes, 51 Nay votes and 12 abstentions, meanwhile Justin Trudeau’s alma mater McGill University voted in favour of a pro-BDS resolution with 512 for and 337 against.

So while our collective political attention, or at least mine, has been focused south of the border, or on less partisan though equally polarizing issues like taxi protests, celebrities being screwed over and basically anything but Canadian federal politics, our parliament has been debating a motion to condemn the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel) movement which will come to a vote today, the same day McGill University votes on whether or not they will adopt a pro-BDS stance or not.

Yes, that’s what our elected officials are spending their time and your tax dollars doing. It started when the Connservative Party, our Official Opposition put forward this resolution:

“That, given Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations, the House reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel, and call upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.”

Now that may sound like typical Harper-era BS. We even got to see Jason Kenney railing against what he thinks is anti-Semitism, completely ignoring the fact that criticism of a state’s policies has absolutely nothing to do with the religion the majority of the people in the state follow.

What’s different this time is that even though Stephane Dion initially called the resolution divisive, it now looks like Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government will be voting for it today. The NDP and Greens will oppose.

This is a really embarrassing moment for the Parliament of Canada. While toothless, the resolution is a clear indication that our parliament, and moreover the Liberal Government, doesn’t respect the right of economic boycott, an overall effective tactic protesters can use to bring about real change.

Now remember that Bill C-51, the so-called anti-terror bill that leaves the definition of terrorism so broad it can apply to anyone the government wants to tag with it,  and C-24, Harper’s second-class citizens bill, which could strip citizenship from anyone convicted of “terrorism” are both still on the books. The Liberals haven’t scrapped C-24 or changed C-51 yet, both things they promised to do. In that context, this toothless statement seems a little more menacing.

Makes sense that there is a petition out against this and people are urging Canadians to contact their MPs (and making it easy to do so). I have signed the petition and sent an email to my MP, who is a Liberal and sadly will probably vote for this resolution anyways. If you agree with me, even if you don’t agree with BDS at all but think Canadians have a right to call for economic boycott nonetheless, I urge you to do the same.

While Justin Trudeau clearly likes appeasing the right wing, including the right-wingers in his party, while at the same time trying to mollify the left with some feigned indignation followed by actual voting support for the very thing they are indignant about, I think a clearer message is in order. Here is my resolution, which, sadly, will never come before Canada’s Parliament :

  1. Criticism or promoting an economic boycott of the State of Israel is not anti-Semetism and any politician who argues so is either uninformed or a political opportunist
  2. Condemning economic boycott is un-democratic
  3. Any politician who supports a resolution condemning the BDS Movement can no longer claim to be progressive and must admit that they are just a neocon in progressive clothing from here on

Contact your MP and sign the petition, but if that doesn’t work, then please make me this one promise: vote any MP who supports this monstrosity of a resolution out of office the first chance you get!

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Thank you Stephen Harper. You did it.

For weeks, months actually, it seemed like you were a done deal. People had started focusing on who was the better choice to replace you. Was Justin really that much different? Could the NDP base actually move Mulcair enough to the left that they would be able to make real progress? Maybe we should just abandon all parties and form a new participatory democracy?

Then, like an obnoxious party guest no one invited but who still managed to crash on the couch, Harper wakes up, still drunk on his own power. Everyone else is having a serious, though contentious, discussion about the future and the different ways to make things better when Harper lets out an enormous belch, reminding everyone just who the biggest asshole in the room still is.

That smelly, loud belch, better known as Bill C-51, or the “Anti-Terrorism Act 2015” in Harperspeak, is a piece of legislation that would grant broad, sweeping powers to CSIS to prevent terrorism or the promotion of terrorism. The problem is, it doesn’t really define what terrorism is.

I know the image the Conservatives want people to associate with this bill: that of Ottawa shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau in particular and radical Islam in general. But that’s not what the bill says. In fact, it doesn’t say much about what constitutes a terrorist. Seeing as people can get five years in prison for just “promoting” an undefined concept and have their websites shut down, too, I think a bit of clarity is in order.

Open to Interpretation

bill c51The bill does try to define what it hopes to prevent. As you can see in the screenshot to the left and by reading the actual document (PDF), it doesn’t really get the job done.

We get a list of things which, for the most part, are things that I think most people reading this would agree should be prevented, like proliferation of chemical weapons. However, there is one bullet point, Clause D, which simply says “terrorism” with no explanation.

Consider for a moment that over the past few years, the Harper Government has been busy trying to apply the terrorist label to environmental activists and Idle No More protesters alike. With this new law in place, what would stop them from also going after any journalist, blogger or supporter who may take up their cause?

Could it be the last point in this section? The one that says “it does not include lawful advocacy, protest, dissent and artistic expression”? Well, what constitutes lawful advocacy? It’s not clear. This passage sounds nice, but it still depends on who is defining the terms.

Let’s look at point I: “an activity that takes place in Canada but undermines the security of another state.” I wonder what state they could be referring to? Could it be Israel? Now consider that the Harper definition of security includes economic security (point A), then couldn’t a blog post promoting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel be considered to be promoting undermining the economic security of another state and therefore promoting terrorism?

When you start sending activists and bloggers to jail for opinions that reflect a popular view that is at odds with that of the government, you are only slightly better than Saudi Arabia.

It’s Not Just the Left that Needs to Fight This

This goes beyond the left-right paradigm. Even if you’re not a fan of the environment, the first people to live in the place we now call Canada or those who are willing to fight for basic rights for the Palestinian people, you too should oppose this bill.

Think about it: Harper may lose the next election. If this bill becomes law before he does, then the next Prime Minister would be able to use it and interpret what constitutes terrorism however they like.

Let’s say you run a group calling for the dissolution of the CBC. You blog about it, you write Facebook posts about it. What if that Commie Mulcair (yes, I know Tom Mulcair is not a communist and to suggest so is offensive to actual communists, but I’m trying to appropriate some right-wing lingo) decides that trying to destroy the CBC is a threat to the economic security of Canada. What if pretty boy Trudeau says “just watch me” as he has your blog removed from the web and sends you to prison for five years?

If Bill C-51 becomes law, all bets are off. Once there are wide-sweeping powers in place that can be directed at anyone the government of the day decides is promoting terrorism, we’re all potential terrorists.

So thank you, Stephen Harper, for proving to everyone that you’re still the biggest asshole in the room. I can only hope we can all come together and make sure this bill does not become law.

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Recently, a headline caught my eye. It said, “Minister of Immigration Chris Alexander tables Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act.” I had to read the it twice because frankly I thought it was satire. Silly me. I should have gotten used to the Harper regime’s xenophobic extravagance by now.

Journalists, commentators, and pundits with some sense of decency have brushed aside the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, treating it simply as another one of those wacko Conservative acts. This act is just like a fading smoke signal to the Conservative voter base.

“If we had 100% of the power this is what we do, vote for us, and we’ll abolish the Supreme Court so we can pass such iniquitous laws,” Harper seems to be saying.

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This newly tabled act is just the last in a series of xenophobic bills put forward by the Conservative cabinet. Furthermore, it is part of a pan-Canadian trend of racism and xenophobia, which has been on the rise for the past few months. Just think about the Charter of Quebec Values, the Conservative plan to modify the framework of Canadian citizenship for creating a two tiered Canadian citizenship standard, racism against Olivia Chow during the municipal campaign in Toronto, and Islamophobia in the wake of the Ottawa shooting. All of these events have unveiled the ugly truth about Canadian society: It is still far from being exempt of systemic racism.

One of the things that Toronto’s mayoral race proved is that racism can still garnish some political ground in Canada, if it is intertwined in an insidious manner with right-wing populism. Maybe what didn’t work in Quebec’s provincial elections might work for the Neo-Tea Party in Ontario, if Doug Ford becomes the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. It most certainly was an essential factor of his mayoralty bid.

What both elections have in common, to a certain extent, is that there exists in Canada an electoral base that might be swayed by some blatant demagogic xenophobia – in the vein of the France’s Front National. The Conservative government, through their anti-immigration rhetoric and their metaphor of barbaric cultures has turned to a page right out of the extreme right-wing playbook.

Up until now, the way the Conservatives have been handling the immigration issue has essentially been economic. Their discourse has been one of unbridled exploitation. “Immigrants are only good, if they generate profit for the Canadian economy. On the other hand if they don’t, they are useless and we must get rid of them,” goes their discourse.

There are other examples to this discourse and its politics: the Bogus Refugee claims, refugee health care, the temporary migrant workers program etc. In this sense, the Conservative party has many similarities with the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and its leader Nigel Farage, who has used the anti-immigrant rhetoric to undermine the traditional hegemony of the British Conservative Party on the British right wing. Doesn’t that ring any bells? Reform Party, anyone?

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But it seems like the Conservative Party ,with their two last bills, has gone further than UKIP and its politics of “soft extreme-right,” which plays on immigration, but not on identity matters. The hard extreme-right, a constellation of all of humanity’s demons, has this visceral need to define identity. To them identity is based on the exclusion of those that are not like us, those that are not part of the “nation.’’  Such is the political agenda of the Le Front National in France or the extreme-right Dutch Party for Freedom.

The Conservative government is clandestinely, through their debate about “Barbaric Cultural Practices,” calling for a debate about the true nature of Canadian identity. Etymologically speaking, barbarian means the other, the person that isn’t us, and by extension not part of Canada. And beyond this, the blanket statement “Barbaric Cultures” also refers to some sort of hierarchy of cultures. It perpetuates the idea that some cultures on that ladder are inferior or superior to others.

It seems that the cultural practices that stem from Western or European groups are quite alright, but “other” cultures have to be put under the loop for their barbaric cultural practices. Thus, with this rhetorical ingenuity, the Conservative regime has redefined Canadian identity.

Too long have we comforted ourselves with the idea that Canada, and Canadians aren’t racist, and because of this we have this false idea that we haven’t let racism creep into the highest spheres of power. The Conservative move to introduce legislation that bans “barbaric cultural practices” is no different than the extreme right-wing proposals on the European continent. Unfortunately in our case, the Conservative party has managed to achieve power, and its threat is very real.

A luta continua.

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In the past two weeks, “democratic reform” has been on everybody’s lips within the spectrum of federal politics, from Trudeau’s supposedly “bombshell” announcement that Liberal senators would now sit as “independents” in the upper chamber of Canadian parliament or the dreaded Fair Elections Act which was tabled this week by Pierre Poilievre, Minister of Democratic Reform.

Now all this talk about democratic reform would be fairly encouraging if it wasn’t just mere talking points concocted by an array of political spin-doctors. Both Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre’s “blueprints” for democratic reform are the epitome of double-speak, a perfect representation of how the debate to reinvigorate democracy in Canada has been hijacked by buzz words and catch phrases.

The fact is that it seems, that within the Liberal and Conservative parties, there is a severe lack of courage and imagination. The question to be asked is how can the Liberal and Conservative parties truly understand the profound systemic change that Canadian democracy is itching for, when the system in place has benefited them time and time again?

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The polarization of Canadian political life between a centre-right wing Conservative Party and a centrist –whatever that means- Liberal Party has been the configuration of the Canadian political spectrum since time immemorial.

The first truthful challenge of this system came with the rise of the Reform Party in the 1990s. The Reform Party challenged in many ways the homogeneity of Canadian political life; the ascendency of this unorthodox political formation of libertarians, social-conservatives and neo-liberals repositioned the point of equilibrium of Canadian politics towards the right.

This movement of transformation of Canadian political life wasn’t initiated by Stephen Harper. It was continued by him and since last election has found in his government its apogee.

But the Reform Party and later the Canadian Alliance had to conform to this Canadian binary vision of politics and thus, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Progressive Conservative Parties on provincial and federal levels were increasingly infiltrated by the “new right” until the final merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance in December of 2003.

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During the period from the 1993 election and the final merger of right-wing forces in 2003 the Liberals reign was undisputed in Parliament. The Reform Party and its successor the Canadian Alliance had indeed profoundly changed the political discourse in Canada but unfortunately within the boundaries of a First-past-the-post voting system, the potency of your message doesn’t count when a majority can be achieved with merely 38% of the vote.

The right-wing forces compromised and this gave birth to the biggest political re-branding (or takeover, which ever you want to call it) in Canadian history, the birth of the contemporary Conservative Party. But the newly anointed Conservatives in many ways were caught at their own game.

Moral of the story: yes the point of equilibrium of Canadian politics had shifted with the “Reformist Revolution” of the 1990s but in joining forces with Progressive Conservatives, the ideological “unity” of their group was compromised. Their “radical ideas” such as abolishing the Senate were thrown to the dustbin of history; they adopted a new position, which was an elected senate.

Then this newly formed coalition started winning elections and now shortly after the mid-mark of their first majority mandate it looks like the Conservatives have adopted status-quo as their modus operandi when it comes Senate affairs. Status quo was saved.

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Anti “Fair Elections Act” messaging from canadians.org

This is the question that isn’t addressed by either of the so-called reforms introduced in Parliament in the past two weeks: the question of representation, the representation of divergent political ideologies, of every single Canadian voice. Trudeau’s idea of an “independent” but still non-elected senate is the brilliant idea that wasn’t.

It quite simply puts a fresh shade of paint on a collapsing structure, because independence is nothing when you’re accountable to no one but yourself. Who would an “independent” unaccountable Senate represent but themselves as they already do quite well.

When it comes to the Fair Elections Act, it’s anything but fair. The changes give accrued importance to money and disenfranchises scores of Canadians.

The system of first-past-the-post has a twisted way of self-preservation; it excludes the “unwanted” voices, banishes them to the sidelines thus upholding the status quo. This is how this morally bankrupt system and has survived since the days of Confederation.

The senate scandal is merely the most recent manifestation of a crisis of democracy in Canada, not the crisis itself. And the only solution to this crisis is to reopen the debate of defining a system that truly represents all Canadian voices, all political affiliations and all groups within the boarders of this Canadian federation.

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As this year draws to a close, we see a spike of nearly five percent of foreign temporary workers admitted to Canada over the course of 2013. 125 000 foreign temporary worker permits were issued this year in comparison to the 119 000 issued in 2012.

Since the mid-1970s, the foreign temporary worker program (FTWP) has not ceased its rapid climb in acceptance rate of foreign temporary workers. The accelerated acceptance rate of the FTWP, backed by corporate Canada and successive Liberal and Conservative governments, is publicly justified by a need to keep Canada economically competitive on the international scene.

This has been the rhetoric and the words used by the political and corporate elites to justify the complete deregulation of the Canadian labour market since the mid-1980s and also the continual expansion of the FTWP into all sectors of Canadian life. Through the expansion of FTWP, anti-union and anti-labour lobbies throughout Canada have seen the stagnation of Canadian wages and the power of organized labour hit a wall, from which it may not fully recover. Profits have skyrocketed and business continues as per usual.

What these anti-union and anti-labour lobbies have essentially advocated for is a growing gap between the rich and the poor in Canada, an increased pressure on the Canadian working-class, the disappearance of the living wage, growing unemployment particularly among youth and the deregulation of the Canadian job market. All of these factors continue to upload a neoliberal vision: global division of labor between the skills-based rich in countries from the north and a manual labour-rich south, what can also be described as the triangular trade of the 21st century.

Throughout the past two decades, many have spoken of the highly skilled professionals and academics that are immigrating from developing countries toward the fully industrialized north. It is a brain drain.

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On the other hand, there is the continual delocalization of many industrial jobs from northern markets towards southern markets, where wages are lower and the tax environment friendlier. In essence, outsourcing for multinational and corporate interest.

Both brain drain and outsourcing have serious consequences on the global economy. The brain drain deprives developing countries of necessary skill sets to tackle the challenges of post-colonization and outsourcing ravages communities throughout the Western world and still does today.

The form of globalization in which we must live today poses no solution for the inequity that weighs in favor of the rich and the most powerful of this world. Well, inequity is the fuel that allows globalization to continue unheeded on its destructive path.

In the past decade we have seen the surge of a new phenomenon called insourcing through the rapid growth of the FTWP. Insourcing, as opposed to outsourcing, is the use of  ‘cheap’ labor when there is lack of manpower to get this or that project completed.

There are many historical examples of insourcing in Canadian history, one being the exploitation of Chinese workers to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Chinese families at the time received no compensation for members of the family that were killed, nor were they always notified of the death itself. Although Chinese workers were promised enough money to send home to their families in China, this dream sadly rarely came to fruition.

With a history like this housed in Canadian public memory, one would think that Canada would learn from these mistakes and make sure they never happen again. Yet, that very same treatment is reserved for foreign temporary workers throughout the country today. At the end of their contract, temporary workers do not even reserve the right to reside on Canadian soil.

In recent years cases of abuse and discrimination have come to light, all of which are proof of violation of labour laws. This has put pressure on the Conservative government to create stricter guidelines for the program. The government now obliges employers to pay foreign temporary workers Canadian minimum wage and pay a user fee.

Fundamentally, FTWP is a program that is based on discrimination and will only breed more discrimination. The FTWP creates a double standard, one for Canadian residents and citizens and one for the Other, creating a second class of workers, that is a reserve force that is inexhaustible in which individuals lose their rights and their dignity.

A capitalist’s dream come true, the FTWP allows those in power to strip individuals and nations of not only their product, but their capacity for trade. To the Canadian government, these workers are disposable.

Any worker that comes to Canada and works for the betterment of our collectivity deserves to be treated in the same regard as any other worker on Canadian soil. There should be no class distinction made among workers; we are one.

To protect the hard-won battles of organized labour throughout the years, we must also struggle with foreign temporary workers. FTWP should not be a centerpiece of Canadian immigration policy, but a program that helps foreign workers who have no intention of staying while they are here and helps those who do wish to remain in Canada make the transition.

“Good enough to work here, good enough to stay” a Canada that respects itself, that upholds the principals and values enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would honour such an ideal.

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Monday’s by-election results in four ridings (or mini-election) were not particularly memorable. But, as a federal political wonk, I have no choice but to scrutinize them to see if they have any augurs, good or bad, for the three major political players (please note that I am deliberately excluding the Green Party and Bloc from this analysis) in 2015’s Federal election.

As the old joke goes, the results of elections are never as important as what the political spin-doctors working for the winners make them out to be. Nor are they as insignificant as those working for the losers would have you believe.

First, let’s look at the winners. There can be no doubt that Justin Trudeau has plenty to crow about after his party not only maintained their strongholds in Bourassa and Toronto Centre, despite hard-fought NDP campaigns in both, but also came within 400 votes of stealing what had been previously regarded as one of the bluest riding in the country, Brandon-Souris, Manitoba.

The fact that they had a strong candidate with Tory roots (Rolf Dinsdale) certainly helped. But it’s clear that the Liberals benefited from a massive protest vote in the election most likely from both NDP (the Dipper candidate had finished second in 2011) and Conservative voters, many of whom appear to be pissed over Harper’s ongoing senate scandal. This coupled with the surprising results in Provencher (where they also finished second) seems to indicate that whatever political baggage Trudeau the Younger’s name once carried with it in Western Canada, and his tendency to alienate Western Canadians voters with various verbal blunders, is becoming less of a burden for the Liberals.

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NDP strategists, on the other hand, have little to brag about after their party failed to increase its seat total in the House of Commons. While many dippers may be genuinely upset over Trudeau’s seriously tacky appropriation of Jack Layton’s now legendary deathbed address to his fellow Canadians, more cynical politicos will probably tell you that the party’s outrage over the victory speech quote probably had something to do with their desire to shift the focus of the media away from some fairly dismal election night results.

Bourassa may never have truly been within reach for the NDP (after all, it did belong to our new Mayor Denis ‘trade Deharnais’ Coderre for the better part of the last 16 years), but they definitely expected a closer contest in the Montreal North riding where they witnessed a huge growth in their vote share last time around with an unknown candidate and hardly any electioneering. Better news came out of Toronto Centre where star candidate Linda McQuaig did a bang-up job of challenging her Liberal rival, Christy Freeland, and came a close second in the final tally. Should she choose to return in 2011 after the riding is split into three, with the Rosedale (one of the wealthiest in neighbourhoods in Canada) portion forming a new separate riding, she would most likely win it.

The biggest losers though, arguably, were the Harper Tories. Not only did their fortress in Manitoba come under formidable siege from the Grits, but they suffered a historic defeat in Toronto Centre, with their worst finish in history, and a terrible showing in Bourassa.

The conventional political wisdom about by-elections is that they are won or lost based your ability to motivate the base. This is surely bad news for Conservatives in the next Federal election. In Brandon (a quintessentially western rural riding if ever there was one) , where the party used to be able to count on overwhelming support, their voters seem to have either stayed away from the polls in droves, or worse, voted Liberal.

Prime Minister Harper must now face the music: his political shenanigans involving the Senate are starting to take their toll on his party.

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This post originally appeared on QuietMike.org, republished with permission from the author

The main promises Stephen Harper made during his 2006 campaign were to reform Canada’s Senate and make our government more accountable. So far, mission failed.

Harper said at the time that if Senate reform failed, it should be dismantled. Back then, Harper’s vision of the senate completely Americanized our upper chamber.

Harper wanted to see an elected senate with a maximum term limit of eight years. This would no doubt have led to the same partisan stalemates we see in Washington.

Harper’s initial stab at senate reform was shot down by the Liberals in the Senate who dominated the chamber when the Conservatives first came to power. However, shortly after their majority win in 2011 they introduced bill C-7, also known as the Senate Reform Act. The bill would limit Senators to a nine-year term and would allow the provinces to hold elections to choose their representatives.

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Instead of passing the bill through parliament which hasn’t even been debated in 15 months, the Conservative government asked the Supreme Court of Canada to look at the constitutional requirements for five possible options for Senate reform:

• Fixed-term Senate appointments

• Repealing the property qualifications required to become a senator

• A system in which the federal government consults the provinces, but still appoints senators at a national level

• A system in which the provinces choose their own senators

• Abolishing the Senate altogether

The Canadian Senate was created with the intention of having a “place of sober second thought” before bills become law. Unfortunately some politicians serving in the senate, past and present, have come to respect the upper chamber as a place of second income.

There are so many problems with our senate the least of which are the senate expense scandals. Whether we keep the status quo by appointing our senators or we choose to elect them, the senate has no business in a parliamentary democracy.

We presently appoint our senators which is anti-democratic to begin with. We elect our members of parliament to the House of Commons to write our laws and table our budgets. It’s ridiculous to think the people we elect can be overruled by those who were not.

But what is the alternative, an American style election for senators that could grind parliament to a halt just the same? Let’s not forget to mention the added cost of holding the elections in the first place. Those of you who think this works need only look south of the border.

Even the notion of limiting the number of years a senator can serve is counterproductive and could cost the tax payers more money in pensions. Our MPs and Prime Minister can serve as long as the population chooses to keep them in office, if it isn’t broken, why fix it, right?

The senate is and has always been an elitist institution. Elected or not, there has been a law in place for the last 145 years that stipulates that a senator must own $4000 worth of land. It isn’t much compared to 1867, but if you rent your home, you cannot sit in the senate.

Canadian-Senate-Cartoon (1)

The senate is broken and in my opinion beyond repair, it doesn’t work, it costs too much money and it gets in the way of governing the country. I’m not the only one who believes this historically useless establishment should go the way of the Dodo. Over 40% of Canadians now feel the senate should meet its end, although the number might be fueled a little by the expense scandals.

Some of the most successful parliamentary democracies in the world do not have an upper chamber or a senate including every Scandinavian country (Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark). Advancement thrives in these progressive countries because there is no second House to obstruct it. Why do we need to be different?

There are those in Canada who insist on defending the Senate because they care about our history and about Canada’s links to the British parliament (which were severed decades ago). Quite frankly, the Canadian senate is as useful to the Canadian people as the Queen of England, but at least the Queen only costs us the salary of one Governor General.

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* This post originally appeared on QuietMike.org, republished with permission from the author

The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition (CDPC) issued a report last week titled “Getting to Tomorrow: A Report on Canadian Drug Policy.” The report calls for our Conservative federal government to change its National Anti-Drug Strategy and decriminalize all drugs for personal use and legalize and regulate marijuana for adults.

The authors of the report (Connie Carter and Donald MacPherson) recommend that Canada reform its drug policy and regulations to include evidence-based approaches to drugs, with the hope of eliminating the stigma and discrimination around the substances.

Evidence-based approaches are not in our Conservative Government’s vocabulary or ideology. If it were, not only would our drug policies be vastly different, but our environmental and economic policies would be as well. You can’t expect a government so hostile to science to embrace facts of any kind.

Speaking of hostility, since Stephen Harper first came into office seven years ago, his party has been nothing but antagonistic towards all forms of drugs. Our law and order government has increased fines and jail time for drug offences and even introducing mandatory minimum sentences for all sorts of drug felonies.

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The “lock them up and throw away the key” approach runs in conjunction with the conservative belief that drug addiction itself is criminal.

Harper has continually tried to close North America’s only safe injection site. Vancouver’s “Insite” has proven repeatedly that these sites reduce crime, overdoses and the spread of HIV. Insite has even helped addicts to kick the habit.

A four-year study released last year suggests both Ottawa and Toronto would benefit from supervised drug injection sites, but all attempts to create them have been blocked by then Health Minister Deb Matthews. Other critics of these new safe injection sites included former Ottawa police chief Vern White and ironically Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

It’s just like our Government to keep moving in the opposite direction despite Stephen Harper admitting last year in South America that the drug war has been a failure. “What I think everybody believes, is that the current approach is not working. But it is not clear what we should do.” He said.

Well, if the status quo isn’t working and it isn’t clear what to do about it, why does Harper’s government continue to dismiss every type of alternative? Do the deaths of 60 000 Mexicans or the record number of incarcerated Americans not convey a message to him? Does he not understand that it’s cheaper to treat those trying to quit?

The CDPC report also recommended an increase in health and social services for addicts and social users alike. Services such as housing and treatment for drug addicts and increased support for educational programs about safer drug use must be in the cards. The report essentially advocated an increase of treatment centers and safe injection sites.

It’s understandable that a certain portion of the population might be skeptical of decriminalizing all forms of drugs, particularly the elderly and religious. The longevity of drug prohibition coupled with decades of anti-drug propaganda has left a lasting impression on our aging populace. It’s no wonder the call for change is coming mainly from the younger generations. I’m not entirely sure what religion has against drugs, but I imagine it has something to do with the purity of the soul.

If we weighed the pros and cons of decriminalizing drugs, you’ll find the argument is fairly one sided. The primary reasons to support decriminalization are cost and health. Canada spends more than $4 on enforcement for every $1 we spend on the health related to illegal drugs ($400.3 million – $88 million).

Cartoon-War-on-DrugsIf you factor in courts and corrections, we spend $2.3 billion annually. Roughly 50 000 people are arrested and charged every year resulting in 400 000 court appearances. This is just bad policy given that $1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction in the flow of cocaine as $7.3 spent on enforcement.

With all the money allocated to enforcement, those who want to quit or be treated are the ones who continue to suffer. Now, what kind of “moral” society spends more money locking people up than they do to treat sick people?

In Canada, we have public health care and we don’t have private prisons, I can’t understand where the motivation to keep drug users and dealers in prison is coming from. The only real argument to keep drugs illegal is that drug use would increase, but how real of an argument is that? Even if it’s true, at least we would have more funds to treat those addicted.

I was a drug user throughout my late teens and twenties. I can tell you the legality of drugs didn’t come into play when I did them. If anything, it attracted me to them. Do people still believe that keeping drugs illegal will keep rebellious teens from trying them?

Honestly, from what I remember back then, I was pissed off at everything (still am!). My parents instilled a good set of morals upon me, but no government was going to tell me what I can and can’t do. If only our Conservative government could receive the same morals I got, maybe we’d have more treatment centres and less prisons.

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* This post originally appeared on QuietMike.org, republished with permission from the author

It’s amazing how Canadians elect politicians who refuse to analyze the country’s problems, but that’s what we did when we handed Stephen Harper and his Tories a majority government. The Conservatives try and pride themselves as being the party of action (just look at those tiresome action plan ads), but the Conservative Party of Canada could better be described as the party of reaction.

Every so called action they’ve taken in the past two years has been a quick, but simple reaction to an otherwise complicated problem. Not once have they stopped to analyze the situation in order to address the core of an issue.

Last week, following the arrests of two terrorist suspects, newly elected Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said “There is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society. Our approach has to be, where do those tensions come from?”

The-root-causes-of-terrorism-is-terrorists

Trudeau’s comments were perfectly reasonable. We shouldn’t be satisfied by humbly thwarting a terrorist attack, we need to get to the crux of why they want to attack us in the first place. The best way to fight terrorism is through understanding their motives. If we merely cut off the head of the hydra, more heads will keep taking its place.

Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives weren’t having any of this. Harper said “This is not a time to commit sociology, if I can use an expression.” That statement was dumbed down even further a few days later when Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre said that “the root causes of terrorism is terrorists.” Poilievre even repeated the declaration to make it abundantly clear that this is what the party believes.

At the time, I remember thinking to myself that it was as if George Bush’s brain had somehow been embedded into Poilievre’s skull. I realized soon after that this kind of nonsense was nothing new, their conservative views were just never explained so bluntly before.

No one has ever accused the Conservatives of being the party of intellectuals, but taking a look at their policy decisions over the last few years, one has to wonder if they think at all. They rule in the present without consideration for our future; you would think they don’t plan on staying in power for long.

They believe the root cause of crime is criminals. Instead of investing in crime’s source, such as poverty and drug addiction, the Tories decided to dish out harsher sentences to criminals and drug offenders. It won’t be long until we need more prisons.

They believe the root cause of global warming is the globe. The earth is warming itself so why try and fight it.

Instead of investing in green energy and technology, Harper gutted Canada’s environmental assessment laws, expanded oil sands development and now plans are in the works to have an equal sized mining project near Thunder Bay. The media has already taken to calling it “Tar Sands 2.0”

They believe the root cause of unemployment is unemployment. With the jobless rate still hovering around 7.5%, the Conservative government decided to revamp the unemployment system. Under the new rules, even seasonal workers will have to prove they are actively looking for work. Forcing seasonal laborers to take menial jobs a few months in the summer or winter will take jobs away from students trying to pay for school.

harper+poilievre
Harper and his pet Pierre

I’m sure there are other tautologies I could find to illustrate my point, but you get the idea. Quick fixes and short sighted thinking is no way to run a government.

It’s why they try and silence everyone from scientists to members of their own party. God forbid the word should get out about how thoughtless and unproductive their policies really are. I always thought Conservatives wanted a smaller government not a more foolish one.

Future generations are going to have to live with this government’s decisions, making statements a five year old child can make and holding to them doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

The root cause of the Conservative Party of Canada has clearly become stupidity.