The fact Singh failed to capitalize on Trudeau's implosion is one of the biggest lost opportunities I've seen in politics. He somehow allowed the Conservatives to fill the void of needing someone to take the mantle for everyday people and workers - the NDP's traditional constituency.
The strange thing about Singh is that he was an obvious failure shortly after becoming NDP leader. What saved him was that the NDP's showing in his first general election as leader wasn't as disastrous as they'd expected! Consequently, all the chatter about getting rid of him disappeared and the party even seemed to be pleased with his performance.
I suspect that the optics of taking down the first racial minority leader of a major federal party is a major deterrent to those who might call on him to step down.
I don't know the "five kids" quote, but I'm personally a fan of the line in Thank You For Smoking that "I've got a mortgage" is the yuppie Nuremburg defence.
I think you both made very strong points about why it's problematic for journalists to jump ship. I think your solution, "you shouldn't be allowed to come back", reflects your old-school instincts for what the journalism profession looks like - a dying world in which there's a few dozen potential employers and if none of them hire you, you are indeed done.
If you both decide to become comms people for Pierre and then attempt to come back to journalism via this Substack, there's nobody in the industry who can prevent you from doing that. It's a democratized medium. The gatekeepers are increasingly non-existent. Or put another way, the gatekeepers are us, your audience. We are individually irrelevant pissants, but in the new world rapidly rising out of the sea, a journalist is done when a critical mass of us are unwilling to pay them to do journalism.
I think the new world is going to have its hazards and its downsides, but I think it's a better world than some cigar-chomping dude on the 50th floor of a Toronto office tower deciding who gets to tell Canada how the world is and how it should be.
P.S. Brilliant analysis of the harm reduction issue.
Probably the most destructive aspect of the current approach to homeless drug addicts is the notion that it’s unfair to expect them to follow the law, or that the law should be especially lenient because of their addiction and circumstances. Every time the police, prosecutors, or judges fail to apply the law equally to that population, they infringe on the civil rights of all other citizens to be able to live their lives safely, to feel secure in their communities, and to enjoy public spaces. It’s not even helpful to the rehabilitation and reintegration of those homeless drug addicts, because one of their fundamental problems is an inability and unwillingness to take responsibility for themselves and their actions.
I can recall the Vancouver Police launching a campaign of ticketing homeless drug addicts for bylaw infractions about 15 years ago. The effort came to a screeching halt when municipal politicians panicked at the screeching of activists and judges who starting sniffing that the tickets were unfair. The activists have been discrediting themselves, the politicians are more terrified of the voters now, but the judges are going to be a difficult problem to address. Canadian judges seem to be indoctrinated in a detached ivory tower left wing perspective that lacks accountability for their failures to adequately punish and incarcerate criminals, and the cozy, cliquish Canadian legal community lacks the diversity needed to address the problem by appointing judges with different perspectives.
Get the public order issue under control, and there’s far more tolerance and sympathy for the plight of addicts. People are not going to be generous when they feel victims of a class of social parasites who undermine the communities they inhabit.
A monetary fine is pretty pointless. Replacing it with community service as a form of restitution might make sense, particularly as it'd get them engaged in productive work, but I'm not about to underestimate the cost and effort that would be required. It'd probably be necessary to jail people to ensure they show up to perform community service, and the combination of that with the required supervision would far outweigh whatever product service results.
The bottom line is that antisocial behavior is unacceptable for people living in any community. A libertarian approach of allowing drug addicts the freedom to live a drug addicted life is conditioned on the libertarian imperative that their choices also don't impact other people. The more humane approach would really be putting homeless addicts in mandatory residential care unless and until they've been rehabilitated to the point where they can live independently again.
Unfortunately, the answer is forced detox and that is very unpleasant to come to terms with.
People who commit crimes including drug crimes need to go to jail. That includes addicts who commit crimes.
And an ethical prison system needs to include drug detox and treatment.
That’s the solution, it’s just hard to come to terms with because it doesn’t feel good because it doesn’t fit the nice happy picture of offering help to an addicted person who will then smile, thank you and be drug-free a month later.
Our current way of handing out treatment to addict is both insufficient and cruel.
First it’s insufficient because there are not enough detox beds because we’re too cheap to pay for them.
Second, it’s cruel because the very nature of addiction hampers them getting help. It’s as if we told everyone with a broken leg that medical treatment was available, right after they ran 3 km unassisted.
The best and cleanest and most pleasant tobacco that I ever smoked was sold in pouches for hand-rollies - late 1960's, I was a teenager - at a gas station somewhere in the mountains of the Bosnian republic of Yugoslavia, by a Serb farmer who came down into the valley to sell his various produce. He got me to smell the tobacco in the pouch, later I came to regret that I bought only one, it was wonderfully fragrant and pleasant to smoke.
The "touching third-rails and not getting even a zapped" point is a great one. It made me think of how just this week I saw a link on Twitter pointing to an article entitled "Liberals go hog wild on immigration, hoping to secure victory in 2029 and beyond": now this is like a step away from Great Replacement Theory, so I assumed it was some conspiratorial right-wing publication ... turns out it was the Toronto Star! I also saw a link to a 13 minute video talking about temporary foreign workers taking jobs from Canadians, nothing new except ... it was from Andrew Chang on CBC! (very well-done vide by the way)
In the US, most mainstream Democrats seem to have gotten the message and completely shifted their messaging away from "woke" politics - see the DNC speeches this week. But in Canada, the Liberals look utterly lost (I liked Matt's "punch drunk" analogy months ago): it's like they woke up from a coma and aren't equipped to operate in the modern world, not understanding why their empty symbolism and sanctimonious talking points are no longer landing.
I would add former governors of the bank of Canada to people who should never be allowed anywhere near politics.
If I’m being charitable, the best question they could be asking themselves is “would I be good at the job?” The problem is that’s the wrong question because it assumes that it’s all about them. And it’s not.
If Mark Carney had pursued his ambition and gone into politics, he would’ve established that being governor of the bank of Canada is a viable path to running the country as Prime Minister. That degrades the job of the governor of the Bank of Canada, and since that’s an important job, Mark Carney entering the field, would’ve been selfish and wrong
That true of Charles Adler and all the other journalists accepting appointments to the Senate, being Governor General or any other role like that including internal party jobs.
They established that being a journalist is a viable path to political power and government. By doing that, they degraded journalism, they just degraded the public respect for the field, and they contributed to its decline. Charles Adler may be a very nice man, and he may be good in many other ways. But he should never have accepted the appointment. Doing so was selfish and narcissistic.
And I don’t think I’m being too harsh because there was something notable about what Matt Gurney said.
“Is it too late to be a plumber?”
There’s nothing wrong with changing careers, it’s just that some roles preclude you from ethically taking on certain jobs.
Jagmeet is a cartoon character. And yes, it is hilarious.
So the "collective bargaining" government took 18 hours to order them back to work. Defacto, they just declared them essential workers. This is not hard bargaining at all . The railroads haven't negotiated in good faith for 40 years, knowing that every strike will be quickly legislated back. Railroad boards have a huge problem. The shareholders only care about raping the business for max profit. They don't care about service, and they don't care about employees. CP has a one year retention rate on new staff of about 10-15%, and are desperately short staffed. CN is no different. Railroad life has always been difficult; life on call 24/7 with two hours notice, rested and ready to go...except the railroads have no schedule and can't come close to telling people when they're going to work. When the Arbitrator imposes a contract, it needs to be very labour friendly to do the job the Board won't do...because the shareholders will can them if they use the dividends to pay the workers. The arbitrators needs to save the railroads form themselves. Because if it's another crappy contract, and the railroads can't find people to work for them, the system will become paralysed. This is the short version. Essential worker legislation needs to come this fall, and the government needs to pay a lot more attention to the state of the railroads. Transport Canada exists only on paper, and the PMO has no idea what's going on.
Calling Doug Ford useless is an insult to useless people.
"Not knowing what success looks like". Is that not the biggest failure of government anywhere? We'll do something, but don't have a metric for success.
I haven't been in Toronto in years....just because getting around is miserable. But I'm quite sure it's not the city I grew up in. I'm not even sure where you start to address the challenges, but maybe it starts with a functional, timely, effective legal system..
The other comment I really liked was about the strategic error of proponents for policies like safe injection sites feeling like they needed zero buy-in from voters or the community. Were I running one of those sites, my first priority would be to ensure we were being a good neighbour.
It also reminds me of an idea US-columnist Josh Barro has written about that he termed "no-choice politics": basically the idea is if voters are told by elites that they have no choice but to support x, they'll eventually tend to rebel and do the "unthinkable" (he used electing Trump, voting for fringe parties, and Brexit as examples).
Listening to Jen talk about media people crossing to the other side, my Christian childhood made me think of 30 pieces of silver. Asking Pastor G. Oogle for guidance the following quote from Genesis came up: “
If the ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.” The value of this is about $400 CDN not counting the stoning.
A Canadian Senator’s salary before indexation is $142K plus allowances. The value of a slave appears to have increased substantially since Biblical times.
You left me with alot to think about. I would not say the Police don't care though. I was assaulted last year in downtown Halifax. The officers who responded absolutely cared and where frustrated that realistically there was nothing they could do. The sad thing is that the person who assaulted was also failed by the system. I found out later that they had mental heath issues and had been unable to obtain thier medication.
Maybe a bit harsh, how about "questionably talented", but I agree with the camera move. The thing with Matt is, he may leave the camera as is just out of spite. Just listening is an option, since we know what they look like.
A fundamental deficiency of safe-supply programs in providing a complete solution is that they provide drugs to people who are *already addicted* to a given drug. But *you don't need a pre-existing existing addiction* to kill yourself with an overdose. Only a regime of regulation and taxation of recreational drugs can provide protection against overdose to the people who are determined to try a drug for the first time.
Ever heard of black market /street market /grey market ? Was anyone ever able to stop that within so called liberal democracies? Not even commies managed to stop that. Any regime of regulation and taxation of drugs will do diddly squat. You would have to have an enforcer on every corner and in every doorway.
If people who want recreational drugs have the choice of a government-regulated supply, at least some share of them can and will buy via that supply for reasons of personal safety. It doesn't matter if a legal supply wholly replaces the non-legal markets, it only needs to displace *some* of the non-legal market.
A lot of these so-called recreational drugs simply aren't safe to use for recreational purposes. All substances with pharmacological effects have beneficial and harmful effects. In medical applications, the dose is carefully considered and controlled to optimize the trade-off between benefits and harm. Using them for fun is foolish, particularly as recreational users lack the knowledge and understanding of medical professionals. It's not a matter of regulating use either - the professionals have already looked at these drugs and said "Hell no!" We've got the precedent of alcohol as a drug that society accepts and tolerates despite its harms; that precedent has been extended to cannabis. But heroin? Crack? Meth? Even MDMA and ketamine - they're all pretty nasty stuff with the potential to do both acute harm and cause chronic health problems.
I don't think that "professionals" were the driving force behind most recreational drug laws. The Opium Act of 1908 was specifically intended to persecute Chinese residents in Canada.
Many of the criticisms of safe supply apply equally to the blanket recreational drug bans. These laws have a longer record of failure than the newer policy of safe supply, and they likewise drain on the public purse through enforcement costs.
Statements that a policy has "failed" if it fails to achieve 100% success on all goals seems odd to me.
At the same time, you would agree I'm sure that our blanket ban on certain drugs did achieve some goals, most notably the goal of NOT requiring my young children to step around the potentially dangerous drug addict huddled next to the entry-way of the Tim Hortons. So far "safe supply" is making that problem far worse.
And that IS a real problem. Telling me and anyone else that I need to expose my children to serious risk is not acceptable.
Matt's right about what happens when the authorities give up on keeping the community safe and it's not pretty. I won't do that, but other people will.
"I'm sure that our blanket ban on certain drugs did achieve some goals, most notably the goal of NOT requiring my young children to step around the potentially dangerous drug addict huddled next to the entry-way of the Tim Hortons"
On what objective grounds would you assert that? Canadian cities had homeless drug addicts and tainted needles lying in parking lots long before safe supply policies took effect - I saw some of them myself.
"So far "safe supply" is making that problem far worse."
Impressions are not evidence. We know that overdose deaths have continued to increase, but that is different than demonstrating that safe supply programs systematically bring addicts closer towards vulnerable members of the public.
Guessing from your photo and the fact that you're a masters student, I'd say I'm about twice your age, possibly slightly more. If not, what's your secret??? ;-) With respect, you're not old enough to have seen and understood the '80s and '90s.
We're all familiar with phrase "the plural of anecdote is not data", but there's the opposing phrase that's somewhat relevant... "Who are you going to believe? Me or your own eyes?"
**********
Here's the thing. One of the downsides of the "war on drugs" as it was called was that it radically increased incarceration for drug offences.
BUT... that's actually a benefit from some perspectives. When someone is locked up for drug possession that person is by definition not slouched over outside the Timmies or breaking into your house. So yes, incarceration for possession is an upside when your concern is "drug addicts near my kids" or "meth addict breaking into my elderly parents home".
The last drug addict near my kids outside the Timmie's isn't going to show up in the "data" because I didn't call the police... because there would not have been any point in making that call... because nothing would be done.
We did call the police about the break-in. But... lesson learned, that was a pointless waste of our time unless the insurance company required it.
The cop knew exactly who did it... and the guy was caught with the stolen goods... but the crown did not charge him with break and enter because apparently the crown believes it plausible that the known criminal with a history of break-ins in the same area just happened to find the car loaded with the stolen property. Either that or believes the judge is naive enough to believe it. This is only slightly less believable than "he just like GAVE it to me man!", but it's enough to get away with a crime apparently.
So will the next time show up in the data?
One last thing...
"Vulnerable members of the public". The problem is addicts being around ANY members of the public. Them being around kids just makes it worse.
Well let's just say that my profile photo was taken 6 years ago (and I took my now-completed graduate studies a bunch of years after my undergrad).
"When someone is locked up for drug possession that person is by definition not slouched over outside the Timmies or breaking into your house."
You're talking about spending the equivalent of $70,000 in tax dollars per year to force someone into circumstances where they absolutely *cannot* be employed. And you're talking about the behaviour of a small minority of drug users, and even perhaps a minority of addicts. Some addicts absolutely are working regular jobs within normal lives, and their incarceration would be economically quite destructive - never-mind the social impact.
"The last drug addict near my kids outside the Timmie's isn't going to show up in the "data" because I didn't call the police... because there would not have been any point in making that call... because nothing would be done."
Who needs police data? I was asking for evidence that safe-supply programs drive drug addicts towards places where they are more likely to cause harm. This should be provable via academic studies, journalistic reports, or municipal city reviews - but only, of course, if such trends actually exist.
"The problem is addicts being around ANY members of the public."
All the same arguments still apply, however. We have persons who can testify that their lives were saved by safe-supply programs, and on the other hand we have impressions but not provable or mass-communicable facts that link supervised drug consumption to increase public intrusion.
Charles Adler, while tirelessly seeking to advocate for an elected and equal Senate, will also have time, now that OJ is dead, to look for the real killer.
Singh is a nobody. Well actually that’s not entirely true. Singh is the Andrea Horvath of federal politics. And yes, that is meant to be insulting.
Horvath got the ONDP to official opposition. Singh will never get the federal party there. He's worse.
The fact Singh failed to capitalize on Trudeau's implosion is one of the biggest lost opportunities I've seen in politics. He somehow allowed the Conservatives to fill the void of needing someone to take the mantle for everyday people and workers - the NDP's traditional constituency.
Yeah, I'm in Charlie Angus's riding. This should be some of their strongest territory. Instead I could easily see us flipping blue next time.
The strange thing about Singh is that he was an obvious failure shortly after becoming NDP leader. What saved him was that the NDP's showing in his first general election as leader wasn't as disastrous as they'd expected! Consequently, all the chatter about getting rid of him disappeared and the party even seemed to be pleased with his performance.
I suspect that the optics of taking down the first racial minority leader of a major federal party is a major deterrent to those who might call on him to step down.
I don't know the "five kids" quote, but I'm personally a fan of the line in Thank You For Smoking that "I've got a mortgage" is the yuppie Nuremburg defence.
I think you both made very strong points about why it's problematic for journalists to jump ship. I think your solution, "you shouldn't be allowed to come back", reflects your old-school instincts for what the journalism profession looks like - a dying world in which there's a few dozen potential employers and if none of them hire you, you are indeed done.
If you both decide to become comms people for Pierre and then attempt to come back to journalism via this Substack, there's nobody in the industry who can prevent you from doing that. It's a democratized medium. The gatekeepers are increasingly non-existent. Or put another way, the gatekeepers are us, your audience. We are individually irrelevant pissants, but in the new world rapidly rising out of the sea, a journalist is done when a critical mass of us are unwilling to pay them to do journalism.
I think the new world is going to have its hazards and its downsides, but I think it's a better world than some cigar-chomping dude on the 50th floor of a Toronto office tower deciding who gets to tell Canada how the world is and how it should be.
P.S. Brilliant analysis of the harm reduction issue.
And you’re absolutely right about the inability to prevent people coming back in the age of Substack democratized media.
Which means if journalists wants to protect their “turf”, they need to be a LOT more aggressive towards the journalists who go political…
Total recall. The one with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Happy 10th Anniversary Gersins. Have a great weekend.
Probably the most destructive aspect of the current approach to homeless drug addicts is the notion that it’s unfair to expect them to follow the law, or that the law should be especially lenient because of their addiction and circumstances. Every time the police, prosecutors, or judges fail to apply the law equally to that population, they infringe on the civil rights of all other citizens to be able to live their lives safely, to feel secure in their communities, and to enjoy public spaces. It’s not even helpful to the rehabilitation and reintegration of those homeless drug addicts, because one of their fundamental problems is an inability and unwillingness to take responsibility for themselves and their actions.
I can recall the Vancouver Police launching a campaign of ticketing homeless drug addicts for bylaw infractions about 15 years ago. The effort came to a screeching halt when municipal politicians panicked at the screeching of activists and judges who starting sniffing that the tickets were unfair. The activists have been discrediting themselves, the politicians are more terrified of the voters now, but the judges are going to be a difficult problem to address. Canadian judges seem to be indoctrinated in a detached ivory tower left wing perspective that lacks accountability for their failures to adequately punish and incarcerate criminals, and the cozy, cliquish Canadian legal community lacks the diversity needed to address the problem by appointing judges with different perspectives.
Get the public order issue under control, and there’s far more tolerance and sympathy for the plight of addicts. People are not going to be generous when they feel victims of a class of social parasites who undermine the communities they inhabit.
I get that - but something like ticketing them is pointless. They're homeless. They can't pay anything.
Regardless of what various levels of government decide to do it should have a point to it and have an actual effect. So far nothing seems to.
A monetary fine is pretty pointless. Replacing it with community service as a form of restitution might make sense, particularly as it'd get them engaged in productive work, but I'm not about to underestimate the cost and effort that would be required. It'd probably be necessary to jail people to ensure they show up to perform community service, and the combination of that with the required supervision would far outweigh whatever product service results.
The bottom line is that antisocial behavior is unacceptable for people living in any community. A libertarian approach of allowing drug addicts the freedom to live a drug addicted life is conditioned on the libertarian imperative that their choices also don't impact other people. The more humane approach would really be putting homeless addicts in mandatory residential care unless and until they've been rehabilitated to the point where they can live independently again.
Unfortunately, the answer is forced detox and that is very unpleasant to come to terms with.
People who commit crimes including drug crimes need to go to jail. That includes addicts who commit crimes.
And an ethical prison system needs to include drug detox and treatment.
That’s the solution, it’s just hard to come to terms with because it doesn’t feel good because it doesn’t fit the nice happy picture of offering help to an addicted person who will then smile, thank you and be drug-free a month later.
Our current way of handing out treatment to addict is both insufficient and cruel.
First it’s insufficient because there are not enough detox beds because we’re too cheap to pay for them.
Second, it’s cruel because the very nature of addiction hampers them getting help. It’s as if we told everyone with a broken leg that medical treatment was available, right after they ran 3 km unassisted.
At this point I'm for that. I still feel like they'll half ass that too though.
It’s da Canayjun way!
My ad:
The best and cleanest and most pleasant tobacco that I ever smoked was sold in pouches for hand-rollies - late 1960's, I was a teenager - at a gas station somewhere in the mountains of the Bosnian republic of Yugoslavia, by a Serb farmer who came down into the valley to sell his various produce. He got me to smell the tobacco in the pouch, later I came to regret that I bought only one, it was wonderfully fragrant and pleasant to smoke.
You should make the trip back to Bosnia. You can still obtain home grown tobacco there to accompany your home made sljivovica.
Bonus, Bosnia-Hercegovina barely have any smoking laws. Every restaurant table still has an ashtray.
The "touching third-rails and not getting even a zapped" point is a great one. It made me think of how just this week I saw a link on Twitter pointing to an article entitled "Liberals go hog wild on immigration, hoping to secure victory in 2029 and beyond": now this is like a step away from Great Replacement Theory, so I assumed it was some conspiratorial right-wing publication ... turns out it was the Toronto Star! I also saw a link to a 13 minute video talking about temporary foreign workers taking jobs from Canadians, nothing new except ... it was from Andrew Chang on CBC! (very well-done vide by the way)
In the US, most mainstream Democrats seem to have gotten the message and completely shifted their messaging away from "woke" politics - see the DNC speeches this week. But in Canada, the Liberals look utterly lost (I liked Matt's "punch drunk" analogy months ago): it's like they woke up from a coma and aren't equipped to operate in the modern world, not understanding why their empty symbolism and sanctimonious talking points are no longer landing.
The NDP hold onto their leaders too long, and are much too indulgent of mediocrity from their leadership. It says a lot about their base to be honest.
I would add former governors of the bank of Canada to people who should never be allowed anywhere near politics.
If I’m being charitable, the best question they could be asking themselves is “would I be good at the job?” The problem is that’s the wrong question because it assumes that it’s all about them. And it’s not.
If Mark Carney had pursued his ambition and gone into politics, he would’ve established that being governor of the bank of Canada is a viable path to running the country as Prime Minister. That degrades the job of the governor of the Bank of Canada, and since that’s an important job, Mark Carney entering the field, would’ve been selfish and wrong
That true of Charles Adler and all the other journalists accepting appointments to the Senate, being Governor General or any other role like that including internal party jobs.
They established that being a journalist is a viable path to political power and government. By doing that, they degraded journalism, they just degraded the public respect for the field, and they contributed to its decline. Charles Adler may be a very nice man, and he may be good in many other ways. But he should never have accepted the appointment. Doing so was selfish and narcissistic.
And I don’t think I’m being too harsh because there was something notable about what Matt Gurney said.
“Is it too late to be a plumber?”
There’s nothing wrong with changing careers, it’s just that some roles preclude you from ethically taking on certain jobs.
Jagmeet is a cartoon character. And yes, it is hilarious.
So the "collective bargaining" government took 18 hours to order them back to work. Defacto, they just declared them essential workers. This is not hard bargaining at all . The railroads haven't negotiated in good faith for 40 years, knowing that every strike will be quickly legislated back. Railroad boards have a huge problem. The shareholders only care about raping the business for max profit. They don't care about service, and they don't care about employees. CP has a one year retention rate on new staff of about 10-15%, and are desperately short staffed. CN is no different. Railroad life has always been difficult; life on call 24/7 with two hours notice, rested and ready to go...except the railroads have no schedule and can't come close to telling people when they're going to work. When the Arbitrator imposes a contract, it needs to be very labour friendly to do the job the Board won't do...because the shareholders will can them if they use the dividends to pay the workers. The arbitrators needs to save the railroads form themselves. Because if it's another crappy contract, and the railroads can't find people to work for them, the system will become paralysed. This is the short version. Essential worker legislation needs to come this fall, and the government needs to pay a lot more attention to the state of the railroads. Transport Canada exists only on paper, and the PMO has no idea what's going on.
Calling Doug Ford useless is an insult to useless people.
"Not knowing what success looks like". Is that not the biggest failure of government anywhere? We'll do something, but don't have a metric for success.
I haven't been in Toronto in years....just because getting around is miserable. But I'm quite sure it's not the city I grew up in. I'm not even sure where you start to address the challenges, but maybe it starts with a functional, timely, effective legal system..
The other comment I really liked was about the strategic error of proponents for policies like safe injection sites feeling like they needed zero buy-in from voters or the community. Were I running one of those sites, my first priority would be to ensure we were being a good neighbour.
It also reminds me of an idea US-columnist Josh Barro has written about that he termed "no-choice politics": basically the idea is if voters are told by elites that they have no choice but to support x, they'll eventually tend to rebel and do the "unthinkable" (he used electing Trump, voting for fringe parties, and Brexit as examples).
Listening to Jen talk about media people crossing to the other side, my Christian childhood made me think of 30 pieces of silver. Asking Pastor G. Oogle for guidance the following quote from Genesis came up: “
If the ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.” The value of this is about $400 CDN not counting the stoning.
A Canadian Senator’s salary before indexation is $142K plus allowances. The value of a slave appears to have increased substantially since Biblical times.
You left me with alot to think about. I would not say the Police don't care though. I was assaulted last year in downtown Halifax. The officers who responded absolutely cared and where frustrated that realistically there was nothing they could do. The sad thing is that the person who assaulted was also failed by the system. I found out later that they had mental heath issues and had been unable to obtain thier medication.
Matt, you *really* need to move your camera such that it doesn't look down from above. The downward cant make you look stupid.
Maybe a bit harsh, how about "questionably talented", but I agree with the camera move. The thing with Matt is, he may leave the camera as is just out of spite. Just listening is an option, since we know what they look like.
I always listen and never watch anymore as Jen's incessant figiting drives me nuts. I'm thankful for the options The Line provides
A fundamental deficiency of safe-supply programs in providing a complete solution is that they provide drugs to people who are *already addicted* to a given drug. But *you don't need a pre-existing existing addiction* to kill yourself with an overdose. Only a regime of regulation and taxation of recreational drugs can provide protection against overdose to the people who are determined to try a drug for the first time.
So, more gubmint than already present.
Ever heard of black market /street market /grey market ? Was anyone ever able to stop that within so called liberal democracies? Not even commies managed to stop that. Any regime of regulation and taxation of drugs will do diddly squat. You would have to have an enforcer on every corner and in every doorway.
If people who want recreational drugs have the choice of a government-regulated supply, at least some share of them can and will buy via that supply for reasons of personal safety. It doesn't matter if a legal supply wholly replaces the non-legal markets, it only needs to displace *some* of the non-legal market.
A lot of these so-called recreational drugs simply aren't safe to use for recreational purposes. All substances with pharmacological effects have beneficial and harmful effects. In medical applications, the dose is carefully considered and controlled to optimize the trade-off between benefits and harm. Using them for fun is foolish, particularly as recreational users lack the knowledge and understanding of medical professionals. It's not a matter of regulating use either - the professionals have already looked at these drugs and said "Hell no!" We've got the precedent of alcohol as a drug that society accepts and tolerates despite its harms; that precedent has been extended to cannabis. But heroin? Crack? Meth? Even MDMA and ketamine - they're all pretty nasty stuff with the potential to do both acute harm and cause chronic health problems.
I don't think that "professionals" were the driving force behind most recreational drug laws. The Opium Act of 1908 was specifically intended to persecute Chinese residents in Canada.
Many of the criticisms of safe supply apply equally to the blanket recreational drug bans. These laws have a longer record of failure than the newer policy of safe supply, and they likewise drain on the public purse through enforcement costs.
Statements that a policy has "failed" if it fails to achieve 100% success on all goals seems odd to me.
At the same time, you would agree I'm sure that our blanket ban on certain drugs did achieve some goals, most notably the goal of NOT requiring my young children to step around the potentially dangerous drug addict huddled next to the entry-way of the Tim Hortons. So far "safe supply" is making that problem far worse.
And that IS a real problem. Telling me and anyone else that I need to expose my children to serious risk is not acceptable.
Matt's right about what happens when the authorities give up on keeping the community safe and it's not pretty. I won't do that, but other people will.
"I'm sure that our blanket ban on certain drugs did achieve some goals, most notably the goal of NOT requiring my young children to step around the potentially dangerous drug addict huddled next to the entry-way of the Tim Hortons"
On what objective grounds would you assert that? Canadian cities had homeless drug addicts and tainted needles lying in parking lots long before safe supply policies took effect - I saw some of them myself.
"So far "safe supply" is making that problem far worse."
Impressions are not evidence. We know that overdose deaths have continued to increase, but that is different than demonstrating that safe supply programs systematically bring addicts closer towards vulnerable members of the public.
I base it on my own life and my experience.
Guessing from your photo and the fact that you're a masters student, I'd say I'm about twice your age, possibly slightly more. If not, what's your secret??? ;-) With respect, you're not old enough to have seen and understood the '80s and '90s.
We're all familiar with phrase "the plural of anecdote is not data", but there's the opposing phrase that's somewhat relevant... "Who are you going to believe? Me or your own eyes?"
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Here's the thing. One of the downsides of the "war on drugs" as it was called was that it radically increased incarceration for drug offences.
BUT... that's actually a benefit from some perspectives. When someone is locked up for drug possession that person is by definition not slouched over outside the Timmies or breaking into your house. So yes, incarceration for possession is an upside when your concern is "drug addicts near my kids" or "meth addict breaking into my elderly parents home".
The last drug addict near my kids outside the Timmie's isn't going to show up in the "data" because I didn't call the police... because there would not have been any point in making that call... because nothing would be done.
We did call the police about the break-in. But... lesson learned, that was a pointless waste of our time unless the insurance company required it.
The cop knew exactly who did it... and the guy was caught with the stolen goods... but the crown did not charge him with break and enter because apparently the crown believes it plausible that the known criminal with a history of break-ins in the same area just happened to find the car loaded with the stolen property. Either that or believes the judge is naive enough to believe it. This is only slightly less believable than "he just like GAVE it to me man!", but it's enough to get away with a crime apparently.
So will the next time show up in the data?
One last thing...
"Vulnerable members of the public". The problem is addicts being around ANY members of the public. Them being around kids just makes it worse.
Well let's just say that my profile photo was taken 6 years ago (and I took my now-completed graduate studies a bunch of years after my undergrad).
"When someone is locked up for drug possession that person is by definition not slouched over outside the Timmies or breaking into your house."
You're talking about spending the equivalent of $70,000 in tax dollars per year to force someone into circumstances where they absolutely *cannot* be employed. And you're talking about the behaviour of a small minority of drug users, and even perhaps a minority of addicts. Some addicts absolutely are working regular jobs within normal lives, and their incarceration would be economically quite destructive - never-mind the social impact.
"The last drug addict near my kids outside the Timmie's isn't going to show up in the "data" because I didn't call the police... because there would not have been any point in making that call... because nothing would be done."
Who needs police data? I was asking for evidence that safe-supply programs drive drug addicts towards places where they are more likely to cause harm. This should be provable via academic studies, journalistic reports, or municipal city reviews - but only, of course, if such trends actually exist.
"The problem is addicts being around ANY members of the public."
All the same arguments still apply, however. We have persons who can testify that their lives were saved by safe-supply programs, and on the other hand we have impressions but not provable or mass-communicable facts that link supervised drug consumption to increase public intrusion.
Charles Adler, while tirelessly seeking to advocate for an elected and equal Senate, will also have time, now that OJ is dead, to look for the real killer.
That title, though. What sort of audience are you chasing? Looking forward to the quality of podcast I've grown accustomed to next time.