DANGER LURKS IN CONSERVATIVE DRUG STRATEGY

The tale of woe at the Air India inquiry from the RCMP and CSIS about
their desperate need for money and personnel to combat terrorism
stands in stark relief to the federal government's ill-considered plan
to adopt a get-tougher stance on drugs.

RCMP Supt. Rick Reynolds and Jim Galt, head of the civilian spy
agency's financial analysis unit, told inquiry commissioner John Major
that, six years after Canada passed legislation to crack down on
terrorist financing, their agencies are hamstrung by the lack of resources.

"I don't want you to be critical of your political masters, but I can
be," noted Major, the former Supreme Court justice, in speaking to
Reynolds, who'd testified that he was left scrambling for staff to do
the job in a post-9/11 security environment.

"It seems to be inadequate -- if you asked for 126 and six years later
you have somewhere around 50, it just seems to me that it speaks for
itself."

Galt said his unit is making do with a staff of six, when it needs
twice or thrice that amount to yield better results than the mere two
charges that have been laid since the terrorist financing law came
into effect.

Even as Major was wondering how these undermanned agencies could be
expected to get any prosecutions of terrorists, the RCMP was taking to
the public airwaves in an $800,000 ad blitz aimed at the 18- to
34-year-old demographic, seeking to replace an aging cohort of
veterans that's expected to retire within the next few years.

The national police force has suffered many black eyes in recent years
related to poor management, investigative screw-ups, high-handed
conduct and even officer fatalities that have led to questions about
operational tactics. With young Canadians also facing a plethora of
job options that offer better pay, hours and locations, the RCMP is
hard-pressed to meet its goal of recruiting 2,000 people a year.

It's against this backdrop that Health Minister Tony Clement is set to
let loose the Conservative government's $64 million anti-drug
strategy, which appears to be rooted more in ideological yearnings
than on sound evidence.

One needn't look much further than the United States to understand
just how well the war-on-drugs approach and the heavy hammer of
punitive justice has worked to curb the drug trade and addictions.

Yet, Clement, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety
Minister Stockwell Day are girding themselves to launch a northern
version of that folly, despite the fact that Canada's security
resources are hard-pressed to protect citizens from real threats
instead of being made to tackle what's essentially a health problem
that has been criminalized.

Their strategy, to be announced soon, promises tougher sentences for
drug offenders, more money to stop drugs at the border and advertising
to dissuade young people from using drugs.

As well, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the government also
wants to shut down a highly lauded and successful experimental
safe-injection site in Vancouver where addicts are provided clean
needles and are supervised by nurses so that the incidence of heroin
overdoses are reduced, and some addicts even are being diverted to
rehab programs.

In fact, Thomas Kerr, a researcher at the University of British
Columbia medical school, has done a study that has proven wrong the
allegations of critics and shown that crime around the Insight
injection site hasn't increased and that drug use hasn't gone up.

As everyone from Dr. Keith Martin, the Liberal MP from British
Columbia whose background is in treating substance abuse, to 130
doctors and scientists who signed a petition suggests, Clement and the
government are creating a "potentially deadly misrepresentation" in
applying the term "harm reduction" to describe the federal strategy.
To medical experts, harm-reduction is action that mitigates the spread
of deadly HIV-AIDS, hepatitis and overdoses, not stiffer measures that
are geared to prevention, treatment and enforcement.

In any case, while police agencies indeed should be going after
organized criminals who thrive on the human misery spread by the drug
trade, the Harper government only will be putting a further strain on
already stretched law enforcement agencies by pushing its "party's
over" tactic that requires cracking down on and criminalizing every
pot smoker they can find.

The real threats that face Canada run far wider and deeper and require
more attention from security officials, while the health challenges
posed by addictions require more attention from Clement than to fob
them off as a justice issue and to play politics with human lives.