MAYOR SAM'S PLAN FOR OUR POISONED PARADISE GLOSSES OVER THE
NITTY-GRITTY

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan says his public disorder initiative isn't
exclusively about the 2010 Olympics -- although, coincidentally,
that's the year by which he hopes his goals will be met.

Frankly, however, there's every good reason why the Games should be
the trigger for action. In the weeks and months before they begin, an
advance guard of an eventual global media army will descend on this
city, and they won't be writing about how pretty the sunset looks on
the North Shore mountains.

Our "world class" city will come under a microscope like never before,
and some of the coverage may be ugly.

The invading hacks will tumble out of the planes at YVR ready to feast
on the still-fresh aftermath of the trial of the alleged most prolific
serial killer in Canadian history.

With headlines such as "The Poisoned Paradise" dancing before their
eyes, they'll comb every nook and cranny of the Downtown Eastside to
expose the horrors of Drug Central.

They'll write about the women who daren't walk alone in Stanley Park
for fear some clinically deranged lunatic will lunge at them out of
the bushes, about the aggressive panhandlers begging for beer money
under the bright lights of Robson Street, and about the yobs from the
'burbs who turn Granville Street into a nightly battleground.

Mayor Sam is right when he talks about "the elephant in the room." But
is he the right ringmaster to herd the beast to slaughter?

My heart sinks when I read about talking heads in suits and yet more
task forces. It's one thing to set goals, quite another to spell out
how you get there. And I don't see a clearly articulated plan in the
mayor's glossy brochure.

Everyone in their right mind knows the answer to the drug problem:
Legalize, regulate and tax. Bye-bye drug dealers, grow-ops and
associated violent crime.

Just this month, the B.C. Progress Board put this to Premier Gordon
Campbell as a well-considered option. Will it happen? Of course not.
Politicians are congenitally blind to the obvious.

That being the case, the only other choice is a swift and terrible
crackdown on dealers and growers. Every city cop knows who they are.
Judges just have to stop holding open a revolving door for these thugs.

As for the Granville hooligans, Sullivan should take a page from the
book of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose zero-tolerance
policy on crime turned the Big Apple from Murder Central to a safe
haven. These testosterone-fuelled bums should be sent to boot camp
until they learn some manners.

With respect to the panhandlers and park-dwellers, well, many are
genuinely sick people on whom society has turned its back. Surely we
shouldn't wait until it's -16 C to find them a bed?

Vancouver could show the world in 2010 it is an enlightened and
compassionate city -- not one in which dithering indifference allows
its dark underbelly to fester like a running sore.