EASTSIDE ADDICTS NEED SOMEONE WHO WANTS THEM TO KICK HABITS

The spectacle of free-spending Gov.-Gen. Adrienne Clarkson and her
wine-loving, philosopher-king husband, John Ralston Saul, going
slumming yesterday in the Downtown Eastside was the perfect symbol for
our government's upside-down approach to Vancouver's social malaise.

We taxpayers are forced to spend millions a year on politically
appealing, feel-good schemes in the nutty, inner-city
neighbourhood.

Yet it manages to become more troubled than ever -- and is fast
gaining a global reputation as an urban zoo, filled with wild-looking
creatures, mayhem-packed bars and 24/7 movie cameras.

It's an exotic area, ideal for a visit by a governor-general who's
worked her elegant extremities off since 1999 to become Canada's most
visible symbol of government spending excess -- with annual,
governor-general-related spending ballooning to more than $41 million

That's why I find it hard to agree with local poverty "activist" Bill
Cunningham, who claimed yesterday Clarkson's visit was "nothing but a
symbolic gesture."

Making symbolic, public-relations gestures, after all, is what
governors-general generally do.

"This is what we do and this is what the governor-general should be
doing," Clarkson noted.

The only problem is, in the Downtown Eastside, there aren't a lot of
positives to accentuate -- as you might expect in an area given over
to open, government-sponsored drug-dealing.

And I'm not just talking about a little pot.

As former B.C. Marijuana Party candidate Mike Hansen told me Monday,
while standing at Hastings and Main: "There's crack deals and there's heroin
deals and there's meth deals going on all around me . . . and no one's down
here dealing with the problem."

Well, no one is. But, they're getting folks to shoot up down the
street in the safe-injection site visited by Clarkson.

And it costs taxpayers almost as much as her own circumpolar trips.

Which is why it, and she, are symbols of what's wrong with the current
government attitude to the Downtown Eastside.

They're both monuments to modern socialism's addiction to playing on
the heart-strings while plundering the purse-strings.

No, the symbol we need down in the downtown is someone with a more
Calvinist cast of mind.

We need a person who likes to shop at Army & Navy, travel by bus and
deal with the drug problem by spending a little and achieving a whole
lot. Above all, we need someone who actually wants to get the addicts
to kick their habits.

We need someone with a little abstinence on her mind.