TORY MAILING BLITZ ASSAILS 'JUNKIES'

Flyer Leaves a Sour Note in East Vancouver

VANCOUVER - East Vancouver residents have been blitzed this week with
a Conservative government flyer turning up in their mailboxes that
says "junkies" don't belong "near children and families."

The pamphlets promise that the federal government will "clean up drug
crime" and feature an image of a child playing soccer near a discarded
syringe.

They are part of a cross-Canada "awareness campaign" about government
policy, said Rick Dykstra, Conservative MP for the Ontario riding of
St. Catharines.

"We are going to get tough on crime by punishing drug pushers and
certainly cracking down on the flow of drugs at the border, and we
want to assist those who are addicted to get off the streets," he said.

Dykstra said the mailings, which have return addresses for
Conservative MPs from various parts of the country, went out to
ridings in every province. He could not say whether Vancouver East was
the first or only riding in B.C. to be targeted.

The prime minister's office said it backs the campaign.

"We support the flyer fully,"said Kory Teneycke, the PMO's director of
communications.

"We think drug dealers should be behind bars and addicts should be in
rehab. That's our approach."

Vancouver East MP Libby Davies says the mailings have not been
well-received.

"We've had lots of e-mails and phone calls in my office since this
hit," Davies said.

"What they attempt to do is play on peoples' fear," she said. "And
frankly, it doesn't go down in east Vancouver."

Davies said the pamphlet is "particularly offensive" given the
Conservative government's negative position on Insite, the only
supervised injection site in the country.

Vancouver South Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh called the mailing "a veiled
attack on the concept of safe injection sites."

But Dykstra said it was "unfair to suggest" that the mailing was sent
to east Vancouver because it's home to the facility.

Mark Townsend, executive director of the Portland Hotel Society, which
runs Insite, said he was depressed to find the leaflet mailed to his
Strathcona home.

He said calling people with drug addictions "junkies" is akin to
calling the mentally ill "lunatics."

"It speaks of being out of touch and not understanding the issues," he
said. "Saying that the junkies shouldn't be near our children is
stupid because the junkies are our children."

Asked whether the language used in the mailing could be hurtful or
stigmatizing, Dykstra said: "The day that we don't need to use that
word and we can escape it and rid it from our vocabulary, I'll be a
very happy individual. ... We can't hide from the problems that we
face in our communities."

Townsend said the alarmist tone of the pamphlet obscures the
complexity of finding solutions to Vancouver's drug problems.

"No child in the whole of Canadian history has got AIDS from being
jabbed by a rig in the park," he said, questioning the authenticity of
the image used on the back of the mailing.

Reactions were mixed at a Commercial Drive restaurant.

Carlos Grosso, a 42-year-old father of two and a soccer coach, said
although he'd never seen a needle on a local sports field, he agreed
with the message.

"I'm a family guy. I don't want drug pushers in my neighbourhood," he
said, adding that sometimes blunt language is necessary to "get the
point across."

Victor Bento, 56, wasn't so sure. Calling the leaflet's wording
"strong, drastic and harsh," he said, "I think we're forgetting that
everyone has a right to live in this world."

He said he wasn't confident that the government's claims of action
translate to real change in his neighbourhood.

Dosanjh called the leaflet symptomatic of the Conservatives'
"irrational, irresponsible position" on drug policy, which he said
doesn't discriminate between drug dealers and drug users.

"They only have one solution in terms of crime, that's lock them up
and throw away the key," he said.

Dosanjh said he thinks the mailing was "too politically partisan" to
qualify for the free postage enjoyed by members of the House of Commons.

Dykstra said the pamphlet does meet the criteria required for such
mailings, since its purpose is awareness.