PROTESTERS GET ROUGH AT HARRIS CAMPAIGN STOP

Bodyguards Shove Premier, Wife To Safety In Bakery Shop

BADEN, Ont. - Premier Mike Harris came here to talk about welfare
reform but instead ran into the two biggest demonstrations against his
re-election campaign.

Shouting ``Go Home Harris,'' 50 angry protesters swarmed Harris, his
wife Janet and reporters as they stepped off his campaign bus, forcing
police bodyguards to roughly shove the Premier into a small bakery.

Barely two hours earlier, four demonstrators were arrested and charged
with creating a disturbance after lying on a street in nearby Guelph
and trying to block the Tory buses from entering an addiction
treatment centre.

No one was hurt in either melee.

Later in Waterloo, a demonstrator was arrested outside a Harris event
for causing a disturbance by swearing.

Harris had come to Baden, near Waterloo, to visit Jerry Weber, a
furniture maker who spent six months on the government's
work-for-welfare program last year before launching his successful
one-man business. The Tories had wanted to use Weber as an example of
how welfare reforms have worked.

Protesters have dogged Harris for weeks. They have stepped up their
demonstrations since last Wednesday when Harris called the June 3 election.

``I don't know what it is they're afraid to hear,'' Harris told
reporters on leaving Baden, ``tax cuts or people working.''

But Paul Baines, a student at Wilfrid Laurier University, said the
angry knot of demonstrators had no choice.

``There's pushing and shoving, in my opinion, because it wasn't a
public event,'' said Baines, 26.

``Why can't we talk about the issues? Why is our Premier going from a
bus into a closed door?

``We can't ask questions. Only you guys (reporters) with the
microphones can ask the questions. What we can do is push and shove
and then we get labelled as radicals.''

Earlier yesterday, Harris went to Guelph for a meeting with physicians
at an addiction treatment centre to highlight a campaign promise that
addicted welfare recipients receive treatment or lose their benefits.

But here, too, the tour was delayed 15 minutes when noisy young
demonstrators tried to block the buses.

To cries of ``shame, shame,'' Guelph police handcuffed and led away
four protesters, dragging them off the pavement and into squad cars.
The situation grew so tense that at one point, a police officer
threatened to arrest reporters at the scene for ``obstructing'' police.

``We realize that we have to stand up and put ourselves on the line to
stop this government,'' said Tom Keefer, a 22-year-old student of
politics, history and ``revolutionary socialism'' at the University of
Guelph and one of those arrested.

``We're sitting down and standing up for what we believe in. He's
closing hospitals, he's attacking people on welfare, he's attacking
students. It's all part of the same agenda. It's all tied together.

``If it was appropriate for Martin Luther King, if it was appropriate
for the civil rights struggle of the '60s, it's just as appropriate
now.''

Alison Gorbould, a 26-year-old graduate of the psychology program at
the University of Guelph, said students are angry that ``Harris has
taken away everything that we thought was good about this province . .
health care, care for mental patients.

``I think it's ridiculous. It criminalizes welfare recipients,'' she
said. ``If someone is on welfare it doesn't mean they're a criminal or
a drug dealer. It's pathetic.''

When asked about the demonstrators, Harris replied: ``Buses are
entitled to travel on public roadways - all buses, including mine.''

NDP Leader Howard Hampton slammed the arrests as ``the typical
approach under the Harris government,'' The Star's William Walker reports.

``I don't approve of the approach. But it has been their approach and
it probably will continue,'' Hampton said in Sault Ste. Marie yesterday.

Arresting protesters during an election campaign is consistent with
the Tories feeling ``they know everything and they know best and no
one else is worthy of being heard,'' he said.

Inside Guelph's Homewood Health Centre, which treats 2,000 to 3,000
drug addicts a year, Harris heard physicians at a round table
discussion warn that mandatory treatment may not work with patients
who aren't ready for help.

``If you mandate somebody to treatment who isn't ready, who hasn't had
motivational support, then they're not going to do very well and you
stand a chance of wasting your resources,'' said Dr. Pieter Mezciems,
an addictions medical specialist.

Dr. Graeme Cunningham, director of the centre's addictions divisions,
also told reporters he wasn't sure if ``any human being should be
mandated to do anything.''

But the centre has had some success treating people sent there for
forced treatment by the courts, Cunningham said.

The Tories have promised they would require any welfare recipient
suspected of having a drug or alcohol addiction to undergo testing. If
the test comes back positive, the person would have to submit to
treatment or lose benefits.