DRUG LAWS DRACONIAN

Protesters are set to gather Monday, December 17, at MP offices in
Victoria and across Canada to speak out against proposed drug laws
they say are draconian and ineffective. The Conservatives' Bill C-26
would entrench the criminalization of cannabis and require minimum
mandatory prison terms for people caught with pot.

Protest organizer Ted Smith of Victoria's Cannabis Buyer's Club says
the laws would needlessly clog up already over-burdened courts and
jails, and that organized crime would only profit from prohibition.
The Conservatives are driven by an ideological agenda that is
disconnected from most Canadians, he says.

"The moral minority, that's what we're up against here," says Smith.
"It's pretty self-righteous of these people to be condemning the
cannabis culture, one of the most peaceful subcultures in society."
Smith says he is organizing two local protests this week-one outside
Saanich-Gulf Islands Conservative MP Gary Lunn's Sidney constituency
office, the other NDP MP Denise Savoie's Victoria office-both of which
are set for noon on the 17th. Savoie, who shares Smith's concerns,
will be addressing the gathering outside her office.

"Clearly we all want the bad guys-the organized criminals, the violent
criminals-put away, so that's not in question. What I'm questioning is
this American-style war on drugs that has shown itself to be a
failure," Savoie says.

Liberal MP for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca Keith Martin is also very much
against Harper's stance on drugs. In fact, it is one of the issues
that made him leave the Conservatives for the Liberals in the first
place, he says. "This is a very destructive piece of legislation, it's
going to criminalize ordinary folk and ruin lives at the expense of
the taxpayer," Martin says. The government should focus on education,
prevention and targeting organized crime, not on criminalization, he
added.

While he is fairly confident Bill C-26 won't get passed this time
around, Martin says he is afraid Harper will be able to ram it through
if he gets re-elected with a majority. Lunn's spokesman, Logan Wenham,
says Lunn was unavailable for comment and that he is not even sure if
Lunn will be in Victoria on December 17.

Sewage pipe dreams?

Now that sewage treatment has been mandated by the provincial
government, one question that remains is whether or not this
project-pegged at $1.2 billion, one-third of which the CRD would be
responsible for-should proceed by way of a public-private
partnership.

"The province has been pushing for public-private partnership for some
time now," says Saanich councillor and CRD Core Area Liquid Waste
Management Committee member Vic Derman. "When you're talking about a
situation that could involve huge amounts of public money, then the
public has a right to participate. With public-private partnerships,
the one thing that concerns me more than anything is the fact that
very often, for reasons given of confidentiality and proprietary
information, the public isn't made aware of the nature of the contract
that is signed."

Provincial legislation used to require electoral approval before a
municipality could borrow over $5 million, or enter into a debt
contract that would extend over five years, to finance wastewater
treatment systems. But an April 19, 2007, Order in Council changed all
that. The order, signed by Ida Chong, Liberal MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon
Head and minister of community services, removed liquid waste
management plans from requiring electoral approval before they can
proceed. One might speculate whether the order is related to the June
2006 rejection by Whistler residents of a private-public partnership
to rebuild their aging wastewater treatment system.

But CRD chair Denise Blackwell says she thinks the order was intended
to prevent residents from rejecting sewage treatment altogether. "I
think any time you ask the electorate to spend $1.2 billion, they are
going to reject it," she says. "I don't think it matters whether it's
a public-private partnership or whether it's a straight
expenditure."

At this point, the decision about whether or not the CRD should pursue
a public-private partnership has not been made-at least to his
knowledge, says Derman. "It better not have been made. And we better
make darn sure when you've got that kind of public expenditure, and
environmental consequences, that you've got the best options sorted
out."

"Big pipe" outdated

Emerging technologies that can generate electricity from what is
tactfully termed biosolids should be seriously considered for the
design of CRD's sewer project, says two Core Area Liquid Waste
Management Committee members. But the push thus far has been to build
upon outdated and ancient "big pipe" technology, they say.

"Up to this point, the minister has dictated, 'Go do this,' but that
should not be an excuse to do the thing that makes most sense," says
committee member and View Royal mayor Graham Hill. The tight deadline
imposed by the province, which required the CRD put forward a sewage
treatment plan by June 2007, prevented engineers from exploring all
available design options, he says. That CRD plan, although it calls
for five decentralized plants, still involves collecting sludge from
the proposed Clover Point outfall and trucking it elsewhere. But
emerging technologies would treat that sludge upstream in a "resource
recovery" mode similar to that of the Dockside Green
development.

"My concern is we haven't done the investigation yet into that broader
resource-based system," says fellow committee member Vic Derman.
"We're too tied to where we have been. There's technology that's
coming out now that takes all the biosolids and essentially turns them
all to a biogas and energy, and gets about a three or four to one
return. So for the amount of energy you use for the process, you get
three to four times as much back out," says Derman, adding this is
something that climate change forces us to consider very carefully.

Victoria, because it hasn't yet instituted any secondary sewer
treatment, has a unique opportunity to implement cutting edge water
and energy recovery systems, but there's a risk we might lose this
chance if we don't carefully consider our options, says Derman.

"If we go in the direction we indicated in June, and if we do it in a
fairly short time-line, then we might lose out on that opportunity to
put in what essentially is a 21st century system, rather than older
technology and older approaches."

Sure fur no slur

Animal rights organization PETA teamed up with a local group to
distribute 53 fur coats to the homeless just as Monday was going to
press on December 11, which cynics could see as a heartless ploy to
downscale the image of fur. But sheathing Victoria's "street
entrenched" population in chic stoles is not a guerrilla tactic
intended to besmear the exclusive air some people still attach to fur
coats, say the individuals organizing the effort.

"When people who have fur coats find out how horrific the fur industry
is, they no longer want these things hanging in their closet. But they
want to do good things with them, so they donate them to PETA," says
Joanne Chang, an animal rights activist in Vancouver. "We do want to
do something to contribute to humanity as well, and this is the best
thing we could think of."

Kelly Heggart, program coordinator for SOLID, the Society Of Living
Intravenous Drug Users, says that when she found out about the "fur
kitchens" run by PETA, she jumped on the chance to host an event in
Victoria, which was only the second in Canada.

SOLID members come into contact with many of Victoria's homeless
individuals while volunteering to clean up the streets of used
needles. All of the people who received coats were extraordinarily
pleased with them, she says.