THE 'PARTY' THAT NEVER WAS

THE other day an interested observer found himself walking in
Vancouver from Main and Powell to Hastings and Carral, a stroll
through what we -- and the rest of the country -- consider an open
sore on our body politic.

It was a bright and warm fall day. The rains of the days before had
been hard and the many in the area who call no place home had had
several rough and wet nights. It was mid-morning, and those on the
street were getting their day organized: check around to see what's
available, maybe do a little dumpster diving to scrape together
enough to pay for it, line up for some food, score and let the night
come. This is the good time of day, when the throngs are up and out,
most of them greeting and reminding each other that this is a
community, close in its shared needs and fears, in its desperation.
Friendships and enmities are strong.

For some, the day is not getting off to a particularly good start.

A small native woman pounds on a door and mutters something into its
opaque glass. She wears a long grey shredded sweater over an
impossibly short denim skirt, her thick feet in unlaced runners that
once were white but now seem to be an extension of her skin colour.
Several people, moving with that jerky urgency typical of the crack
addict, wander in front of and through traffic on Main, Cordova and
Hastings, indifferent to the danger -- or maybe welcoming it.

On Hastings, just past the Carnegie Centre, two men looking like
twins dressed by their mother, in their matching stained green
jackets and black jeans, are alternately arguing and laughing over
something they are intently looking at on a window ledge. One
suddenly grabs it and starts to hurry away. The other shouts, swears
and turns to follow. He trips and falls hard, scrambles to his feet
and runs unsteadily after his friend.

A small woman, with legs so thin they would fit comfortably into
shirtsleeves, walks quickly along, doing a sort of goose-step, then
suddenly stops, swears at the sky, spins and walks in the other
direction. Twenty paces on she stops, stamps her foot hard, raises
her arm as in a Hitler salute, yells "f*!" again, turns and struts
back. She repeats the performance over and over again, like a wind-up
doll. She looks so frail the strength of her voice is a shock. Her
face is pale and lined like crumpled parchment. Her eyes glare out
from under her hoodie, over a long, thin nose and a mouth that is
hardly more than another crease.

The morning crowd gathers in the sun at Pigeon Park. A big man with a
radiant smile, his eyes closed, sits on a bench softly singing an
unintelligible song. Near him, two men and a woman share a pipe,
while on the ground against the wall lies a well-blanketed body, a
late riser. The garbage strewn everywhere complements the weary,
disheveled clot of people intent on only one thing: survival of another day.

That's the "party" federal Health Minister Tony Clement announced a
week earlier is over. Some party.

And on offer from our ideologically blinkered leaders -- if they
really mean what they say -- is $63.8 million over two years to deal
with the ever present "drug problem": $32 million for treatment, $10
million for prevention and $22 million for enforcement. Not one cent
allocated to efforts to alleviate the dislocation, disease and death
that can accompany addiction. The prime minister keeps a straight
face as he insists that his new "strategy" (which is anything but
new) is both "tough" and "compassionate."

The tough part consists of "cracking down" on dealers and smugglers
and, when they're caught and convicted, hitting them with mandatory
minimum sentences. Presumably, this crackdown will work where the
hundreds before it have failed because $11 million per year will be
added to the almost $500 million already spent annually on enforcing
our drug laws.

The most that can be expected is a miniscule acceleration of what has
been happening for a century: only street-level dealers and, very
occasionally, middlemen will end up in court. Those who maintain
control of the prohibition-created multi-billion dollar market, those
who decide on the sources, availability, price and quality of the
drugs, those who benefit from addicts continuing their addiction,
will look down from above and smile.

I'll devote more space next time to mandatory minimum sentences. It's
enough to note that Mr. Harper's own Department of Justice has two
reports, one from 2002 and another from 2005, which both make clear
that mandatory minimums are a futile and costly tool for fighting
crime, especially drug crime. He doesn't have far to look to get the facts.

The lack of serious thought behind what the P.M. laughingly calls the
"compassionate" part of the strategy is equally reprehensible. His
paltry $16 million per year for treatment will provide an additional
ten detox beds for all of B.C., per year -- and that's before
treatment can even begin.That pittance in the face of an $18 billion
surplus? That's the best they can do when they say that, this time,
they're really serious?

The fact that not a nickel is allocated to harm reduction cements the
notion that all of this is pure political posturing in anticipation
of an election. The only sensible assessment is that they can't mean
it. If they did, it would signify that both Harper and Clement are
ignoramuses, which they demonstrably are not. But they do expect that
talking tough about drugs, while toeing the ideological line that
harm reduction is equivalent to enabling, might garner a few votes.
Sadly, they are probably right.

Which only makes their cynicism as appalling as the wastefulness of
the strategy itself.