HARPER TO FOCUS ON PORT, DRUGS

Churchill, Narcotics Strategy Big Themes In Manitoba Visit

Manitoba will get lots of prime ministerial attention when Stephen
Harper arrives today for a two-day visit that will include a national
anti-drug strategy and an upgrade of the Port of Churchill.

Harper will also attend a Tory party fundraising barbecue and
participate in the annual general meeting of the Bilingual
Municipalities Association of Manitoba today.

This afternoon, Harper, Health Minister Tony Clement, Public Safety
Minister Stockwell Day and Manitoba's senior minister, Treasury Board
President Vic Toews, will use the backdrop of the Salvation Army in
inner-city Winnipeg to launch a multi-tiered approach to deal with
both the justice and health side of illicit drugs.

The $64-million plan promised in this year's federal budget will
include stiffer penalties for drug dealers and improved treatment
options for drug addicts. The strategy is also expected to have an
educational campaign warning young people about the dangers of drugs.

In recent weeks, Clement has roundly condemned the former Liberal
government 's plan to decriminalize marijuana. It was a policy the
Tories trashed immediately upon winning government in 2006, and
Clement has said repeatedly he feels the former government sent mixed
messages to young people about the dangers of drug use.

The plan will not address the long-term funding of Vancouver's
safe-injection site, or whether such a program should be expanded.
Clement has publicly been less than lukewarm about the idea of safe
injection sites, where drug addicts shoot up with clean needles under
the supervision of counsellors and health professionals.

In August, Clement said research cast doubt on the Vancouver site's
effectiveness, causing an outpouring of anger from research
scientists and doctors who said the research shows the site is working.

But Clement deftly moved the controversy over the safe injection site
out of the way for his big anti-drug announcement by extending the
funding for the Vancouver site by six months to the end of June.

The funding was to have run out at the end of December but Clement
said the extension was given to allow for further research.

Before making the announcement, Harper will participate in a
round-table meeting at the Salvation Army.

He will fly up to Churchill tonight with Premier Gary Doer. Friday,
he and Doer will make a joint funding announcement likely to expand
or improve the Port of Churchill and the Hudson Bay Rail line, which
is Churchill's only land link to the south.

The port is mainly used by the Canadian Wheat Board to export grain,
but there has been a lot of work ongoing to get additional shipping
through the port, including making an Arctic route for goods coming
in from Asia.

But the infrastructure is quite old and the port itself needs
upgrading to handle container ships.

Harper will be just the third sitting prime minister to visit
northern Manitoba in the last 40 years and the first to hit
Churchill. Pierre Trudeau visited Thompson in 1967, and Paul Martin
stopped in The Pas and Thompson in 2004.

John Turner made a campaign stop in The Pas in 1984 in the midst of
the federal election.