LOCAL MLA'S FOCUS ON METH IGNORES GANGS

With just eight months until the next provincial election, it's hilarious
to watch B.C. Liberal back benchers scrambling to grab publicity in an
effort to appear as though they have been doing something for the past
three years. In fact they haven't.

Take our own local MLA, Randy Hawes, for example. Since he was elected,
Hawes for most of his term has been sitting on his hands doing nothing
while the Fraser Health Authority gutted the Mission Hospital. Hawes, in
fact, told Dr. Hector Baillie "he had been instructed by his bosses not to
fight for MMH" and that "politicians have no place in advocacy in healthcare."

So now Hawes is scrambling to look like he cares about this community by
taking on an issue he feels no one can argue about: the increased use of
crystal meth in the Lower Mainland, particularly by young people.

Hawes would like the public to believe that his concern for this issue came
from his attendance at a forum in Maple Ridge, when in fact it was his own
government that unveiled a provincial strategy [without funding] to combat
crystal meth addiction in mid-August of this year.

In connection with this issue, Hawes is circulating a petition in the
community to put pressure, he says, on the provincial attorney-general,
Geoff Plant, to put corresponding pressure on the federal justice minister
for stiffer sentencing for meth producers. In other words, the B.C.
Liberals will not advocate stiffer sentencing on their own, because it's
the right thing to do, without public pressure. The petition also proves
that Hawes has no influence, as an MLA, with the attorney general in his
own government.

It's also clear the real reason why Hawes and company want stiffer
sentencing is to download the problem on the federal government. First and
second time offenders usually get a court sentence under two years, which
is served in a provincial institution. Sentences over two years are served
in a federal institution. Arresting more drug producers without stiffer
sentences would be problematic for the B.C. Liberals since, starting in
2001, they have closed down seven provincial corrections facilities [not to
mention five probation offices and 24 courthouses]. They would have no
place to put them all.

Hawes made a colourful, but nonsensical statement this summer in a local
paper that "the front lines [in this drug war] are literally drawn at your
kitchen table." If Hawes were at all serious about this issue, and not just
grabbing publicity, he would know that the line with meth producers is not
at the kitchen table, but in Mission's industrial park, where the local
chapter of the Hells Angels has their clubhouse.

Everyone, from The Vancouver Sun newspaper to the RCMP, knows the principal
player in B.C.'s multi-billion dollar illegal drug industry is the Hells
Angels. Setting up "a community task force" or a "drug watch program" is
not going to make a single dent in organized crime involvement in crystal
meth production. Until such time as Hawes and his government enact
provincial legislation similar to Ontario and Quebec to deal more
effectively with biker gangs, and as soon as MLA Hawes recognizes that the
Hells Angels are a dark force right here in his own constituency, then once
again, he is only blowing hot air and puffing himself up for next year's
election.

R. McFarlane

Mission