SEX, DRUGS AND POTHOLES OF GOOD INTENTIONS

THE WEST -- 'Run your own massage parlour/escort service from the comfort
of your own home, and make mucho dinero! And it's all perfectly legal!"

Don't click that mouse. The above message is not spam. It's merely the
latest news from Vancouver, your alien outpost by the bay.

At this moment, at least until it meets tonight and has a chance to
reconsider, Vancouver council is the only jurisdiction in Canada to pass a
motion allowing "sex-trade" workers to operate from home.

Last week, in an attempt to make it safer for prostitutes to do business,
the eager-beaver progressives in the majority on council added massage
parlours and escort services to a new bylaw allowing home-based businesses
in Yaletown, a trendy new forest of high-rise condominiums and townhouses
on the site of the former the Expo '86 lands.

The next morning, when the heavily mortgaged residents of Yaletown woke up
to the decision and the convoluted rationale for making it, the outcry was
so loud, the two perpetrators, councillors Ellen Woodsworth and Anne
Roberts, backed off and promised to bring a new motion before council
tonight to reverse the decision. Whew, that was close.

As usual, the road to hell is festooned with the potholes of good
intentions. Mayor Larry Campbell, who has become adept at tempering the
excesses of Ms. Woodsworth and her nation, was away with the flu that
night, as were the other relative moderates on the COPE majority. That
allowed Ms. Woodsworth and Ms. Roberts to spread their wings and set the
stage for a flurry of bordello building in Yaletown.

They knew exactly what they were doing -- sort of. They knew that body-rub
parlours and escort services are often just fronts for the sex trade, and
they wanted to make it easier and safer for prostitutes to come in from the
cold. However, they seemed oblivious to the Criminal Code, which makes
operating a common bawdy house a criminal offense, not to mention the
impact on enforcement, licensing, and the neighbours.

The hasty backpedalling and rearguard speechifying did nothing to stifle
the ridicule from the opposition, the police, building owners, and
residents, not to mention the local media, which has worked itself into a
fine frenzy.

Frankly, I am surprised anyone noticed. Yesterday, Canada's first official
heroin-injection site opened for business. What appears to be a permanent
tent city has sprung up on False Creek, advertising rent-free, prime
waterfront for the "homeless." City Hall just looks the other way. City
Hall, in fact, is falling all over itself to wrap the disenfranchised in
such a big, warm hug that it is hard for the rest of us to keep up.

If I were Police Chief Jamie Graham, I would wonder: Where's my hug?
Vancouver is already the largest marijuana-growing operation on the planet;
the port is a funnel for illegal drugs, yet police are demonized by their
own politicians when they try to impose a semblance of control. Just one
example: Local addicts, frustrated by the time it was taking to set up the
safe injection site, went ahead and set one up on their own, completely
illegal of course, but the mayor told police to back off.

The mayor is a staunch defender of the poor. He likes to say that people
should not be arrested just for being poor, and it is hard to argue with
that. His anger and compassion were forged when he was chief coroner, and
hundreds of drug addicts died of overdoses on his watch. Not only that,
dozens of prostitutes simply disappeared and no one cared until they turned
up as DNA fragments on a Port Coquitlam pig farm.

Still, his approach to the down-and-out is predicated on a single whopping
assumption: that acceptance and compassion will somehow lead to a solution.
This assumption has fuelled the establishment of the safe injection site,
as it has prompted an even more ambitious scheme to extend morphine
maintenance to anyone who needs it. In this "hug first, ask questions
later" context, the sex-trade motion comes as no surprise. The surprise is
that it is still possible to go too far, too fast.

The mayor can argue he was elected to address poverty, homelessness,
addiction and prostitution in a new way, because the old way was not
working. However, he's going to have to keep his henchpersons on a shorter
leash.

Most people, given a preference, don't want to live next door to a
bordello, or, for that matter, a tent city or a safe injection site. Until
now, widespread unease has been tempered by the notion that it's not good
to stand in the way of progress, but only if progress is not a freight
train that goes right by your bedroom window. If the mayor and company
aren't careful, they will be disenfranchised themselves at the next
opportunity (November, 2004), and a tougher brand of love will come back
into style.