Pubdate: Tue, 21 Sep 2004
Source: Business In Vancouver (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 BIV Publications Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.biv.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2458
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Note: see Thumbs Down

Thumbs Up

UPLIFTING B.C. PROVINCIAL QUARTERLY REPORT DESERVES ROUND OF APPLAUSE

To Finance Minister Gary Collins and the B.C. Liberal government for 
delivering a first quarterly report that has exceeded fiscal expectations 
in a number of key areas. This year's budget surplus, for example, is 
forecast to hit $865 million, which is far higher than the estimated 
$100-million surplus contained when the 2004 budget was tabled in February. 
Higher surpluses are also predicted over the next three years. Government 
revenue, meanwhile, is expected to be $1.2 billion higher than original 
budget forecasts. And the total provincial debt is estimated to drop to 
$37.2 billion by the end of the 2004/05 fiscal year. That debt is still far 
too high, considering that neighbouring Alberta is debt-free, but the 
reduction is over half a billion dollars higher than original estimates.

Cynics could argue that Collins' good news springs in large part from 
low-ball estimates included in budget 2004.

The government's numbers also benefit from higher than expected natural 
resource royalties, over which it has no influence, and increased revenues 
from taxation, which represent the blood, sweat and tears wrung from the 
province's citizenry. And the BC Liberals have posted their share of fiscal 
blunders over the past three years, but they have also made some hard 
decisions that are now beginning to bear economic fruit for the province. 
Government deserves brickbats when it blunders; it likewise deserves 
bouquets when it succeeds.

Thumbs Down

CURBSIDE PHARMACARE ERODING CITY'S BUSINESS AND SOCIAL FABRIC

To the peddlers of Vancouver's increasingly pervasive drug culture who 
place the desires of the drugged and those seeking to be drugged over the 
rights of merchants and other business people in the Lower Mainland to earn 
an honest living. Flash point recently was centred on a Commercial Drive 
cafE where marijuana was being sold contrary to the laws of the land, but 
the issue is spread far wider than the seemingly innocuous trade in B.C. 
bud. Vancouver, with its safe injection site, its official tolerance of 
aggressive panhandlers and consideration of drug-friendly programs such as 
administering free heroin to addicts, has bent over backwards so far for 
the drugged minority that it has forgotten those upon whom its society is 
built. So we have merchants in various areas of the city besieged with drug 
addicts and threatened with violence by drug dealers when they try to clear 
the drug trade from their streets so legitimate business can be conducted. 
And we have visitors to the city aghast at the state of Vancouver streets 
and a property crime rate that's now the highest among 354 major 
metropolitan areas in North America and a mayor who wonders "what's the big 
deal" with open marijuana sales.

The big deal, your honour, is that we have forgotten which end is up in our 
social order. That's bad for more than business.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D