Pubdate: Tue, 07 Jun 2005
Source: Business In Vancouver (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 BIV Publications Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.biv.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2458
Author: City Business

STAKES ARE HIGH IN SIN CITY EXPERIMENT

Every so often in Vancouver's history, usually during economically expansive
times, the city gets caught up in what author Daniel Francis calls "a
periodic moral panic." In his biography of Vancouver's longest serving
mayor, L. D. Taylor, Francis describes the politics of "social evil" -
usually prostitution, mixed with a heady dose of alcohol, drugs, racism and
organized crime.

On one side were the church-based moral reformers, aligned with
opportunistic candidates for higher office, who were scared not only of the
obvious sins of a port city but of perceived corruption at city hall and in
the police department.

On the defensive were the "regulators" - those politicians, like Mayor
Taylor, who claimed they were merely facing facts.

According to L. D., speaking before a public inquiry, "Vancouver was a port
city with an understaffed police force. A certain amount of gambling and
prostitution was going to occur." He (Taylor) was not as concerned about it
as he was about "major crimes ... ." His approach, which he stated openly,
was to regulate vice crimes while at the same time committing the city's
limited police resources to protecting citizens from violent crimes and
tracking down serious criminals.

Taylor, it should be noted, was a populist politician, without a distinct
ideology, who positioned himself as a representative of the ordinary working
citizen. And if that sounds familiar, so does the issue that may shape the
upcoming civic election in November: a sense of eroding public security and
rising crime.

The regulators of today, some from the right, more often from the left, have
been trying radical new approaches to long-standing social issues.

* Drugs: try safe-injection sites, effectively decriminalize marijuana.

* Gambling: legalize slots, open up casinos.

* Alcohol: extend drinking hours, licence more bars.

* Prostitution: zone live-work spaces for de facto brothels or, if that's a
tad too much, light up the strolls and increase patrols.

The public, so far, has absorbed all this with surprising equanimity. Of
course, when politicians of every stripe, from Philip Owen to Jim Green, try
to outdo each other as more compassionate than thou, and all the politicians
in between run terrified from accusations of "No Fun Vancouver," it leaves
the opposition in this secular city without a pulpit to preach from.

Vancouver has become the testing ground for a social experiment with huge
stakes, given our increasing international profile and Olympic aspirations.
Can this mix of booze, drugs, sex and slots be simultaneously sanctioned,
stripped of moral opprobrium and regulated in a such way to protect the
defenceless, reduce crime and, not incidentally, increase tax revenues?

Not that there is anything like a strategic plan - or even a co-ordinated
approach. Because it's unlikely that senior governments will legalize pot or
prostitution for the convenience of Vancouver's social engineers, local
authorities simply stop serious enforcement, water down the penalties and
turn a blind eye - rather like the approach Vancouver took towards Hogan's
Alley, Alexander Street and other concentrations of sin in the first two
decades of the 20th century.

Still, as history has abundantly illustrated, when anything goes, the danger
is that anything might. When the line that shouldn't be crossed is erased,
how do you stop someone from stepping over it? Aren't drug dealers on
Seymour, gangs on Granville and grow-ops pretty well everywhere merely
entrepreneurs establishing territory in this new economy?

The problem that Taylor ultimately had to face was not the failure of
half-hearted regulation but the failure to handle the concerns of those who
paid the taxes. Their bottom line was peace, order and good government. When
it looked as though the police were infected by corruption, when problems
began to spread or became too visible, when the politicians had only excuses
and didn't seem to care about their anxieties, the public resorted to the
ballot box to indicate their displeasure.

They kicked Taylor out of office - but, it should be noted, for only one
term. The moral panics subsided when swept away by economic catastrophe.
That's not exactly a consolation when we anticipate the world arriving in
half a decade to a prosperous, well-managed and safe city - not to a town
where city hall is running the rackets with the efficiency of Moscow
managing the mob.
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MAP posted-by: Josh