Pubdate: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 Source: Nanaimo Daily News (CN BC) Copyright: 2013 Nanaimo Daily News Contact: http://www.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1608 Page: A6 COVERAGE OF FEDERAL POLITICS IS PUZZLING Following federal politics is fascinating, particularly when it comes to watching what the media covers, and chooses to ignore. Canada's lowest ever poverty rate and lower crime statistics for the ninth consecutive year are important items, but were barely mentioned. Is that because they may, perhaps, have something to do with federal government policies? Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an actual economist, but he's often described as a "policy wonk", controlling, distant, uncaring. . . Meanwhile, the "Trudeaumedia" machine keeps generating headlines and flattering photos regardless of the topic, including the Liberal leader's outrageous call for legalizing marijuana. The media's love-in with Justin Trudeau continues unabated. Handsome, dashing, articulate . the adjectives are almost always favourable. Trudeau's earlier call for the decriminalization of marijuana was raised to legalization. The Conservatives must have been smiling over those sound bytes, and undoubtedly have them filed for use in future campaigns. Trudeau sounds like he would throw in the towel on the war on drugs, decrying it "doesn't work." Canada should never wave the white flag in the war on drugs. As Edmund Burke once said, 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." We have governments to protect people, which includes scenarios when people must be sometimes protected from themselves. Statements like Trudeau's must make the RCMP cringe, as they're on the front lines seeing the debilitating and devastating impact of this entry level drug on the streets. RCMP drug squad members know that the marijuana of today is many times more potent than 1960's "weed". Meanwhile, Canada's poverty numbers were ignored. Andrew Coyne of the National Post wrote that, while Statistics Canada's report on poverty in Canada, "Income of Canadians,", was released on June 27, virtually no media outlet has reported on it. Could that not, even in part, be a result of the current government's policies? Oil and gas revenues and expansion? "Certainly if the trend were in the other direction, we'd be reading about nothing but," Coyne muses. "That's not speculation: when the poverty rate was rising, it was a staple of news and commentary. 'Nearly four million Canadians,' the Toronto Star told its readers in December of 1992, 'now live in abject poverty.' But now that fewer than three million Canadians are in poverty, it is no longer worthy of notice?" Non-violent crimes were down 36,000 across the nation in 2012, according to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics - and it was the ninth consecutive year that it has decreased. Any connection between the government's introduction of tougher-on-crime policies? Slowly but surely, the government has made incremental changes, including legislation and replacing liberal-minded judges, and it appears to be having an impact to some degree. No? Yes? Harper doesn't have many friends in the media, and it obviously doesn't bother him. Despite a very difficult spring, the polls released this week show that if an election was held right now, the Conservatives would win a minority government. If the media doesn't begin to provide balanced coverage of important political issues, it shouldn't be puzzled about why, as polls mirror the coverage of issues, when it's time to count the ballots, voters decide otherwise. Just like here in B.C. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt