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.
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MAP posted-by: Matt