Pubdate: Sat, 27 Jun 2015
Source: Prince George Citizen (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Prince George Citizen
Contact:  http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/350
Author: Pete McMartin
Page: 7

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale. I disclose this by way of making 
clear my position on the legalization of marijuana, which is: Wait, 
what? It isn't yet? The feds are still frothing at the mouth over 
this? What's wrong with these people? Are Conservative MPs the only 
ones that never got invited to the cool kids' parties?

Did they shun sin so they could spend their weekends in study hall?

If so, why have we let these people run the country?

A better question might be: ARE they running the country anymore?

Think of the issues that preoccupy us - climate change, housing, 
transportation, the economy - and our cities and city governments are 
not only generating the ideas and solutions to address them, they 
have moved to fill the political vacuum that our senior governments 
have themselves created.

It's no wonder, then, that the City of Vancouver has moved to 
regulate illegal marijuana dispensaries. It's neither "historic" nor 
new, as it's being billed, but it is a common sense reaction to a 
cultural shift, of which the feds seem incapable. Rather than 
criminalize marijuana use, something the city and police are loathe 
to do - because, after all, this is Vancouver - the city has moved to 
regulate the proliferation of dispensaries rather than begin another 
wasteful and fruitless war on drugs that the feds demand.

The Conservatives, anyway, seem more interested in scoring 
pre-election points than conducting an adult conversation about the issue.

Health Minister Rona Ambrose issued a statement Wednesday linking the 
city's regulatory approach to "Justin Trudeau's plan to make smoking 
marijuana a normal, everyday activity." You know, like drinking, 
which is, of course, much healthier than smoking weed.

Once upon a time, ideas and innovations poured forth from our senior 
governments. Now we get bullying and moralizing. In the late 1960s 
and 1970s, senior governments poured funds into urban infrastructure 
not just out of an obligatory sense of duty, but to make city life better.

"It was a time of incredible optimism," said Gordon Price, director 
of Simon Fraser University's City program.

"We'd just come out of Expo '67, and senior governments were doing 
major funding down at the urban level.

"And out of that came the structures and innovations we live with today."

Granville Island. The south shore of False Creek. Co-op housing and 
affordable housing. Innovations that revolutionized Vancouver and 
changed the city's way of looking at itself.

And then senior governments began their long retrenchment. They got 
out of nation-building and into bookkeeping.

"Call it neo-liberalism, or the idea that government is the problem," 
Price said.

"Its core idea was that government was wasteful, and the best thing 
you can do is cut off its funding and prevent it from innovating and 
producing new programs. And I think that political philosophy 
prevailed, won the day, particularly in the U.S. And I also think its 
effect spilled across the border and became the accepted philosophy 
of senior governments here. Less government is better. Less 
regulation. Less funding. The best thing you can do is cut taxes. And 
you're certainly not going to get into the business of innovating 
social programs. In fact, you're going to de-fund the ones you already have."

Vancouver saw that in subsidized housing. The federal government (and 
to a lesser degree the provincial government) slashed its affordable 
housing programs. The housing problems didn't go away, of course, so 
the city was forced to step into the political vacuum the feds had created.

"You don't leave political voids empty," Price said. "They get 
filled, just like in nature."

The same thing, Price said, is happening today with transportation.

The provincial government, rather than take the initiative, deflects 
Metro Vancouver's transportation problems by insisting on a 
plebiscite to fund improvements, the results of which are not binding.

"The cities are going to have to tap their tax base," Price, said, 
"and they're going to have to find innovative ways to do it - which 
sounds like a good thing, but if the senior governments are getting 
out of all of this stuff, the cities have to have a more resilient 
tax base, and they have to have the kind of expertise and political 
will on a scale appropriate to the programs."

And what of the issue of climate change, where all of Metro 
Vancouver's largest civic governments are in open revolt against the 
feds' plans for oil pipelines and coal terminals? In face of the 
Conservatives' disgraceful bullying and lack of impartiality, the 
cities have had to take on the role of opposition.

That's why Vancouver is going its own way on drug policy, and why, in 
time, it will lead it.

It has had to face up to the realities of urban life as it's lived now.

In the meantime, Ottawa blows smoke.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom