At some point in the next six months I expect we will all slowly emerge from our caves, blinded by the sun, completely disoriented as we stumble into a post apocalyptic world. Okay, it won’t be a scene of utter destruction. Think instead of a world hit by a Neutron Bomb, you know the kind that wipes out mankind but leaves everything else intact. We will have to relearn how to interact with our fellow human beings, how to hug again or maybe just have a few people over for dinner. There will be lapses when, unprepared, we witness people behaving in ways that are currenty verboten. Hopefully, we will catch ourselves before we try to shame them.

What a year. I guess the biggest headline is COVID 19. How could it not be? It shut down so much of the world that we knew. It imposed limits on us that previously would have been completely unacceptable. And, of course, it took a terrible toll, killing over fifteen thousand Canadians and counting.

When the all clear is finally sounded there will be time to assess how we did, whether collectively as a province or nation or individually as we picked our way across the minefield of pandemic issues and restrictions. As a Canadian I think we rank somewhere in the middle when it comes to how effective our response has been, although living next door to the United States tends to make us feel we have done better than we actually have. There will be time for praise and criticism and hopefully lessons learned and applied before the next great health threat confronts us.

And how will it affect us individually? It being New Year’s, I see a number of columnists venturing into that field but most of their prognostications sound a bit like “hopes and prayers” to me. I accept it will have a significant effect on all of us who experienced it, although I expect the effect will be greater the older you are. And for those of us closer to the end of our lives than the beginning, I think it will be profound. For younger people, not so much. That’s just the nature of youth, not to mention that the disease was significantly less deadly in younger people. Speaking as an older person, I’m sure I will value more whatever years and experiences I have left, recognizing they could easily be fewer than I expect.

Although the pandemic is clearly not over, looking back to its beginning less than a year ago I feel as if I’m surveying ancient history. Remember the hoarding of toilet paper? What was that about? Not to mention the sudden disappearance of all sorts of foods from our supermarket shelves. We in the West are very spoiled. Those sorts of shortages were supposed to be confined to the Third World but all it took was a little bit of panic and, no matter the reassurances about supplies, people started hoarding here and all over the so called First World. What a fragile structure we rest upon.

The one enduring legacy I hope comes from the experience of the pandemic is the appreciation of good, strong government; the realization that government, at least here, is a force for good and is absolutely essential when things get tough. Like many of us over the years, I have tended to drift towards the devaluing of government in favour of the private sector. Not any more.

Were it not for COVID 19 the daytime soap opera of American politics would certainly have claimed first place for attention in 2020. As it was, it still managed to break through with distressing regularity, particularly as the American government’s epic failure to confront the virus fed the political firestorm. As those of you who have read my earlier blogs know, I am astonished that Donald Trump received seventy four million votes in the U.S. election, even while his administration was failing to meet its most important obligation: keeping the American people safe. Ironically, had Donald Trump confronted the virus when he first became aware of it in February and had he marshalled the resources of the federal government to battle it, he would have been re-elected in November. But he didn’t and he wasn’t, and that is a very good thing for the survival of democracy in the world although the chances of recidivism in America are great and, while I wish President Elect Joe Biden every success, I also know that the rest of us should never again rely upon the United States as the backstop for democracy in the world. In passing, let me also say that Donald Trump’s behaviour since he lost the election, i.e. major poor loser, validates the views of everyone who ever felt he was singularly unsuitable for the office of President.

And let’s not forget about the effects of climate change in 2020. While much of California burned my home city, Vancouver, along with many others was cloaked in choking smoke for days on end, making the sacrifices required by the pandemic even harder to endure. Oh, and what about all those hurricanes crossing the Atlantic Ocean, slamming into North America and adding new misery to their usual ferocity by then parking over coastal American states and flooding them with bibilical amounts of water. And yet the climate change deniers in Washington continued to fiddle.

There was also the explosion of anger after the killing of George Floyd leading to massive protests both in America and around the world including here in Canada. In the U.S. some of those protests led to looting and violence, including the extra judicial execution of Michael Reinoehl by U.S. Marshalls and local police, an execution that was subsequently praised by Donald Trump as part of his Law and Order campaign.

2020 also saw The Peoples’ Republic of China acting in particularly odious ways, whether effectively jettisoning the agreement that made Hong Kong semi autonomous, imprisoning more than a million of its citizens in concentration camps, failing to provide full and timely information on COVID19 when it emerged in its heartland, bullying smaller nations like Australia and, in the process, demonstrating the complete futility of entering into trade agreements with the PRC or, and especially for Canadians, continuing to engage in hostage diplomacy with the illegal detention of the two Michaels. All of this while delivering condescending lectures to other nations about how they should behave. Give me a break! Developing a coordinated response by the democracies to the PRC will likely be high on the agenda of the incoming Biden Presidency and Canada should be fully committed in that endeavour although, given the spinelessness of the federal government when it comes to so much to do with the PRC, don’t hold your breath.

Oh, and did I mention Murder Hornets? I’m not sure whether they first appeared in British Columbia or in Washington State but, whichever, they are now lurking in our midst, waiting to attack us and inflict terrible damage while, not incidentally, destroying bee populations. They’re kind of the icing on the cake for 2020 and, unfortunately, even after COVID 19 is behind us, will be waiting in ambush.

So, yes 2020 was an awful year although, for me at least, not the worst year of my life although certainly in the top two or three. And I am thrilled that it is over. Now we can wait patiently for the departure of Donald Trump from the U.S. Presidency and the end of the pandemic.

What will I do first once it’s over; I mean “really” over? I’ll exhale.

Happy New Year.

Just sayin

G

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America. Oh America. Such a complicated history. First, thirteen colonies in rebellion and the violent expulsion of twenty percent of its population who, effectively, founded English Canada. The orginal sin of slavery. The genocide of native American populations . The conquest and expropriation of much of Mexico. Lewis and Clark pushing to the Pacific and effectively confiscating a large chunk of British Columbia. Imperial ventures beyond North America, whether in Cuba or the Phillippines or Hawaii or the Carribean or Central America as European/American settlement spread out across the world.

And then the lumbering military and economic colossus of the second half of the twentieth century, at times chafing at the leadership role thrust upon it, at others, exploiting it ruthlessly to advance its economic and political interests, whether in Iran, Vietnam, Chile and, intermittently, much of Central and South America. Much of this the logical outcome of the core ideas of rugged individualism and unfettered capitalism and, with it, the unbridled acquisition of wealth. The constitution states that “all men are created equal” but, even if true, all men certainly don’t end up equal.

But through it all there was the idea, the idea that seemed to animate the very best impulses of western civilization and thought; that formed those impulses into ideas and then form, defying the odds and framing a constitution and political structure unlike any previously seen. The words, if not the practice, of: “all men are created equal”. The stirring lines by Emma Lazarus at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. The thrilling example of the young democracy coming to the rescue of the old in the Second World War. All of it. Confusing. Frustrating. But mostly hopeful.

None of this should have worked, at least based on the millenia of human experience, and yet, seemingly defying history, it did. At least for a while. Oh, there were many, many examples of failure, of corruption, of experiences that were the very antithesis of the ideas behind the American experiment but, on the whole, particularly in the years immediately after the Second World War and especially after the end of the Cold War, where it seemed possible the Americans had lit upon something magical, something that had eluded other human beings throughout history and that should be emulated as the best idea for governance.

And they celebrated that. The references to “the city on the hill”; to American exceptionalism; to American goodness; all were offered up and provoked the envy of the world. That America’s closest allies and neighbours found it a bit shallow, not completely true and sometimes downright irritating never got in the way of the admiration most of us felt for America. At heart we believed America and Americans were good and could be relied upon as our friend and ally.

Hindsight is twenty/twenty and with it we can now see early signs of failure undermining the American dream. For people of my generation that happened in the sixties and seventies when the increasing divide between the wealthy and the poor, between uban and rural, between young and old became more and more obvious, leading to conflict and polarization. And it was exacerbated by some terrible policy choices by America’s ruling elites. Yet even then, the fact that Americans would rise up and fight for their rights or to oppose policies and behaviours seemed to confirm that the foundation of the republic was still bedrock.

But by the dawn of the twenty first century the disagreements had become chasms.

I would like to think the apotheosis of this was the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and, with his defeat in 2020, the divisions will begin to lessen as Americans embrace each other as members of one national family. But the odds against that are large and growing. Of course this isn’t the first time America has been deeply divided, the worst leading to a civil war that cost the lives of approximately 620,000 soldiers and nearly 1000,000 civilians, this in a country with a total population at the time of 18,500,000. The simple truth is America has always had an undercurrent of violent conflict even when things seemed peaceful on the surface.

And now we come to 2020. The election of Donald Trump as the forty fifth President of the United States brought all the conflicts to the surface; his divisive and offensive style giving permission to his legion of followers to shed whatever facade of civility they had maintained and to behave in ways that validated the worst suspicians of the other half of America. His re-election campaign is memorable for all the wrong reasons and now we have the spectacle of the wannabe dictator using every trick in the book (and quite a few that aren’t) trying to maintain his hold on power. He will fail but the poison he has unleashed will not subside easily. His mission right now, aside from raising as much money as possible for his future, seems to be to deligitimize the Presidency of Joe Biden who beat him fair and square in the election.

If this were just about Donald Trump that would be bad enough. But it isn’t. Aside from his many enablers in the Republican Party as he mounts his campaign against democracy, there is the stark fact that America’s governance structures, while they may have sustained the election, continue to fail on so many other levels, whether responding to the COVID 19 pandemic, offering relief to those suffering because of the economic shutdowns, or providing basic medical care to its citizens.

Many are treating it as news that democratic norms are the underpinning of a successful democracy and that when leaders are unwilling to follow them all the carefully articulated structures of government and democracy fail. But it shouldn’t be news. Democracies require consent at every level of society and when it is withdrawn they turn into something else.

In America today it’s not just people disagreeing over ideology or belief, it is so much deeper than that. There is an epistemological chasm stretching across this very divided nation. In other words, there isn’t even agreement over what is or is not a fact. This was perfectly encapsulated in the words of the memorable Kelly Anne Conway early in Trump’s Presidency when she introduced us to the notion of “alternative facts” which, to any reasonable and informed person, is nonsense. But it is precisely this nonsense that has seized perhaps forty percent of the American population in their response to the 2020 election. And there are few obvious ways to address it.

At a personal level I am somewhat familiar with this phenomenon. I had an aunt and uncle who farmed in Alberta. I loved them both and I believe they loved me. This was long before the internet or computers but they did have a television that beamed the words of American televangelists up to them on a regular basis, words that, in my view, were completely disconnected from reality but no matter how hard I tried, there was no way I could dissuade them from their beliefs that black was white, up was down, right was wrong and they were part of a beleaguered Christian minority under threat from all sorts of international conspiracies. And they weren’t alone in this. Their neighbours held the same views. By the standards of the day, my aunt was a well educated woman but that made no difference. And thanks to the internet and social media, we are seeing this same phenomenon on steroids, particularly in America but also in the UK. This seems particularly acute in the Anglosphere although Canada has been spared from most of its worst excesses so far.

Everyone who cares about democracy should wish President Biden the best of luck as he tries to close the savage divisions that cleave his nation. But it’s unclear how he can succeed in the face of such opposition even if the Democrats somehow manage to win the two Georgia Senate seats. How do you govern people who have a completely different view of reality, one that eschews fact and clings to the sort of make believe most of us shed with our childhoods? I suspect the best we can hope for is that a minority of those people will slowly rejoin their fellow Americans and realize the stakes in this existential battle.

I also think democracies must turn their attention to the distorting role social media is playing in our societies. Until this moment the idea of limiting exchanges on the internet has been anathema to me but now I’m not so sure although I concede the internet and social media are only part of the problem. Perhaps the bigger part is how we are failing to educate young people to think critically, analyze information, recognize fact and form reasonable opinions.

Just sayin

G

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So here we are. Nearly ten months into the pandemic and counting. Our world has been turned upside down. Most of us have sacrificed something in the fight against COVID 19, some a lot, some less, but most something. We have learned a whole new vocabularly: “bend the curve”; “plank the curve”; “social distancing”; “quarantine”; “surges”; “ventilate”, some completely new and others with new and sometimes terrifying meaning. And through it all, we have been urged to be patient, to be tolerant, to be kind, to be understanding of those around us who are having a similar experience.

In British Columbia where we have had very good political and medical leadership through this crisis, the mantra has been “Be kind. Be calm. Be safe.” constantly reiterated by the province’s Chief Medical Health Officer, the admirable Dr. Bonnie Henry. And, on the whole, we have been. It took a while to suppress the urge to shame and criticize when others around us were seemingly behaving in ways that were inconsistent with the guidelines we were being asked to follow. But, mostly, we succeeded which is probably one of the reasons British Columbia has fared relatively well in this struggle.

As a child of the sixties, the Kumbaya approach should be natural for me. But it’s not and I confess to having quite a struggle to hold the line at times. And now I need to vent.

Where to begin? How about at the top or close to it? And I can’t think of a better place to start than with the Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney. Anyone who has been following the spread of COVID 19 in Canada should know by now that Alberta has the dubious distinction of having the highest rates of infection per capita in the country; that its hospitals are sounding the alarm at the real possibility they will not be able to handle the expected surge in cases in the coming weeks and, as a result, the Alberta government has requested the federal government and the Red Cross to assist in setting up field hospitals, perhaps bringing in the military. All this while the government of Mr. Kenney has refused to implement the kinds of mitigation measures applied elsewhere in the country, including right next store in British Columbia where, as a result, the rates of infection are significantly lower. It seems the “live free or die” mantra of his core supporters is more important than the advice of doctors or the needs of his citizens. I heard Prime Minister Trudeau declining to criticize Alberta’s approach which I guess is understandable, but as a Canadian with deep family roots in Alberta, I feel no such compunction. I mean, where do they get off asking the rest of Canada to rush to their aid when they refuse to take the very straight forward advice of experts on how to control the pandemic, advice that is being followed elsewhere and that is resulting in economic hardship there? I’m not suggesting we just turn our backs on Alberta. But really? Shouldn’t we at least be making it clear that this is a team sport and they are not playing by the rules?

And then there is the Conservative MP, Derek Sloan, previously distinguished by his opposition to a law outlying conversion therapy in Canada, now stepping forward to present an anti vaccine petition to Parliament just as we are getting the first glimmerings of light at the end of the COVID tunnel. And while I’m on the subject, it’s not lost on me that the new Conservative Leader, Erin O’Toole, has yet to call him out on this. As I said on a Facebook post, if the Conservative tent includes Derek Sloan it will never include people like me.

Not to be overlooked in all this are the churches asking for special pleadings that would allow them to remain open to in person worship during the pandemic. In British Columbia they are most notable in the Fraser Valley where they seem to believe their religious beliefs trump the health and safety of everyone else. And they are not alone. In Alberta two Baptist churches have filed lawsuits against the modest restrictions in that province, claiming they are tantamount to the actions of a dictatorship. I’m a non believer but, even if I were a devoutly religious person, I would be appalled at the selfishness of these churches. And while I’m on the subject, why should religious groups have any special rights here? Yes, I know they do have Charter rights but that’s the subject of another blog, but the rest of us are also giving up many things that make our lives worthwhile, fulfilling and enjoyable. So why should they be an exception?

And of couse there are the perennial flat earth groups who are marching around maskless and defying medical health orders whenever they can, often insulting others who are trying to follow the rules. Are we even the same species? I assume they grew up in the same Canada as the rest of us, that they went to the same or similar schools, that they enjoy the way Canadian society is organized and yet here we are. Okay, they’re not nearly as numerous or as vocal as their counterparts south of the border but, really, that’s a very low bar and surely not one we aspire to meet.

I know. I know. Shaming people won’t cause them to change their ways. But it sure does feel good.

Just sayin

G

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https://geoffbc.home.blog/2020/03/24/aids-and-covid-19-then-and-now/

Four years ago almost to the day a minority of Americans voted for Donald Trump and, thanks to the Byzantine rules of the Electoral College, elected him President of the United States.  This, despite warning signs everywhere, whether his history as a racist, his record as a businessman who stiffed contractors and employees, his boasting about moving on women and “grabbing them by the pussy”, his mysterious foreign financial ties, his record of marital infidelity and his appallingly unpresidential demeanor during the Republican primaries and the subsequent election.  Although not a majority, over sixty million Americans voted for him.

In the subsequent four years almost every fear about his Presidency has been realized as he turned the office of the President into a money generating machine for his businesses; as he gave the back hand to America’s long standing friends and allies in the world and cozied up to some of the most unsavoury authoritarian leaders; as he worked to undermine a free and independent press; as he tried to weaponize the courts against his political enemies and  critics; as he ignored the science on climate change even as America burned and flooded and withered on his watch;  as he ignored the scientists and doctors and instead, midwifed the Corona 19 pandemic across America because it suited his political needs to do so; as he fanned the flames of racial injustice; as he worked to undermine Americans’ faith in their democratic institutions, going so far to say he might not accept the results of the next Presidentail election unless he won; and as he debased and coarsened political life in this once great democracy.

And yet, through all this his supporters stayed with him, some with glee parroting his most outrageous and offensive positions.  Hilary Clinton called these people “deplorables”.  It may have been impolitic to do so, but she was right.

But to me at least, the far more offensive Trump supporters are the “but” ones.  You know, the ones who say “well, I wish he wouldn’t tweet all the time, but…” or “of course I’m offended by his tone and language, but…” or “well I don’t agree with all his positions … but”  or “I do wish he would tone down his rhetoric, but…”.  You know who I mean.  We all do.  We all know at least some “but” Trump supporters.  And what follows  the “but”?  Well, it  is usually some version of “well, you know he is a successful businessman (wrong!) so he really knows how to run the country” or “I’m so tired of political correctness and being looked down upon by the California or New York elites and he knows how to put them in their place” or “he cares about the little guy” or, my favourite in terms of what we know of his Presidency, “he’s draining the swamp in Washington”. 

Each of these pitiful insincere mea culpas trying to separate these “respectable” people from the meanness, the corruption, the  filth and the degradation of this Presidency.  Well, they are not absolved because:

when Donald Trump says he can “grab women by the pussy”, so do they;

when Donald Trump describes racist anti semitic marchers chanting “Jews will not replace us” as some “very fine people”, so do they;

when Donald Trump fills the “swamp” with his toadying supporters and legion of grifters, so do they;

when Donald Trump describes members of the American military as “losers and suckers”, so do they;

when Donald Trump grovels at the feet of some of the most appalling dictators in the world, so do they;

when Donald Trump insults America’s long time allies and friends, so do they;

when Donald Trump abandons America’s allies in the midst of battle, so do they;

when Donald Trump fans the flames of racism and division, so do they;

when Donald Trump takes a buzz saw to gay, lesbian and transgender rights in America, so do they;

when Donald Trump ignores science on climate change and fiddles while America burns, floods, is devastated by hurricanes, and sees its crops across the midwest wither, so do they;

when Donald Trump lies about the potential devastation of the Covid 19 Virus and then pursues a response to it that is completely dictated by his politcal needs as millions of Americans get sick and hundreds of thousand die, so do they;

when Donald Trump casts doubt on the legitimacy of America’s democratic institutions and processes, especially voting, so do they;

when Donald Trump won’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election, so do they;

when Donald Trump encourages white and violent extremist groups, so do they.

Okay, so I credulously accept that some “but”  Donald Trump supporters may have voted without understanding who and what he really is although it takes an enormous suspension of disbelief in the wake of the Access Hollyood Tapes, his long and very public history in New York and the words he used to announce his bid for the Presidency;  ( “Mexicans are drug dealers, criminals and rapists”), to do so.  But just for a minute at least, let’s try.

On November 3 they will vote again and there is no possibility, none whatsoever, they won’t know who and what Donald Trump is and what he is doing when they cast their votes.  There are absolutely no excuses this time.  If they vote for Donald Trump they are voting for him because they agree with him and like who and what he is.

As I have said to my many American friends and family:  “I trust the American people” and I still do although the last four years have often strained that to the almost breaking point.  But I still believe that on Election Day the majority of American voters will rise up, defend their democracy and send Donald Trump and his fellow grifters and enablers to the richly deserved dustbin of history where they will join the legions of wannabe dictators, Quislings and swamp dwellers.

Just sayin.

G

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Well the silly season in the campaign has definitely arrived. This morning the blaring headline concerns an exchange between the Liberal and NDP candidates in North Vancouver, both women, about “sexualized” language one used about the other. I have to say from a male point of view the comments in question seem pretty benign but then I am not a woman and I will leave it to others to judge.

We are now just over a week from the election. The one leaders’ debate is tonight and I have my first ever mail in ballot ready to be cast. So, where do I find myself?

In my first blog on the election I criticized Premier Horgan for calling the election and for subsequently trying to justify the unjustifiable defending that decision. Except for the leader of the Green Party who, for abvious reasons as the bride left at the altar, is still smarting from the early call, the campaign has moved on from it. I have friends who remain sufficiently angry about the early call they are going to “park” their votes with the Greens but that wouldn’t work for me.

In that same blog I criticized the NDP for the character attacks on Liberal Leader, Andrew Wilkinson and especially for ads targeting the gay and lesbian community suggesting the election of a Liberal government would lead to the loss of the hard won rights of that community. I did acknowledge there were probably Liberal attack ads I had not yet seen and that probably were equally odious. And right on cue, two days later one arrived in my internet account that, if it wasn’t so appalling, would have been funny. I don’t know whether the Liberal ad machine was trying to resurrect WAC Bennett’s cries from the sixties and early seventies that “the socialist hordes were at the gates” or whether it had just had too much exposure to Donald Trump’s approach to politics but, either way, it doesn’t matter. The ad was full of dire warnings that John Horgan and the NDP were stalking horses for a radical leftist takeover of the province. They were just waiting in the wings. The title of my last blog was “Stop Treating Us Like Children” and boy does that apply in this case too. I replied to the ad saying how distasteful it was but I suspect, other than having me removed from its circulation, it is still circulating around the internet.

So it seems there is plenty of stupid to go around.

I said there are three issues that will affect how I vote: a party’s approach to the chaos that is enveloping and destroying all the downtown Vancouver neighbourhoods and that is coming from the Downtown Eastside; the party’s proposals to fundamentally change Medicare so that reasonable access to services becomes a reality; and the plans each party has for a return to fiscal balance after the pandemic is over.

Not surprisingly, no one has really stepped up to the plate on any of the three although, on the issue of defending Vancouver’s neighbourhoods the Liberals got my attention with their so called “law and order” proposals. But even they didn’t demonstrate an understanding of what was happening to the neighbourhoods and was mostly about funding more police and having psychiatric social workers attend police calls for the sorts of disturbances occurring in the Downtown Eastside. It surprises me the Liberals weren’t more forceful and detailed because they are defending against a strong challenge in their seat of Vancouver False Creek where I live and where communities are right on the front line of the problems (for example, Yaletown). The other two parties? Well, aside from the usual bromides about developing new and creative strategies to end homelessness (where have we heard that before) and to ensure a safe supply of drugs, nothing.

On how and when to enact fundamental changes to Medicare in B.C. , that perennial third rail of Canadian politics, nada. Just the same old game of promising to throw more money at the current system. This really didn’t surprise me in light of the B.C. Supreme Court ruling striking down the challenge to Medicare’s monopoly as enforced by “The Medicare Protection Act”. I said then the court’s decision was a lost opportunity, one that could have forced politicians to roll up their sleeves and finally deal with the structural problems causing the well documented access to care problems in B.C.

And on the issue of how the parties will lead us out of the deep debt and deficits brought on by the pandemic response, really nothing. The Liberals are traditionally seen as the party of fiscal responsibility but their proposal to cancel the PST for a year and then to bring it back for at least another year at 3% blew that claim to smithereens, at least for me. As for the NDP, oh well at least they are behaving according to their playbook although some of their “vote buying” proposals are blatant even by their and the province’s historical standards. A thousand dollar “gift” (remember, it’s our money we are talking about) to almost all British Columbians. A four hundred dollar gift to renters. And all the bafflegab about it being somehow related to the pandemic response brings me back to my cri de coeur: STOP TREATING US LIKE CHILDREN.

So with no definitive positions addressing my most pressing issues, what should I do?

Well, the NDP did provide good, if not spectacular, government for the two years of their mandate before the pandemic hit and since have done an outstanding job guiding us through it. Those two statements are pretty irrefutable.

The Liberals have only been out of office for three years after sixteen in power and, watching them, it seems to me they could use a bit more time on the bench, time to sort out who they are, what they are, and what they are going to represent in the future.

Some, myself included, have had qualms about an NDP government with a majority. For me at least, most of those have been allayed, although I would feel better if their excellent Minister of Finance, Carole James, was able to run again. But, as we all know, she can’t for health reasons.

So in the end I think the NDP deserves to be relected (although it would be a delicious irony if they were re-elected with a minority and needing the support of the Greens who they so easily kicked under the bus at the beginning of the campaign…well, in B.C. elections you never know).

Whatever your views, get out there and vote.

Just sayin

G

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On September 20 Premier John Horgan of British Columbia asked the Lieutenant Governor to dissolve the provincial legislature and call a general provincial election for October 24, 2020, approximately one year earlier than is required by law. She granted his request and the election is on. And just to be clear, the election was not “forced” in some sense. Aside from there being another year left in the mandate, the government’s control of the legislature was assured by the support of independent Andrew Weaver and the continuing agreement between the Greens and the government that guaranteed Green support for the government on all matters of confidence until the next election.

Since calling the election Premier Horgan and his NDP MLA’s and supporters have tested several arguments to justify it. None of them holds any water and continuing to pile bafflegab on us just makes the issue worse and more irritating. It is not in the interest of British Columbians to have an election right now. The agreement with Greens was secure and would have provided stability until the scheduled election date in October of 2021. It is not correct to say that with COVID numbers rising it’s important to get the election over now while we can without increased risk to voters’ health and safety. Yes, COVID cases are rising right now but, if we are to believe most of the experts, including Dr. Bonnie Henry, there is reason for optimism on the vaccine front and by next fall we will likely be in a much better position than we are now, both on the COVID front and for safely holding a vote.

So why did the Premier call the election. It’s really very simple and no amount of obfuscation and clever arguments is going to hide it. He called the election because he calculated that his increased popularity as a result of the very good leadership he and his team have provided in maneuvering through the pandemic will result in a majority victory now, one that will assure his role as Premier and party as government for four more years. In other words he made a political calculation, nothing more, nothing less. Some will call it a cynical political calculation but that strikes me as creating a redundancy.

But will it work? Will he get the majority he wants? He is ahead in the polls and that might translate into a victory. Or it might not. It seems to me he and his advisors should probably have paid more attention to “The Dave Barrett Rule”. Oh, you haven’t heard of it? Well that’s because I just invented the term. Some of you will know immediately what I am talking about but I suspect most will not. So, a little bit of history.

Dave Barrett was elected as British Columbia’s first NDP Premier in September 1972. There were a number of factors contributing to his victory but, most important, was the splitting of the conservative vote in B.C. between the Social Credit Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party that allowed him to win with a relatively small plurality, 39 % of the vote. With all the pent up energy of its many years in opposition the NDP set out to remake the province passing an average of one new law every three days for a total of 367 laws in its three years in government. Some were good, some less so but many were controversial and, in large sections of the electorate, very unpopular. And in those nearly three years the government’s share of the popular vote failed to break out of the relatively low range it was elected with. Three years into the mandate the government was confronted by massive strikes in the forest industry, strikes that crippled B.C.’s principal industry (forestry) at the time. And, in a turn that stunned everyone, his government brought in sweeping back to work legislation that ordered fifty thousand workers back to work and imposed the terms of a collective agreement. Not surprisingly, Premier Barrett’s union supporters felt deeply betrayed but the general public was on side and his ratings spiked. And that’s when he made the biggest mistake of his political life. He believed the new ratings would allow him to secure another majority government and so, with two years left in his mandate, he called a general election. Forty some days later he was defeated ushering in another sixteen years of Social Credit governance of the province. And that is what I call The Dave Barrett Rule.

Premier Horgan is now banking on his increased poll numbers resulting from his government’s management of the pandemic, believing presumably they will translate into more votes. But will they? I’m not so sure.

To begin with, the fundamental polarities of political life in B.C. remain intact despite the outstanding social cohesion shown in the face of the pandemic. Around forty percent of British Columbians will never support the NDP. They may be pleased with its handling of the pandemic; may even be pleasantly surprised that their governance before the pandemic didn’t validate their worst fears. But this is British Columbia and the indelible divides that reach back over a century have not gone away. I am aware of the early polls that show the NDP with a significant lead and it is possible in this world where everything has changed so too may have the political divisions of the province. But nearly sixty years of being part of and observing B.C. politics makes me skeptical.

And then there’s the matter of calling the early election which is where I come in. Prior to the pandemic I was almost persuaded to vote NDP for the first time in a long time. The government seemed competent, had stick handled its way around the three big issues I was concerned about with their election (electoral reform, Site C and the Tran Mountain pipeline), were filling in gaps in social and community support that had emerged over the sixteen years of Liberal governance and, most of all, seemed to be handling the public purse competently under the excellent guidance of the Finance Minister, Carol James. When the pandemic struck I, along with most British Columbians I suspect, was impressed with the government’s approach to it: trust the science; let the doctors do the leading; enforce the public health messages and ask everyone in the province to do their part. By and large, most people in British Columbia did and we “bent the proverbial curve” and avoided the worst of the first wave of the pandemic. For the first time in sixty years in B.C. I saw a kind of social solidarity I had never seen before and I liked it, really liked it and hoped perhaps against all probability, it would lead us to a better, more harmonious province when the pandemic was behind it.

Premier Horgan is the first Premier of B.C. since Boss Johnson that I haven’t known or, at least, had interractions with (yes, I’m that old). So my understanding of him is based entirely on his public image and as I watched him maneuver through the first three years of government I was impressed. He seemed intelligent, thoughtful, caring about people, aware he had to balance the competing interests of all British Columbians and he was a very good retail politician. So when the pandemic struck I wasn’t surprised those same qualities seemed to be guiding him to the exclusion of everything else. And that’s when I firmly decided I would vote to re-elect him in the next provincial election.

But now things have changed.

I don’t know who gave him what advice but I do know from my own experience that, as a new Premier, he is almost certainly surrounded by young, dedicated, partisan advisors who are absolutely certain they are right on everything and their decisions are the best for everyone regardless what everyone might feel. How do I know that? Because I was once one of those people.

And in the end, John Horgan is just another politician, no better, no worse than all the others. Okay, I know some of you who have known me for a long time are rolling your eyes right now because, yes, there was a time I was as partisan, hardnosed, strategic and ruthless as anyone who played the game in B.C. But I like to think life has given me some perspective and I do believe there is a better, more collaborative way to govern this province than what we’ve had throughout its entire history. But apparently not this time.

So how does all this affect my vote? To begin with, it moves it squarely into the “undecided” column where the campaign really will make the difference. And I know from discussions with friends I am not alone in this regard. When I say “the campaign will make a difference” I mean several things.

First, I live in a traditionally Liberal riding in Vancouver but the last election showed it is vulnerable to an NDP takeover. The NDP has nominated a woman who I know nothing about and, as I learn more about her and her positions, that will weigh on my decision.

Second, there are three issues that I am especially concerned about:

I will want to hear from both the NDP and the Liberals how they intend to address the chaos that is engulfing and destroying our neighbourhoods in Vancouver, whether Chinatown, Gastown, Yaletown and, increasingly, the rest of the downtown peninisula. And when I say I want to hear what they have to say I want them to start by acknowledging the victims in this crisis who are not drug addicted, mentally unstable residents of the Downtown Eastside. I want to hear they understand that all the other tax paying, law abiding citizens of Vancouver are victims as their neighbourhoods get trashed and destroyed. Just telling me they are going to build more low cost housing or ensure a supply of safe drugs isn’t going to cut it, even if that were ever going to be enough or is even a good idea. No, I want to hear what they are going to do on the enforcement side including removing people from society whose behaviour is threatening its stability.

Second, in light of the recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling rejecting the challenge to the Medicare Protection Act, I want to hear what they are prepared to do to fundamentally change how we deliver medical services in this province in a timely way. And just saying they are going to throw more money at waitlists won’t cut it. Been there, done that. Bandaids are not enough if there is a genuine commitment to sustaining Medicare. As it’s being provided now, it contravenes one of the key principles of The Canada Health Act, “Access”, something those who like to cherry pick those principles to support whatever position they are advocating conveniently ignore.

Third, I want to hear at least the beginnings of a plan to get B.C. back to fiscal health after the pandemic is behind us. And it won’t be enough to indulge in the magical thinking of so many on the left that says we need do nothing and just “grow our way out of it”. If the history of government debt in Canada doesn’t teach us anything else, it tells us we will need to do much more than that before we hit a fiscal wall. It will need tax increases, cuts in government spending and, yes, robust growth.

So, to return to my principal theme, the glass of social solidarity that I hoped would carry forward into the future has been cracked and that, admittedly probably utopian hope, is nowhere in sight. But at least they could try to campaign in a way that doesn’t add to the damage. Unfortunately that’s not what I’m seeing. I’m sure there are Liberal attack ads I haven’t seen yet but I have seen theNDP attacks on Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson that try to paint him as a scary Donald Trump wannabe. I’ve worked with Andrew Wilkinson and I know him to be highly intelligent, thoughtful, principled and not at all reactionary. I should perhaps note here for those of you who know B.C. politics, he is very much of the Liberal wing of the coalition that is the Liberal Party of B.C. And as for those who are lamenting what will happen on the pandemic front if we are foolish enough to elect him as Premier, I simply say this. Andrew Wilkinson is a lawyer but, more importantly on this issue, he is a medical doctor, in fact was a small town doctor in rural B.C. I haven’t the slightest doubt he will follow the science and let the medical professionals continue to take the lead in B.C.

As well as the NDP attack ads, I’m being inundated on social media with ads warning me the Liberals will take away all the hard won rights of lesbians and gays. Aside from provoking an eye roll, what utter nonsense. Even if they could, there is no reason whatsoever to suggest they would. So, really guys, cut it out.

I’m afraid the cracks are spreading. Trust me when I say, “it is what it is” I’m not quoting the unmentionable President of the United States. I’m just acknowledging where we are because of a bad choice that Premier Horgan made.

In the meantime, at least on the issue of why the election was called or the attempts to scare vulnerable minorities or to demonize the government’s opponents, I say this:

STOP TREATING US AS CHILDREN!

Just sayin

G

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A conservative and usually Republican friend of mine in the U.S. reacted to one of my recent blogs by suggesting I was improperly meddling in the U.S. election. I responded that it affected us all but, putting aside the hypocrisy of most Republicans turning a blind eye to the real, blatant and documented Russian meddling in the election to help Donald Trump, I thought the accusation deserved a fuller response. Here goes.

First the personal. I grew up in southen Alberta and southern B.C. The U.S. border was always an easy drive away and we thought nothing of jumping in the family car and going to Montana or, later, Washington State. Crossing the border in those days involved little more than a wave from the border guard both going and coming. My early impressions of America were formed by Montana. We would visit exotic locales like Great Falls, Helena and Kalispell, driving through impressive countryside to reach them. My early memories of the Americans were positive. Friendly, outgoing, helpful but still somehow different than us although I couldn’t quite put my finger on how at that young age. After we moved to Vancouver in my teens visits to Bellingham and Seattle were an easy drive. I remember liking the energy of the places and probably secretly envying the Americans their lives. A bit later, friendships and partners in Seattle resulted in frequent commuting back and forth.

All that changed on September 11, 2001. The border got thicker and then much thicker, making crossing by car a trial even with a Nexus card. My visits immediately south were curtailed and then mostly petered out. I did, however, continue to visit frequently by air, continuing my love affair with New York and my affection for places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Key West. And it wasn’t just the locales that appealed to me, it was the people with all their sometimes outrageous energy and overwhelmingly positive drive. It seemed they were at the forefront of western civilization and, as a young man, I wanted to be a part of it.

And before I here howls of “but” about America, let me say I have witnessed and am aware of its flaws. I marched in the first anti Vietnam war protest in Vancouver. I was a vocal critic of its often deadly meddling in the affairs of Central and South America. I deplored its ginned up invasion of Iraq. I was horrified by its seemingly effortless slide into the use of torture after the 911 atttack. Like most other Canadians, I am appalled at the role and number of guns in America. I have witnessed the blatant racism that so poisons so much of its civic discord and I see the terrible economic disparities in America, leaving so many of its citizens destitute and desperate with little ability to access healthcare or to feed their families. So, I do understand America is far from perfect, although I suspect no more so than the empires and dominant powers that came before it.

But still…

There is the idea. That incredible idea that is the foundation of the republic. The idea of individual human beings at the centre, not the periphery or the object of, governments. The idea that all people are created equal. The idea that governance should be by the people, for the people and of the people, that all have a say. And, lest we take this for granted, it needs to be said it is a radical break from the norms that have governed humanity for its many millenia.

So, yes I do feel I have a personal stake in what’s happening in the United States and not just because of my friends and family there or my investment of affection for the country. But also because it still represents the best, and perhaps last, hope for the ideas that have animated western civilization since the days of classical Greece.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (for those of you not familiar with Canadian history, he was the father of the current Prime Minister Trudeau) famously said to Americans:”Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twich and grunt”

There is also a Canadian version of the global aphorism: “When America sneezes, Canada gets a cold”

Vancouver, my home, is known for the sparkling waters of the Pacific Ocean that surround it on three sides; for snow capped mountains that tower over the city and for the cool, clean Pacific air that washes over it. But, as I write this, we in Vancouver have just emerged from ten days of respiratory hell. A dark, dirty brown smoke settled on the city for ten days, blotting out the views, in fact sometimes making it impossible to see even across a street. It burned our eyes. It irritated our nostrils. It infiltrated our lungs and then our blood streams promising unknown but negative health effects. The health authorities urged us to stay indoors with our windows closed. For at least three days Vancouver had the worst air quality on the planet. The only time I have seen anything even remotely like it was in Beijing and surely we don’t want that to be the standard. That smoke came directly from the wildfires burning up and down the entire American Pacific coast from southern California to the Canada/U.S. border, wildfires made immeasurably worse by climate change that the overwhelming scientific consensus says is the result of human activity.

As the climate warms the effects on Canada will be severe and, in some cases, catastrophic:

Glacial caps will melt and flow to the oceans which then rise and significant parts of my home city, Vancouver, will no longer be habitable;

As the oceans around Vancouver warm, critical stocks of fish are disappearing, probably seeking colder water up north and one of B.C.’s vital and historic industries, commercial fishing, is endangered;

Infestations of previously unknown insects are appearing, killing our forests, damaging the forestry industry and leaving a trail of dry tinder in their wake;

The prairies, Canada’s “bread basket”, are experiencing increasingly extreme weather with more drought and heat endangering the crops that we rely upon and have used for over a century to help feed the world;

The east coast of Canada is experiencing more and more extreme weather, like the category two hurricane that is barrelling towards it as I write this;

The Canadian arctic is warming faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, destroying precious habitat and pushing species like polar bears towards extinction while uprooting communties, some that have been there for thousands of years.

And while this is happening Donald Trump sits in the White House and fiddles. Acually, if he were just fiddling that would be an improvement but instead, in a childish drive to eradicate any vestige of his predecessor, he and his enablers are systematically unwinding all the progess America had made in fighting climate change. I don’t know if the motivation is just his need to destroy the Obama legacy; or it’s because he’s in the pockets of big business that relies on carbon extraction; or because he is just appallingly ignorant of science or it’s all about politics as he tells his followers they really don’t have to change anything in their lives, rather like his ongoing advice on the COVID 19 pandemic. But it really doesn’t matter what his motives are. His actions speak for themselves and without American leadership battling climate change there is little likelihood the other huge polluters like China and India will do very much either until large parts of this planet become uninhabitable.

Again, we have a stake.

America’s response to the COVID 19 pandemic is a man made catastrophe. Its failure results from the complete lack of leadershp at the top. Now we know it wasn’t just ignorance or a dislike of science. Now we know it was outright lying to try to gain a political advantage. So, as the virus became embedded in the American population, Donald Trump fiddled and, not at all surprisingly, at least in B.C., the virus crossed the border into Canada, America becoming far and away its major source in this province.

Again, we have a stake.

Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been either farce or tragedy, probably some combination of both. His courtship of the tiny viscious North Korean dictator, while producing cringeworthy photos, and his love affair with tyrants, did much worse. His so called “deal” with North Korea did nothing to curtail the expansion of its nuclear and missle arsenal. And now it is likely North Korea has nuclear armed missiles able to hit the west coast of Canada.

Further away and yet in some ways closer to home, his abandoning the Kurds fighting for their freedom in northern Syria and Iraq left the Candian soldiers, who had been embedded with them and guided them for years through their long struggle, with the agonizing choice of abandoning trusted allies and friends or facing the onslaught of the mighty Turkish army.

Canada has supported the international order mostly created by America after the Second World War. It has developed diplomatic and economic relations around the world that rely on it and the belief the naked self interest of individual nation states can be curbed for the benefit of all. But Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to it and the institutions that express it, whether NATO, the U.N., the World Health Organization and so many others. He has done so in the name of “America First” as if the order it created did not primarily benefit America. Increasingly, the world is in disarray and that presents a profound challenge for Canada.

Again, we have a stake.

Growing up in Vancouver there was very little crime that involved guns. Now it seems there is one or more shootings every day. Canada has reasonable gun control laws (although not as tough as I would like) and it is still relatively hard to get a gun legally in Canada. So where are the guns coming from? From the United States, sold and smuggled illegally into Canada.

And, need I say it again, so Canada has a stake.

And then there’s Donald Trump’s direct treatment of Canada. For over two hundred years Canada has tried to be a good neighbour and ally of the United States. Our soldiers have fought and died side by side on the battlefields of the First World War, the Second World War, including the Normandy landings, the Korean War and more recently the battles against Al-Quaeda in Afghanistan. We demurred twice: the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq, both decisions I as a Canadian am proud of. On a smaller scale we have helped where we could, whether sheltering American diplomats and then smuggling them out of the country during the Iran Hostage Crisis at great risk to our own diplomats (despite, by the way, the appallingly revisionist picture of those events in Ben Affleck’s film) or sheltering and supporting thousands of Americans after the 911 attacks.

We have worked collaboratively to ensure the North American economy is integrated and competitive with the world. And we have both benefited from that. Aside from his casual insults, Donald Trump has wrecked havoc on our relationship, threatening at one point to “destroy the Canadian economy” and all this just to satisfy a campaign promise to tear up the NAFTA agreement that, in the end, remains mostly intact.

And then there is his frequent use of “national security” to justify slapping tariffs on Canadian products such as steel and aluminum, as if relying on Canadian suppliers would somehow undermine America’s security, this from one of our oldest and best allies.

The damage to the relationship will take a long time to repair. Canadians will not soon forget how capricious and unreliable America can be and that is a the loss to both countries.

So finally, yes we have a stake.

And then there is the biggest of all issues. We, in the west, live in what is described as “Western Civilization”. Its roots stretch back through antiquity to classical Greece, continuing through Alexandrian Greece and through the Roman Empire, only to be extinguished in the dark ages for nearly a thousand years after the fall of Rome in the fifth century. It awoke in the sixteenth century with the Italian Renaissance and has continued apace for over five hundred years, becoming the dominant culture on earth. Like all previous civilizations it will end. The question is “how soon”? Will it be fifty years from now or a century or two? These are very important questions because for all its faults and dreadful things done in its name, western civilization has benefited the world enormously. Whether in science, medicine, technology or, even more fundamentally, its view of the role of each human being in human communities, we are the beneficiaries of its progress. The very ideas of human rights, womens’ rights, gay rights, civil liberties, indeed freedom as we understand it itself, are all products of the long march forward of the west. And all of that may be lost.

I should note that I have come to believe that the western models, the western ideas, don’t always apply to other cultures where humans and societies have evolved in different ways and that it is folly for the west to try to export its systems of belief and government, particularly by force. But I am certain it is the best fit for us and its loss to us would be incalculable.

So what does all this philosophical “stuff” have to do with the American election? Well, as imperfect and messy as America is, it is still the best, indeed currently likely the only, hope to extend the west’s long trajectory of progress. The simple fact is there is no other western power big enough or strong enough to pull the west together and to lead it and there is none on the horizon. The last time the leading power was faltering, when the Brtitish Empire was in decline, America was in the wings. Today the wings are empty.

So as America is riven by partisanship, racism and divisions that threaten its very existence, we all need to be concerned. I don’t expect the west will end cataclysmically, more likely it will just decline until, like the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, it’s an empty vessel waiting for the mildest breeze of history to topple it and plunge us all into a new dark age in a time when cultures and civilizations come to dominate that are antithetical to our very existence. But far better that be hundreds of years from now than soon.

So my American friends, we do have a stake, an enormous stake, and while we don’t get to vote, we not only have a right but a duty to raise our voices and try to alert you to the fact that when you vote in November, it’s not just about you. It’s about all of us.

Just sayin.

G

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Two years ago I drove from Vancouver to San Francisco with stops in Seattle and Portland. It had been several years since I had visited them and what I saw was distressing. The prevalence of homelessness, neighbourhoods under siege, panhandling and open drug use was shocking. In Seattle the worst examples were in the Capital Hill district and in Portland, that I always thought of as a kind of bucolic little oasis, they seemed almost everywhere in the downtown. San Francisco had also changed for the worse and streets and neighbourhoods that had been vibrant and safe were anything but. For those of you familiar with San Francisco the most shocking example for me was in the few blocks of Sutter immediately west of Union Square. This was an area that had been filled with galleries, boutique hotels and upscale restaurants and bars. It was the area I stayed in on my frequent visits to the city in the seventies and eighties but now it had the feel of neglect with boarded up store fronts, panhandlers, the smell of urine and, for lack of a better term, street people everywhere. It was as if the Tenderloin had migrated north although I suspect it was even worse there.

As Canadians we like to think we handle things better than Americans, particularly when it comes to social order and civic involvement. However, if that’s what we think on this issue, we’ve got it wrong. Canadian cities are having the same struggles with poverty, homelessness, drug addiction and the destruction of neighbourhoods as our American neighbours.

While I believe these problems exist to a greater or lesser extent in all Canada’s major cities, I suspect they are most acute in Vancouver and Victoria because of climate.  They are the only two Canadian cities where it is possible to live outside year round.  I have lived in Vancouver for sixty years, with nearly fifty of them on the downtown peninsula. In that time I have seen enormous changes as the city strove to make the downtown a place where people could both live and work. It had a head start with the West End which had been filled with rooming houses since the early twentieth century and was then transformed in the late fifties and early sixties as successive city councils supported the replacement of those old houses with high rises. By today’s standards they really weren’t that high although I remember when it was claimed that the density in the West End of Vancouver was exceeded in North America only by Manhattan. And it provided a large, affordable rental housing stock for the downtown workforce, all within walking distance.

Subsequent development in Vancouver continued to pursue this objective as the Downtown South, Yaletown, Coal Harbour and False Creek South and North neighbourhoods were built, this time focussing primarily on co-op’s, leaseholds and condominiums. A distinctive style appeared that came to be known as the Vancouver Style. It consists of single highrises anchored by pedestals of street level town houses. It got noticed and Vancouverites were proud of what they were accomplishing, especially when other cities emulated it. The goal was to create a downtown that remained a vital alive neighbourhood even at night and on weekends and, to some extent, it has. Although this new housing is expensive, the city added non market housing amongst these developments. It has also insisted on amenities that appeal to families to make the new neighbourhoods family friendly and mixed. In response, thousands of people have moved into these neighbourhoods, whether downsizing from stand alone houses, new arrivals to the city or first time buyers.

Partly in response to price pressures, developers also began similar neighbourhoods further east and north of the downtown core, specifically in Gastown, which is the original city centre, Chinatown and on the Eastern shore of False Creek which, for those of you not familiar with Vancouver, is the smaller of Vancouver’s two harbours.

While all this was happening something else was going on that would ultimately threaten and potentially defeat the goal of creating viable neighbourhoods in the city’s core. The Downtown East Side is the neighbourhood strung along Hastings Street for six to eight blocks beginning just east of Main Street and tapering off the further west you go. It has long been the poorest postal code in Canada and, in fact, may have been the neighbourhood that first led to the term “skid row” (for reasons that are interesting but not germane to this blog). When I was growing up in Vancouver it was considered seedy but still basically safe.  It had a number of down market hotels that catered to single men who worked on the waterfront or in mining, forestry or fishing and who came to Vancouver intermittently. There were beer parlors where the police would often be called but, on the whole, the neighbourhood didn’t intrude too much into the rest of the city. It’s unclear when that changed although there is a theory it may have started, or at least been accelerated, by governments’ decisions in the seventies and eighties to deinstitutionalize many people suffering from mental disorders, with them subsequently congregating in that neighbourhood. Also, Vancouver’s rapidly rising property prices almost certainly drove people to find shelter in the neighbourhood that, for obvious reasons, remained relatively inexpensive.

And now the Downtown Eastside is a massive malignant and metastisizing tumor on Vancouver’s carefully nurtured pristine image of ocean, mountains, parks, flowers and happy middle class families. It is a civic and national disgrace, an open drug market and the incubator of property crime all over the city. Driving down those few blocks of Hastings Street is simply unbelievable with blocks and blocks that could have been taken directly from the “Bonfire of the Vanities” or, worse, the most pestulent, poverty stricken and desperate slums in the world. And all this just a short walk from the new glamorous family friendly neighbourhoods.

Not surprisingly, the chaos and anti social behaviour is spreading and as it spreads it threatens to unravel the threads of civility, safety and civic mindedness that are the glue that holds any great city together. The neighbourhoods closest to the Downtown Eastside have already been destroyed or are under extreme threat. The vibrant Chinatown that, in my youth, was billed as the second largest in North America after San Francisco’s and was filled with exotic shops and restaurants complete with giant neon signs is a ghost of its former self, its residents having fled to the safety of the suburbs. Gastown, the quaint center of the original city, is under constant pressure and never quite makes it to the next step of livability. And now Strathcona, the first neighbourhood of Vancouver that, having survived threats of demolition for a freeway in the seventies and then slowly, methodically been restored by individuals and families is seeing its main park occupied by a homeless encampment where drug dealing and use is rampant and where, if past is prologue, there will be assaults and worse in the days to come.

And anyone living elsewhere in the city who thinks their neighbourhood is immune from this disease is fooling themselves. I live on the North Shore of False Creek in a nice neighbourhood, in fact the oldest of the residential neighbourhoods on the south side of the downtown core. Twice in the past three days I witnessed people shooting up drugs not a block from my home and, frankly, didn’t find that surprising although a few years ago it would have been unthinkable. And even more recently, several men have set up a “chop shop” right under the Burrard Bridge opposite a daycare where they are dismantling bicycles in front of everyone.  Even where neighbourhoods are not yet colonized, the open sore of the Downtown Eastside sends out its tentacles disbursing chaos and disorder to many other parts of the city. Drug addicts, the mentally unstable and others who, for whatever reason, are living outside of society fill the city’s streets as panhandlers, scavengers and, yes, thieves.

I don’t know why we have tolerated this for so long but I do know it can no longer be ignored. Politicians going back decades have had “solutions” to the problems of the Downtown Eastside. Except none of them has worked, perhaps because none of them was prepared to fully confront what was going on there. We have focused on safe injection sites, a safe supply of drugs and providing more and more social housing, none of which gets to the root of the problem. While I certainly agree it is important to do what we can to ensure people do not die from injecting unsafe drugs and, to the best of our ability, we must try to ensure people have adequate shelter, the real question is why have we tolerated the out of control Vancouver drug scene and associated crime for so long?

I believe it’s because our liberal sensibilities block us from seeing these people as anything other than victims which may, of course, be the case although I suspect a similar argument can be made for most other people who break the law. And the simple fact is they are not the only victims in this situation nor, I would argue, the ones with the greatest claim to our sympathy. Everyone else who tries to lead a law abiding life in the city; who invests in their home; who pays taxes to support schools and playgrounds and, yes, the very services that are devoted in ever greater amounts to the people who, for whatever reason, have decided to place themselves out of society and create a world of chaos that threatens the stability and safety of everyone else, is a victim. Billions, yes billions with a “B”, have been spent and are being spent supporting the people of the Downtown Eastside and their confreres, much of it promptly injected into their bodies and into the pockets of local and International drug dealers.

So, what do we do? Well, for starters, we must reaffirm that laws are not suggestions. When a democratic society, through its elected legislatures and representatives, declares something to be illegal it is a prohibition and defying it should have negative consequences. And yet when it comes to drug use on the Downtown Eastside and elsewhere around the city we turn a blind eye, somehow making those doing it an exception to that fundamental building block of a successful society. I know that leads right into the demand that drug use be legalized; that possession of small amounts of hard drugs be deemed acceptable. But how would that help the problems we see as a result of drug use? It wouldn’t and is a cop out.

I am told we don’t have enough police resources to enforce the current laws; that the courts couldn’t cope with the huge increase in cases; and that the correctional system is simply not equipped to play its role.

Then hire more police, perhaps a special unit specifically trained to deal with the unique problems we are confronting.

Then increase the capacity of the court system, perhaps creating a separate system dedicated to just this issue.

Then develop and build the institutions and facilities that will be needed.

Remember, we are already flushing billions down the drain.

I am also told there are legal, perhaps even Charter, obstacles to denying people their liberty this way. Well then, change the laws.

I’m not advocating that all drug users simply be tossed into jail, although that would be appropriate for the dealers. We need to be smarter than that. We need to create and support institutions that, while separating these people from society, are also equipped to help them with their mental and dependency issues. The simple fact is the drive to deinstitutionalize people with mental health issues has failed and the best evidence is found in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

I’m not exaggerating when I say we are in danger of losing our cities; that the great experiment of bringing people back into cities’ cores will fail if we are unable to address the growing problem so well illustrated by Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.  And, we must address it soon before the loss is irreversible.

 

Just sayin

G

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