Magic Teeth by Gareth Gaudin

Letters - June 18

Bill too high

Re: “MP abstains on C-15,” June 11-17

As the executive director of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society and a Graduate Research Fellow for the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., I was honoured to be one of the researchers and experts invited by the House of Commons Justice Committee to comment on Bill C-15, the Conservative Party’s mandatory minimums drug bill.

As I told the committee, Parliament will not pass another bill that has a greater potential to harm Canadians than this failed and expensive approach to reducing substance use. For evidence of this threat to human rights and public health we only need to look south of our border. Mandatory minimum sentences have made our American neighbour the biggest jailer nation in the world, with over 2 million of their citizens behind bars. But I don’t really blame the Conservative Party for this debacle; it would be naïve to expect anything but ideological and ill-considered legislation from the Conservatives on complex issues like gay rights, the environment or substance use. However, while the NDP and Bloc Quebecois rallied their troops to strike down this bill, the Liberals sat on their hands, leaving their moral and ethical principles at the doors of Parliament for short-term political gain.

Despite the good intentions and actions of Dr. Keith Martin, his party had every occasion to kill this legislation and to put forward an evidence-based strategy to substance use focused on public health, and informed by harm reduction and human rights. Canadians want and deserve drug policies based on science and compassion, not fear and misinformation, and by supporting this bill the Liberals have cursed us with years—perhaps decades—of harmful and dangerous policies that will inevitably lead to a rise in HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C in both the prison and general population, waste untold millions in taxpayer money on court and prison costs, and move us ever closer to an unwinnable U.S. style “war on drugs.”

Philippe Lucas, Victoria

Senior thoughts

Re: “Re: Design,” June 11-17

The accompanying graphic for your editorial last week noted, “Now there’s a cover style we were happy to see changed.” Sez you, you runny-nosed little whelp.

Show some respect for the graphic heritage of this magazine! Why, I’d cane you to within an inch of your life, if I wasn’t in a wheelchair and tethered to an oxygen tank.

You young snots think you know everything. Why, in my time we . . . kaff, kaff, aaarrggghhh!

Gene Miller, Monday founder

Burning for you

Re: “High and Dry,” June 4-10

Kudos to Sean Holman’s review of the Liberal low-ball forest fire budget and kudos to NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston for winning first place in the Metaphor Massacre Playdowns of 2009. Mr. Ralston, in two sentences, combined “shoehorn,” “envelope,” “running,” “shaved” and “bite” as sequential descriptors of the Liberal budget exercise. We all know how few politicians can claim celebrity status for their diction, but Mr. Ralston sets a new standard here, no question.

W. Baird Blackstone, Tsawwassen

In trustees we trust?

Re: “Failing Grade,” May 28-June 3

I would ask our trustees to do everything possible to fully fund the education of our children. They do not have a voice and rely completely on those who have been given this stewardship. It is time to take a courageous and correct stance. Work vociferously at the provincial level with trustees throughout the province to create a collective statement to inform the Ministry that the School Act is not serving the best interests of our children.

Deborah Nohr, Victoria