Pubdate: Mon, 30 May 2016
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Page: A11
Copyright: 2016 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: John Barber

POT POLICY IS A BIG FOG

Somewhere in Canada at any given time, groups of federal cabinet
ministers are clustering at the feet of a few famous gurus of the high
art of "deliverology," learning how to implement the promises that
brought them to power by retreating to mountains and forests to absorb
the wise words of international experts.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, the same government's almost
spectacular mishandling of its most notorious promise - legalizing
marijuana - is actively creating whole new classes of marijuana
criminal, leading to widespread arrests, confiscation of property,
neighbourhood strife and massive civic confusion.

On this signature policy, the Trudeau government's performance is a
glowing object lesson in non-delivery.

You almost have to go back to the Chretien years to find an
implementation of anything so inept.

So far, the most authoritative voice on the current state of federal
pot policy belongs to Saskatoon police chief Clive Weighill, current
president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. "Right now,
it's just a big fog," he told the CBC.

And wouldn't you know it, the big fog has a name: Since accepting the
job of Canada's pot czar six months ago, former Toronto police chief
Bill Blair has fairly billowed with obfuscation, taking every possible
pro- and anti-pot position in his tireless efforts to avoid action.

On the hustings, Blair altered his longstanding beliefs to affirm, in
line with party policy, that it's just plain wrong for the police to
target and criminalize marijuana users. In Toronto this week, he
castigated the businesses and users that responded naturally to that
promise as reckless and cynical scofflaws.

More than 90 people were arrested in the raids that followed the
ex-chief's latest decriminalization initiative.

Amid the shouting and confusion that attended the drug-bedecked,
throwback press conference that followed the raids, Chief Mark
Saunders flailed manfully in trying to describe the current state of
the law. In a final attempt to end the pain, he directed attention to
Health Canada officials, who were standing by with leaflets that
spelled out the Harper government's now-nullified policies in
unhelpful detail.

Known locally for a once-promising career that degenerated into mulish
resistance to necessary reform, Blair's first act as newly appointed
pot czar was to dampen expectations. He refused to provide a schedule
for legal reform, mulling instead about a task force. Six months
later, he's still mulling. There's no task force. There may or may not
be a schedule.

Meanwhile, the cops are back to knocking heads up and down Main
Street, neighbourhoods are seething at the explosion of dispensaries
and local officials are struggling to cope with the inevitable
consequences of federal ineptitude.

In defence of the hapless deliverologists, one could say that events
ran ahead of them. The excuse would be more credible had they not
triggered the events in question themselves. Besides, that's what
events do: They run ahead. And that's why leadership matters. Rather
than grappling with the easily anticipated consequences of his
promise, Trudeau flung open the barn doors to legal weed then ambled
off to smileytown, leaving the file in the hands of a political rookie
with an established propensity to stand pat.

In his latest performance, Blair positioned himself as the
arch-defender of "Big Marijuana," the group of 31 producers licensed
by the Harper government to grow the herb for medicinal use.

After massively over-investing in a tiny market with barely 70,000
legal users, Big M is desperate for the government to clear
gray-market competition out of the recreational market it hopes to
dominate.

But making the world profitable for millionaire investors was not part
of the "mandate letter" in which Trudeau ordered Justice Minister Jody
Wilson-Raybould to legalize marijuana.

And doing so, as Toronto has discovered, requires creating a whole new
class of marijuana martyrs whose cases will continue to shame the
federal government as they proceed prominently through the courts.

The popular dispensaries are Ottawa's Uber, and the response is
paralysis.

That's not surprising, given the past quarter-century of cuts,
retrenchment and "making government smaller."

The gurus are needed. But until their teachings take hold, the hard
business of regulating the sale and use of recreational marijuana will
fall to those lowly local officials who attend no retreats but
actually know what they're doing.  
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D