Pubdate: Sun, 16 Apr 2017
Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2017 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact: http://www.ottawasun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://www.ottawasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/329
Author: David Krayden
Page: 19

POT LEGALIZATION SHROUDED IN RHETORIC ABOUT PROTECTING KIDS

For a while, it appeared that I was attending the wrong news
conference on Thursday. The usual Liberal government suspects were
there, with their typical tendentious talk, including Health Minister
Jane Philpott and Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

But I was waiting to hear about the legalization of marijuana, and all
these people wanted to advertise was how some new legislation was
going to "protect children" and "make safer communities" and even
obviate organized crime.

What was this announcement all about? It all started with Liberal MP
and parliamentary secretary Bill Blair, who led the public relations
charge and hit every talking point with an ease and skill that you
might not expect from a former Toronto police chief.

But of course this is how Trudeau wants to frame legalized pot in
Canada, as a safety and law and order issue. This was a news
conference written with U.S. President Donald Trump in mind, a
desperate attempt to transform the legalization of a noxious drug into
something that sounded amazingly like the previous Conservative
government's "safe streets and safe communities" mantra.

I will dispense with the usual arguments about why marijuana should
not be legal in Canada. I will even avoid pointing out that the
legislation is rife with internal contradictions and pregnant with
marketing and distribution problems.

But it is certainly beyond reason to suggest that making it legal is
going to prevent youth from accessing the drug and using it. If it is
available to them now, when the drug is illegal, it is the height of
absurdity to suggest that making it legal will somehow strangle the
illicit trade. These Liberals know that, too, but Thursday's
announcement was all about messaging with barely a hint of reality.

Goodale did his best to sound tough on crime, but this minister's best
doesn't add up to much. This is the same guy who insists he is
enforcing the law at the border while the illegals continue to stream
past and offers money to the Emerson volunteer fire department as a
means of containing the flow of refugees.

You can be reasonably sure that this is not how Trudeau originally
planned to roll out this legislation. The Liberal communications
handlers have been working on this strategy for about, oh, four months
now, ever since Trump won the election. Trudeau has become an
increasingly compliant American ally, endorsing an aggressive foreign
policy that is predicated on an active and reflexive military response
that would have been anathema to Trudeau a year ago.

Ironically, we are left with a sort of 33-per-cent Trudeau. The Trump
administration increasingly has him boxed in not only on the foreign
policy level but on the environmental frontier as well. With Trump
dropping the Paris environmental accord like last year's fashions, it
is unlikely that Trudeau will proceed much further down that policy
road. Watch for him to tighten the refugee policy in the coming months
as well. Even in a fiscal sense, the Trudeau government demonstrated
an inertia and uncertainty in its last budget that has failed to
please any section of the political spectrum.

But he continues down the social re-engineering path as he legalizes
cannabis, reinforces Canada's unrestricted abortion on demand policy
at home and funding abortions abroad, as well as pushing ahead with
the promotion and funding of supervised injection sites to enable
heroin users. There's even his quiet but determined attempt to further
restrict free speech in Canada through support of ridiculous
"Islamophobia" motions.

There's no doubt that we could have a far more dangerous Trudeau who
could fulfil that Conservative party warning from the last election
campaign that said he was "just not ready." To be sure, the Trudeau
regime could be even more of an intrusion upon a conservative
interpretation of Canadian values and individual liberties.

But what we have remains toxic enough. Liberal cabinet ministers
unveil their legislation to legalize marijuana on Thursday.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt