He didn’t really talk to the nation. He played a role: sunny, shiny, happy, rainbow-painted park benches pride parades, but underneath it’s the same champagne-sipping Laurentian neoliberal wankery.*

I’d say the mask was off with either electoral reform or, and this is my theory, the lightning-fucking-quick move to sell TMX.

(as opposed to the tall-hat, cowboy-cosplaying Calgarian elite that’s the CPC)

The problem is that we’re now forty years into neoliberal orthodoxy. There’s been two or three generations of policymakers, politicians and bureaucrats who cannot even conceive of publicly-funded, publicly-run services and solutions. I’ve been in meetings where this gets suggested and people look at you like you’re pants-on-head crazy for suggesting government just do it, soup to nuts.

Think about it: when was the last, realy, fully-public solution delivered? Not one where the private sector was bribed to do it, not one where the government gave tax breaks, not one where some douchebag got their name on the door.

You have to go back to the 1970s, at least. Anything good, anything we built, was before 1980.

Politicians have had almost 15 years since the drug crisis started in earnest to do something.

What they did was implement a “let’er rip!” non-enforcement strategy that, without supports, housing or healthcare, was basically pouring gasoline on the pre-existing fire. Addicts weren’t going to get help, but they were going to get even fewer speedbumps on the road to letting addiction ruin everything for them and around them.

And politicians did this because choosing not to enforce anything while simultaneously not providing supports was the cheapest option. It required doing even less than they were doing at the time, and it let them get kudos for being so progressive and forward looking.

Jump forward fifteen years or so and the toxic fruits have come to bear.

Clamping down on SCS is just another way to avoid spending money fixing the problem.

Yup, Ron Jr.

He’s actually very progressive, especially given his upbringing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Reagan

This is pure poetry. Well done.

It’ll work when government spends real money on it.

That means real institutions, not shoestring strip-mall locations with precarious funding. It also means safe-supply. It also means housing. And–this is the hard one for advocates–it means humane incarceration for people for whom support, housing and safe-supply aren’t enough.

All of this comes with a price tag, but we’d rather build a spa parking lot or give Galen Weston money to upgrade his fridges or some such bullshit.

To be honest, a lot of the problem is because people–not addicts, nor the people who are trying to help them–aren’t seeing the benefit, and advocates have been terrible at messaging.

I’ll give you an example: the common refrain is that harm reduction saves lives, and that Naloxone saves lives, and that safe-consumption sites save lives.

And while this is true, most people don’t care. In fact, a sizable–and growing–percent of the population sees “saving lives” as a bug, not a feature. They’re tired of being robbed, of having their property stolen, of being assaulted, of being chased out of downtowns. Many have seen their supply of empathy run dry, and a lot didn’t have any empathy to begin with.

They would be quite happy if most addicts died.

I’ve heard a lot of people saying “You know what? Fuck naloxone. Fuck safe-use sites. I haven’t had a doctor for six years, I have to dodge needles and crack pipes while walking, I can’t use the park down the street any more, someone shit on my front lawn and someone stole my kid’s bike. If a junkie ODs, that’s one less junkie who makes my life miserable”. And that’s pretty much a direct quote.

We need to do a much better job of explaining to people how safe consumption sites reduce crime overall, and why safe-supply cuts out predatory dealers and thusly the economic incentives that drive crime. We really need to talk more about social services and treatment. Because, and again, this is hard to hear, an increasing number of people don’t really care if addicts die.

And we need to do it, because the people who vote, are burnt out and the political right is at least talking to their insecurities and anger and anxiety, where the left offers platitudes at best and condescension & condemnation at worst.

Filesystem snapshots are the best thing since sliced bread.

This hasn’t been the case since the 1990s or so, when CanCon started to actually get good.

I will agree it sucked through the 70s and 80s, though. There was a looooong incubation period between the time CanCon took effect and the time it bore fruit in, eg, Canadian bands stopped sucking en-masse.

Alan Cross has a good podcast on CanCon and the long tail it required. I don’t think modern governments can or will do anything like that again, where the payoff is decades after the costs and implementation.

Anyone have that gif of Rupert Murdoch with a plate of cookies?

Found it…

The problem with the current program is that we did a “half Portugal” where we stopped with enforcement because it was cheaper, and also didn’t put in funding for support and treatment because because they (the goverment) thought is was cheaper.

The problem with this, knowing that our government is cheap. They’ll talk about enforcement, but will be super cheap about it. I’d actually be more worried about this endeavour if I thought they were going to fund it adequately.

Sorry, the double-negative threw me for a loop.

The Boomers fought in world wars?

In utero, maybe.

“Thunderdome except it’s billionaires” would solve so many problems.

You could start taxing them. Especially the rich ones.

You know that’s an option, right?

Oh, if only that were true.

But what about that one guy who writes absolutely brilliant VB?

Putting aside the obvious concerns, a mayor doing this and using “it’s the same as the maintenance guy” should be a red flag.

I’ve worked in companies where high-level people take it upon themselves to do operational work. It’s at best pointless retail poltics, and at worst it’s rampant bikeshedding.

Don’t worry, he’ll build it, make it a toll highway, and sell the rights to a foreign company for 99 years. It’ll all work out, just trust me, bro!

I’m sure China would be equally amenable to a peace proposal that would allow Taiwan part of the mainland, or would allow Tibet autonomy.

China, in other words, can fuck right off.