Meet your next musical crush: Gary Clark Jr.

By Simona Rabinovitch - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 5:13 PM - 1 Comment

Photograph by Myriam Santos

Once in a blue moon, a music fan is lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the future. I was just so lucky a few weeks ago. Opening for The Roots at a private event in New York, a young singer, songwriter and guitarist from Austin, TX, blew my mind. His name: Gary Clark Jr.

Clark radiates that extra little hocus-pocus that makes the hairs on your neck stand on end. The searing riffs and soulful grooves are reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan with a little White Stripes thrown in. It’s powerful stuff, cool and joyful, and Clark makes it all look effortless. Continue…

Choose your own position

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 4:05 PM - 19 Comments

Yesterday during QP, Liberal MP Geoff Regan stood and asked about the case of a Nova Scotia resident languishing in a Spanish prison. In response, Diane Ablonczy stood and outlined the government’s position on the repatriation of Omar Khadr. She later lamented for the House audio system.

All of which wouldn’t have been cause for much notice except for the fact that Ms. Ablonczy’s volunteered comment on Mr. Khadr—”We will respect the agreement between Omar Khadr and the U.S. government”—seems to contradict the position of the Public Safety Minister.

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Thursday the minister’s decision about the 25-year-old Guantanamo prisoner’s transfer to Canada will be made irrespective of the deal Khadr signed. “It would not affect the minister at all,” spokesman Michael Patton told the Toronto Star. “I don’t know what’s in the plea deal but it wouldn’t matter because the minister is not a signatory.”

… According to government sources in Ottawa and Washington, the embarrassing exchange reflects a behind-the-scenes uncertainty about the Khadr case, which has divided Canadians for almost a decade and which the Obama administration seems eager to hand over. Senior officials with the U.S. Defense and State Departments met with their counterparts in Ottawa last month to discuss the case, but left without finalizing details.

The Greatest of all Cell Phones

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 4:04 PM - 0 Comments

I don’t know how much “evolution” this video actually shows, but as you recall if you saw Zack Morris’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon, the thing we remember most about him (other than his unexplained power to stop time) was his gigantic “cellular phone.” I suppose there are some phones in today’s TV that will look just as much of their time, but I doubt any of them will be as huge.

Reality will bite back in Ontario

By Richard Warnica - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 2:34 PM - 8 Comments

Blair Gable/Maclean's

The Twitterati in my home province of Alberta made a lot of hay this week over a headline in The Globe and Mail that presented the election of Alison Redford, a centrist former justice minister and now provincial premier, as an evolutionary step forward for the knuckle draggers of the Prairie politic. “Alberta steps into the present,” the headline read, to which the easily offended replied, “So where were we before, the past?” Albertans have an almost reflexive sensitivity to criticism from the East. It’s a bit like what the rest of Canada feels for the U.S., a mix of smug superiority and desperation to be noticed. But Albertans should relax. Ontarians seem to think worse of each other than of anybody else. And their politics, well, they’re nothing to brag about.

Take last night’s election. It was, in many ways, an odd campaign. In a province where health care eats up $46 billion a year, more ink was spilled on cross-dressing than on doctors’ salaries. Indeed, it seemed at times as if the parties had made a pact to avoid dealing with most of what a provincial government actually does. Health care? Untouchable. Education? Just keep the kissing booths out and we’re fine. Continue…

Oil sands pipeline gets final hearing in DC

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 2:33 PM - 4 Comments

After a series of public meetings along the pipeline route, the State Department held a final public meeting on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline today in Washington, DC.

The large hall at the Ronald Reagan Building on Pennsylvania Avenue seemed about evenly divided between opponents of the proposed pipeline and supporters, mostly members of two unions that support the project: the Laborer’s International Union of America, which represents construction workers, and the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters.

During the portion of the event that I attended, individuals took turns making three minute-long comments to a panel of State Dept. representatives. The presentations were often heartfelt, and the applause raucous, but generally the process was calm. As expected, the arguments boiled down to environmental concerns versus jobs. The issue of replacing middle eastern oil with Canadian oil came up, as did pipeline safety concerns. But environment v jobs was the bottom line.

Along 14^th Street, the LiUNA members staged a demonstration in favor of the pipeline. One chant was “Queremos Trabajo!” (We want work.)

Across, the street, an echo of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement had set up an “Occupy DC”encampment on Freedom Plaza. (A LiUNA spokesman said that they support that movement, underscoring the extent to which Keystone XL presents a strange issue for them because it puts them opposite many of the progressive groups they usually stand. But in a country where 1.2 million construction workers are unemployed, jobs are the paramount issue for the union, the spokesman told me.)

I recently wrote in Maclean’s that environmental groups have changed their focus from the official State Department review process, which is expected to wind up by the end of the year — to pressuring the Obama re-election campaign directly, by threatening to withdraw their financial and organizational support.

The anti-pipeline movement has gained a lot of steam lately — and there seems to me more pressure on the administration than ever before. But Keystone XL is still hardly a household word. Given the difficult job situation in the US, and the State Department’s TransCanada-friendly Final Environmental Impact Statement, and Obama’s repeated willingness to back down from some environmental rules on account of their economic impacts, it’s hard to see Obama nixing this project and giving Republicans another “job-killer” slogan to throw at him.

Political analyst Roland Martin notes in my Maclean’s piece:

“We are in such a difficult economic climate that anything that has the word jobs attached to it becomes kryptonite … Republicans have been beating the President over the head with ‘job-killing regulations’ and ‘job-killing taxes.’ At the end of the day, the sense I get from the Obama campaign is that they are thinking about how to target independent voters.”

***

Twitter/luizachsavage

A muddled Senate

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 2:16 PM - 15 Comments

Jeff Jedras notes Stephane Dion’s continued dissection of the Harper government’s Senate reforms, including the exclusion of federal parties from the proposed process. Meanwhile, an informal poll of academics in Alberta and British Columbia finds overwhelming opposition.

Professors contacted in the two provinces agreed by more than a 3-1 margin with the proposition that the reforms, aimed at ensuring senators are elected and limited to nine-year terms, are against their provinces’ interests. The legislation, being debated this week in the House of Commons, “scares me, to be honest,” said University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan, a former senior Harper adviser.

John Geddes considers the massive questions left unanswered.

Two Murdoch-Related Links

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 2:11 PM - 2 Comments

- Harry Shearer offers a statement about the Simpsons contract negotiations, confirming that the cast offered to take a pay cut in exchange for profit participation, and the studio is insisting on a larger pay cut and no profit participation. Where this will wind up, I don’t know, though it’s increasingly looking like The Simpsons is closer to the end than we ever might have thought possible, even if a deal is finally struck. The striking thing with this and Law & Order is that it happened so suddenly: shows we never thought would end are faced with the very possibility of ending, almost without warning. It could be that the days when a long-running hit would quietly decide to end, with a lot of fanfare and a huge finale, were an aberration. The ending of Fox’s other long-running comedy franchise, Married: With Children - it ran forever, and then the plug was pulled without warning – may be the future.
Update: Well, so much for that. The Simpsons will have another two years, so while it may yet end abruptly, it won’t be this time.

- Bill Brioux looks at the question of why Murdoch Mysteries is being canceled, and offers several theories. I don’t have any information about this particular case. I will say that in general, the situation with Canadian scripted shows reminds me of the way things were on U.S. cable channels before original scripted content really took off: shows would seem reasonably successful and still disappear, or they would be yanked after a certain number of episodes to make room for new ones within the overall budget allotted for original programming. The Disney Channel used to have a policy of ending most shows once they reached 65 episodes and then picking up something else to replace it; it was a cyclical model. It was only recently that the network ended the rule and started making as many episodes of Phineas and Ferb as they could.

Canadian, U.S. economies add jobs

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 1:47 PM - 4 Comments

In a bit of long-awaited good news on the economic front, both the U.S. and Canadian economies recorded positive job gains in September. Canada added 61,000 new jobs, all of which were either in the public sector or in self-employment. (By itself, the return of teachers to the classroom contributed 40,000 jobs.) Meanwhile, after months of lacklustre job figures, the U.S. economy saw payrolls add 103,000 new jobs. The Labour Department report also said the doom and gloom of past months may have been slightly premature—the U.S. created 100,000 more jobs over the past two months than had been previously reported. As a result of September’s job gains, Canada’s unemployment rate now stands at 7.1 per cent.

Ottawa limits caffeine in energy drinks

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 1:39 PM - 4 Comments

Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced Thursday that Ottawa will start limiting the amount of caffeine contained in energy drinks such as Red Bull and Monster. The changes introduced by Health Canada will also include new warnings to be placed on the beverages. However, Aglukkaq resisted pressure from the medical community, which had called for even stricter regulations, including that the drinks be sold only to those over 18 and only under the supervision of pharmacists. Health Canada will instead cap the caffeine content in the drinks at a maximum of 180 milligrams per single-serve container, or the equivalent of five regular cans of Pepsi.

The Globe and Mail

The impartial Speaker

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 1:10 PM - 38 Comments

Peter Milliken reflects on his time as Speaker.

Ultimately, the Speaker is left to attempt to curb the worst of any excesses, to uphold the rules insofar as this is possible—for example, to ensure that the time limits applicable to questions and answers are strictly adhered to—and to strive to do this in an unbiased and impartial fashion. The toleration of some indecorous behaviour is preferable to creating the impression that the Speaker is intervening in a partial or partisan fashion. Neither can the Speaker be seen to interfere with or arbitrarily to obstruct the legitimate questioning of government Ministers.

Senate reform: it’s Harper vs. the experts—again

By John Geddes - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:53 PM - 15 Comments

Peter O’Neil of the Vancouver Sun takes an enterprising approach in this story that bids to inject some life into the debate over the federal government’s Senate Reform Act. O’Neil surveyed professors at British Columbia and Alberta universities, and found that 18 of 25 who responded didn’t like the bill, which is now being debated in Parliament.

It’s telling, but not all that surprising, that political science and constitutional law profs don’t much like the government’s plan to limit Senate terms to nine years and set up an oddball system for non-binding elections (future prime ministers wouldn’t have to appoint the winners to the upper chamber, but would presumably face strong pressure to go along with the voters’ picks).

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Experts in B.C., Alberta don’t like Harper’s Senate reforms

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:30 PM - 7 Comments

An email survey of professors of political science, Canadian history and constitutional law at universities in British Columbia and Alberta found they stand opposed to the Conservative government’s plan to overhaul the federal Senate by a 3-1 margin. Of the 25 academics who got back to the Vancouver Sun on the issue, 18 said Harper’s legislation was against their provinces’ interests. The reform bill, which is being debated this week in Parliament, would limit senators’ terms to a nine years and set out a scheme for non-binding elections of future senators. Some professors objected to the possibility of the Senate becoming more powerful. Some protested against reforming the upper chamber without redistributing seats; based on their populations, BC and Alberta are grossly underrepresented in the Senate, whereas Ontario, Quebec and, especially, the Maritme provinces have many more senators per capita.

Vancouver Sun

Activists Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman win 2011 Nobel Peace Prize

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:28 PM - 1 Comment

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to three women in recognition of their role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia—Africa’s first elected female president—her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner, are the first women to be recognized by the prestigious award, which comes with a US $1.5 million prize, since Kenya’s Wangari Maathai was named as the laureate in 2004. The citation read by Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Oslo-based Nobel committee, suggests the honour was conferred in part to give impetus to the cause for women’s rights around the world: “We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society.”

New York Times

Can Apple keep its luster without Steve Jobs?

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:06 PM - 2 Comments

The idealist

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:03 PM - 2 Comments

The Literary Review of Canada excerpts Jack Layton’s foreword to a new book about Charles Taylor, George Grant and CB Macpherson.

Tommy Douglas understood that our human journey had to be a collective project, something we would, could and should do together for and with each other, as a community of free individuals. Freedom, in this view—an idealist view—has enormous positive potential, not just for individuals but for all people as part of a fabric of diverse communities. Obvious questions flow. How can the pursuit of what would be right and good for the whole community be sought, at the same time, by each free and independent individual? How can a group effort not limit liberty but rather enhance it?

The idealist current holds that human society has the potential to achieve liberty when people work together to form a society in which equality means more than negative liberty, the absolute and protected right to run races against each other to determine winners. Idealists imagine a positive liberty that enables us to build together toward common objectives that fulfill and even surpass our individual goals.

Newsmakers: Sept. 29-Oct.6

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

Graham/NBA/Getty Images

Knox walks

Amanda Knox was whisked home to Seattle shortly after an Italian court overturned the 24-year-old’s conviction in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. Knox’s boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, was also freed; a third defendant, Rudy Guede, remains in jail. Once home, Knox, who was offered complimentary champagne on board her British Airways flight, will reportedly enjoy a 21st birthday party she never had. Her sister Deanna is also planning a more low-key outing: “We’re going to go down to Lincoln Park, which is right by our house,” she told ABC News. “We’re going to sit in the middle of the park and paint.”

Buddhist grounded

All Archbishop Desmond Tutu wanted for his 80th birthday was a visit from the Dalai Lama. Unfortunately, South Africa’s prolonged hedging over whether or not to grant His Holiness the necessary visa forced Tutu to cancel his party this week. It is widely suspected the South African leadership is reluctant to do anything that might complicate its strengthening ties with China, to which it exports $5.5 billion in mineral resources annually, and which views the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan government-in-exile as a separatist movement. “You are disgraceful. You are behaving in a way that is totally at variance with the things for which we stood,” said Tutu, rapping the African National Congress government, which received global support in its fight to end apartheid. “I really can’t believe it. I mean, the Dalai Lama!”

X marks the spot

Two Canadian premiers were re-elected with solid majorities this week. P.E.I.’s Robert Ghiz—son of Joe, who served two terms as the province’s premier from 1986 to 1993—won a second term in office. But he lost two cabinet ministers, including Allan Campbell; the innovation minister oversaw the province’s immigration program, which was marred by allegations of bribery. Greg Selinger, meanwhile, gave the NDP their fourth straight majority in Manitoba.

Who brings a banana to the rink?

Police in London, Ont., charged 26-year-old Chris Moorhouse with “engaging in a prohibited activity” last week, after he tossed a banana onto the ice during an NHL exhibition game. The flying fruit came as the Philadelphia Flyers’ Wayne Simmonds, an African Canadian, was skating in on goal during a shootout. Moorhouse’s lawyer says he was “unaware of the racial overtones of his actions.” But even his own grandmother is appalled. “Who would do a thing like that?,” she asked London’s AM980 News.

Continue…

Iranian films go audience-friendly, are explicitly political

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 1 Comment

Courtesy of Maryam Keshavarz

There has never been an Iranian film like it. Circumstance is a love story about two renegade schoolgirls in Tehran who defy authority by cruising underground nightclubs, doing drugs, dancing to Persian hip hop, exploring lesbian romance—and helping dub bootlegs of banned movies like Milk and Sex and the City into Farsi. Circumstance, which won the audience award at Sundance, was shot in Lebanon, under clandestine conditions, and the footage was smuggled out of the country via Jordan to be processed in the U.S. The film’s director and cast hail from five countries in the Iranian diaspora—three of the actors, including the lead, live in Canada. By making the film, they know that under Iran’s current regime they can never set foot in their homeland again.

For decades, Iranian cinema has held a rarefied pedigree. Auteurs like Abbas Kiarostami won acclaim for exquisite neo-realist dramas, often about children, that eluded censorship by hiding politics behind a veil of metaphor. But recently, Iranian filmmakers have become bolder and are suffering the consequences. Last month six were imprisoned by authorities—including Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, who co-directed This Is Not a Film with Jafar Panahi, a droll documentary that shows Panahi under house arrest in Tehran, acting out his next movie, and blocking scenes with masking tape on a Persian rug because he is banned from making a film for 20 years.

But as Iranian cinema faces the harshest repression in its history, it also seems poised to break out of the art-house ghetto. Not only was Circumstance a hit at Sundance, Iran’s A Separation was voted second most popular movie at the Toronto International Film Festival. Asghar Farhadi’s riveting drama follows a feud that erupts after a man undergoing a divorce hires a secretly pregnant woman to care for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father. The story is wired with a sly critique of Islamic patriarchy: in one scene the caregiver phones a morality hotline to ask if it’s a sin to change the old man’s soiled clothes. Nevertheless, A Separation is Iran’s official Oscar candidate.

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Herman Cain is able

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 10:45 AM - 11 Comments

Danny Wilcox Frazier/Redux

Herman Cain is the rare presidential hopeful with a healthy sense of humour about himself. The former CEO of the Godfather’s Pizza chain recently quipped: “If you vote for me, America, I will deliver.”

Now Cain is becoming less of a punch-line. He has soared from barely registering in the polls to a tie for second place in the Republican race. The 65-year-old African-American businessman from Atlanta has drawn support away from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has ceded his front-runner status back to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

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Laws and accountability

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 10:44 AM - 2 Comments

When questions were raised this summer about potential legal ramifications to the handling of the G8 Legacy Fund, I emailed Lorne Sossin (a friend of the show) to get his thoughts. After the interim auditor general again mused of the “interesting debate” that could be had, I checked in with Dean Sossin again to see if he had anything more to add.

His responses to both my queries below. Continue…

There was a grow op in my house?

By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 3 Comments

In a move that is part public safety, part public shaming—and part public relations—the Mounties have launched a new website that lists the addresses of former marijuana grow ops and other busted drug-cooking labs. Inspired by similar initiatives in Quebec, Toronto and Winnipeg, the online database will act as a warning for homebuyers across the country, who otherwise wouldn’t know that the property they’re about to purchase was once loaded with pot plants or crystal meth and could suffer from problems such as mould. “Illicit marijuana grow operations in our neighbourhoods and the criminal organizations that run them are a danger to us all,” said RCMP Commissioner William Elliott. “Homeowners will now have a tool that will lower their risk of being victimized.”

But here’s another warning for would-be homebuyers: don’t use the new website as your only resource. The fine print is nearly as long as the press release. “Some addresses may have been erroneously included in this list,” the disclaimer reads. “If there is an address which has been erroneously included on this list, please advise the site administrator.”

“This is also not intended to be an exhaustive list of all addresses at which the RCMP is aware that marijuana grow operations and/or clandestine laboratories have been located,” it continues. “This list should not be relied upon for such purposes. This list is for information purposes only and is not intended to be relied upon by any individuals. The RCMP will accept neither liability nor damages by any person who rely upon this information to their detriment.” Rely on this, in other words, at your own risk.

Showdown: JFK and the integration of the Redskins

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 10:33 AM - 0 Comments

Who would have imagined that a team named the Redskins would have a race problem? George Marshall, owner of the Washington football team, was one of the best showmen in football and one of the most unreconstructed racists: in 1961, the Redskins were the only NFL team without a black player on the roster. Smith tells the story of how Marshall was forced to change his ways under political pressure. Stewart Udall, president Kennedy’s secretary of the interior, realized that since his department owned the land beneath Marshall’s new stadium, he could effectively order the team to hire black players under threat of losing its lease.

Udall’s decision to take on Marshall, Smith explains, took on importance beyond one city and one team, and became “a sort of philosophical football” for the U.S., with liberals rooting for Udall’s move as a symbol of desegregation, and conservatives seeing it as “an unwarranted intrusion by big government.” Finally, Marshall had to buckle under government and public pressure, and black players like future hall of famer Bobby Mitchell arrived to turn the franchise around.

The book is more of a potted history than an in-depth study of Udall’s attempt to integrate the Redskins: Smith spends several chapters setting out the story of the Redskins and sports segregation, while Udall’s decision to challenge Marshall is covered in only about a page. But Smith does manage to show how the Redskins battle presaged civil rights battles to come, and the incident demonstrates why, in spite of JFK’s weaknesses in civil rights, his administration “took positive steps to combat racial injustice.” Above all, it gives us a strong portrait of Marshall, a man near the end of his life, still committed to segregation even though it was costing his team wins. If we thought that business owners always acted in their own best interests, Marshall (who said “does it matter which team has the Negroes?”) reminds us that for some, ideology is more important than winning.

They got the Jets—then lost the pilots

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 5 Comments

You’ve heard of people moving out of downtown areas and into suburban neighbourhoods. Now the airline personnel are doing it themselves—in Winnipeg, at least. Air Canada has announced that “due to safety concerns,” it will stop using the Radisson Hotel in the city’s downtown core to house its pilots and crew. Instead, during layovers, Air Canada employees will be bussed to an airport hotel. A spokesman for the airline told the Winnipeg Free Press this came in reaction to an assessment by “local law enforcement officials, and our own security people,” and didn’t say when—if ever—it will be safe for flight attendants to venture back downtown.

’Peggers bristled at the suggestion their downtown is dangerous. Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz fumed that Air Canada should “say exactly what it is they’re saying” about the perceived threats, implying that safety issues might be an excuse for cutting costs: “There’s more to this than meets the eye,” he said. “The reasons don’t appear to be valid.” The decision comes as a blow at a time when, finally, Winnipeg’s reputation seemed on the mend. This summer, the NHL returned to Winnipeg, but now that the Jets are back, the jet pilots are fleeing.

The airline hasn’t yet given a full public justification for the decision, but an internal memo fingered the “1,000 displaced people from rural Manitoba” who were forced to flee their homes during summer flooding. Air Canada has since apologized for what the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs called a racist claim that Aboriginal flood victims were making the city dangerous. Airlines expect their pilots to be brave enough to withstand bad weather and the threat of terrorist attacks but, it seems, they must be protected at all costs from homeless people.

Good news, bad news: Sept. 29-Oct. 6

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Good news

Brighton, England basks in a fall heat wave with highs of nearly 30° C. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Flying on their own

Their motives may not be pure, but the governing Conservatives took a step in the right direction this week with legislation to wean federal parties from their $27 million worth of annual subsidies. Yes, the Tories reap more than their rivals from grassroots fundraising, so the change will likely serve them best. But parties should be creatures of the body politic, not the government, and subsidies help entrench those that cannot persuade individual Canadians to write them cheques. The opposition parties now have a four-year phase-out period before their subsidies disappear—ample time to convince voters their causes are worth bankrolling. They may find it a useful exercise.

Economic drivers

Automakers remain an engine of the North American economy, so we’re cheered to hear the Big Three enjoyed healthy sales jumps in September, despite swooning markets and fears of a double-dip recession. Chrysler Group LLC led the way with a 27 per cent gain in U.S. sales, while GM and Ford saw sales rise 20 per cent and nine per cent, respectively. We use the term “healthy” advisedly: more car purchases mean higher levels of consumer debt. Still, if we’re going to spend, better we spend in support of our own struggling manufacturing sector. Long may it last. Dead, but not forgiven.

Continue…

Are we ready to subsidize heroin?

By Ken MacQueen and Martin Patriquin - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 221 Comments

Brian Howell/Maclean's

For the last 22 years, Cactus Montréal has doled out needles, crack pipes and other necessities of drug use to the city’s addicts. North America’s first needle exchange program had humble beginnings; it once provided its services from a cockroach-infested storefront on St-Dominique St., facing a particularly seedy section of Montreal’s red-light district. Today, Cactus’s headquarters are a monument to respectability. Its drop-in centre and needle exchange occupy a bright, glassed-in corner of an avant-garde building in downtown Montreal, across the street from a university pavilion. “A lively and warm place,” as its website advertises, “where people of all stripes come to get injection equipment, condoms, crack pipes, counselling and even to draw a picture or play an instrument.”

Thanks to last week’s landmark Supreme Court of Canada ruling directing the federal government to stop obstructing Vancouver’s Insite supervised injection clinic, Cactus will soon be renovating once again. Cactus administrators, and those across the country who advocate harm reduction, a policy of mitigating the damage of drug use without requiring abstinence, interpret the ruling as essentially green-lighting supervised injection sites, albeit under strict conditions. By next spring, Cactus administrators hope to have an area where drug users will be able to inject drugs under the supervision of a medical professional. Many of Montreal’s other needle exchange sites, as well as those in Quebec City, will likely follow suit in the coming year, if they meet the criteria the court established to win a federal exemption from drug possession laws.

You might say it’s infectious. Supervised injection sites have the backing of several of the country’s biggest health authorities, including those in Montreal and Vancouver. There are preliminary plans for another site in Vancouver, and possibly one in Victoria. Some advocates look ahead to a time when addicts might receive prescription heroin rather than street drugs. While many governments are reluctant to endorse giving addicts a place to shoot up, let alone the drugs to do so, every province has some sort of needle exchange program. Even Calgary gave out safer crack pipe kits for three years until health officials nixed the program over the summer.

For proponents, providing a clean, medically supervised place to imbibe drugs is simply a logical extension of a service already provided across the country. “The Supreme Court decision let us stop being hypocrites,” Cactus community coordinator Jean-François Mary told Maclean’s. “For 22 years, we gave people clean tools, then sent them out into the street. We were doing half the work. Now they’ll be able to shoot up in complete safety.”

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