poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
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CA - Liberals' 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 Chrétien 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 long-standing 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.
John Barber is a Toronto-based freelance journalist.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2016/05/30/liberals-pot-policy-is-a-big-fog.html
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 Chrétien 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 long-standing 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.
John Barber is a Toronto-based freelance journalist.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2016/05/30/liberals-pot-policy-is-a-big-fog.html
