Tony Clement's Junk(ie) Mail

Resident's of Vancouver's impoverished downtown east-side recently started receiving flyers from the Conservatives promising to rid Canadian streets from the plague of "The Junkies" (cue the ominous music). In a truly Reaganesque demonstration of ignorance, Health Minister and general dumbass Tony Clement has determined that Vancouver's Insite safe injection centre for drug addicts is "unethical" and the start of a "slippery slope". Mental midgets like Clement don't often let facts interfere with their thought process.

Clement's recent attack on Insite has prompted swift rebuke from those who actually know a thing or two about medicine - doctors.

“As an expression of somebody who calls himself a minister of health, it's a very unhealthy statement,” [Insite physician Dr. Gabor] Mate said.

“The repugnant aspect is his attack on the morality and ethics of human beings who are trying to work with a very difficult population.

“I mean where does he come off? Where does he appoint himself as a moral judge of professionals who he doesn't understand and knows nothing about?”

Indeed. CMA President Dr. Brian Day has also chimed in, stating that 79% of CMA members believe that programs like Insite (which promote harm reduction) work. Yet Clement and the collective braintrust (and I use that word very lightly) of the CPC continue to susbscribe to the fantasy that the scourge of drug addiction can simply be eradicated by stiffer jail terms and tougher policing.

The flyers, approved by the PMO, promised to "clean up drug crime" and went one step further, claiming that "the Liberal dark decade is over".

“Too many Canadians have seen the ugly face of drug crime,” the double-sided page sent from the local MP declares.

Hmmm. The only ugly face I see is that of Stephen Harper. Go figure.