Canada's health minister Tony Clement is blatantly more focused on politics than health care when it comes to Vancouver's safe injection site.
According to NatPo, last year Clement ordered an aide to prepare a report debunking the "five myths" surrounding the facility before he announced his refusal to extend the site's permit.
Here are the five myths that Clement's aide conjured up:
1. safe injection sites are commonly used in other countries,
2. they operate "all across Canada",
3. they are legal,
4. they present "a complete solution" to drug-use harms, and,
5. the Vancouver site "has the complete support of the community."
Guess what, those are indeed myths. It's too bad Clement thought it necessary to make them up. Hey Tony, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Safe injection sites are used in some other countries such as Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Luxembourg, and Australia. They're legal enough that these countries, states we're proud to be allied with, are running their own sites.
No one, save perhaps for this bozo, Clement, has suggested these sites are "a complete solution" to drug-use harms. To reach that far shows how desperate Clement is for any sort of justification to shut down this facility. Similarly no one has claimed that the Vancouver site has the complete support of the community. What project ever does get complete support? Try building a new arena or, better yet, a transit line and you'll find plenty of people ready to bitch about it. That doesn't mean they're not worthwhile or that you shelve them.
These myths exist only in Tony Clement's tortured mind. Too bad we have to settle for a man of his calibre and vision as our health minister.
I doubt Tony is clever enough to think up all those the myths on his own.
ReplyDeleteGiven the record, one can only imagine that a volume of work of this nature would take the entire Conservative caucus AND all the cub reporter propaganda types that do most of the thinking around there.
If ignorance is bliss, the entire party must be near comatose by know.
(foottothefire)
Good point, anonymous, Tony is a nobody.
ReplyDeleteIt's all orchestrated from the top (PMO) to mislead to bottom. Tony would even have trouble finding Vancouver on a map of Canada.
He's supposed to be the "health" minister, but, needles(s) to say, it depends on whose health that needs financial support; drug addicts don't really need any help, or do they?