psvrh

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)

This should be automatic vehicle seizure and at least a decade-long license suspension.

That nice little BMW you clocked at 230+? It's going to fund the next OPP picnic.

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

Hey, don't blame us for this guy!

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.

The only issue with the podcast is that he cant get rights for the entire song, so it's not quite the same as radio.

It's still as wonderful as the show was in all the other ways.

Metric isn't bad, either.

I admittedly haven't been a big radio listener for almost twenty years, but I saw a huge difference in ~1997 or so, when a lot of Canadian indie started getting airplay. I don't think we'd have Metric without CanCon requirements.

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.