Viewpoint
Heather Mallick
I'm trying to summon up some human compassion for Canada's health minister, Tony Clement, in the sense that I acknowledge him as an actual human. But as for compassion, the well is dry. Dust sifts through the air down there. Cicadas hop; the dry grass sings.
The man has publicly damned not just drug users but the doctors and nurses who support Vancouver's safe drug injection site, a relatively cheap and effective clean-needles way to make life less bad.
What is he saying, that Staphylococcus aureus has a positive health outcome because junkies die faster? If junkies must have needles, let them harbour Clostridium tetani!
This latest attack on an attempt to mitigate the market forces that kill hundreds of drug users in Vancouver each year is part of the Conservatives' continuing efforts to make Canada follow the disastrous neo-conservative path that has destroyed the quality of American life.
Yes, that same sourly triumphant neo-con campaign that has made a once-great nation contemplate a sudden decline, its currency sinking, its military ventures emptying its coffers, its bridges and banks collapsing, its Big Food sending poison directly to the bowels, its citizens unlettered, its monster homes abandoned and its journalism a waste of time.
I keep imagining Stephen Harper standing in front of the mirror in the morning and reciting, Coué-like, "Every day, in every way, I get more and more Republican."
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http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/08/22/f-vp-mallick.html