026 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 026

Air Date: October 11, 2007

Host: Bob Metz

The views expressed in this program are those of the participants, and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine):

Rom: I’ll do the best I can.

Speaker 1: May I be the first to offer my congratulations?

Leeta: Oh, Rom!

Nog: Way to go, Dad! Alright.

Quark: You want Rom? You could have him. In fact, you deserve him. He’s perfect for this new workers’ paradise of yours. He can save the environment and levy all the taxes he wants.

Grand Nagus Zek: He’s not taking it very well.

Bob Metz: Good morning, London. It is Thursday, October 11th. I’m Bob Metz, and this is Just Right. Here on CHRW, 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now until noon. No, no. Not right wing. Just Right.

Today on the show, welcome to the show. 519-661-3600, if you’d like to join us and comment on anything you might hear today. Or you can write, or email rather, justrightchrw@gmail.com. Today on the show, a little bit about Ontario election results. Don’t want to talk very much about it. Public education, one size fits all. Is Canada, do you think Canada is the world’s turkey? Michael Coroen certainly thinks so, and I think I have a few comments on that. And federally we see Stephen Harper escalating the war on drugs, and there’s been some interesting reaction to that. And if we get to it, we might even talk a little bit about going postal.

All about workplace stress and the best way to operate a government business. But of course, as you know, last night was the election. No big surprises. I’m sure you were all up till midnight just watching those results with anticipation. Isn’t that right, Ira? Were you up all night and watching those elections?

Ira: Oh, and I was nibbling my fingers there, Bob.

Bob Metz: Yeah. And did you win?

Ira: Yes, I did.

Bob Metz: Oh, good for you.

I don’t think I’ve ever voted for a candidate that won, regardless of what party I voted for, and I voted for all of them at some time. But turns out that, of course, MMP was defeated. I don’t think there’s any surprise there. And there really was no surprise in terms of the overall results of the election. You know, 71 Liberals seats 26 PC, 10 NDP. It was certainly the lowest turnout in Ontario history, we are told.

London West saw a 58% turnout, 51% London North Centre, 48% in London Fanshawe, less than half the people who were eligible to vote chose to vote. It’s interesting. You know, we have another Liberal majority. It’s the first time back to back Liberal majority, I think, in Ontario history. And of course, the main issue of the election that surfaced for everyone was the faith funding of education versus just a continued state monopoly on education. A lot of people thought this was a non-issue. It shouldn’t have been talking about it. It shouldn’t have taken the attention of everyone. But, you know, I think beyond the issue itself, it served to define the fundamental nature of each party.

And that was what people were really looking for. It, you know, it was the issue that became the point of difference, identifiably so, between the Liberals and the Conservatives. And I think it’s not the issue itself again so much as what it tells you about the parties. I think personally, if this issue had not arisen, that the results would still be largely the same.

The polls before the election showed pretty much that it was going to be that way, the way that people vote. Generally, if people do not want to throw the party in power out for, you know, a really good alternative or a really good reason, they’re going to stay entrenched for a while. But progressive Conservative promises were quite weak right across the board. Particularly, you know, with their vague promises to lower taxes and increase spending. That just didn’t sit well with Conservatives and it didn’t make sense to the opposition either, even though they justified it various ways. In most respects, there was no way to tell the difference between a progressive Conservative and the Liberal candidate. I mean, from budgetary figures to policies, there was essentially no difference between them and no reason to vote PC for any change.

I was looking in the National Post and they’d have columns side by side. Here’s the budget of the PCs. Here’s the budget of the Liberals.

They were almost identical and even their policies were just so similar on most issues. Until faith funding, that is. Now, on this issue, Liberals were discouraging individual choice in education, not by prohibiting it outright, but by continuing the forced parents who pay for private school out of their own pockets to also pay education taxes to the school system that their children do not attend. Conservatives, on the other hand, were selling choice, quote, end quote, at taxpayer expense, which is, you know, it’s really a contradiction in terms. When the right thing to do was to offer choice in education right across the board, meaning everyone paid directly, and that can be with or without financial assistance, which is really a secondary issue if you’re talking about education, that is. But they could pay directly to the school of their choice, public or private, religious or non-religious.

These issues shouldn’t have even come up in the context of education. And so now the possibility of true choice in education has been pushed back, let’s say, by at least four years in Ontario, with the Liberals now in power for the next four years because of fixed election periods. Remember, that’s something new to Ontario. We already know that the next Ontario election will be held in October 2011. Ontarians will be forced to endure the costs and inefficiencies of Ontario’s education monopoly, at least until then, if they even choose to change at that point in time. Now, the thing I want to talk about is that, you know, this is not a new debate what happened here in election 2007 over the education situation. This is a deep-rooted issue in the history of Ontario, and it’s deeply rooted in both religious and political roots.

I want to stress that. This is not a, you know, religion just didn’t suddenly pop into this issue out of the blue. It wasn’t that kind of issue.

The funding issues have been debated in Upper and Lower Canada before Confederation. And, of course, the thing to be aware of is that, you know, the purpose of monopoly in education is not so much to educate, it is to indoctrinate. And its supporters will tell you that. This is made abundantly clear, I think, by the Liberal candidate supporting the government’s monopoly. It’s not just about funding, it’s about bringing people together, says London Fanshawe re-elect Khalil Ramal during the last election. He argued that the government monopoly on education was the best way to integrate, and that was the word he used, people, and to have a society with one vision and one future. And, you know, I think integrate in this sense really means to indoctrinate. And, you know, to some level I wouldn’t disagree that certain values have to be shared by all people who live in a free society, because if they don’t share that fundamental values of freedom, they cannot coexist.

And that is, you know, being free means having the right to disagree above all freedoms at the top of the list. So I thought it might be interesting to understand how the state monopoly on education even got started in Ontario. Believe it or not, it happened right here in London, Ontario. And I’m referring to a really beautiful book called Loyal Sheer Remains. It’s a pictorial history of Ontario, which was put out by the United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada back in 1984.

It’s got a real nice picture of Bill Davis on the front of it, which to me spoils it a bit, but what can you do? But interesting background, I’m just skimming some of the relevant details, I think, on the history of education in Ontario, which might surprise you to some degree. And I’m referring a lot of this is coming from that book. Now, when he assumed office in 1791, Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe devoted himself to molding the local colony here, which fit the religious, political and military values of the time that he cherished. And education was central to his vision, and his successors would carry his mission forward. And with other like-minded compatriots, that’s how they put it in the book, Simcoe was convinced that quote, enthusiastic and fanatic teachers, end quote, had contributed to the conspiracy which erupted in the American Revolution south of the border. So already you had this political motivation behind wanting to get kids put into some sort of public education.

By that we mean state run. Now, unless these disloyal preachers and teachers were unmasked and suppressed, they could be expected to spread their Republican heresy over the border and into the churches, homes and classrooms of Upper Canada. And yet until the middle of the 19th century, relatively few young people received what would be called official schooling. They and their parents were basically preoccupied with the demanding and relentless challenges of clearing the land and planting their crops. In other words, survival. That was the key thing at that time. And the responsibility for founding and funding institutional education depended upon voluntary efforts of basically ambitious educators and committed parents.

By 1800, about 20 privately run schools had been started by loyalists throughout Upper Canada. Now I’m skipping along pretty quickly here just to give you some key highlight points of what happened. There’s a complete political controversy behind this which will come out of this. But in 1807, the province passed some legislation which was called the District Public School Act, which for the first time allowed teachers to have their wages partially subsidized from the public treasury. And through this act, the principle of state aid to education had come to Upper Canada. Now that’s in 1807.

Again, a long time before Canada even existed as a nation. And there were other people who were founding schools from the Anglican and Loyalist perspective. John Strachan, like Simcoe before him, feared the continuing influence of quote, Yankee adventurers among the ranks of itinerant teachers. And then they came out with the Common School Act of 1816, which was sponsored by Strachan.

And it required instructors either to be natural born subjects of Great Britain or have taken an oath of allegiance to the crown. So you can see how political this already is. And of course fierce debates about the development and funding of education gripped the province during the 1830s. It was the stuff of which elections were debated. Reformers demanded that education be funded from an entitlement of the clergy reserves while the Tories insisted that the people should tax themselves.

American ideology once again was considered by many to have been the cause of Upper Canada’s political woes. And they thought that maybe by suppressing those ideas, interesting that you’d be thinking about education in terms of suppressing ideas. But at that time, Lieutenant Governor Arthur denounced quote, the madness of allowing Americans to be the instructors of the youth of the country.

And so his concerns and the persistence of these concerns accounted in part for both the development of a more centralized school system and attempts in the late 1840s to eliminate all American textbooks from the classrooms of Canada West, in favor of the pro-British and Irish national readers. Now of course Christianity, the role of religion here played a, was huge. Christian denominations all, interestingly enough, accepted the responsibility of the public schools to provide students with a sound moral training based in Egerton Ryerson’s word on quote, the general system of truth and morals as taught in the Holy Scriptures, end quote. And thus you had Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists and Roman Catholics.

They had all established colleges in the 1840s and 1850s and it’s from these colleges that many of their clergymen and from those denominations could actually be trained. But still the long local tradition or tradition of local autonomy and volunteerism and education affairs could not easily be displaced by provincial administrators, the book says. So thus in 1846, actually it’s called the 1846 Act, created a board of school trustees which had the power to hire and fire teachers, maintain school buildings and implement school laws of the province. And that was soon followed by the Common School Act of 1850 and which had to do with local taxation, but they were still voluntary at the time. But by 1870, even though it was voluntary, 4200 of 4400 school sections in Ontario adopted local assessment voluntarily, believe it or not. And one year later the Common Schools Act made the practice compulsory, thereby guaranteeing that throughout the province elementary education would be tuition free.

And in addition, the law stipulated that children between the ages of 7 and 12 must attend school for at least four months of the year. Now statistically, this was interesting, in 1887 over 400,000 students were enrolled in the province’s elementary schools. And that was about between 42% to slightly less than 50%. And in 1877 also the pupil teacher ratio in elementary schools stood at 72 to 1, though apparently it quote improved to 49 to 1 by 1902. And thus was basically government’s involvement in education born here in the province of Ontario. And similar histories of course, abound around other jurisdictions. What’s interesting is that since then of course we have learned a lot about public education.

You know, it’s funny that now we have this monopoly as though it’s the answer to creating a quality education. And it’s really funny, I feel like I’m in deja vu again because here I am in 2007, almost said it. And we’re basically in the same situation as we were back in 1984, which is pretty much the year I got involved in politics.

And I remember saying even at that time about education that, you know, it’s funny that when it comes to the books we read, you know, the neighborhood we live in, the religion or philosophy we practice, the food we eat, the people we associate with. In fact, in like most areas of our lives we really value our freedom of choice. And yet when it comes to one of the most precious resources we have, our children, we aren’t allowed that necessary freedom. And thus we have state interference and control of education throughout the whole educational system.

Because of course it serves all these political purposes to which the founders of the system quite readily attest to. And, you know, even back then in the 1980s the common complaints about the state schools were that, for example, their political masters who were at that time the school trustees hardly ever set foot into the classroom to really see what was going on or, you know, ask families and kids for their opinions. And it wouldn’t make much difference if they did either because they didn’t really have that much power because they were governed by all sorts of hundreds of laws, you know, by provincial law, which kind of stifle innovation. And course content is dictated by, you know, this huge Queens Park bureaucracy. Another problem was that the curriculum were, you know, far more the result of political pressure than of market feedbacks resulting from consumer preferences be that in any area of education from science to the humanities. And interestingly enough, even back then we pointed out that school funding is becoming a battleground for the religious sects, each claiming equal benefits of the law, meaning equal access to tax money for schools.

And, you know, a situation like that, which is exactly what, of course, happened this election. We know that the schools are sort of burdened by heavy unionization of the teaching profession. And it’s kind of fostered a system that rewards seniority more than ability, which is basically how unions operate. And it’s made it almost impossible to turn over staff fast enough or often enough to renew the schools with, you know, fresh minds and fresh ideas. School costs and school tax is rising faster than enrollment. And even when enrollment goes down as it did recently, the cost still goes up.

It’s magic. And of course, there’s the issue that too much and or you might say too little emphasis is placed on a piece of paper called a diploma, implying that it’s really not really worth what it ought to be worth. And of course, still you hear today high school graduates lacking certain basic skills in literacy, numerical ability and certain workplace ethics and attitudes. Students have a lack of respect for schools and their own education since nobody has to really pay directly. It’s funny how we all say we value our health care and we value our education, but we are not willing to pay for it directly.

What we value is that the other guy pays for it and that we can, you know, get the benefit of it. You know, and the interesting is that compulsory schooling in a sense, you know, life makes schooling compulsory when we when the government talks compulsory schooling. They mean compulsory in their schools, you know, come to my school, learn the values and what we want to teach you. And there’s, you know, I’m not saying people shouldn’t be teaching values, but it shouldn’t be done by a state education monopoly that in essence really doesn’t teach values. It teaches that all values are equal and interchangeable and there’s no difference between them. So, you know, something is better than nothing. If you remember what I said a couple weeks ago about the whole concept of nothing and how harmful that can be.

But generally none of these, you know, problems have really been resolved, have they? The choice of an education, you would think, might be one of the most important a person could make in their lifetime. And yet how many state schools even bother to advertise their points of difference from other schools?

And when was the last time a state educator called you on the phone and said, hey, what does your family need educationally? And how many choices do you have? Do you even have any worth pursuing? And do you know? And if you don’t, why not? And, you know, why do we give more time to purchasing a new car than we do to often picking the education for our kids?

And I think really the answer is when it comes to education, we really don’t have a choice and the government wants to keep it that way. Now, take a quick break and we’ll come back with a follow-up to this recent Thanksgiving wonderfully warm weekend. We’ll be back right after this.

Clip (Unidentified stand-up comedy routine):

Comedian: I love TV, man. TV was really important to me growing up. I learned everything from TV. I learned everything I needed to know. Actually, I learned to read by watching Sesame Street.

Oh, I do like living in Canada. I feel like I’m way more Canadian at this point. The little things that I noticed when I first moved here to Canada, I had friends ask me, you know, why would you move to Canada? You know, I finally had to tell my friends in the States, I made up a study, just said, you know what, when I lived in the U.S., I felt hideously undertaxed. I work hard, but I don’t think I’m giving my fair share. God bless you’ve taken care of that.

Bob Metz: Welcome back. They sure did take care of that. You’re listening to Just Right. I’m Bob Metz and this is CHRW 94.9 FM, where we’ll still be with you till noon today.

519-661-3600 if you’d like to give us a call. I was, of course, we just got through the Thanksgiving weekend, this past lovely long weekend. It was a steamer out there. It was like the middle of July in complete contrast to today, which is very much more October-like. But I just couldn’t help but notice, and it’s again, I think this is the second time I’ve done this explicitly, Michael Coren’s article in the London Free Press that appeared on October 6th.

And it was, I guess, his salute to Canada in terms of Thanksgiving and what do we have to be thankful for here in Canada. And the heading says, pretty well says it all, thanks for nothing. And if nothing else, this is cynicism at its best, and I just wonder how much you might find yourself in agreement with some of the things that Coren says here, how many things you might find in disagreement.

I’m mostly in agreement, but I have my few points as usual where I think it’s a little fuzzy or I might not put it that way or might not even agree. But, you know, he says, basically, he says, I don’t mean to spoil your pumpkin pie and all that, but exactly what is it we have to sit down and pretend to be thankful for here in Canada. And he starts off with, of course, the Aboriginal issue. He says, first and foremost, it’s Thanksgiving for Canada, our home in native land. Unless those, well, native land claims are taken seriously and 110% of the country they claim to be theirs is given to them.

Don’t dare criticize, however, because they were here first, even the ones who weren’t. Ah, but Canada is so safe, he says. Sure, at least for the time being, until Osama and his buddies decide to treat us the way they’ve treated Britain, Spain, the U.S., Jordan, and others. And he says we can scream that we’re peace-loving and Muslim-friendly until we’re blue in the face.

Won’t matter one bit, says Coren. Still, we are free, sort of. On the one hand, there are the Human Rights Commissions and activist lawyers working their publicly funded bums off trying to reduce our ability to speak our minds in public.

On the other, are ethnic, religious, and sexual special interest groups promoting their own agendas and anxious to stifle anyone who protests. We have to be thankful that we have law and order. He says, see above, but no law and order if you happen to be unlucky enough to have worked all your life for a house, and then find its own land claimed by natives. Suddenly, the police see and hear no evil, unless it’s you complaining about them seeing and hearing no evil. Murderers walk free after 10 years in prison. Rapists spend 12 months behind bars, gun-carrying, thugs receive a warning. And as for teenagers who beat, steal, and intimidate, it’s not really their fault, and they deserve a 15th chance. But we do have a Charter of Rights.

Yes, we do, says Coren. Before that, we had a legal code and a system that worked very well and fairly. Now we have empowered every piece in the Canadian jigsaw to pound against each other and destroy the picture. Very few mainstream law-abiding Canadians benefit from the Charter, but almost every radical in the country adores it. He says, we have public health care.

Give me a break. We’ve ranked 30th in the world, and we celebrate when we have a hip replaced in less than a year. The French and Germans laugh at our system, but we don’t have to change because we can buy all the myths about American system and bleed to death in our complacency. But we’re respected abroad, says Coren.

No, he responds to his own assertion. We’re unknown abroad. Canada has considered a large northern suburb of the United States, but without the glamour and the power. As for being historical peacekeepers, this is bunk. We’re historic warriors.

But our armed forces have been emasculated by the people who are embarrassed by our martial traditions. And what about the arts? Look at our writers and actors. Nonsense.

Millions of dollars in public subsidies to produce mediocre books and truly dreadful television dramas. Yes, yes, yes, he concludes, but we’re still Canadian and that’s a great thing. It was in 1867, 1914, 1940, and even 1967. Now it’s almost a crime to be proud of the founding culture of this country.

A collection of economically viable shopping malls bound together by forced multiculturalism and force-fed liberalism. So much is going wrong and we still take it out on the poor turkey, he says. I just had to read that whole article because it was just a tome in cynicism. And I think he hits on a number of points that are quite valid. We certainly have a major issue.

I noticed he twice, he visited the aboriginal issue. I’m going to be doing a whole separate section on this one time. I actually gave a presentation to an official government body on this and researched it to the core.

And I think you’ll be surprised at what I might have to say on that because you may think there’s a lot of differences fundamentally in the political realm between aboriginals and the rest of Canada. It ain’t so. Often what happens in quote, our world happens in the other world as well. It’s just on a different scale. And definitely one would think that these claims would get into some kind of arbitration or court and be settled for heaven’s sakes as quickly as possible.

Again, a lot of the other issues he talks about, of course, Canada having been a tradition of a… I think the world’s fourth power in terms of our army and our armed forces and things of that nature. And that was certainly the case after the last world war. And of course you can talk about pouring money into the arts, which is not something I think we should do with taxpayer dollars.

I’ve talked about that in the past. But of course one of the key things that I think bothers Korn in all of these issues, and it’s something that I have to agree with, is the political correct environment in which we’re in that makes it difficult to discuss a lot of these issues openly and honestly. I don’t like to have to sit with a group of people and not say X or Y because it might make someone uncomfortable. I don’t think there’s any license or reason at any time to insult people.

Or because of their racial heritage or beliefs or anything like that, I think that’s just something you don’t do in a civilized society. And of course I think that’s the big thing that bothers Korn. He’s hearing so many stories about people who have been silenced on just speaking their mind, even if what they’re saying might be a little bit crude or offensive. Which was a case in a column he had on September 29th where apparently someone in the media, not him, but was, you know, I don’t know, apparently criticized very violently in a way because they said some things about immigrants, the way we allow immigrants to come into the country and basically say, and if you come here you should live by our rules and not bring your own rules. You’ve heard that old story before, but it’s not the issue that matters. It’s talking about it and being allowed to talk about it that matters.

I think that when you silence people on too many issues too often, you’re actually putting some pressure in that steam kettle and eventually it might blow up in something beyond a debate. That’s what civilization is all about. We have the right to disagree and to go peacefully our own way when we do disagree about things. That’s what separates a free society from an unfree society. In an unfree society, if Bill and Jim don’t agree with each other, then one of them gets to force the other one to go along with them and do what he wants to do. You’ve got to send your kids to the school.

I’m sending my kids too. Or you’ve got to be on the same health insurance plan that I am. You can’t go by your own. That’s just one of the many ways that that principle and that idea manifests itself in basic politics and philosophy and how it results in our society.

Anyways, just wanted to bring that to your attention. It’s kind of a cynical view of Canada. I think it’s something people are sharing. Everybody feels this feeling that there’s sort of a deterioration occurring in the country. Everything from our infrastructure physically to even the moral stature of the country. And I think there’s some truth to that, but that’s what happens when you go the socialist way. I’m afraid that’s just the way it is. Okay, after this break we’re going to be talking about on the federal scene what’s happening with Mr. Harper here. Why is he heating up the war on drugs? We’ll be right back after this.

Clip (I Am Not Canadian rant):

Comedian: I figured I’m a Montrealer. I’m not a Canadian because I don’t particularly like the rest of Canada too much, you know? No, I don’t. I’m not a Quebecer because they won’t let me be, right? Because as Montrealers we have nothing in common with the rest of this country. Nothing.

I’ve been across it nine times. Nothing. Newfoundland, what the hell are those people talking about? B.C., they’re stoned 24 hours a day. Toronto? They’re Amish people with cars. Don’t get me started on the prairies. Oh God. Insane.

I was in Saskatoon. It’s flat. So everything’s straight.

That’s insane. All the roads are straight nuts. We’re driving in Montreal. At night you fall asleep with a wheel in your car, hit a curb, hit a tree, you’re dead. Here in Saskatoon you fall asleep behind the wheel of your car, you wake up when you run out of gas.

Clip:

Comedian: You notice what they did? They changed everything that used to just be a bad thing to do to a disease, to take responsibility for it. Over-eating, gambling, alcoholism. I don’t think something’s a real disease unless you can call in sick and get the day off work. You can’t do that with alcoholism. You can’t call your boss. Yeah, I won’t be in the work today. I’m hammered. I really shouldn’t be driving. Can’t do that with over-eating.

Yeah, I won’t be in the work today. I’m huge. Plus I accidentally ate my bus pass. So gambling addiction, you can’t call in to work. Yeah, I bet you’re 50 bucks I won’t be in today.

Bob Metz: Yeah, I’ll bet you he won’t if you say that to his boss.

Welcome back. Just right. I’m Bob Metz and this is CHRW 94.9 FM where we’ll be with you for another 27 minutes or so.

It’s a topic here. Looking at the National Post, October 5th, Tories, this is federally speaking now, not to get your mind away from that provincial election. Tories take a harder line, it says the headline on illegal drug users, written by Megan Fitzpatrick on October 5th, and says that the federal government will introduce legislation this fall that would require mandatory minimum jail sentences for people convicted of, quote, serious drug crimes, as what Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday, which would have been October 4th at this time. And the anti-drug strategy that the government’s proposing basically works out like this. It’s of course, as usual, spending money on things, $21.6 million over two years to support law enforcement and combating illegal use of drugs, $10 million over two years to implement a national prevention campaign aimed at youth and their parents, and $32.2 million, which is more than the other two combined, over two years to support treatment services that will address substance abuse. And Harper, when he was asked about harm reduction programs and things of that nature, I think he’s got a sort of, he leans against them in a way because he said he regards them as a second best strategy at best. Nevertheless, the government is now looking at spending $63.8 million on this new war on drugs, which is such a superficial amount when you consider the amount of money involved in the drug trade itself. It makes you wonder whether any of this is even serious or not, or whether it was just meant to stir up a discussion. I mean, all of these announcements were followed by the usual, you know, blah, blah, blah, about how drugs are bad and how many more people are using them, which is to me an admission right there and then that the past drug strategies haven’t worked.

It doesn’t matter how illegal something is. If people want it, they’re going to get it. But again, the direction he’s gone is in the direction of criminalizing the drug and not the behavior of an individual who may be using drugs and causing a legitimate social problem. Also, I think there’s the injustice implied in his strategy of wanting to separate users from sellers. You know, it’s just the same in the prostitution field, you know, that you can charge the prostitution, but you can’t charge the client, and that’s how they kind of view the drug situation as well. What is interesting about it, what that tells you is that they’re not interested in the morality of the issue or in what is actually, you know, what its social ramifications are, what they are interested in is restraint of trade. Make no mistake, that’s what it’s about.

It’s about restraint of trade, and nobody loves drug laws more than people in the drug business. It’s just, it is just that way. Watch The Godfather again. If you don’t get that message out of that movie, then you didn’t see the movie. And that that’s what basically it’s all about.

Consider it. You know, if you’re in the drug business and somebody’s making it a prohibited substance, that means, well, you can’t declare it an income. You have to totally do it underground. You make 100% profit. Zero tax is payable, which in and of itself is a bonus bigger than any fine that you could ever put on anyone in the drug industry. And by that I’m talking about illegal drugs, whatever it might be, whether it’s marijuana or whether it’s heroin, the same principles apply. It’s just not the right way, I think, to handle the drug problem.

I think there are right ways to handle the drug problem. But as usual, the police and organized crime and petty criminals are in favor, while most other groups are against the proposals. And interestingly enough, a couple of these objections showed up in the national post as well.

Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, had his October 6th letter put in the letter of the day column in the national post. And he comments, and I quote him here, quote, the conservative government’s anti-drug strategy relying heavily on prohibition, punishment, and fear mongering empowers organized crime and further endangers the health and lives of persons battling addictions. There’s no reason to think that what has not worked for the last 40 years and what has swollen the U.S. prison population beyond those of China and Russia will produce any positive effect on drug use or abuse in Canada. Mandatory minimum sentences are unjust because they punish classes of crimes rather than individual wrongdoers.

That pretty well gets close to the point I was making where they’re basically criminalizing the drug, the thing. You see that when somebody does something irrational too. Oh, you watch a TV show. It made them violent. So you blame the television show or sexual crime.

You blame pornography or something like that. Nevertheless, Mr. Jones goes on after 40 years of getting tough by following the failed U.S. war on drugs model. A street price is for most drugs are lower, their purity is higher, and their availability is better. If the conservatives would listen to their own experts, they would have devised a very different, much more humane, just, effective, compassionate, and evidence-based drug strategy, but this is not it. Another interesting comment by Lorne Gunter on October 3rd says a better way to fight the drug war in his column. And again, he was making a prediction here that there’s every indication that Tory’s plan will lead to an obsession with arresting individual users and rely too heavily on persuading addicts to kick their habit. In other words, it’ll focus on winning the war on drugs by attacking the demand side, and such an approach is destined to fail. Of course, when they say the demand side, that means if there were no users, there’d be no sellers.

Okay, well, that’s kind of obvious. But there are users, and politically the problem is, and this is why they generally go after the sellers and not the users. It’s like rent control, eh?

There’s more tenants than there are landlords. There’s more drug users than there are sellers, and they all vote. You know, there’s nothing that says in any constitution, you use drugs, you lose your vote.

So they know they have to still appeal to that constituency. So, you know, and it’s been tried, every jurisdiction that tried it, it’s a failure, and it’s just amazing that unless you opt for a complete police state, which is almost what would be required, you would never be able to solve the drug and or alcohol problem in the way that you want, you’re hearing people wanting to do it. They take this all or nothing approach, you know, total prohibition on things, which makes possession of things crimes rather than actions you do, which is, I think it’s not even a moral basis on which to decide someone’s or that you can punish someone for something.

And Gunter goes on to point out, quote, that since nearly all the violence associated with the drug trade stems from turf wars between syndicates and gangs over who may make or sell drugs in which neighborhoods, and again, that’s, you know, watch the Godfather again, that’s what that’s about. And since hundreds of millions already spent by Canadian governments have done little to stem any user demand for drugs, now here’s the daring suggestion from Lauren Gunter, and he says, the government should consider accepting that for good or bad drug use is a personal choice. As such, there is very little it can do to prevent it. But given that it is a personal choice, society has little obligation to pay for the consequences of misuse. Legalize most drugs but also declare no welfare for addicts. Let private charities supply relief and health care for those who abuse drugs and quote, very daring and very close to how I think about it. But of course, there are still other people who disagree, and interestingly enough, one of them who wrote a letter again in response to what Lauren Gunter just said here, was an author, Michael C. Chettleburg, who wrote a book called Young Thugs Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs. And he responded to the comments that I just read to you, Lauren Gunter, and he says, Lauren Gunter’s intelligent and timely column on Canada’s new drug war was regrettably marred by its moralistic conclusion. Treating addicts as pariahs, left to fend for themselves and deal with their addictions, is a public policy as bad as the Tories imminent get tough war on drugs. If legalized drugs were controlled and taxed by the state, we could generate a several hundred million dollar per year fiscal dividend to finance the negative outcomes that invariably arise like addictions for which we already pay the price. Moreover, we would generate the funds needed to properly fund prevention, harm reduction and targeted police suppression efforts.

Let’s treat drug addiction for what it really is, a public health problem requiring a sound public health solution. Now, there is the response back to Lauren Gunter. Now again, remember this fellow says that he considered Gunter’s comments intelligent and timely, he just didn’t like his closing where he said, basically no welfare for addicts. But he did say, let private charities supply their relief and health care for those. And I think there’s no getting government out of the equation totally, but I think that’s more in line of issues of justice.

Now, what I find a problem in this whole debate, and I see it all the time, it’s confusing two separate issues that have to be talked about, I think, entirely differently. One is the issue of addiction, drug addiction itself. You know, I think most of us who don’t do addictive drugs, myself being one of them, are maybe not too aware of what it might be like to be an addict, because remember a lot of times people think that the drug they’re on makes them crazy, makes them stoned or whatever. When in fact, the case for most addicts is that the drug makes them normal, because when they come down off some harmful drug particularly addictive, that’s when they go a little bit wonkers, and that’s when you’d think that they were on drugs, is when actually they’re coming off.

And that’s hard to relate to for a lot of people. But, you know, think of what it would be like. You know, we all are addicted to things. It’s just not drugs. If you wanted to, by definition, you could almost say that we’re addicted to food, and we’re addicted to water. Consider the withdrawal pains you would be going through if you didn’t have food for a prolonged period of time.

Your body is, quote, addicted to it, although we wouldn’t think of it that way, because we see that as part of the natural process and a necessity. And it’s funny, whenever the word necessity enters the equation, anything is allowable. Even drugs, once we determine, oh, they’re necessary, then they’ll pump you up with anything. But until that word necessity comes into the picture, you know, drugs are evil, drugs are bad. And if you go into a history of mankind, by the way, you’ll see drugs have been used since the beginning of recorded history, much more so perhaps in today. Just that they weren’t the, quote, social problem because they didn’t have laws against them.

It just wasn’t thought of. Now, the other issue that’s confusing with the addiction, or confused with the addiction issue, is the simple one about prohibition and possession, which again comes to down to a restraint of trade issue. And that’s why I think that legalizing drugs, which doesn’t mean making them, you know, available in the corner store, it just means you end prohibition. You do not treat, you can, a lot of substances are, quote, called controlled substances, which are in a sense prohibited substances, but far more effectively controlled because they’re not prohibited. And you don’t automatically put someone in jail simply because of a substance in their body or sitting in their pocket.

It’s just not something that I think one would consider just. Now, here’s my basic, quick two second solution to the drug problem as it really manifests itself. I don’t think drug addicts should be able to stand on public property and in public streets, you know, just shooting up and having no consequence. I think if someone commits a crime on drugs and the drugs are found to, and this would apply to alcohol or any kind of illegal drug, legal or otherwise actually, if that drug is deemed after a person’s guilt in a crime, let’s say you committed an offense theft or you hurt somebody or killed somebody in a car accident, certainly I think that’s when the state can do something with that individual about their particular drug problem.

And I think we almost have to target it that way. You never ever hear the term drug use. You always hear the term drug abuse. And I think that if you look at statistics such as we always hear, for example, the marijuana trade in Canada is considered the second largest single industry in the country when even amongst all the legitimate ones, we can talk about forestry and steel and industries of that nature, but it’s just on the underground market.

And that tells you that a lot of people are using it. And if every one of them was going mad in the streets and causing lawlessness and things of that nature, it would certainly be worse than it is. We simply don’t hold people responsible for their actions. And I think that’s almost worse than the drug war itself. And we make the future look less open to them, fewer choices. Again, that’s the growth of government.

You see that everywhere. And it’s interesting that drug abuse goes up and alcohol abuse goes up. The more state control the society is. And that’s pretty well statistically true. Anyways, you can see where we might be heading in Canada with that one again. It’s an age old story. And okay, when we come back, a subject I haven’t talked about before, Canada Post. Let’s get into that when we come back from this.

Clip (Unidentified stand-up comedy routine):

Comedian: I always liked the lessons they try and teach you on the shows too. I always wish they would have taught, tried to teach you a lesson on Seinfeld, had like the anti-drug episode. You know, they come on and tonight on a very special Seinfeld, Jerry’s been doing drugs. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

Why do my fingers look like little people? Who are these people? What are they doing to talk to each other? They’re probably talking about me, what are they saying George. Help me, George. I have no idea, Jerry. No idea. Somebody has to help me. Somebody. Hey Jerry.

You look like you’ve been seeing little people on your fingers. All this comedy all these years, we thought you’re making this stuff up. Well, you just let the cat right out of the bag.

You can’t tell. Oh, I can tell.

Yeah, it’s written all over your face. Oh, written on my face. Well, maybe that was the little people on your fingers.

Look at it down this to me. Newman. Hello, Jerry. Hello, Newman. I see those walls outside of Jerry. Garcia to see a great full-dead commemorative star. You’ve seen them have you? You’ve seen them. I licked them. Now I’ve seen little people on my fingers. You ruined my life. You ruined everybody’s life. In fact, you’re the guy who dropped that thing and ruined Jurassic Park.

Clip (Jebb Fink – Going Postal):

Jebb Fink: You guys don’t have a big mass murder problem up here. Not even your postal workers. They haven’t had any of those guys snap in the U.S. for a while. That was kind of amazing to me. Post-the-workers going crazy, shooting everybody at work. How does that happen? How do you develop the stress level as a post-the-worker to snap and kill everybody at work? I mean, this is your job. You’re a post-the-worker. You know what you’re going to wear to work every day. Your biggest decision with your job is in the summer when you got to pick long pants, short pants. You get to work. You’re getting like $28 an hour and the houses are in order. I mean, it’s not like they’re giving you blank envelopes going, I don’t know, ask around.

Bob Metz: Welcome back. You’re listening to Just Right and I’m Bob Metz and you’re listening to CHRW94.9 FM where we’ll be with you just for a few minutes until the top of the hour.

Interesting. The comments just made by comic Jebb, or Jebb Fink there on workplace stress and going postal if you want to call it that. Speaking of that issue, there was an article on workplace stress. Again, in the National Post by Tom Blackwell showed up on October 4th and a study that was published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, you know, it came at a time when mental health problems are considered among the fastest growing categories of disability claims, interestingly enough.

And the number one reason for absenteeism at work, according to the head of the study, Professor Elaine Marchand, who is a sociologist with the University School of Industrial Relations. Now surprisingly, quote, the study found that manufacturing and laboring employees were most likely to report poor mental health on a Statistics Canada survey, while people like police and firefighters seemed to have a relatively healthy psyche. And here was an interesting little chart they had relating to workplace stress. Now here are some, I guess you would call it, you know, careers in which the degree to which your mental health is affected by workplace stress. And here are the ones most likely to report poor mental health.

And see if you can hear something that might be common between them. Machine operators in fabric, fur, and leather products, well that’s pretty specific. Public works, laborers, food, beverage, and tobacco wholesale distributors, electrical equipment and component manufacturing, assembly related occupations, truck transportation, transportation equipment manufacturing, motor vehicle mechanics, very miscellaneous manufacturing, and fabricated metal product manufacturing, why they broke them down in those particular categories, I don’t know. Here is an interesting other side to the picture. The least likely to report poor mental health.

Managers in production, managers in manufacturing and utilities, police officers and firefighters, which we just mentioned, processing supervisors, university professors, I’ll let you wonder about some of them I guess, building material and garden equipment dealers, sales representatives and wholesale, clerical supervisors, and human resource and business service professionals. And you know if I look at the two groups that makes what the comic just said before make a lot of sense why somebody might go postal and why we even use that term. It’s basically a great deal of stress is caused when you’re not in a situation to make choices and be responsible for your actions and when you’re doing a lot of repetitive same things over and over and over again.

And to me that seems very understandable. That if you know I’ve worked in a lot of factories and I’ve worked in, you know I consider the job I do now harder and it certainly doesn’t pay me as much as I might have made in some industrial and factory situations. But I certainly was less happy there and far more stressed even though it demanded less of me in terms of mental effort and being responsible for things and stuff like that. And that’s why often people in those professions find other ways to get those things out. But the contrast with Canada Post is very interesting because right now they’re talking, you know the National Post had another article called Delivering a New Canada Post as Privatization the Answer for an Anticated System Using Decades Old Machinery. And it’s really funny how to describe what’s going on there.

It says it looks like a scene from the movie. You see these parcels, this is in Toronto, in the Toronto sorting station. You see these parcels are moved along steel rollers, you know by a woman in black t-shirts and jeans. And if a package is going to Toronto or out of province, the worker lets it pass. If it’s heading anywhere else in Ontario, she pushes it forward with gloved hands onto a roller line that’s going the other way. And there are 16 workers pushing parcels from line to line in that area of the plant.

And if one of them has to leave, his or her post, the whole system shuts down until that person gets back. And despite this, the plant handles about an average of 1.8 million pieces of mail per day and is a nightmare of antiquated process, flow and design according to the article. They have over 8,000 accidents a year, which is one per six operating employees. You know, $7.3 billion in revenue Canada Posts and gets in revenue. And yet it still needs 200 new sorting machines to replace its complement, which are on average five generations old.

They haven’t modernized at all. Despite all these outrageous price increases we’ve seen over the years, and unless you are a major user of the mail, if you’re just using mail for home purposes, you aren’t aware of how inefficient Canada Post actually has become. Unless you’re one of those unlucky people that has to walk down to the end of the street and get your mail instead of having it delivered to your home, that’s about the major effect you’ll see. But certainly those of us who move a lot of mail and mass mail is part of what I do too. I see so many inefficiencies in the system.

It’s just terrible. And you know, I remember a time before all the automation, you could, there was two mail deliveries a day. If you mailed a letter in the morning in London, it would get to its destination elsewhere in London by that afternoon. And there was, that was pre-automation days.

But again, you’re looking at a, you know, at a basic organization, has 72,000 employees and 27,000 due to retire over the next decade, due to the baby boom coming out.

Before I continue, we’ve got a caller on the line who has a question or a comment. Can you put him through there, Ira?

Ira: Okay, we have him on line one. Go ahead caller.

Caller: Hello Bob.

Bob Metz: Hello.

Caller: How’s it going?

Bob Metz: Not too bad.

Caller: I happen to work with the post office and I have to agree with you from a person inside the trade that we are very, very, we’re horrible.

Bob Metz: Is it stressful too?

Caller: You know, I don’t know if, you know, I don’t know if it’s as stressful as people say it is. Like, an interesting fact that some people don’t know is that we have the same amount of letter carriers in the city of London now that we did 20 years ago. Yeah. Which people don’t understand that like there has been a great number of like expansion. The city has not stayed the same since 20 years ago. We have the same number of letter carriers.

The city has grown. With those, with those mailboxes that you were talking about, the brown ones. They’re called community mailboxes. There’s more of them. Now, you know, walks for letter carriers are starting to become longer and longer and people are getting up to thousands of people, which, you know, it does become stressful after a time. It’s not so stressful at the mail part as it just is the dealing inside the working of the post office.

Bob Metz: Oh, I hear this constantly from people in many, you know, things that are sort of guaranteed or given a monopoly by the government. It’s funny that your comment sort of beat me to my next point, which I was going to make about how, you know, unless your neighborhood was sort of grandfathered in, you don’t get your mail delivery from Canada post directly. And I think that’s why you say that the numbers haven’t changed over a large period of time. But it looks like our time is running out. I’ve been told here I’m getting a signal from Ira in the control room. I guess we’re running out of time for today.

I can’t believe it. Didn’t get to a lot of the things I wanted to discuss. So I guess we will leave it there for this week and we’ll have to come back and pick up the conversation again next week. So that’s it for this week, folks, and I hope you can again join us again next week when we’ll continue our journey in the right direction. So until then, be right, stay right, do right, act right, and think right. Take care.

Clip (Unidentified stand-up comedy routine):

Comedian: The best one of all those little sayings, though, is not for a million dollars. I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars. Folks, the list of things I wouldn’t do for a million dollars is real short, okay? I can’t think of anything. I had a friend call me last week.

He goes, hey, I’m watching Discovery Channel. They say people in India eat cockroaches. I wouldn’t eat a cockroach for a million dollars. For a million dollars? I’ll clear out New York’s Upper West Side. The mayor will give me the key to the city, man. I had fried monkey nipples for a million dollars, man.

I didn’t have ranch dip on anything. I’ll choke it down. Million dollars is a lot of money, folks. That’s why I never understood that whole debate when an indecent proposal came out.

You remember that? Would you let your wife sleep with another man for a million dollars? Million dollars? I’ll dress her like a French maid and drive her there myself. I’ll pump her full of yaeger, and run the camera, dude. What do you mean?