Waterloo Region Record from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada • 7

Insight editor: Carol Ross Williamson 894 2231 ext 2646 cwilliamsontherecordcom INSIGHT KITCHENER CAMBRIDGE WATERLOO A7 The RECORD Monday January 13 2003 I A I A fr 7 'V MWEdWWM URM 4 3' MRr CANADIAN PRESS Six candidates are vying for leadership of the federal New Democratic Party They are Toronto city councillor Jack Layton (above) the frontrunner and MP Lome Nystrom of Regina (centre) MP Bill Blaikie of Winnipeg (top right) and pictured together at right Joe Comartin from Windsor (right) Bev Meslo of Vancouver and Pierre Ducasse of Drummondville Que A CR MU jr LiEWMW IMS 7 A nOL kl'S Mm LEADERSHIP CANDIDATES Support for NDP is growing By Scott Piatkowski The past 10 years have not been very kind to New Democrats At a federal lev el gone from a high of 44 seats to a low of nine They now sit at 14 seats good for fourth place in the fractured House of Com mons but rarely on the radar of the national media Provincially NDP governments are still solidly entrenched in Manitoba and Saskatchewan but the party lost power in British Columbia the Yukon and Ontario Still there is considerable reason for opti mism for Canadians who seek an alternative to the right wing policies promoted by the oth er parties (and with Paul Martin as leader the Liberals will likely move even further to the right) While national polls continue to show that the Liberals have a healthy lead the NDP has topped both the Alliance and the Tories at times during the past year with support as high as 16 per cent Numbers are also looking good in Ontario where Environics has tracked provincial NDP support at 22 per cent up six points since July and the highest level of support in a decade The best news for the party has been the ex citement generated by the race to succeed Alexa McDonough as federal leader Between the start of the campaign in early June and the Dec 10 deadline NDP member ship across Canada has increased by 418 per cent this includes increases of 75 per cent in the Kitchener Waterloo riding and between 30 and 40 per cent in other area ridings Over a six month period 24168 Canadians paid to take out a new NDP membership Along with previously signed up party members these new recruits have the opportu nity to cast a vote in the leadership selection in advance either by mail or by Internet or during the convention (Jan 24 to 26 in Toronto) The NDP is the first North American politi cal party to allow the Internet option in a lead ership selection The convention will be broad cast live on CPAC the Canadian Public Af fairs Channel NDP members will be choosing from among an impressive field of six candidates three of whom are thought to have a chance of winning the excitement generated by the race to succeed Alexa McDonough as federal leader NDP membership across Canada has increased by 418 per The perceived frontrunner is Jack Layton (a perception backed up by the only poll of the campaign) a longtime Toronto city councillor and until recently the president of the edera tion of Canadian Municipalities Those who are supporting Layton people like former leader Ed Broadbent MPs Svend Robinson and Libby Davies Saskatchewan Deputy Premier Clay Serby and party leaders from British Columbia Alberta Nova Scotia and the Yukon are convinced that he can ig nite the embers of the support and take it to even higher levels Layton is energetic well informed bilingual and media savvy The candidate expected to offer the greatest challenge to Layton is Bill Blaikie who has served as member of Parliament for 23 years for a Winnipeg riding A United Church minis ter Blaikie is a fiery orator a master of parlia mentary procedure and is respected through out the party He has considerable support in the federal caucus in Manitoba and the other prairie provinces as well as in northern On tario (including Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton) supporters have emphasized the importance of having the party leader in the House of Commons Lome Nystrom of Regina has also run a strong campaign Another veteran MP (he was first elected as an MP in 1968 at the age of 22) Nystrom argues that Canadians support the NDP unless they can be convinced to trust the party on economic issues He also enjoys considerable support among current and former elected New Democrats but many who supported him when he ran for leader in 1995 now support Blaikie or Layton A surprisingly strong campaign has been run by Joe Comartin the firstJerm MP for Windsor St Clair A former labour lawyer Co martin has made great inroads with Islamic Canadians who are impressed by his strong defence of civil liberties after the Sept 11 at tacks and his outspokenness on issues affect ing the Middle East Comartin is supported by fellow Windsor MP Brian Masse and has attracted a signifi cant amount of labour support At just 30 years of age Pierre Ducasse has been the surprise of the campaign A native of Sept Iles he ran for the NDP in the riding of Manicougan in 1997 and has served as associ ate president of the federal NDP since Septem ber 2000 Ducasse is charming thoughtful and articulate and despite his low profile at the be ginning of the campaign clearly has a future in the upper ranks of the party Also running is Bev Meslo of British Co lumbia While she has effectively represented the persistent but small Socialist caucus she should finish behind the other five candidates Leadership debates have been held across the country over the past three months and all have been well attended The final debate of the campaign will be held in Ottawa tomorrow at 7 pm It will be broadcast live on CPAC (Channel 59) Scott Piatkowski of Kitchener is a former fed eral NDP candidate and a volunteer with Jack Lay NDP leadership campaign Antiquated pot laws should go up in smoke Reading about the police drug sweep that took place in Cambridge high schools in the fall I initially deemed the operation a great service to our young and no doubt a testament to our community taking action against the scourge of substance abuse I then considered the issue further and wondered how many ordinary teenagers were made into criminals at that time for simply possessing small amounts of marijuana I can only speculate but assuming that the majority of the charges were based on marijuana possession those unfortunate souls may have their fu tures irreparably tarnished by a crimi nal record merely for possessing a substance that many in the scientific community consider less harmful than alcohol or tobacco STIGMA IS GONE Yes marijuana is a drug but it has long separated itself from the stigma rightfully attached to those who use harder drugs the desperate junkie doing anything for that next six Too bad these kids live in Windsor Recently an Ontario judge threw out a marijuana possession charge against a 16 year old Windsor boy in a ruling that suggests that Cana marijuana laws are headed toward irrelevance Justice Douglas Phillips dropped the charge after the lawyer Brian McAllister argued there is effectively no law prohibiting the possession of 30 i i i COMMUNITY EDITORIAL BOARD MARK KENNEDY grams or less of marijuana Having recently graduated from uni versity ana socialized witn a vast cross section of 18 to 26 year olds I can with some certainty issue this wake up call to the baby boomer generation: Most of your kids have tried smoking pot at least once at college university or in high school If they at least one of their friends has But conservative parents fear not marijuana will not ruin your career goals and it probably lead them into a moral sewer either And rarely does it lead to experimentation with harder drugs If anything it turns them off drugs altogether Social acceptance of marijuana has been on the rise over the past few decades and so has the list of people and Organizations supporting its de criminalization Among those in favour of decrimi nalization are law enforcement offi cials and at least two Ontario judges as well as much of the scientific commu nity who point to research that indi cates marijuana use can be an effective treatment for the symptoms experi enced by cancer and HIV patients Indeed it is precisely because of the medicinal benefits of pot that the fed eral government has allowed HIV pa tient Jim Wakeford and a few others in Canada to smoke pot legally in order to alleviate the pain they suffer as a result of a serious ailment The government however has so far failed to come up with a legal supply of the drug As recently as last Thursday Ontario Superior Court Justice Sidney Leder man took another step toward decrimi nalizing simple possession of marijua na by medicinal users He argued that it is not fair to allow people to smoke med icinal marijuana and then not provide a suitable legal supply of the drug forcing those who need marijuana to get it on the black market JUDGE ISSUES ULTIMATUM which put seriously ill vul nerable people in a position where they have to deal with the criminal under world to obtain medicine they have been authorized to take violate the con stitutional right to security of the per Lederman stated in his ruling Lederman gave the federal govern ment six months to six the regulations after which time if no new legisla tion is passed simple possession will not be illegal The con tinuing silence on the matter could in deed be interpreted as a sign that they are willing to let this occur As for those who smoke pot for the pure enjoyment of it why not legalize it for them too? Keeping marijuana il legal is costly and clogs up the legal system with minor possession charges Active law enforcement prosecu tion and incarceration of pot users has inundated the system and diverted at tention of law enforcement away from more serious crimes This has become such an issue for police that in 2001 the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs requested that federal lawmakers write out of the Criminal Code posses sion of weed for individual use Arguments against decriminaliza tion point out there are no studies indi cating that prolonged use of weed does pose a health risk to users Even if pot did pose a health risk of some sort over long term consumption so do many of the foods we eat urther sub stances that are clearly harmful such as tobacco and alcohol remainlegal despite their well documented harmful effects on human health unlikely that see marijua na sold beside cigarettes and booze any time soon but the legal and social mo mentum toward the eventual decrimi nalization of weed is ever increasing There may well come a day when we Generation Xers are of ripe old age and our grandchildren will laugh in disbelief that marijuana was once ille gal Mark Kennedy of Cambridge is a free lancer writer in the Guelph area IAN URQUHART ft I Our auto industry needs help Buzz Hargrove is a frustrated man these days The president of the Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW) is trying to call the attention of politi cians at Park and Ottawa to the plight of the auto industry the en gine that drives our economy While auto sales have been relative ly buoyant employment in the Indus try has been declining from its peak in 1999 This is partly attributable to the poaching of jobs by southern US states offering government subsidies (not to mention right to work laws) to auto manufacturers to relocate Last year for example Daimler Chrysler chose Georgia over Ontario as the assembly site for its new Sprint er delivery van The reason: Govern ments there offered incentives to talling $325 million US And last fall in their contract nego tiations with the CAW both ord and DaimlerChrysler promised to build new of the plants in On tario but only if Canadian govern ments offered similar subsidies But Hargrove seem to get the politicians here to take notice very worrisome right he says He been able to get in to see Premier Ernie Eves at all A meeting was scheduled for late November but cancelled by Eves at the last minute It has not been rescheduled Hargrove has met with Enterprise Minister Jim laherty but not with much success laherty keeps repeat ing the Tory mantra that govern ment is not in the cash handouts busi He is offering instead to put money into skills training and infra structure which while welcome may not be enough to offset direct subsidies in the southern states Hargrove has not fared much better with the opposition parties He had a good meeting with NDP Leader Howard Hampton notwithstanding the personal tensions between the two men (Hargrove has made no secret of his dissatisfaction with leadership of the NDP) Afterward Hampton issued a press release calling on the provincial government to aggressively recruiting new auto plant facilities for But during the whole of last session of the legislature the New De mocrats did not ask the government a single question about the auto indus try Nor did the Liberals TIME IS A WASTING Hargrove had a meeting with Liber al Leader Dalton McGuinty who was sympathetic but pointed out that the politicians are facing competing pres sures to spend more in other areas such as health care and education To which Hargrove responded: you have an auto industry go ing to lose the money for office says he will have something to say about the auto indus try in a speech in Windsor this week A But meanwhile time is a wasting with decisions pending soon by ord and DaimlerChrysler on their new plants To be sure a committee has been struck to study the problem: the Canadian Automotive Partnership Council (CAPC): laherty and his fed eral counterpart Allan Rock have at tended its meetings along with Har grove and representatives of the major I auto manufacturers But it last met in December and scheduled to meet again until the spring CAPC issued a report last month calling for elimination of various cor porate taxes to help out the auto indus try but Rock promised only to take the recommendation to federal inance Minister John Manley for considera tion So there may be something in the federal budget next month Then again there may not Last week did however bring a glimmer of hope for the auto sector as former premier Mike Harris came out in favour of direct subsidies This is somewhat akin to Mao Tse tung endorsing capitalism During his revolutionary days as an opposition leader Harris hotly opposed "corpo rate and promised to elimi nate direct subsidies to business Once in office he kept his word But now Harris is singing a differ ent tune tune to time there is a he told the National Post last week (the federal and provincial governments) stop the subsidies (in the southern US) they are going to have to be aware of where all the new assembly plants have been going in the last little period of timeThere are two on the horizon and there are not very many more We have to get those in Of course these remarks were made the day Harris was named to the board of Magna International the major auto parts supplier Still if hb can change his mind maybe laherty and Rock and all the others can too Hargrove just hopes it is not too late when they do Ian Urquhart covers provincial issues for the Toronto Star.