Safe? Harper's Campaign Of Fear
In August of this year, the federal government introduced their version of the Reagan era "War On Drugs" campaign.
It was introduced to thousands of Canadian homes in the form of a cheap pamphlet. It was dropped through the mail slot from a Conservative MP that you have probably never heard of.
The pamphlet reads as follows...
Junkies and drug pushers don't belong near children and families.
They should be in rehab or behind bars.
The Conservative Government will clean up drug crime.
* Punish drug pushers with more jail time.
* Keep junkies in rehab and off the streets.
* Crack down on cross border drug smuggling.
The issue that many in the community took was three fold.
1) The language. Junkie? Is this a term a responsible government should use for an already marginalized demographic of our population? They need harm reduction, support and counseling. Not segregation, fear and prosecution.
What next? Hippie? Yuppie? Drunk? This is "fear labeling" and has no place in a (so-called) democratic, (so-called) progressive 1st world nation.
2) Fear. The federal government is trying to scare the "unaware" voter into believing that there are used drug needles, lurking under your children's toes, in the recesses of the grass knoll surrounding the "monkey bars".
The irony being... The current federal Government also, desperately wants to shut down our safe injection site. The very facility that helps prevent these scenarios from occurring.
3) Money. This campaign involves thousands of pamphlets being mailed to you on your dime... the tax payer. This is propaganda designed to reel in your vote. Under the guise of an information mail out, these documents serve only one purpose. To scare the heck out of Canadians and have you vote for the party that will make the bad "Druggie" man go away.
During the filming of this clip... We talked to a great deal of Vancouver residents and drug users on how this made them feel. Here is a portion of their stories and insights.
Please drop us a comment on how you feel about the ad campaign too.
I would like to thank all of the great people who worked long hours and added their support to this video.
Wow. Great stuff.
I can't believe political parties are allowed to get away with stuff like this ad campaign. I can't believe people actually get paid to think up stuff like this. I can't believe people even think up stuff like this. Why are people so selfish and so narrow-minded?
so there we have it again. not only does the feds have it out for the poor so does gordon campbell. Gordon campbell has an agenda also and it does not include the poor and homeless. He wants to make us disappear before the 2010 olympics. How pathetic,huh.
Scandalous, really. How Harper managed to get re-elected, I don't know. He doesn't have any respect for anyone. And yet, millions of people read the words on the pamphlet and actually go for it... scary....
(He calls artists "left-wing radicals". That would be me... Well, I'm proud of being a left-wing radical! )
i think part of the problem with his re-elect (all be it a minority gov.)is the fact that the right is so much more organized than the left. many people that would have voted against harper, simply did not vote, out of apathy, out of protest, out of feeling that their voice didn't matter. when we do nothing, we contribute nothing. there is a reason obama was elected, and it wasn't because the left stayed home on voting day. the fact that we as a country put up with this type of a political platform is almost as disturbing as the platform itself.