Tory mailing targeting 'junkies' strikes a sour note in east Vancouver

Tory mailing targeting 'junkies' strikes a sour note in east Vancouver Catherine Rolfsen, Vancouver SunPublished: Friday, August 15, 2008

VANCOUVER - East Vancouver residents have been blitzed this week with a Conservative government flyer turning up in their mailboxes that says "junkies" don't belong "near children and families."

The pamphlets, which feature an image of a child playing soccer near a discarded syringe, promise that the federal government will clean up drug crime.

They are part of a cross-Canada awareness campaign about government policy, said Rick Dykstra, Conservative MP for the Ontario riding of St. Catharines.

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We are going to get tough on crime by punishing drug pushers and certainly cracking down on the flow of drugs at the border, and we want to assist those who are addicted to get off the streets," he said.

Dykstra said the mailings, which have return addresses for Conservative MPs from various parts of the country, went out to ridings in every province. He could not say whether Vancouver East was the first or only riding in B.C. to be targeted.

The prime minister's office said it backs the campaign.

"We support the flyer fully. We think drug dealers should be behind bars and addicts should be in rehab. That's our approach," said Kory Teneycke, the PMO's director of communications.

Vancouver East MP Libby Davies says her office has received a lot of e-mails and phone calls about the mailings.

"What they attempt to do is play on peoples' fear," she said. "And frankly, it doesn't go down in east Vancouver."

Davies said the pamphlet is particularly offensive given the Conservative government's negative position on Insite, the only supervised injection site in the country.

Vancouver South Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh called the mailing "a veiled attack on the concept of safe injection sites."

Mark Townsend, executive director of the Portland Hotel Society, which runs Insite, said he was depressed to find the leaflet mailed to his Strathcona home.

He said calling people with drug addictions "junkies" is akin to calling the mentally ill "lunatics."

"It speaks of being out of touch and not understanding the issues," he said. "Saying that the junkies shouldn't be near our children is stupid because the junkies are our children."

Asked whether the language used in the mailing could be hurtful or stigmatizing, Dykstra said: "The day that we don't need to use that word and we can escape it and rid it from our vocabulary, I'll be a very happy individual. . . . We can't hide from the problems that we face in our communities."

Townsend said the alarmist tone of the pamphlet obscures the complexity of finding solutions to Vancouver's drug problems.

"No child in the whole of Canadian history has got AIDS from being jabbed by a rig in the park," he said, questioning the authenticity of the image used on the back of the mailing.

Reactions from customers at a local restaurant were mixed.

Carlos Grosso, a 42-year-old father of two and a soccer coach, said although he'd never seen a needle on a local sports field, he agreed with the message.

"I'm a family guy. I don't want drug pushers in my neighbourhood," he said, adding that sometimes blunt language is necessary to "get the point across."

Victor Bento, 56, wasn't so sure. Calling the leaflet's wording "strong, drastic and harsh," he said: "I think we're forgetting that everyone has a right to live in this world."

He said he wasn't confident the government's claims of action translate to real change in his neighbourhood.

Dosanjh called the leaflet symptomatic of the Conservatives' "irrational, irresponsible position" on drug policy, which he said doesn't discriminate between drug dealers and drug users.

"They only have one solution in terms of crime, that's lock them up and throw away the key," he said.

Dosanjh also said he thinks the mailing was "too politically partisan" to qualify for the free postage enjoyed by members of the House of Commons.