Tom Fletcher recently suggested (Penticton Western News, March 23, Alternatives to urban drug ghettos) that the nanny-state is making Grand Theft Auto a favourite pastime of Canadian adolescents and druggies.
Two weeks ago they played the game with my car in Abbotsford. The thief/thieves jimmied a closed window and the ignition of our 1990 vintage Honda, put their just-stolen plunder in the trunk and drove across town, presumably home. The police, the towing company, and ICBC made it clear that this is common, and without consequences to the perps; prosecuting and incarcerating them costs the government more than letting us pay our $300 deductibles and letting ICBC/insurance pay the damages over and over again.
Funding “drug bazaars” like Vancouver’s East Hastings developments, and a stoned-criminal class is the governments’ idea of charity. Who are these politicians really working for? You? Your children? Who truly benefits?
Mr. Fletcher inadvertently points to the family as the real solution. He notes that isolated, rural farming facilities are a better alternative than subsidized “low barrier” booze and drug saturated “harm reduction” programs. Of course they are. He warns, however, that they are “costly programs” Of course they are; like everything else funded by money we have forced from our fellow citizens at government gunpoint (taxes).
But the historically therapeutic and successful Canadian family farm was not a “costly program.” It still is not. Families working together is not costly. The family living and eating together, laughing and learning together, growing food together is not costly — it is rich.
Whether rural or urban, the family is the answer. There is no other that even comes close.
All legislation must be family-friendly.
Jonathan Sevy
Penticton