Municipal elections are this coming Saturday in British Columbia, and the Vancouver Sun editorializes it's really time to take stock of just what compassion hath wrought in the province's major metropolis.

Vancouver's crime rate is tied for highest in Canada. The region's property crime rate is worst in the nation. City residents are on the hook for $108 million in property crime losses last year. The region's robbery rate is the nation's highest. Bank robberies are on track to exceed last year's total of 204. Punishment for convicted criminals is startlingly lax, recidivism high, and 84 percent of all crime in the Vancouver region is attributed by police to drug addiction. Yes, it seems that perhaps.....all is not quite right.

The Sun doesn't come right out and say so in the above-linked editorial, but this might be taken as less than a glowing endorsement for the Vancouver mayoral candidate Jim Green, a Vietnam-era Stateside draft dodger, ex-poverty pimp and government payroller. You see, he's the one backed by outgoing, bleeding heart liberal Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, the undisputed champion of Vancouver's "safe injection site" for heroin addicts, an approach to drug addiction so whack even the United Nations objected. This so-called "harm reduction" strategy augments already abundant social services, further attracting crime-disposed addicts to metro Vancouver, and thus dovetails rather too closely with outsize "harm infliction" on the city's law-abiding populace, not to mention a ghastly public defecation problem.

Green's party is Vision Vancouver, a more moderate offshoot of Campbell's COPE party, the latter having just been distinguished by an incumbent city councillor advocating city-operated brothels to reduce harm to sex-trade workers.

Green's challenger, and the clear choice despite one long-ago misadventure of his own in addict-enablement, is four-term city councillor Sam Sullivan of the center-right Non-Partisan Association. That party's very existence provokes a screeching diatribe from a Wal Mart-hating columnist for Tyee.com, an online news and commentary publication covering Vancouver. I've read Tyee.com has had its moments. This doesn't appear to have been one of them.

From the Sun's editorial on Vancouver and crime (first link, above):

The climate, the legacy of the Wild West, the lure of easy pickings, the abundance of drugs and lax enforcement may all have contributed to the Lower Mainland's dubious distinction as Canada's capital of crime. The Greater Vancouver Regional District has the worst property crime rate in Canada and although local politicians like to point out that the rate dropped four per cent last year, this is hardly a cause for celebration.

The City of Vancouver is tied with Winnipeg for the highest number of criminal code offences in the country (adjusted for population).....Losses from property crime in the city last year are estimated at $130 million with residents picking up $108 million of the burden. Many property crimes are not reported and is so pervasive that police rarely investigate or even bother to visit the crime scene.

.....The GVRD is also by far the worst municipal region for robbery, outpacing the incidence rate in other large regions by a wide margin. The robbery rate per capita in Vancouver last year was 34.97 per 100,000 persons, more than six times the rate in Toronto (5.79 per 100,000). The 156 robberies at local financial institutions by mid-2005 indicate the final number for the year will easily exceed the 204 reported robberies in 2004.

Criminals who commit robbery in the GVRD are far less likely to be incarcerated than in any other jurisdiction in Canada. And the few who do go to jail spend less than half the time behind bars offenders in Calgary or Edmonton do. Not surprisingly, the recidivism rate is higher here than elsewhere in Canada with two-thirds of all robberies committed by those with previous convictions, compared with about half for other major metropolitan areas. About a third of robberies in the GVRD are committed by criminals on parole, on probation, out on bail or unlawfully at large.

Police attribute 84 per cent of all crime in the GVRD to drug addiction, a far greater percentage than in other major urban centres. Many of the region's drug addicts come from elsewhere, drawn by the abundance of drugs, the absence of enforcement of illicit drug laws and an array of social services that enable and encourage the drug subculture.......Crime is rampant throughout the GVRD, no community is immune. Voters might want to consider whether they feel safe at home, are comfortable going out at night or have confidence that the police are capable of upholding the law and dealing effectively with criminals before they cast their ballots. Municipal councils approve police activities and budgets and should be held accountable for their performance.

As I've noted here before, Vancouver is a great place to visit. But as for living there, well, it's another world altogether. And some pretty odd ducks are swimming in the waters. Then again, B.C. elections tend toward the odd. This time around, a mayoral candidate in Kelowna is proposing free crack for crack addicts, to boost their self-esteem.

B.C: Sweden on drugs.

TECHNORATI TAGS: VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, DRUGS, CRIME, ELECTIONS

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 14, 2005 10:00 PM