Peter Falkner, CanWest News Service: Kim Campbell and husband Hershey Felder relax at their home in the St. Germain area of Paris. Campbell is now a globetrotting consultant and public speaker on democracy and women’s rights.

CAMPBELL HAPPY TO LEAVE THE PAST BEHIND

Living in Paris with musician leaves former PM free of political ‘baggage’

VANDALS DEFACE TRUDEAU’S TOMB

No arrests yet; investigation continues

Reuters: An officer from the Surete du Quebec provincial police watches over the vandalized crypt of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in Saint-Remi Que., just south of Montreal. The words “FLQ” and “Traitor” were found painted on the family tomb.

CanWest News Service

MONTREAL – Quebec police are investigating after graffiti was found on the mausoleum that serves as the final resting place of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

A member of the Surete du Quebec said it appears the graffiti was left sometime Friday night or early yesterday morning.

It was spray-painted on to different parts of the grey limestone mausoleum in St. Remi de Napierville, a town just south of Montreal in the Monteregie region.

The initials of the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) could be found on a wall and one of the plaques listing some of the members of Trudeau’s family whose remains are also kept in the tomb.

The word “traitor” in French was also found on one wall. No arrests have been made.

Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act during the 1970, October Crisis, allowing the arrests without warrant of more than 400 people suspected of having ties to the FLQ, responsible for the murder of Pierre Laporte and the kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross.

The mausoleum, where Trudeau’s parents were also laid to rest, has been part of the town’s small roadside cemetery for more than 80 years.

Trudeau died of cancer on Sept. 28, 2000.

The RCMP guarded the mausoleum for a few days after Trudeau’s state funeral when they learned of threats the mausoleum would be desecrated.

VICTORIA SET TO SHIP CRIMINALS HOME

Plan mirrors ‘Con Air’ program already in place in Vancouver

ROB SHAW Times Colonist

“Con Air” is set to land in B.C.’s capital city. Wanted criminals who have fled to Victoria to escape warrants will be shipped back to their home provinces under a program to be launched by the Victoria Police Department, the Times Colonist has learned.

The plan mirrors the high – profile Con Air project started by Vancouver police late last year, in which local troublemakers with outstanding warrants from other cities are rounded up, put on planes and flown out to face charges in their home provinces.

It has been praised as the first program of its kind in Canada to offer a solution to the problem of non-returnable warrants, which are only good in the province in which they are issued. Criminals have learned to simply flee that province and count on police being unwilling to pay transportation costs to ship them back.

Victoria’s version is expected to come online later this summer, sources said. Local politicians heard first mention of the plan at an in-camera joint council meeting of the police board in early April. It has not been brought to municipal councils.

“It is an initiative we are diligently working on,” said Sgt. Grant Hamilton, police spokesman. “There are still some procedural issues to work on. We’re moving forward, but it’s still premature to announce anything.”

Victoria is seeking the same provincial funding as Vancouver, which received $40,000 from the solicitor general’s ministry last month. But a ministry spokesman said the government has not yet made a commitment to give Victoria any grant money.

The provincial money will enable Vancouver to send about 30 people to other parts of Canada. It costs around $2,500 per trip to send a warrant subject and the required police escorts to Toronto by commercial airline, Vancouver police estimate.

So far, Vancouver has shipped 10 people back. It estimates as many as 2,500 criminals in the city are wanted in other provinces.

Some other police departments, such as Edmonton, Lethbridge, and London, Ont., have agreed to pay to have their suspects returned. Vancouver police have also started a petition asking Ottawa to fund the program for other forces.

Vancouver’s program leans largely on the support of the community to pay the bills. The Vancouver Board of Trade and local citizens have offered to help pay airfares by donating frequent-flyer points.
Vancouver’s police chief, Jim Chu, has said shipping out non-resident criminals saves B. C. social service, health-care and court costs. Chu has said a crack-cocaine addict typically steals $2,000 worth of goods a day to support the habit.

In Victoria, about 175 active criminals commit the vast majority of property crimes in the city, police have said. Removing even a handful of them, along with other suspicious characters, could have a big impact on crime, police say.

Victoria police have been collecting information from their mainland counterparts since the Con Air program launched last year. At that time, Hamilton said “a lot” of people in this city have out-of-town warrants, but police were unsure of the exact number.

With files from CanWest News Service

UVIC PROF LECTURES PM ON TORIES’ DRUG POLICY

RICHARD LAM, CNS

Professor Susan BoydUVic professor Susan Boyd is outraged at the government’s proposed crime bill C-26.

University of Victoria professor Susan Boyd’s weekly letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on drug research haven’t garnered a response from the federal government, but others around the world are reading.

“I’ve received many, many e-mails from people all over Canada,” said Boyd, a drug policy researcher.

On Feb. 1, Boyd, along with the Beyond Prohibition Coalition of Vancouver, launched a website at www.educatingharper.com to inform the prime minister and concerned Canadian citizens about drug policy and harm reduction.

At the same time, she began a letter-writing campaign. Each week she heads to the post office with a letter and an accompanying article, pays for postage and sends it off to the Prime Minister’s Office.

“I haven’t received a letter back, not even a form letter. But I would hope… just out of sheer curiosity, that he would look at his mail now and then to see what Canadians are thinking,” Boyd said.

She has 52 articles planned out, a weekly reading list that can be found on her website. The first articles deal with the failures of drug prohibition and criminal justice initiatives.

The drug researcher, on sabbatical this year, says she was outraged by the federal government’s crime bill C-26, which cracks down on drug traffickers – and adds mandatory minimum sentences for growing marijuana – as well as budget funding increases for police enforcement with only nominal amounts for harm reduction and treatment.

“More than 78 per cent of federal drug funding goes toward criminal justice initiatives, while only three per cent was allocated to harm reduction,” Boyd said. “That allocation flies in the face of sound academic research,” she said.

It convinced her that Harper needed to do his homework. In her letters she includes 25 peer-reviewed studies of Vancouver’s supervised injection site Insite, where people can inject drugs with health professionals on hand to offer everything from treatment for overdoses to addiction counselling referrals.

The federal government rejected the Vancouver Health Authority’s request for a 3½-year extension for Insite and instead in October 2007 gave the operation only a six-month lease on life.

“The [research is] well balanced methodologically, sound, with no exaggeration or claims that can’t be supported,” she said. “Most researchers believe Insite has been a tremendous success,” she said.

However, others point to Vancouver’s seedy and troubled Downtown Eastside as overcome by crime and drugs and general chaos, all made worse by Insite. But Boyd argues that crime and public disorder have not increased because of the supervised injection site.

“When I walk through Downtown Eastside what I see is the result of extreme poverty and marginalization and cutbacks, gentrification,” Boyd said. “We should be ashamed we don’t provide affordable housing for people, adequate social supports, mental health supports.”

Given a chance, Boyd would like to try to convince the Prime Minister to allow Victoria and other Canadian cities to run supervised injection sites. The Vancouver Island Health Authority is considering applying to Health Canada for an exemption from Canada’s drug laws to pilot a supervised injection site as a research project.

Boyd says, “Supervised injection sites are a unique way to reduce drug overdose deaths and hospital emergency visits, to prevent or reduce the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C and to put drug users in contact with social services and health care providers, as well as detox and treatment programs and addiction counselling.”

“I truly believe they serve a good purpose,” Boyd said.