The Drug Crisis in Canada

Phillipe is a part-time writer, and full-time classical liberal and Ottawa Senators/Vancouver Canucks fan. He resides in Vancouver, British Columbia where he writes on politics, individual rights, and free speech by day and hockey by night. The big topic we discussed was the drug crisis

You can find him on X at HTBF1968 or read his writing at Hoist the Black Flag on Substack.

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Transcript

[00:01] Russell: All right, folks, and we're back. Russell here with the canadian conservative podcast. And today in the studio, I have Phil O'Reilly. Phil O'Reilly is a writer for a substac. He does some writing for wrong speak publishing. He is a classic liberal and he writes on politics, culture and hockey. Welcome to the show, Phil.

[00:29] Phil: Thanks, Russell. I appreciate you having me on. Took a couple months, but we got it sorted out.

[00:33] Russell: I was really looking forward to this because I've been reading your writing for a while now, and I think that it's really good writing. And I'm kind of excited to talk a bit about foreign interference, democracy and just the ailments of canadian society that we're facing right now. But before we do that, I'll give you a chance to do an introduction. Tell us a bit about yourself.

[00:55] Phil: Okay, thanks. So I guess we'll go back a little bit. I served some time in the canadian navy, so about ten years in the military. And then after that I got out, got an it. I worked down in New York state, upstate New York for 20 years and then returned to Canada, got interested, I guess, in political writing over the last few years. It's been about two or three years since I got involved. So rather new to it. I'm enjoying it. Like the research, like the debate. So looking forward to this conversation.

[01:25] Russell: Well, I'm really excited to have you on the show to talk about foreign interference. Do we even have foreign interference anymore or is that done in the news cycles? Are we, have we moved on to the next scandal, the next tragedy? Because I don't hear anyone really talking about it anymore.

[01:42] Phil: Yeah, that is a concern. The report came out a few months back. I think they did a really good job of it, highlighted that some information is not known. But as I read it, that they do know that some MP's willingly or unwillingly colluded with some foreign powers. And it is disappointing that after what was, what was it, maybe two or three weeks of it being in the news, parliament seems to have gone on vacation, gone on summer break, and everybody's forgotten about it. You know, I'm hopeful that when they come back, it'll be back in the news cycle. But it's concerning, wouldn't you agree?

[02:23] Russell: Well, I think it's really concerning that we have people sitting right now as MP's that could be compromised. It could be working with hostile foreign governments. They could be influenced by hostile foreign nations, even corporations. And this isn't something new. I mean, we look back on all sorts of different things the last few years about money being sent to other countries that's not really accounted for. We look at some of the fundraiser functions of the liberal party and where they've been attending, who they've been talking to. And it's not just government, it's corporations. What's the name of that company? Hawaii.

[03:08] Phil: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's pronunciation, I believe. Yeah, the chinese company.

[03:12] Russell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're, they're a private company, but really they're, they're kind of like one step away from the chinese government itself.

[03:23] Phil: Right. And we, and we know from, you know, the last ten years, and it's happened in the US as well, we know that foreign powers are attempting to influence elections. And it's good that the RCMP and the NCSIs are aware of it. But what's concerning, I think, is that we've known for at least seven years and the government's done nothing. And they'll argue, you know, the argument was we can't release the names because due process and etcetera. But you can't have due process until the someone's accused. Right. So, and you've got, you need to weigh what the risks are. Right. So is it a bigger risk to list the names and then take it to court and then potentially give information to the, to the foreign powers that you're on to them? Or is it a bigger risk to do nothing? In which case we potentially have foreign governments paying our MP's or influencing people to vote for the MP's, in which case the election is questionable at best. Right. And I'm of the opinion we need to shine some light on this. Get the names out there. Let people defend themselves. If they're not guilty, let's have some trials. If they're guilty, let's get them out of there.

[04:37] Russell: Yeah. It's very concerning when it comes to elections, because Scott Adams said this before, and I agree, if people don't believe that the election was one fair and square, do you really have democracy?

[04:51] Phil: Right.

[04:52] Russell: Really government. If people actually don't believe that they actually had a choice in who they voted for or that their choice was curtailed through manufacturing consent and things like that, do we really have a government? And if we don't believe that our government is legit, do we have a moral or legal obligation to follow the rules that they tell us to follow?

[05:18] Phil: Well, that's an interesting question, but just going back to the election, so as it stands right now, looking forward, the conservatives look to win a sweeping majority, right? A super majority. What happens if they don't? The liberals don't release the names and the liberals pull off a surprise win. What does that do to the legitimacy of the election? How can you ever trust anything but a conservative victory in the next level, what we say, nine to twelve months? And given that the Liberals are the only party, I believe they're the only party now who are resisting releasing the names.

[05:54] Russell: Well, I don't think the NDP wanted to release the names either. Elizabeth may have originally hand waved it away. That wasn't a big deal. And then she came back afterwards and said, well, it might be a bigger deal than, than we thought. And I think that was mostly because of pressure even within her own party. You know, this can't just be a nothing burger. This is, has to be something. And so there's a lot of pressure and people still will use the old adage, while, you know, Pierre could look at the list, he just needs to get a security clearance to look at it. But part of getting that security clearance means once you get that clearance and once you look at those documents, you really can't discuss them anymore.

[06:35] Phil: Right. And so go ahead, sir.

[06:37] Russell: So they're kind of trying to put him in a trap here.

[06:41] Phil: Right. So is it, Tom Montclair was the previous NDP party leading? Well, he even came up, came out supporting what Pauly's doing. So he said he wouldn't read it if he was in the same position. So I mean, when you're, you know, when your allies agree with you, like you said, it's a nothing burger. But when your adversaries do, then clearly you, youre on the right path.

[07:06] Russell: Yeah.

[07:06] Phil: And not to cut the conservatives too much slack, but theres so many things that are wrong that when you come back from the summer break, theres no shortage of targets to go after. So will they actually come back to this? I dont know. I guess we just have to wait and see.

[07:22] Russell: Well, I dont think necessarily theyre going to come back to it. Theyre winning big strides right now on housing, winning big strides on cutting bureaucracy. Those have kind of been the ones I find that have won the biggest strides so far. Talking about the homeless crisis, the drug crisis, that scored them a lot of points because that's something Canadians can see on the streets. We all see it on our streets now. This isn't an isolated problem for Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal anymore. It's everywhere. Ten cities, I was in South America a few times now. And if you go outside the major cities, you see that there is just shantytowns and it's all the disaffected people from society. And they've made little shanty towns outside the big cities. And even within the big cities, there's just no go areas. For some of these big cities, you don't go to thinking Lima, Peru, miraflores, and some of those areas, they're really nice areas to go to, but there are certain areas that you just don't go to. And if you do go there, you're putting your life at risk. But the areas that they do keep clean, they keep really clean overall. And I'm seeing that kind of somewhat in Canada now where the suburbs, you know, people are keeping those suburb areas clean and trying to regulate, relegate the issues down to downtown areas and that. But that can only last for so long.

[08:59] Phil: Right. And the approach seems to be, you know, move them along, but don't solve the problem. Right. I mean, we should be looking at, to a certain extent, the. The activists are correct that we need to solve the underlying problem. The issue I have with the activists course is they're word games, right? So they're not homeless, they're not housed. You know, it's an addiction, so it's not their fault. You know, the latest one, urban camp, urban camping for living on the streets. It doesn't solve any problems. It's just all aimed at trimming up empathy for the homeless, which obviously there should be. But we need real solutions, right? And we need to, you know, the government's got to step in here, and there are. And you can jump in if you think there's more than this. But I see there's three groups of the homeless, right? There's the addicts, the drug addicts, people who are drugs to do drugs. There's people with mental issues, and then there's the truly unfortunate people who are just by bad luck, they're homeless. I can't think of a fourth group, but if you approach it from a logical standpoint, it should be fixable. So it's not going to be easy, and it's probably going to cost money. But you need to look at these three different groups and provide three different solutions, because what you can't do, and I think even the activists will admit this, you can't put these people in a dorm like environment, right? You get. Everybody gets a room, and they're all online. It would just be anarchy. So you've got to go back to. It's got to be an assessment of the individual. What's their mental status, what's their addiction, status. And then you've got to group people that way and then you address the problem based on what the underlying issues are. So from drug addiction, drug addiction, I should say the safe supply harm reduction approach is just not working. If it worked, it would work. We're not seeing, as far as I know, a reduction in opioid overdoses or deaths. If anything, it's probably increasing. So we've got to get people addicted to drugs into mandated treatment. So that gets them off the street and it gives them an opportunity to get off the drugs.

[11:18] Russell: But that's, but that's the problem, though, with liberalism, because liberalism at its end, state, the state protects the person's right to consume drugs and protects the right to be homeless and to be crazy on the street.

[11:35] Phil: Well, I mean, there's a balance, right? I mean, there's individual rights and then there's community rights, right. So you go on one end, too much individual rights and you have anarchy. Too much community rights and you've got communism. So there's a trade off. And you've got to balance the needs of the individual with the needs of society. And where we are right now, I agree. We've gone too far, at least with respect to certain things, and homelessness is one of them. We've got too far onto the side of individual rights. Right. So this whole where are they going to go? Or people have a right to do drugs and they do, I mean, within limits. I'm fine with, with legalized drugs, but legalized drugs the same way we legalize alcohol. Right. So you're, you're allowed to drink alcohol in your house or in a restaurant or something. You're not allowed to wander the streets drunk. And if you are, if you do wander the streets drunk, the cops are used to do something about it. And that's the approach we need to take with drugs. And I don't know what the, you know, I don't know which particular drugs should be legal and which shouldn't be legal. And that's probably too much depth of this conversation. But if you lack the ability to do, do two drugs responsibly, then it's, society has the right to step in and do something about that. Right.

[12:53] Russell: But we've taken a, a different approach. The approach that we've taken, again, I go back to this idea of end state liberalism, is that who are we to stop them from doing drugs? That is the highest they will achieve in their lives. And so we should just enable them to be happy in what makes them happy. So now we've developed this, we've developed this mass state around the use of drugs where the state now protects that addiction because who are we to get in the way of their addiction? Who are we? We're not tyrants to get in the way of their addiction. And then we build infrastructure and management, the managerial class, the administrative state around that. So then we funnel resources like our tax paying money into nonprofits that supply a safe place for them to do those drugs. Safe places in parentheses. We've seen videos of what those safe sites look like in Vancouver and Toronto. They're not very safe and they're not safe for the neighborhood. So we built this apparatus around this end state liberalism where we have basically put our hands up in the air and said, well, who are we to stop them? That's their right. They can get as high as they want and that is as, that is their life. That is as high as they will get in their life. And I don't mean that in a joking way.

[14:21] Phil: Yeah, no point attend. And I agree. I mean, there's a certain portion of population who do believe that, and certainly the activists fall into that group. But I think we're starting to see this with, as we see the support for the conservatives grow, that there's a large number of the large percentage of the population who are opposed to this. And this is liberal, if you want to call it this liberal overreach or left leftist overreach or whatever term you want to want to apply to it. Right. So it's gone too far. And as I said, the challenge is balancing. Right. So yes, I agree, there are people who think whatever they want to do is fine, but in a democracy, we're allowed to push back. And if the challenge with the democracy is you've got to convince, well, not necessarily the majority and we can get out of that later, but you've got to convince enough people that they've gone too far to get the government, to get the right government elected. Right. And we, and it's starting to look like that may be the case in Canada. Right. So you know what? We're probably 14 months off from an election at most. And with the polls where they are, as I said earlier, we're looking at a conservative supermajority. And Polyv has stated that hes against safe supply and harm reduction. The question, of course, is always will he deliver on his promises and will it be a priority?

[15:46] Russell: Well, im going to be a bit doom pilled here and say that. I dont actually believe that hell go through with that promise. And again, that comes back to the mass state. Theres too much of an apparatus built around drug addiction. Think about it. If we got all the addicts off the street tomorrow, how many people would lose their jobs? How many people's good? Hundred thousand dollars a year. Nursing jobs rely on the addict.

[16:16] Phil: Well, I mean, I'm not sure that it's a nursing thing because we have a shortage of medical professionals in Canada, but I will grant you that it would certainly hurt the activist, we'll call it the activist industrial complex, but it actually wouldn't. You're not talking about unfortunately eliminating addiction, right? Addiction's not going away. What we're doing is taking addiction addicts off the street and putting them in treatment. If anything, you're providing more jobs because it's more regimented, it's more structured, the treatment is more structured. Back to more structured. Instead of the haphazard safe injection sites, you're talking about treatment that is aimed at reducing an addict's reliance on the drug, where safe supply is just making sure that the drugs they use don't kill them. There's no effort to actually get them off the drugs.

[17:12] Russell: But I'm going to ask you this, Phil, do you actually think treatment works?

[17:17] Phil: I think it works for some people.

[17:19] Russell: What happens when it doesn't work? What happens? That's the problem. What happens when it doesn't work? What happens when you got people going into treatment and they're like, I can make a couple of really good dollars here. So they go into the treatment facility and they got a whole bunch of drugs shoved up their ass and when they get in there, they take those drugs out and they start distributing them within the facility. Well then you just have another drug industrial complex there and it will happen. It will happen.

[17:49] Phil: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, there's no perfect solution, right? There's only progress. I think we both can agree that what is happening now is worse than it was ten years ago, five years ago, a couple years ago. Right. So we have to do something. Well, I'll turn the question back to you. What then would be the solution? If we're not going to look at treatments, what's the alternative?

[18:13] Russell: I'm not against treatment. I guess what I'm saying is what rights are we willing to take away from people to enforce that treatment is what I'm trying to say.

[18:27] Phil: Okay. Yep.

[18:27] Russell: Is what, how restrictive will the state be and how restrictive will we allow the state to be to restrict people's rights in order to get them clean? And because I'm not very keen on treatment. Not because I don't think that it doesn't work. I think most people don't want treatment. Most people want to live as comfortably as possible. And they. And we have a state, the mass state that is enabled and become like a, like a. With very, this very weak energy that we're just going to. Well, they want to be addicted. Okay, we'll put you in treatment. Oh, treatment's not working. It's okay.

[19:11] Phil: It.

[19:12] Russell: It's okay. You had a hard life. Things are tough, and we just coddle people and we just enable these issues even more instead of telling people that they gotta take responsibility and putting some responsibility back on them. I think we do absolutely nothing for drug enforcement. And I understand that the war on drugs failed. And when I look back at why the war on drugs failed, I think it's because the people at the top of the drug hierarchy, they're. Might as well just call them politicians. They're not. They're not your street level dealers, although we need to go after those people as well. We should be as ruthless as possible because they're dealing death to people. I also.

[19:55] Phil: Okay, sorry, go ahead.

[19:57] Russell: But at the end of the day, there's just too much money to be made. And so there's no incentive for us as a society to actually move away from this addict, this drug industrial complex. There's just too much money to be made. How many thousands of people's jobs are at stake?

[20:18] Phil: Okay, so, I mean, there's a couple of things to touch on there. Let's go back to the. Let's go back to the treatment thing for a second. So, okay, so just starting with the starting point, there's no perfect solution. Right? So hard decisions need to be made. Now, I agree with you that treatment won't work on everybody. It won't work for everybody. So what you need is a hierarchy of punishments based on where you are in the treatment plan. We'll say, right? So in the old days, if you were drunk on the streets, the cops would say, you know, if you can, you know, if you can walk home, you're fine. Go walk home, you're fine. And then if that didn't work, you got in the drunk tank, and then that didn't work, you know, just repeated escalations until you went to jail. Right. And unfortunately, I don't see an alternative to that with respect to drugs. Right? So you make a mistake, fine. Go home. You're in, you know, second time, maybe you're in the system. The third time, maybe you get week in jail and, you know, a couple of weekends of treatment and then, you know, it just escalates from there to the, and then eventually you get to a point where you are, you know, you are a danger to yourself and society and you can't be treated, in which case, and I'm not advocating locking people up with, you know, violent criminals, but perhaps institutionalizing some people is the only way. Right? Maybe a small percentage. And you're talking about, or when I, when I say institutionalized, I'm talking about something along the lines of minimum security, you know, prisons or, you know, something just to keep them from harming themselves. Again, people aren't going to, I know people are going to be upset with that, with that comment, but there's a trade off, right? So you either let people who can't be treated wander the streets, in which case you're looking at overdoses, you're looking at violent crime, looking at arson and things like that, or you're institutionalized, in which case you're taking away the freedom. And, you know, you would, I would ask individuals to think, if it was someone I love, what would I, what would I want? What would I want them lying on the streets doing drugs or would I want them permanently locked away? Both bad ends, but one of them is clearly better than the other. Well, it's going to, it would cost money. Right? So we would need institutions, we would need government supported treatment plans and we would need the moral courage to do it. So it's not like it's, it's a simple, logical solution, but it is not, it's not easy.

[22:50] Russell: Sell the issue I have with that. Okay. You locked them up, still getting drugs into prison.

[22:57] Phil: Right?

[22:58] Russell: You're still getting drugs in the jail. Yeah.

[23:00] Phil: But you're back to there's no perfect solution. Right. There's only so much you can do. Right? So we lock up violent criminals now for sometimes for drug related crimes. And the fact that they can get a, can get drugs in prison doesn't mean society isn't better off with them in their doing drugs than out here selling it. Right? We have to understand or we have to be based in reality. What can we do? What makes things better, what progresses us forward rather than what's the perfect solution? Because there's no perfect solution.

[23:33] Russell: I guess then we have to ask then, how big would we let the state get because our jails, our prisons already overflowing. We, one of the main reasons why so many criminals get bail right now is because there just is no place to put them, I think, in Ontario right now where some of those provincial facilities, they're like triple bunking right now. So that's three people in a cell made for one because they're just so overcrowded because crime and dysfunction is so out of control. So how do, how many prisons do we build? How much staffing do we need? How big does the state get to try to deal with this?

[24:12] Phil: Well, then you have to, I mean you have to look at the underlying causes too, right? So some of it is, you know, there's a certain portion of the population, we're talking about crime. A certain percentage of the population are sociopaths, right. So I don't know what that is, one or 2%, right. But I think the majority of crime is driven by. Bye poverty, right. So you're looking at economic solutions, right? You have to, you have to. One is reactive, prisoners reactive. We need preventive as well. And preventive means we need a strong economy. Right. We need a strong economy. We need good jobs for people. The problem is our economy's out of whack, right. So crime's going up in part because poverty, I believe is rising a little bit. Not, you know, we're not a third world country yet, but it's, you know, if you look at the housing crisis is a problem. Inflation over the last four years is a problem. Unemployment is higher this month than it was last month. So you cant just say you wouldnt just lock everybody up because youre right, thats not a long term solution. But weve agreed that you cant let them walk the street. This is something that the US ran into in the seventies. If youve ever seen pictures of Times Square in the seventies, its just pornographic movie theaters and prostitutes, right? And now it's Disneyland. And what led partially of what led to the, so the seventies was a nightmare, right? So we got high inflation, high unemployment, de industrialization and things like that happening in the seventies. And so you've got, and also you've got the drug crisis, right? The drug use just takes off. And they had it a lot worse than what we're seeing now. And they're locking people up and they're doing the same thing, right? Where are we going to put all these prisoners? They were talking about barges, they were talking about all kinds of things. And one of the things that happened was the economy turned around, right? So the eighties happened and the economy turns around. Plus they did. What's it called? I'm going to get a lot of flack for this one too. What's it. Broken, broken glass.

[26:09] Russell: There's a stop and search.

[26:11] Phil: Well, stop and search was part of it, but you basically, you focus on this. You don't let the small face slide.

[26:16] Russell: Broken window.

[26:17] Phil: Broken window. There we go. Broken window theories, right? You don't let, you know, you see someone doing graffiti, you do something about it. You don't just let the small stuff slide. You show that we're going to enforce the law in this neighborhood, and the little stuff stops, right? Whereas if you let the little stuff go, the big stuff starts to come in, too. So back to what you said earlier. We've gone too far to the left. We've gone too much into the forgiving, everybody makes mistakes mentality and not. And we're nothing. Punishing criminals. So the economy's got to be fixed. Not a small thing. I'm saying that we just turn a switch and you've got to start the reactive stuff. You can't just let people sleep on the side of the road. It's not good for them and it's not good for society.

[27:01] Russell: The problem I have with that, Phil, is the only solution seems to be a governmental solution. And that's the big problem I have, because our government services at the municipal, provincial, and federal level are already complete trash. And so we're talking about revitalizing the public service as well. The problem with that is the public service already over bloated. These are compounding problems, and all it's doing is it's enabling the worst while completely destroying any sense of meritocracy and things like that. People are punished when they try to be innovative and they try to find out the box solutions, but they are rewarded when the solutions evolve. Spending more money, tax paying money. For example, in Saskatchewan, go to any public hospital that's open 24/7 Ruh Victoria, any of those hospitals open 24/7 go there at 01:00 in the morning. And you know what's in that waiting room? Homeless people. And they give them blankets and they let them sleep there because they have nowhere else to go. So our hospitals are de facto homeless shelters. And then during the day, the homeless people wander around the hospital, you know, a place for healing, a place for people to go and mourn. You know, grandma's there, she's not going to be around much longer. And those people, they have no morals, so they're stealing stuff from people. And then the hospital administration is just like, well, what are we going to do? We can't let these people sleep on the street. It's safer for them in here because we have security guards with no authority or power to do anything. They just call the police and that. And then, so we're just going to, we're going to be the, we're going to solve this problem by just letting them sleep here and destroy the place and make it unsafe for people who need treatment not to come here. I'll use another example. The library. Library is a place people go to learn. Library is a homeless shelter now. And librarians are effectively prison wardens now because they have to control the homeless population that resides there during the librarian hours. And that. So that's not their job description, but it is their job description. Now then we look at the mall. The mall used to be a place where families went to spend money, spend time. Most malls have very brutalistic architecture now they don't have seats for people to sit on. They want you to go in, spend your money, get the hell out of there. Why? Because the malls are also a homeless shelter now. And that's why people don't go to malls anymore, because they, you go there, you run the risk of getting stabbed to death. You know, I was in, I was at a midtown mall a little while ago, and there was people in the bathroom shooting up. I won't go back there again. Why would I go back there? Why would I put myself at risk? And because there's people literally in the stalls, in the washroom, sleeping, shooting up. And that all these areas, these public areas that people took for granted are now being taken for, for granted. Bye. A very unsavory population that has no morals. They will kill you for a dollar. They don't care. They don't care. They're so in their own pain, their own addiction, their own sense of right and wrong and their own perceived and real injustices. And we have enabled a culture where, who are you to stop me from doing exactly what I want all the time? That's my right to do that. Only I'm willing. I'm willing. I'm saying this as the bad guy. I'm willing to use violence to do it. I'm not afraid to go to jail where everyone else is. How do we fix that, Jeff?

[30:58] Phil: Well, again, I'm back to, you've got to put a system in place that gets people like that off the street. Initially, it's probably going to cause the state to grow a little bit. But the other side of things is you got to prioritize. So we've seen right now, the liberal government just seems to be, well, I'm going to exaggerate regularly offering new free service. Free services. Right. You've got to make the government prioritize what it spends. Right. Resources are limited. You can't just keep giving away things for free. So perhaps tax choices is the way that comes about. Right. So right now our influence on tax policy is strictly based on who we elect. But there are systems that are theorized, we'll say, and I think, well, no, I don't think anything's used. But you could, you could, there's no reason you couldn't come up with a system that said, you know, the government gets to decide where 50% of the, of the money goes and the individual gets to decide where the other 50% goes. So once a year during tax time, you go through, and I'm not saying you're down to the we're building this ship kind of level, but you could say, I want to put, I want my 50% to go to the military, I want 10% to go to prisons and 10% to go to cultural activities. But if you came up with a system like that, it's more democratic. You're giving the government a portion of the control because they want, I mean, they won the election, so they should be able to do some of it. But it, in this way, people like, you know, people conservatives or people who are concerned with the homelessness and the drug addiction issues could prioritize those, those type of activities over things that they don't like. You know, I can't think of anything top of my head that I wouldn't donate to, but I'm sure there's a lot of it.

[32:50] Russell: But see, the issue is with that, that's, again, that's more mass state and state liberalism because again, voluntary charity versus compulsory use of my capital towards different services. I mean, if I have the option for 50% of my tax where I want it to go, I want it to go right back into my pocket.

[33:17] Phil: Well, yeah, I can understand that as well. But I mean, there's limits to what we can solve on this call, right? I mean, we have to be realistic. If a party is running on reducing the taxes, obviously I would think you and I are going to vote for it, all things being equal. But there is a role for the state. We can agree that the bureaucracy is too big right now and at the same time maybe agree that its priorities are out of whack as well. Given that, I think recent polls show that the price of housing is the number one issue and the economy, broadly speaking, is up there as well. And I believe homelessness is up there, too. Right. So how do you go about fixing that? And if its not the state, then were back to activists and volunteers. Right. And theyre just not doing it. So either way, youre faced with the task of trying to convince people what the right approach is. And short of coming up with private to low secured or minimum security prisons, I don't see a way around state involvement.

[34:27] Russell: Well, definitely there's a place for the state. I think we have to let the free market do some of the solving for us. Not everything can be solved through the state. And I think that we need to be looking at the market. We need to be looking at, you know, voluntary association with different charitable organizations that are there to help people and utilize their power that they have for them to help out. And we have. The state, in my opinion, should come third in the equation. Free market. First, what can we do as a free market solution that's going to help, that's going to be innovative. That's going to be something that brings people together towards finding a solution, utilizing brain power and people power. And then I would say next needs to be some type of voluntary association. So that's your charities and your nonprofits and that sort of thing. And, and I'm not talking ones that take government money. Cause my opinion, if a nonprofit takes government money, they are, they're just another, they're another piece of the state's pie because they have to be beholden to the state's whims if they're going to take the state's money. And then the state should be the third option. But we should always start the lowest form of the state, though, the municipal government.

[35:52] Phil: Yeah, well, you're not going to get an argument out of me that we need to reduce the size of the government and get the government out of a lot of areas. I just haven't thought about this a lot. So I don't know how you get the market and individuals involved in the drug addiction issue. I mean, obviously you can get volunteers, but I'm not sure how the free market come to play on that. And like I said, I haven't really thought about it. So clearly you have. I'm curious what your ideas are.

[36:21] Russell: Well, I think when it comes to drug addiction and the free market is the one that's going to develop the programs that work best for people.

[36:31] Phil: Okay.

[36:32] Russell: Yeah, I don't think that the government should be the ones developing the programs because they're just going to sit around and they're going to have meeting after meeting after meeting and then they're going to pay some stakeholders a whole bunch of money that could have just developed the programs themselves for way cheaper.

[36:47] Phil: Okay, yeah, yeah, I can see that. Yeah, that makes sense.

[36:50] Russell: And I think too that with the voluntary association, we have groups out there, for example, like Mustard, mustard seed, they're a big group out in Calgary and working their way across Canada and they're kind of like the experts in opening up shelters. They understand the market, they understand how to run a shelter thats safe. It doesnt always mean the shelter is safe, but they understand the dynamics of running a shelter. For example, how many provinces in Canada, for example, when they have a natural disaster, even though they have emo groups, who do they bring in? They bring in the Red Cross because the Red Cross is specialization. Is that those areas? So why not use the people that are specialized that are there? They have volunteer power behind them of people that do care and people that's made it their mission without having to have the state coerce them into making it their mission to help people and you, and really utilizing them without putting the roadblocks in place, you know, like the conservative government likes to say, get rid of the gatekeepers. Well, how do we enable these organizations to be best utilized without getting in their way?

[38:06] Phil: Yeah, no, I think that's an interesting idea if framed that way. Yeah, I would agree with it. I mean, obviously you're going to, if you're talking about mandated treatment, there needs to be some level of state involvement, right? Because private organizations are not allowed to, that's the word I'm looking for, not imprisoned, but restrict somebody's freedom of movement, right? So there's, there's needs to be some level of government involvement if we're talking about mandated treatment.

[38:34] Russell: And I agree to an extent, but then that what that comes down to is, and this is another issue that kind of ties into a lot of what we're talking about today is, is the power that comes with private property and private property rights. You know, that's another, you know, if we empower people to have control of their private property, then people can make better decisions. Like right now if someone broke into my house, right now, for example, I have a duty to retreat. I have a duty to use reasonable force to get them out of my property. And I had a previous podcast with a defense lawyer and we, I kind of said, well, like I'm not an.

[39:22] Phil: RCMP officer, so I'm not sure I understand what you mean by enhanced private property.

[39:28] Russell: What to so like enhance people's rights on private property and that. So, you know, maybe not, maybe not castle doctrine or something like that. But, you know, the government, you know, for whatever reason, the state is mandated that you have to be in this treatment facility. So you will stay in this facility, can't leave. Right? I don't know. I don't know if that needs to be. I don't know if that needs to be run by the mass state to make that work.

[39:55] Phil: Well, I don't think you necessarily need, again, we're getting into legal terms, but I don't think you necessarily need the state to like, own the facility or staff the facility, but you need them to grant a certain level of authority to those running the institution for lack of a better name. Right. And you know what that. What level of lack of a better word, violence that the institution is allowed to use, maybe restrict. Now, violence is the wrong word. Restraint, I guess, would probably be a better word.

[40:29] Russell: I agree with you. I agree. Violence because the implied threat is violence. If you do this, then violence may be upon you to get you back in the line. I think that's a right.

[40:39] Phil: So, I mean, yeah. And I think we're, we're certainly getting into areas that I haven't thought about. But, you know, you've got to start somewhere. And I think the place to start is with identifying the types of people involved and then coming up with approaches to get them off the street, which we're not doing right now. Right. Our approach right now is move them along and then they'll come back later or they'll move to another neighborhood and that'll be that neighborhood's problem. It, it's a fail. It is a failure of government. And your story was basically a failure of government, too. Right. The tax money's going in and the services that are required are not being provided because the priorities are out of whack. And so rather than, you know, constantly providing more and more free services, they should be, they, they should be fixing the ones that they already have.

[41:35] Russell: And, well, you know, when people ask, like, what I think the solution is the people that are currently deeply in the throes of addiction right now, I don't really think there's much we can do to save them. Maybe a few of them. I'd like to hope that we can. I really would. But I think most of the people that are currently deeply in the throes of addiction are too far gone. And I'm not saying that we need to do anything drastic. I agree. We may have to lock them up and that, and hope that we can come up with a solution that works. I think preventative. We need to focus less on. We need to focus less on what has or hasn't worked in the past and what we need to learn from it. We have to be looking at the future. How do we stop this from, from happening again and again and again? Because there's a lot of focus on what's happening currently, but there's not a lot of focus for, like, a long term solution.

[42:36] Phil: Right. And, you know, you're not going to focus on one thing. Right. There's, like I said, there's the reactive approach, which is the mandated treatment, and then there's the preventive approach. And part of that is the economy. Part of that is probably education. I'm not sure what the, you know, I'm not sure what that education is. Dangers of drugs, if nothing else.

[43:00] Russell: Dare really didn't work, though. Dare, no, dare didn't work. And I think, you know, if anything, kids get more education about drugs and sexuality and stuff like that now than ever before. I mean, they, they, at some of the high schools now, they're handing out like, drug kits and stuff like that. If you're gonna use drug students, then, well, do it safely and well.

[43:23] Phil: I know, like the broken windows approach. Right. So you've got to, you've got to start with the small stuff. Something happens on the street, you know, if even it's somebody's public urination, do something about it. Right.

[43:35] Russell: But what do you do?

[43:36] Phil: You'll bring them down, put them in the system, call their parents. You know, not everybody. I mean, like, there's going to be some people whose parents don't care, but the vast majority of parents care. I. Right. And you get a call from the cops and the parents are going to step in and do something. Right. So you've got to, you know, we have to, we have to realize that the vast majority of people are average, right? Which means they're generally good parents, work hard, they want something good for their kids. Maybe, you know, they can't either. Kids are away in school, especially in high school. You don't know everything. But if you're gonna call from the cops, it's wake up call. Right.

[44:16] Russell: And isn't, though.

[44:17] Phil: Well, for the average person. Yeah. I mean, if I got a call from the cops about one of my kids. Yeah. I mean, I would be stunned that I didn't know, but I don't think the average parent gets a call from the cops and just goes, yeah, what are you gonna do, right? I mean, I have a little bit more faith in the average person that they would take care of their kids again. Some of them won't, but you have to design these processes, these systems, whatever you want to call them. For the average law abiding system, what would a good person do? And the vast majority of people, regardless of whether you agree with them or not, are good people. They may do things we don't necessarily agree with, but I don't think there's a very large percentage of population who want bad things to happen to the children.

[45:03] Russell: No, I agree with that. But I would say that right now we have a lot of households right now where both parents are working. We have households where people are really struggling to make ends meet. Theyre racking up the credit card debt, theyre racking up the lines of credit and that sort of thing because things are becoming more and more unaffordable. We dont really have an accountability culture built in to our system anymore. We've eroded so many accountability mechanisms. And so I think, me personally, I think that a lot of these families, you know, whereas if our parents got a call about us doing something that we shouldn't be doing, that would be a wake up call, I think, for a good number, not, not a lot, but a fair number of people, and that it's, well, why are you harassing my child? Why are you doing this? Did the cops say something to you? How can we get money out of this?

[46:09] Phil: Well, I mean, I think there's going to be some who are like that, but I think, I guess I disagree. I think the vast majority of people who got a call from the cops, it was something as simple as public urination, would not shrug it off. Didn't I raise you better? Again, I'm back to, you got to start somewhere. Even if we think to what used to work and what didn't work, rather than throwing everything out and starting over, what worked in the past and let's bring that back. What didn't work in the past and let's try not to bring that back, but you have to start somewhere. And accountability, you can't be accountable for something if you don't know about it. Right? So the parents, parents need to be informed. People need to be held responsible for their actions, whether that's, you know, for public donation. I'm not advocating locking somebody up, but fines. Right. I mean, do, don't ignore it. We're back to broken windows, right? Don't ignore it. I mean, I go to a gym here and across the street is police, a small police station. And people on, on the side of the gym, outside of the street with the gym are doing drugs. And it's not the police, you know, it's not the fault of the police because they have to follow the, you know, the priorities of the municipal government or the provincial government or whoever happens to be in charge of that particular police force. We have to hold the governments accountable. We have to say through, you know, the democratic process that this is what matters to us. And if it, and if, and it might take a while, but if the government doesn't do its job, then vote for somebody else. And if it doesn't do its job, then vote for somebody else and keep doing that until the politicians realize that if they don't do what we want them to do, they're going to be out of a job. Right now we have too many people who vote for their party regardless of how it's doing. And you and I see this on Twitter all the time, right? There's still 24% to 30% of people saying liberals are doing a good job. These people are not, I'll be polite and say, independent thinkers, right? They're people who will vote liberal regardless of what happens. And the same goes once the conservatives are in power for eight years and inevitably they get arrogant or whatever, there will be people who vote conservative regardless of what happens. We have to vote to fix things. And if the government's not fixing things, we have to kick them out. And it's not a quick solution. It doesn't mean a year from now when we kick the liberals out, God willing, the things are fixed. In a year from now, when we kick the conservatives out, I will be, you know, right now I'm ranting and raving against the liberals. But if the conservatives, I'll give them three months of honeymoon time, but they better start moving the needle.

[48:52] Russell: Well, that's like a lot of people right now with Danielle Smith. They say, okay, what has Danielle really done since she took office? And I seen a good number of conservatives from Alberta on Twitter right now and they're like, what has she done? What has she really done since she got in? And people are saying, well, you got to give her more time. Well, how much time do you have to give? You know, when we talk about the state solution, to me that disempowers, that disempowers people and that because it implies that the state is the only way, you know, here's, for example, those people doing the drugs outside the police station sure. What if, what if you called up your neighbors and 40 people went out there and told them to beat it, and they, and the implication is, if they don't beat it, well, you know, they're going to be made to leave. I used to live in a small town, smaller town, and there's a small little RCMP station in the town, and there was a drug house in town everyone knew was the house that was dealing drugs. And so I, you know, people, the police would say, well, keep an eye out and if you see something suspicious, let us know and we'll go over there. Because the police have to respect the rights of the people at that house. Right. Even though everyone knows they're dealing drugs and they're trying to get kids hooked on drugs, we still have to respect their rights to deal drugs till they get caught.

[50:18] Phil: Well, I mean, I don't think I. They have to respect their, their property rights. Yeah.

[50:23] Russell: Okay, so, but here's, here's a different thought on that.

[50:27] Phil: Sure.

[50:28] Russell: What if, what if everyone in town got together and every single day 50 people picketed outside that house? Every single day, every vehicle that came in and off out of that property, license plates are being taken down. Now, no one's on the property, no one's interfering with their ability to egress from that property. But the heat is definitely there because how do criminals work? They like to work when they're not being noticed. They like it when they, there's no heat on them. But what if 50 people just showed up when they all had signs saying, drug dealer lives here, drug dealer lives here. Watch your, watch out. Selling death to the kids in the neighborhood. How quickly do you think they'd move out and go somewhere else?

[51:14] Phil: Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting thought experiment. Not sure I could come up with 50 people to do the job, especially, you know, when we get back to the fact that we do pay the police to do that sort of thing.

[51:24] Russell: But the police aren't working, though.

[51:26] Phil: Yeah. I'm trying to think in real time here how to answer your question. Well, I mean, certainly there's a role for the average citizen. It just depends on what the situation is. Right. So, I mean, if you see someone lying on the street and they're addicted to drugs, how much, given the scenario right now, are you going to go out of your way to do something? Probably not. If somebody's beating up somebody. Okay, then you got a situation where maybe, well, you know, there's, now there's the element of violence, but now you've got a reason to interfere. Whether you want to get, you know, beat up or stabbed or not is another question. I really don't have a good answer for you. Honestly, I don't have to kick this around in my head for a while.

[52:15] Russell: I wanted to give you a chance to have the last word. And, you know, what do you, what are your thoughts on what we discussed today and what's your advice to people that are out in the audience?

[52:26] Phil: Right. Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Russell. I really enjoyed the conversation. We're pretty close on a lot of things, little further apart on some stuff, but you'd expect that advice. You know, I really think more people need to get involved in politics or at least pay attention to it. Right. Find out what your, your MP is doing or find out what your different parties believe. I mean, there are websites out there that you can, you know, you can answer a bunch of questions and it will tell you which party is, is most aligned with, with your belief system. It's a democracy. There are problems, but they rely on citizens involvement. And if we're not willing to get involved, then the politicians will keep doing what they're doing, which is at the moment, very little.