Only government can spend more while doing less

If ever there was a chance to watch government resplendent in its well-meaning, fussy finery, then the looming legalization of recreational cannabis provides the perfect vantage spot.

Put aside the actual decision to legalize smoking weed — that argument was won or lost, depending on your personal view, a while back — and instead watch the gong show that has transpired ever since, as every level of officialdom gets caught up in the wonders of actually stopping something they did before.

This, folks, is a perfect microcosm of why we pile on such debt as a society in order to pay for the privilege of enacting, and subsequently enforcing, more and more laws and regulations designed to suffocate us in such a silky safety net, it’s a wonder anyone dare leave the confines of their own home.

Now if an individual were to decide to stop smoking weed, it might indeed be a somewhat tough initial choice, but the mechanism itself and the future benefits would be simple enough. That person stops doing something, which saves money and improves his or her health (come on, sucking smoke into your lungs, no matter the variety, is not good for anyone).

This person might then decide to change other aspects of behaviour — perhaps not hanging around with the same people, maybe avoiding situations where the temptation is highest and instead taking up some other recreational pursuit that’s cheaper, healthier and less smelly.

But with governments, such simplicity vanishes like pot smoke caught in a chinook wind. Take the latest official merry-go-round, courtesy of the Calgary Police Service, which acknowledges officers continue to charge people with cannabis possession at the same rate they’ve done for years.

From January to April, city police laid 159 weed possession charges. That’s a rate comparable to the 490 laid in all of 2017, the 473 in 2016 and the 479 the year before that. In essence, there’s been no change in enforcement.

Meanwhile, the federal government is speeding up plans to make it easier to get a pardon for people convicted on relatively small-time possession offences. While here at the provincial level, we are inundated with sorry tales on how both the criminal and civil courts are so overburdened, people are waiting years for hearings. In some cases, serious charges are being tossed because such delays violate an accused’s constitutional right to a speedy trial.

Taken as singular incidents, this trio of events makes some sense. Yes, the possession law is still on the books, so police enforce it; yes, it makes sense for people in future to get pardons for doing something that will then be legal; and yes, few charges of possession get as far as a judge because they are plea bargained away or dropped as the accused faces more serious offences.

But taken together — and remember, there’s figuratively only one taxpayer paying for these different levels of officialdom — we are left with an expensively funded circus act.

We have police charging people here in Calgary, when in Ottawa, the government moves to make sure they will be pardoned in future for this very same offence. Meanwhile, in Edmonton, the province tries hiring more judges to clear up a court backlog, the result of the number of criminal charges being laid.

The merry-go-round doesn’t stop. The city now wants more money from the province to hire extra people to enforce all the new bylaws dealing with where legal pot can be smoked. Calgary police say they’re too stretched to deal with it themselves.

The ultimate kicker to all this collective nonsense is we’re actually trying to stop enforcing something. If this is how time-consuming and expensive not doing something is, then imagine for a moment the mountainous monstrosity of overreach involved when government does its more usual nanny act, by imposing new rules upon us poor souls.

Yes, folks, this is government in action. No wonder people smoke dope.

With governments, such simplicity vanishes like pot smoke caught in a chinook wind.