Drug decriminalization and a lesson from history

It is good that the B.C. NDP government has chosen to try roll back its decriminalization scheme pending approval from the federal government.

It is bad that it took a massive exercise in public drug abuse and subsequent outcry to overcome what from the beginning was more an exercise in ideological validation than evidence-based decision making.

The decriminalization scheme is the latest and worst in what has been a steadily increasing series of ideologically founded policy decisions on the part of this government.

To assure the public that it will neither consider nor repeat such ill-considered behaviour, the provincial government must identify, hold accountable and remove from its core decision making processes its extreme party ideologues.

I come from Saskatchewan and remember well the standard of good government provided by NDP leaders Allan Blakeney and Roy Romanow, done in the spirit of Tommy Douglas.

They did so because they kept their ideologues at arm’s length away from their core decision making processes.

By keeping them at bay these premiers in the long run preserved the professional integrity and independence of the provincial civil service.

All bureaucracies are subject to the risk posed by bureaucratic entrepreneurs who will tailor their work to please the biases of their political leadership rather than speak truth to power.

This process accelerates within ideological environments because they tend to project a binary view of faux-reality.

If Premier David Eby wishes to emulate and measure up to the old Saskatchewan NDP standard of good government he may wish to study and learn from its history.

Daniel Kyba Victoria