'The Poppy Problem'
And how not to deal with it. Report and photos from Afghanistan.
Harvesting opium poppies in Afghanistan, April 2007. Photo: Safai.
Gallery: Afghanistan's 'Poppy Problem' »
Over the next few weeks, Afghan farmers will be planting poppies, a crop long cultivated here, but much maligned of late. They'll also be sowing seeds of frustration among those trying to rein in an illegal drug industry spun out of control.
Nowhere is this more true than Helmand province, the world's largest opium producer and the subject of the accompanying photo essay. Last year, Helmand grew more than half of Afghanistan's record harvest, which supplied a whopping 93 per cent of the world's opium, according to the UN Office On Drugs and Crime.
Safai, a photojournalist with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), has documented one cycle in the losing battle fought by counter-narcotics officers in Helmand. Men flock from as far away as Pakistan to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, to take part in the harvest. There, they negotiate wages with landowners and buy tools of the trade -- instruments for scraping poppy bulbs and collecting the opium paste that oozes out.
A token amount of Afghanistan's harvest is confiscated (no high level trafficker has yet been caught) and a fraction stays in the country to supply a relatively small but growing number of addicts.
The rest feeds heroin habits around the world, destroying millions of lives and enriching others with drug money.
Much debate, few answers
Next year's harvest will mark yet another season of frantic debate about how to address "the poppy problem." Proposals range from licensing the crop to produce medical painkillers to eradicating it through aerial spraying. While such solutions often play well in the West, they tend to lose coherency when faced with obstacles on the ground -- successfully enforcing a licensing system in such a lawless country is a dubious proposition at best; public opposition and Afghanistan's vast, rugged terrain make any large scale spraying program likely to fail.
What is clear is that the current piecemeal eradication approach -- plowing under a field here, leaving one standing there -- is not working. And there is growing evidence that it's driving disgruntled farmers into the arms of the Taliban. What to do?
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, has been studying historical approaches to dealing with poppy cultivation -- from China, to the golden triangle, to Turkey's successful transition to licensed production. She has some advice for those attempting to eradicate poppies in Afghanistan: Don't.
Stability first
In a recent article in the Washington Post Felbab-Brown pointed out that "during major insurgencies or civil wars, no counter-narcotics policy has ever succeeded in eliminating cultivation."
The Thai government abandoned attempts at forced eradication while fighting insurgents in the 1960s. It eventually succeeded in eliminating cultivation, but only after defeating the insurgents and then implementing 15 years of programs to provide farmers with alternative livelihoods.
Turkey's medical licensing program depended heavily on U.S. support and government control over its territory -- factors clearly lacking in Afghanistan.
China took a far more aggressive approach to eradication in the 1950s, executing traffickers and imprisoning millions of addicts. But Mao Zedong only implemented such harsh policies after he gained control over the countryside. Before that he collaborated with drug lords.
Rather than sinking resources into eradication programs, Felbab-Brown urged NATO to focus on creating security. "Only after stability is achieved do counter-narcotics policies have a chance to reduce cultivation, and then they should follow the Thailand model, rather than the China model."
Western hysteria, Afghan complacency
While western officials wring their hands over the widespread cultivation of opium poppies, attitudes in the Afghan countryside are significantly different. Last month, IWPR journalist Matiullah Minapal reported that traffickers in Helmand were distributing some of their profit to the poor during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. In accordance with a tenet known as "zakat," Muslims are obliged to give one-fortieth of their yearly income to charity. And drug dealers are not excluded, at least in Helmand.
"Opium trading is legal, but its consumption is not," one religious leader told IWPR. "Anything that is legitimate and can be traded for a profit is subject to zakat."
Impoverished residents of districts in Helmand where aid workers are afraid to go told IWPR they were grateful to receive the food and clothing distributed by drug traffickers.
"May God bless them," said one.
"We would have a very miserable life had they not helped us. We will always support them," said another.
With sentiments like those, the possibility of convincing Afghans to support eradication seems remote indeed, especially while they are caught in the middle of a conflict that is keeping them mired in poverty.
Related Tyee stories:
- This Afghan Life
The everyday life of an Afghan woman, in pictures. - Afghanistan's Coalition of the Killing
Group wants to topple Karzai, but has bloody hands. A Tyee special report from Kabul. - How the West Destroyed Afghanistan
History got us into this mess. Can it get us out?
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dangrice.com
4 years ago
Senlis Plan
The Senlis council has made a recommendation to purchase poppy's as part of rebuilding efforts. The Green Party of Canada has adopted this as part of its foreign policy pan in resolving conflicts in Afghanistan.
IAMC
4 years ago
90000 children
Yes the poppies are a problem.
There is good news about Afghanistan, that Canadians can feel good about.
Close to 90,000 children who would have died before age 5 in Afghanistan during Taliban rule will stay alive, this year, because of advances in medical care in the country.
Under 5 mortality has declined from an estimated 257 deaths per 1000 live births, to about 191 per 1000 in 2006 as reported by the UN and John Hopkins University.
The UN and lead agency Save the Children hailed the advances in health care in Afghanistan.
I realize that saving human lives is not always a priority for many visitors to this site.
In fact many of you would like us all to disappear. Better for the planet and all.
But there is room for all of us.
Imagine there is no death?
It's easy if you try.
Imagine there's no doom.
It's easy if you try.
Frank
4 years ago
John Lennon again?
Imagine there is no poverty,
Its easy if you're not poor.
Imagine there are no diseases,
Its easy if you're not sick.
Imagine there are no endangered species,
Its easy if you don't give a rat's ass.
Imagine there is no third world,
Its easy if you live in ignorance.
Imagine there is no environmental degradation,
Its easy if you try.
Pretty much sums up right-wing thinking... thanks Ron
Canis Latrans
4 years ago
Saving Lives...
Well, for sure saving lives isn't what the US Empire cause , which Canada is part of serving, is about in Afghanistan. Rather, it's about killing great numbers of those folks, who were US Allies (Taliban) against the former Soviet Union, and securing for Empire Amerika, control over the entire Middle East, particularly, in this instance, that (Afghanistan) part of it which is slated for a pipeline corridor from the northern oil rich 'stans (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan) through Pakistan to US bound tankers in the Arabian Sea. (Which plan is at the heart of the growing conflict with and threat perceived by current Russia, and yes, China, who see that as part of their "influence patch".)
See:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/oil.html
It's certainly not about educating or "saving" the lives of Afghanistan children or the liberation of their women. That is but about a ploy/hoodwink attempt to "win hearts and minds", there and here, for "control" purposes, confined largely to the City of Kandahar over there, which is all the US Flunky Alliance with Amerika actually really controls. It is but one of the two parallel strategies for Empire Conquest, the other of which is killing and maiming the Afghanis, and interfering in their lives, which it is for them to live and resolve.
Get off your US Empire Loyalist pot IAMC, and wipe the butt you have bent over and bared for Amerika. We have a huge percentage of Canadian children living in poverty and malnutrition, along with their mothers desperately in need of "liberation" in this country, if you were really serious. And you were not just spouting the US propaganda line of your lover, currently digging his grave in the deserts of the Middle East, along with now, significant numbers of Canadian forces also doing their foreign master's bidding. (Before which it was the British Empire their predecessors largely served.)
Whereas the "serious" left here actually is about saving lives, Afghani and Canadian, by calling for an end to Amerika's imperialist intrusion into Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East, and Canadian complicity in the crime. That's how one concerned with actually "saving lives" and not just spouting Amerika's propaganda would pose it.
And insofar as concern with the poverty of children and women goes, we have our own growing patch of issues in that regard to deal with and resolve, right here in this very country-, without presuming some self-righteous "White man's burden" mission to "civilize the savages" of someone else's country and region.
Folks who live in sardine tins shouldn't throw can openers, without a "clue".
Now take that poppy and chase the dragon with it. :-)
IAMC
4 years ago
The liberal mind
Defective obviously.
We do not have a HUGE % of Canadian children living in poverty.
And Amerika is spelled America.
I guess I don't know what country you are talking about Canis.
"White mans burden" is a racist term, that none of us deserve to be afflicted with.
Maybe you, but not me.
The USA is a vehicle for good, not bad.
Baseball, Jazz, Laptop, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, democracy, Rock and Roll, Microsoft?
What part of this marvelous country do you hate?
Idaho?
Texas?
Surely not New Hampshire or Berkeley.
You are very transparent Canis.
jimtan
4 years ago
Peace Brings stability
Jared’s article does not advance our understanding of Afghanistan. Can Southern Afghanistan be “secured’ when the political and military players are not united? Or, when Pakistan is about to be destabilized?
Karzai is a westernized Afghan. But, the warlords posing as parliamentarians have a different vision for their country. And, the tribal Pashtun merely wants to be left alone.
Meanwhile, the 40,000 American soldiers have their own agenda while various NATO contingents operate under different rules and strategies.
Time has run out. In 2005, the strategy (to hold the Taliban until Afghan security forces were ready) might have worked if there was enough troops. In 2007, the strategy is obsolete and unworkable.
The new factor was the expansion of the jihad to Pakistan, an unstable country.
Let’s be realistic. Western military force is now useless, unless western countries are prepared to pour 200,000 troops to secure Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan. Nothing less will do.
Instead, let’s make peace in Southern Afghanistan. Peace is the only means of bringing stability and economic relief. And, stability is the best defense against extremists.
ME2
4 years ago
More US hypocrisy
The article is about growing poppies and a lifestyle centuries old. As I understand it, by far the bulk of Afghani poppy sap has always been shipped to Pakistan where the primary products have been Codeine and its kin, and NOT Heroin.
Pakistan has long been the primary world supplier of medicinal Codeine, and among the major consumers have been Third World countries, who have depended upon Codeine a a cheap analgesic.
Thanks to the US and its hired poppy-field burners, the world is now short of Codeine, and the suffering poor in Third-World countries do without. Similarly, the aid promised to burnt-out Afghani poppy farmers has not materialised.
No country, even under the most brutal of regimes, has ever been successful with the prohibition of drugs. The evidence for this is plentiful, but the US "War Against Drugs" is based upon ideology - not logic - and who gets hurt or why in its prosecution then becomes immaterial.
G West
4 years ago
Well Ron, what would you consider huge?
Titled “Oh Canada! Too Many Children in Poverty For Too Long”, the 2006 National Report Card on Child & Family Poverty shows that 1,196,000 children – almost 1 in every 6 children – live in poverty in Canada. In First Nations communities the child poverty rate is higher: 1 in every 4 children.
Source: 2006 National Report Card on Child & Family Poverty
Jeffrey J.
4 years ago
Predictable Consequences
US foreign policy fails again. Let's recap: in 2001 the sovereign Afghanistan government agree to hand over Osama bin Laden to a world court IF evidence is presented establishing bin Laden's guilt. The US dismisses the normal protocol and bombs the country back to the stone age and builds massive military installations around the strategic region. Now, the country is a disaster and cultivation of narcotics has become a cash crop. Very sad. Great article!
realisticman
4 years ago
Canada muscles in
The domestic market for codeine, morphine and oxycodone, which is derived from thebaine, is in excess of $1.6bn (€1.1bn) annually; however, the entire supply is currently imported.
"The overall theme of this work is to modify plants to make them more useful as crops and chemical factories," Facchini said.
"Canada is well-positioned to support the development of new crops cultivated for the production of valuable bioproducts."
Facchini received a CAD$650,000 (€480,000) Strategic Project Grant from Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) for the purpose.
TTTT
4 years ago
imagine if there's no religion
now that I could support.
www.leap.cc
the only sensible thing.
realisticman
4 years ago
Poverty Industry Hit Hard by Good News
Layoffs likely in the massive Poverty Industry!
Margaret Wente, Globe & Mail
This is bad news for the poverty industry, which depends on single mothers and their children to sell the public on its anti-poverty crusades. It's tough to make your case when your pool of sympathetic victims is drying up. It's even tougher when the economy and employment rates are booming. But the worst news of all (for poverty activists) is that the boom times are not the main reason why welfare rolls are shrinking. The main reason is dramatic social policy reforms.
This is the conclusion reached by John Richards, a respected public policy analyst at Simon Fraser University. His new study for the C. D. Howe Institute, called Reducing Poverty, finds that the best remedy for poverty is - guess what? - a job.
The most dramatic changes were to single-mother families. Their poverty rate fell from 56 per cent to 33 per cent. In 1996, single mothers made a median income from work of only $8,600 (after tax). By 2005, that figure had nearly tripled, to $22,200 (all rates in 2005 dollars). In other words, more single mothers were employed, and their earnings had gone up.
Canada's welfare reform happened piecemeal and by stealth. Although nobody really noticed, we've headed down the same path as the United States and Britain. In all three nations, both welfare and poverty rates have markedly declined.
The difference is that, in the U.S. and Britain, there's been a certain convergence among liberals and conservatives about what works. Not in Canada. You can be excused if you are under the impression nothing's changed. "It's still the rhetoric that poverty is as serious, or more so, than ever," says Mr. Richards. Especially if you listen to the poverty industry.
One has to wonder if those in the Poverty Industry care more about themselves than they do about those they are meant to help.
Canis Latrans
4 years ago
Margaret Wente...!!!
IAMC after a sex change. :-)
G West
4 years ago
I dunno R/man
The people in the poverty industry have cabinet offices in the Pee Wee Government - you tell me.
You and Margaret Wente think that having one-third of the single parents in this country living in poverty is a GOOD result?
And an after tax income level of 22,000 isn't poverty - whether than woman is working or not. C'mon...what are you smoking?
Nothing has changed and even if that single mother can find decent affordable child care she's still functionally poor: Margaret Wente notwithstanding.
I also notice you only mentioned Mr Richards' association with the CD Howe Institute - he's also a featured author at that other fountain of truth the Fraser Institute.
Perhaps Professor Richards, Ms Wente and you should talk to Dalton McGuinty - he apparently still thinks that poverty is a big problem in Canada's largest province. I reckon he'll be pleased to know everything's fine.
realisticman
4 years ago
I can understand
when you say I dunno. In fact I'm sure that you don't. Margaret Wente is just reporting on the the C.D. Howe study, why slag her? John Richards also works at that other bastion of conservative thinking SFU, on education and other issues in Bangladesh. What could they know, after exhaustive study, that you could have told them for nothing?
I presume you read the C.D. Howe Institute Commentary.
These damn facts always get in the way of damned good socialist negative ideology.
Help the Poor! Get the Socialists out of the Way!
G West
4 years ago
Look at what else I wrote
This man is crowing because the median income of single mothers has reached a level of $22,000. Marvelous!
It's a meaningless statistic without context.
If you stopped and read you'd realize that. Perhaps we could now debate the positive effect of Pee Wee Rambo's latest tax cuts toward ameilorating poverty.
Could you please let us know how much more money a lower income family will have in their pockets as a result of the 1% reduction in the GST?
Don't bother, I'll tell you - it'll amount to about the cost of a meal for a family of four at McDonald's once a month.
If you weren't so blinded by your ideology and looking for opportunities to call progressive people nasty names you might actually begin to understand how poor people and working people actually LIVE in this city...because you clearly don't know.
Why don’t you look me up and you can join me at the soup kitchen where I cook for the people (very many of them families) you think are doing so well.
I can assure you that in the years I've been volunteering there the number of clients has never decreased from one year - or one month - to the next.
Now, that really IS a growth industry.
It has no impact at all on how folks from Shaughnessy and South West Marine Drive live. They, for their parts, seem to be more interested in blowing each other away these days.
Frank
4 years ago
Poverty industry
Hey how about that, I woke up this morning and found out nobody is poor in Canada anymore. It all went away.
I also found out that people who get paid to write reports and articles call volunteers the "poverty industry".
Its good to be back in "1984", are we at war with Eurasia or Eastasia?
Frank
4 years ago
GWest
The joke is apparently on you G, you're volunteering to help people that CD Howe has said don't exist. I bet you're pretty embarrassed eh?
G West
4 years ago
But Frank...
What puzzles me is where the soup is actually going. I’m gonna have to let everyone know it’s just an illusion.
Aliens I guess.
I think it would be Eastasia ... But I haven't read Orwell for a while. I do know that along with clients at soup kitchens there are always lineups at the lottery counters these days.
Lots of happy people.
I think maybe Orwell said something germane about that too.
Fogotwillingate
4 years ago
Bush's Heroin Industry Subsidy
I have read the UN reports. Heroin production was unknown in Afghanistan until Karzai took over. Until then, the country was an exporter of raw opium.
Why is this happening? Bush is trumpeting successful opium eradication. That is true everywhere in Afghanistan except Helmand District, where Canadian troops are based. Since it took power in the country, and to the present, Taliban has taken a 15% cut of the drug trade. As much as 90% of the world's opium supply comes from Helmand. There are 5,000,000 heroin addicts in Pakistan and Iran (its speaker of parliament is an addict).
Why has the mainstream media refused to report Canada's worthless efforts in Helmand? It has NEVER been Bush policy to eliminate the Taliban; he has always wanted a negotiated solution, which would subject Afghanistan politics to pseudo democracy. Given that Harper only commenced the intervention in context of Bush proffers to end restrictions on importation of Canadian (read: Alberta) beef, Harper sacrifices Canadian troops in a no-win grind, in order to sustain his political base. Bush is relying on Afghan heroin prosperity, to create conditions for a faith based regime in the country, which would include Taliban, and Harper is happy to play his player piano.
Frank
4 years ago
The soup
I think I've figured it out G, all those people were raptured. They were taken up to heaven years ago.
SFU, CD Howe and the Globe will probably tell us tomorrow that its only their ghostly imprints that still show up and pretend to consume the soup, they're actually dumping it in the sink.
Frank
4 years ago
Fogotwillingate
Actually Harper wasn't in power when Canada "intervened". But being as the Libs and Cons are the same I guess its not worth splitting hairs.
rangergord
4 years ago
legalize it
Such beautiful flowers. As successful supervised injection sites show, harms from heroin can be greatly reduced. Although heroin is extremely addictive and hard to kick, the worst effects are the prohibition induced prices that drive addicts to prostitution and theft, the dirty needles, and the homelessness and malnutrition spawned by financial ruin among other things. By legalizing all the derivatives of the poppy we could give fair compensation to poppy farmers, reduce the enormous revenues flowing to so called "terrorist" groups and gangsters on our streets and provide heroin to addicts at fair affordable prices. The downtown east side could be transformed and drug lords in afganistan would be challenged. Eventually heroin addiction rates would level off and begin to decline as street pushers are put out of business.
Frank
4 years ago
Big bucks
Hey G, do you make big bucks volunteering down at the soup kitchen? Or does Wente get paid more writing that you're a fat cat and she's mad as hell and not going to take it any more?
I wonder how many ladles of soup Richards has found time to dispense while being paid to prove there is no poverty?
Seems to me that the "Let's hate poor people" industry gets paid pretty darn well and gets oodles of perks to boot. And they never even have to answer to the folks they claim don't exist. Sounds like a pretty sweet gig.
anarcho
4 years ago
Those rich single moms!
Yeah $22,000 is a lotta money when you are shelling out $1000 a month for rent!
Frank
4 years ago
Afghan land
Is it just me or should Richards get the Order of Canada for wiping out poverty? In fact, I think we should send him to Afghanistan where he can write a paper proving there is no poverty there either.
$20 says CD Howe and Margaret Wente think the Afghans just look poor when the cameras are rolling but that they all live in great houses with fancy cars and more food than they can eat.
Richards is the man who can finally prove this.
realisticman
4 years ago
Imagine That!
Imagine a government keeping it's promises. Harper is different.
Begin with 1990 when the Mulroney Conservatives brought the tax in. The Liberals, facing a huge Conservative majority in the House, tried to use their majority in the unelected Senate to block the tax. After Mulroney appointed more senators to get the measure passed, the Liberals ran a noisy and unsuccessful filibuster, which would have diminished the dignity of the Senate if it ever had any.
Move on to 1993, when Jean Chrétien brings the Liberals back into power on a promise to abolish the GST.
Move on to the next 13 years, in which successive Liberal governments do not abolish the GST.
Now here we are, with the Conservatives, not the Liberals, cutting, if not abolishing, the GST, and the Liberals, not the Conservatives, complaining about it.
Frank
4 years ago
Source of quote unknown
But I'm going to guess and say the writer is under the delusion that the Liberals aren't a right-wing party.
realisticman
4 years ago
Ick
Try and recommend something else Garth. All that sugar! Have you ever tried Canada Goose pie? Lot's of 'em around. Are we allowed to eat them?
G West
4 years ago
Funny stuff
I wasn't "recommending" anything - you are right that the Liberals and the GST have had a rocky history though. Nevertheless, one thing no one can blame them for (right-wingers though they undoubtedly are) is instituting the thing in the first place.
Along with accepting envelopes full of thousand dollar bills and a number of other activities - including the switch of Air Canada to Airbus under highly questionable circumstances - the GST is a Mulroney legacy.
Why the Liberals and the MSM aren't screaming blue murder about the fact the wrong guy is awaiting deportation in the Toronto remand centre ought to be the real question of the day. I didn't think anything could make me feel sympathy for Karlheinz Schreiber but that is no longer the case. Apparently, Mila was so overwrought at the thought of Brian actually having to be accountable for his sleazy, self-important perjury-riddled behavior that she threatened suicide.
I wonder when Andrew Coyne will be updating his conclusions from this column:
http://andrewcoyne.com/2005/04/talking-of-envelopes-full-of-cash.php
Pee Wee isn’t just blotting his copybook in his nominally hateful racist way, he’s also taking on the responsibility for the way the Mulroney conservatives behaved for a decade in power and afterward and pretending it’s ‘nothing’.
You can tell a lot by the folks some people pick as friends and mentors.
realisticman
4 years ago
et Tu?
Still hobnobbing with Peter C.? Conrad really dressed him down the other day, eh? So did Bob Fulford.
yacub
4 years ago
value-added heroin factories in afghanistan
according to the former british ambassador to uzbekistan, craig murray, afghanistan now has factories producing heroin...http://tinyurl.com/2d2rk6
"It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the
chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The
tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads,
improved by American aid, with Nato troops. How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect....The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum [Head of the Afghan armed forces] to President Karimov [Uzbekistan]."
G West
4 years ago
What are you talking about?
This has nothing to do with Peter C Newman - it has to do with a compromised former Prime Minister and a continuing Fifth Estate investigation aired on the CBC last Wednesday and again on Friday.
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/unauthorizedchapter/schreiber.html
Where have you been? Why do you think Pee Wee was making all the funny compromised noises about not opening old wounds the other day?
It has to do with lies and half-truths and attempting to subborn perjury; misrepresentations about the role and actions of the RCMP and it has to do with blatant payola and kickbacks. It has to do with the man who is currently Prime Minister of this country because he appears to be preapared to just sweep it all under the carpet. Something even Paul Martin didn't do...
For someone who seems well-informed you aren't very up to date. Nothing to do with Newman at all...this is all Brian - and, given his recent little tell-all (well not quite all) book, it was very interesting.
G West
4 years ago
sorry, that should be:
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/unauthorizedchapter/schreiber.html
lynn
4 years ago
Soupe du jour: Poverty
Dear Ms. Wente,
Hope you read this letter-to-the-editor from The Toronto Star, October 27.
To the editor:
Prof. John Richards is wrong to criticize columnist Carol Goar with his assertion that poverty rates in Canada are substantially lower today than in the 1980s. Everyone – from TD Economics and Statistics Canada to the University of Toronto's Centre for Urban and Community Studies and the United Way of Greater Toronto – has documented deep and persistent poverty in Toronto and across Canada.
Canada doesn't have a widely accepted, reliable measure of poverty – a critical omission that Miloon Kothari, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, noted with concern during his recent visit to Canada. If our national government can't be bothered to develop a solid statistical measure, how can we set realistic targets and measure our progress in implementing poverty-reduction campaigns?
Richards bases his claim that poverty is way down on Statistics Canada's low income cut-off (LICO), a commonly used poverty indicator. StatsCan reports that the percentage of Canadians living below the LICO before tax was an average of 16.54 per cent each year during the 1980s. For each year from 2000 to 2005, the rate had barely budged at 15.9 per cent. Each year during the 1980s, an average of 3,061,700 people were living in poverty. From 2000 to 2005, that number grew to 3,535,333 annually.
The conclusion: If you count real people, the number of Canadians living in poverty has grown by almost half a million from the 1980s – a whopping increase of 16 per cent. The poverty rate has only decreased slightly.
Richards alleges that drastic federal and provincial cuts to income-assistance programs in the 1990s were a kind of tough love that forced lower-income Canadians into the market economy. There's no question that there are fewer people today able to access employment insurance and other income assistance, but the facts clearly show that the poor haven't magically become richer as a result.
Michael Shapcott, Senior Fellow,
The Wellesley Institute, Toronto
G West
4 years ago
Thank you Lynn
And thanks to Michael Shapcott too.
Frank
4 years ago
Lynn
Oh darn and all day here I thought poverty was a thing of the past.
Can we send Richards to Afghanistan anyway? I'm pretty sure he will tell us that poppies aren't being grown anymore due to NATO "tough love" policies :-)
Hey, this just in, Margaret Wente has declared Jesus to be the leader of the "poverty industry"! I knew it!
G West
4 years ago
As for Robert Fulford
At least he has the wit to deliver a sound verdict on Mulroney's book (and a pretty fair one on Chretien's too).
You'd have thought (as the CBC documentary illustrates) that in 1121 pages Mulroney might have mentioned (just once) the cancer on his prime ministership though, wouldn't you?
I'd have gone a little further in forming a verdict than Fulford did when he wrote:
That observation could have extended to his record as a political leader, prime minister and business associate as well.
I especially liked the voluntary declaration to Revenue Canada for money he never got, in cash, from a man he didn't know.
Sort of like the little man who wasn't there.
But that's just me.
lynn
4 years ago
To Afghanistan with (tough) love
Frank, wonderful idea....
Do you think Margaret Wente will fit inside John Richard's suitcase? ;-)
Sort of like the little man who wasn't there
LOL, G West....who knew Mulroney was so deep into film noir?
realisticman
4 years ago
Says it should help
"I've been to some of these cities where Games have taken place, and there has been a lot of money generated. You have to see the result in terms of looking ahead many years." He said Vancouver should "have a vision that says, 'Yes, we'll not only become a city known around the world, but we're going to improve the standing of our citizens.'"
Good to hear that money will be made here and that the Olympics are a nice little earner. I had a feeling that some people doubted this. Should be good for everyone, as long as we all get involved.
Frank
4 years ago
Realisticman
You believe Olympics are big money earners?
G West
4 years ago
Nice to know you're got it all scoped out R/man
It's definitely in the way you count the items on the balance sheet all right. I guess Vanoc could take lessons from the Convention centre accountant and then everything will turn out nicely and on budget. Would they consult Ken Dobell on that process?
By the way, how's that Richmond skating oval coming? Budget-wise.
realisticman
4 years ago
Let's hope so Frank
As Koltari said in last week's Am Johal's Tyee piece, "It's glaringly apparent in Vancouver that for quite some time... successive governments have failed to create the housing that is necessary. You have a legacy of misguided government policy that has led to this massive crisis in housing and homelessness."
Since, as he says, successive governments have ignored the problem, perhaps now it will change, with all that money coming in.
realisticman
4 years ago
Richmond's baby
Richmond's picking up tab for Oval, West, so, unless you live there don't worry.
G West
4 years ago
Don't hold your breath
The current gang is much too enamored of smoke and mirrors, fêtes and circuses. All the money is going into the pockets of Campbell's friends R/Man - you just haven't been paying attention. Campbell and Jean Drapeau would make a nice pair of bookends.
The housing was being created - just for the wrong people. Perhaps we can evict the drug lords from Shaughnessy and billet the homeless, handicapped and poverty stricken there.
It might lead to few less bullets zinging across Granville Street... But then, what's a few dead Merc drivers among friends.
I remember not so very long ago when all you needed to get into Canada as a landed immigrant was about 150 thousand dollars.. No Questions asked. I think a few of our own "poppy" problems may date back to those days, don't you?
I remember the ads in the Economist at the time. Maybe we'd have been better off with a few more refugees and a few less economic immigrants.
realisticman
4 years ago
sure
Throw the baby out with the bath water.
G West
4 years ago
Richmond Oval
That's very comforting - why am I not particularly sanguine about your assurances?
I know the budget was $178 Million but the design and location in unstable soils could be as big a headache as some details of the convention centre and look how deeply that budget sank in the mud. The facility is going to need a lot of extra foundation preparation and probably pre-loading to minimize settlement. I think that could end up costing the good burghers of Richmond a fair bit of extra cash. You may not care a whiff for them but I suspect in the end overages are going to have a wider impact whether you like it or not.
I haven't seen any progress reports - Campbell and friends like to keep bad news to themselves as long as possible. I was just wondering if you'd heard anything.
The Pain
4 years ago
clearing up one misconception..hopefully
ME2's comment fails to mention *THE* primary legal source of opioid compounds - Turkey.
The Brits started it all, opium was funneled into China to allow for trade with a region that wished nothing from our culture, and was fed poison and addiction and death.
The very same evil colonial philosophy ensures that illegal opium and heroin is always going to be a major Afghan crop, and many of the same US profiteers are the reason.
Canada as bum boy will flail away at a mission doomed from the get-go to abject failure. Pakistan - that wonderful ally of the US in the purported "war on terrorism" is a seething mass of instability and Islamic rage, fundamentalist angst, and hatred that any real effort to thwart terrorism must begin there, with, as a previous poster has mentioned, peacemaking..
Frank
4 years ago
Realisticman
Sorry, but I'm not one of those who think Olympics have created wealth in their wake.
I tend to put the Olympics on the same level as the PNE roller coaster as far as wealth creation goes. Sure, lots of people buy tickets and go for the ride. But does the city and country get richer? Are there plans to build roller coasters in Prince Rupert to build the economy? Well, no, because no one thinks a wealthier economy would be the result.
realisticman
4 years ago
Oval
As I understand it Richmond auctioned off land nearby for development and concerns that the Oval was going to cost too much were overwhelmingly alleviated when these auctions bought in much more than anticipated. The roof is going on it now. It's a great site and it's big. The challenges are formidable because of the site and the tolerances are necessarily minuscule but the team is good.
Frank; Koltari seems to think money will come based on his studies. I'm completely uninterested in the games but since they will come I support them, now. Hoping that my hometown and province will look good and we all benefit, including the less well off.
Frank
4 years ago
Hope springs eternal
Well, hope is not enough for me. I'd prefer to hear about how Turin, Salt Lake, Nagano and so on all experienced big economic gains.
murdock
4 years ago
try 500,000 troops
jimtan, you have the right idea for 'securing peace thru superior firepower', just not quite enough numbers.
Now I KNOW that NATO will never muster that sort of manpower for the situation in Afghanistan.
An interesting interview from The Real News, kind of puts a stamp on part of my view of this whole situation.
Listen to what Eric Margolis says near the end of the interview, then ask yourself,
"would we do any different in similar circumstances?"
Frank
4 years ago
Afghan land
The purposeful attack on school children by a Taleban suicide bomber yesterday is a disgusting act by an organization to whom words such as morals and humanity are as foreign as many of their fighters.
G West
4 years ago
You're not answering my question
Is it over budget or not?
The provincial government thinks it's fine for forest companies to sell off land originally given to them as TFLs to stay in business too.
I'd sooner see them go bankrupt, have the lond and the tress revert to the crown and husband the resource for the future.
Richmond's sale of adjacent lands to cover cost over-runs seems equally inane, but, that's what one has come to expect in this province.
One day not too long in the future there is going to a big bill to pay.
realisticman
4 years ago
As best as I can
I don't know if it's on budget or not. There was a plan to develop the lands to the west of No.3 road and this had nothing to do with any cost overruns. The extension of Landsdowne Road to the river and the creation of a waterfront promenade was to be done in conjunction with offering land for development. It sold well.
Frank
4 years ago
Realisticman
Have you ever thought of changing your handle to "Hooray-For-Everything-Man"? :-)
And yes, I stole that line from the Simpsons.
G West
4 years ago
Welll????
This, from you, doesn't exactly reflect that fact - either the additional sales were related to the project...or they weren't. I don't see the taxpayers being well-served - for the reason I advanced - by such a program of asset stripping. Just sounds like more Campbell economics..
I'm more and more convinced the Olympics, the Convention centre, the Canada Line and pretty much everything else this government has done is going to end up in the red. Let's see what the numbers actually are when the project's done.
realisticman
4 years ago
Take a look
A disused rail spur. A bunch of scrub land. Some old parking lots. Creating a river-front for the public. What's so bad?
G West
4 years ago
What's bad?
The lies, the cover-ups, the obfuscation.
Remember Jean Drapeau's 'baby'?
You know the one he said a man could never have - that one!
How many decades did it take to pay that off?
If Richmond is selling off assets to pay for its commitment to the Oval (and it is, as I suspect, significantly over budget) it really isn't any different than a forest company being permitted to liquidate tree farm licence assets for housing to keep a company solvent when it isn't employing anyone anymore anyway.
To pretend that these decisions and the costs that attend them don't have a broader and more corrosive effect on the society around is insane. Just like the poppy business in Afghanistan is evidence of the failure of the West to honour its bargain with the Afghan people.
Did you happen to hear Malalai Joya on The Current this morning? The idea that we're defending a democracy there is utter nonsense.
ov
4 years ago
Follow the Money
Remember when the West was in Vietnam how 90% of all heroin came from the Golden Triangle, and now that the West is in Afghanistan that 90% of the heroin comes from there. Coincidence? I think not. The Anglo-American governments have been the biggest drug pushers in the world ever since the the British forced opium on the Chinese. Since then cocaine and heroin have been the mainstays.
Without a constant infusion of narco dollars laundered through the stock market Western Civilization would have tanked a long time ago.
Wonder why this significant detail was omitted from the article.
As for the Canadian poverty industry I don't know what this has to do with the topic except perhaps as a red herring distraction.
ME2
4 years ago
Afghani heroin
Well, ov, I posted opinion above re opium, Pakistan and Codeine, based upon a documentary I heard on CBC Radio.
Then someone follows with a post about how the Taliban had wiped that trade out, and how the US has now set the scene for a massive, overt trade in Afghani heroin. The link offered appears to be credible.
It has been said that in war, the first casuality is the truth. I think this is also very true of all stories about drugs.
ov
4 years ago
ME2
Good post on the Pakistan and Codeine, which is something I didn't know. Your caption More US hypocrisy gets to the crux of the matter. And the usual neo-con trolls jump right in to obfuscate the issue.
ME2
4 years ago
ov
No, ov, I was not complaining about contrary opinion, but rather about the near impossibility of finding an impartial story concerning drugs and the drug trade. Perhaps because "morality" is involved every story shows the writer's predetermined "spin".
Following your last post, I thought I'd do a bit more research, and came up with this site dated 2001:
http://opioids.com/afghanistan/index.html
All of which suggests that:
1/ The Taliban had only just succeeded in stopping poppy production the year they were defeated.
2/ Afghanis HAD been producing heroin.
3/ One is forced to seriously question whether the bulk of the opium crop was sent to Pakistan for rendering into Codeine as my source had informed.
4/ This source could be as wrong as the others.
So, my apologies ov, I don't know what else to say, except that since the poppy issue appears to be central to understanding what's going on in Afghanistan, perhaps it is worthwhile to repost the unhighlied link Yacub offered above, since it is so bizarre and unsettling:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=469983&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source
ov
4 years ago
ME2
I wasn't complaining about contrary opinion so much as for the tendency for the dancing bears to come in waving the free market pompoms and in so doing provide entertaining distractions from the crux of the issue.
Thanks for reposting that link, I missed it the first time around. How can you have tankers of processing chemicals coming into the country without everybody being aware of what is going on. Just adds further confirmation to what I was saying about the biggest drug pushers being the states, and those that get caught are mainly outsiders providing unwanted competition.
Here in Vancouver there is a surge of articles on drug crime lords, and organized crime, and yet nary a mention of the customs agents at the ports where all the heroin enters the country. These guys on the street are small potatoes compared to the people that are paid to look the other way.
Its the same bunch of internationalists that profited during the Afghanistan Russian conflict which set up Russia to be later looted by the oligarchs worse than any country has ever been looted. Same crowd as behind the Chinese opium wars of long ago. That, more than anything else, probably has more to do with why you will never hear about this in the main stream media.
reality_check
4 years ago
Join the NDP > the 4 pillars drug strategy
http://www.endprohibition.ca/index.php
Of course, they will be a fringe group that wants irresponsible use and implementation of an anti-prohibition program, but the majority of NDPers support something along the line of the 4 pillars' approach as advocated by many eminent Canadians: prevention, treatment, harm reduction, enforcement. It is clear that there is the US lobby and the drug lobby that have a vested interest in keeping the unsuccessful prohibition of all drugs (and there might even be a drug lobby inside the NDP). As a teacher, however, I would recommend a slow transition, understanding that the previously mentioned groups will use all kinds of pressure, unethical means to prevent such actions. Of course, we will have to fight the religious right as well. Has the war on drugs worked? No! Will these people ever see the light?
I think it is crucial to have this program take about one generation (or 20 years) to be implemented, starting with strong and smart education programs in schools (at an early age) to brainwash softly the minds of the youth (sorry, but I prefer this to addiction) to prevent them from using any drugs. Of course, smart means using the best educators, advertisers, and marketers to convey the message and to engage youth into understanding the harm of drugs at all levels. Will we get 100% results. No! Perfection does not exist! Especially considering the levels of use, the infrastructure, the quantity of people benefiting from the prohibition.
This is the fight of the century. Ok! This is and the fight against global warming! :)
margot
4 years ago
yes, ov
The opium harvesters are from all over the region, with the best and most experienced receiving top wages, around $8.50 a day, depending on demand, with others earning much much less. ('99, UN report)
Farmers and farmer-groups need their expertise. And it is expertise.
Opium harvesters get great meals every day, supplied by the farmers. Even those who earn much less than the experts. Tell farmworkers in/from Surrey etc.
I can't find the UN report I got some of this from, but there's a good bit at:
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/alternative_development_studies_4.html
There's a much more detailed, interesting one that I can't find right now.
It's far more decent and serious business than being financial "advisors" or stockbrokers. Although no one gets to tool around in a Mercedes, families and farms get by.
It crazes me that the real money in opiates is so very far from the farm, and that this money does not go to basics of family and community. Rather, the reverse.
Meanwhile, the system as we here know it is hell on the lives of any but the richest coping with heroin proper, rather than terrible "substitutes" touted by extremely self-serving "professionals", hideous stuff like methadone and benzos.
I know and love and respect a pillar of her community who has used heroin since she was 12. for good reason.
And then there's Bill, Billie, and our other favourites, who could touch pain to touch us, and thrill us, long after in recordings, but who needed stuff to keep going and doing and living.
Guess I need to add that greed is a pain killer, and which does more harm.
The lower mainland and Vancouver Island could be home to zillions more poppies than pop up naturally (origin of pop?)but we are trying to get a minimum wage of $10 hr, not per day for experts.
margot
4 years ago
ov me2 yacub dostum
sure in 2001 the taliban shut down all opium sales, sales, not storage, and were paid about 45,000,000 by the US who didn't want them to do it and later invaded.
the one region still openly doing the poppies opium game was under Dostum's control. No question as far as I know.
And then remember December 01 january 02, the fall of Kunduz, look up Afghan Massacre (video) and about the horrendous Sheberghan situaion: http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2002-01-28.html
A war crime.
ME2
4 years ago
re Heroin
Thank you Margot for the informative post and the links (although I got too angry to finish the second).
Since you seemed to be informed about Heroin, I would like to ask your opinion re somethimg I've heard about that drug.
Some years back on a phone-in show, I heard a woman state that other than its addictive properties and the train of events that today this brings about, Heroin is basically harmless to the body. Many people, she said, can function normally while under its influence.
As it happens, I've known a very competent Coastal faller who was completely addicted, and who because of his high wages could afford (just barely) the drug for himself and his wife.
Is his story unusual?
margot
4 years ago
me2 heroin harmless?
Sounds like you are ready to read Bruce Alexander's book Peaceful Measures: Canada's way out of the war on drugs.
Also, the realy sad stories are people coerced onto methadone.
For now, check out Rat Park on wiki. Go to section 2, Rat Park experiments. Read it at least twice and get back to us.
ME2
4 years ago
Rat Park
Very interesting, Margot, and has the ring of a credible story. I've put Alexander's book on my to-read list, though I doubt it will alter my views much, since I'm no fan of "The war on drugs"
Do you know of any readily quotable facts re the number of people who are users, yet still function as normal, productive citizens?
I mentioned my own experience above, yet when I recount it to others I get the "What have YOU been smoking?" look.