Insite v. Tony

For the past couple of days our Health Minister, Tony Clement, has been travelling around the planet shooting off at the mouth about Vancouver's supervised safe-injection site, the first in North America, InSite.

A hefty amount of research has been done on safe-injection sites and it has been overwhelmingly been deemed a vital step in the right direction for harm reduction plans. In the face of recommendations from such respected groups as the World Health Organization, Canada's Conservative government has taken it upon themselves to disassemble the great strides that have been made in Vancouver. From Wikipedia:

"The Canadian Insite Supervised Injection Site commenced operation in in 2003. As well as public order and improving health, the major difference between the supervised injecting centres and the unsupervised European model is the more clinical nature of the service."

But what is the worst and most ridiculous thing about the Conservatives' stance? Yesterday, at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, Tony had this to say about the WHO's strong endorsement of InSite, "it's not my job to kowtow to orthodoxy."

Tony's Conservatives are now trying to say that a relatively recent, innovative program that has been embraced by only a handful of countries in the world and rejected by large powers such as the United States is orthodox. The Conservatives are trying to paint themselves as the progressive bunch who are going against the grain by attacking an established method. Safe-injection sites are hardly traditional! How dare the Conservatives try to even suggest otherwise? Worse still, now a whole lot of idiots are going buy the horse shit our Ministre de la Santé is serving us. Cheers!