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Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded February 12th and 20th, 2022
The Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club discovered last week the cost the province’s Community Safety Unit sees fitting for it to pay for the crime of providing British Columbians with medicines they cannot find elsewhere. Following raids led by the CSU in 2019 and 2020, the Buyers Club now faces fines approaching $6.5 million. It’s a price too far they say.
Ted Smith is a long-time justice activist and co-founder of the Victoria Cannabis Buyer’s Club, which for more than twenty-five years has provided cannabis-based products to people with terminal cancer and other incurable medical conditions. He says, though they were waiting for the CSU shoe to drop, the Club was still unprepared for the ridiculous amount announced. Nor were they ready for what followed: GoFundMe® disallowing their legal defense fund, and now webhost, Go-Daddy going and removing the club’s website – reportedly at the request of the CSU.
Ted Smith in the first half.
And; there’s a crisis in Canada. It’s not the one you’ve likely been watching on the news nightly, but a greater crisis of confidence in the institutional foundations not only in this country, but across the western world. From the French Gilets Jaunes and Spain’s Indignados, to the January 6th insurrectionists and Ottawa Freedom Convoyistas, there is an unmistakable whiff of tiki torch in the air. And, perhaps it’s the promise of pitchforks to come that has Neoliberal, globalized leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sánchez, and Justin Trudeau stabbing at the panic button? In Trudeau’s case, the Canadian prime minister’s minority government Februrary 14th declared a “public order emergency” and in an unprecedented step enacted the federal “Emergencies Act”. This in response to a “fringe” group of truckers blocking streets in the nation’s capital.
Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, journalist and activist, and former front-runner for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada. He calls the Trudeau government move “draconian & anti-democratic legislations” that he says “should not even exist“.
Dimitri Lascaris on the Liberal government’s St. Valentine’s Day massacre of Canadians’ civil rights, and the necessity to support dissent, even when you don’t agree with the dissenters in the second half.
But first, Ted Smith and the perils of practicing compassionate care for the sick and dying in Canada’s “legal marijuana” environment.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio and serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/