As we hurtle, hearts and heads, into the year 2016, it is important that we look back at 2015 and analyze the effects it has had on us.  We also need to look at what it portends for the new year. Only then can we understand what policies are needed in the future. In my effort to give perspective to us as to what has happened in the City of Victoria over the past year, I offer you a recap from my blog of Lisa Helps’ ruinous reign in 2015 in pics and toons. In doing so, I specifically focus on the effects of her handling of pot shops and the tent city.

There are four stories that have dominated my thinking in 2015. I will present those stories over this blog posting and the next three postings. Those stories are:

1.  How Lisa Helps and her policies are transforming Victoria for the worse

2. How Stew Young and his policies have encouraged crime in Langford

3. How the courts are releasing seasoned and dangerous criminals on bail and/or conditions and leaving citizens exposed to their violence

4. How the Times Colonist is a “feel good” newspaper more interested in editorializing stories than it is in journalism, hard reporting or the truth

On cannot look at 2015 in Victoria without thinking of the blue bridge,

but it is not reasonable to blame Lisa Helps entirely for this debacle. So this review will not address that growing budget and ever expanding timeline. Instead, it will focus first on the pot shops which Lisa Helps has encouraged. It will address the armed robberies and home invasions which have occurred since Lisa Helps turned a blind eye to them. It will also look at the negative consequences they are having and will continue to have on tourism, on crime, and on our youth. Then, it will deal with the tent city which I lay at the feet of Mayor Helps because of her promotion of the helplessness of the city to deal with it

Victoria’s pot shops are a gift from Lisa Helps’ policy of blackmailing city council, of blackmailing the provincial government and of nullifying your opinions

Pot shops do not belong where our youth see them. We hide cigarettes behind curtains. We don’t allow signs on the outside of stores advertising them. When it comes to pot shops though, it seems there are no rules. It is the Wild West for pot now in Victoria.

If you want to talk about crime, look at three armed robberies and two armed home invasions in the last several months.

Do you want to know what Lisa Helps said about these crimes? She said, “People don’t rob places because they’re bad, people rob places because they’re desperate.“

Is she joking? I guess career criminals don’t exist? Does she think biker gangs are populated by nice people who are desperate? What does that say about her ability to regulate pot shops? Lisa Helps needs to get get a grasp on reality.

In the meantime, these pot shops run a prescription scam. They hook you up with a doctor over a Skype connection. This is a doctor who never so much as touches you or even takes your temperature. He simply writes you a prescription based solely on what you tell him/her. If that seems like quackery to you, you are not alone.

Lisa Helps tells us these pot shops are not licensed to sell pot, but that four of them are licensed to give medical advice and sell drug paraphernalia. Hmmm.

That makes me curious. Why would shops that sell drug paraphernalia need a licence to dispense medical advice unless that license was given in anticipation of them selling pot?

Marijuana dispensaries, medical or otherwise, are ILLEGAL under Canada’s federal laws. Thus the motorcycle gangs who supply our pot shops and the criminals who run them love the mayor’s policies. They use those policies to protect themselves as they reap the profits of crime based on the “silent invitation” of Lisa Helps to come to Victoria and get rich.

In my opinion you are being blackmailed by “the stall”. If I do nothing for long enough, the people will have no choice but to go along with me. It’s a

tactic aimed at controlling you through calamity because Ms. Helps lacks a compelling argument to put forth in any meaningful debate before you or city council. So she silences your voice through her oppressive tactic.

Among other organizations, what about the Downtown Victoria Business Association, the Victoria Police Department, and Tourism Victoria? Aren’t these the very organizations whose input is more important than Mayor Helps’ personal agenda?

They represent the “Face of Victoria”. They have been left entirely out of the process. Lisa Helps is encouraging pot shops by her refusal to follow federal laws and by her willing failure to do anything about them. This is not representative of a desire to follow the needs of the people. It is representative of a desire to impose her will above all else.

Right now, the City of Victoria is undergoing an almost unprecedented tourism boom. That boom is a product of the hard work of those organizations in the past, along with previous City of Victoria government administrations, as well as the current devaluation of the CDN vs the USD.

Lisa Helps is busy undoing the work of those organizations and those who preceded her. When the Canadian dollar turns, as it inevitably will at some point, Victoria may find itself, above all else, as a “DOPE DESTINATION” and lose its current international cache.

There is a pot shop solution here

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Tent City is another gift from Lisa Helps. It comes from her public promotion of it. And it demonstrates her policy of blackmailing city council, of blackmailing the provincial government and of nullifying your opinions

How did we end up with a tent city at the courthouse park?

• Do you think Lisa Helps going to news media and announcing that she was legally powerless to do anything about the campers might have had anything to do with it?

• Do you think announcing to all that the city was looking for housing for the tenters might have brought even more people to the park?

• Who is responsible for the homeless tenters who are now flocking here from other cities?

• Do you really think that Mayor Helps did not know exactly what she was doing?

What about our kids?

The tent city residents are now to be housed in a temporary “indoor tent city” across the street from a middle school.

Once again, as with the pot stores, it is our children who are to suffer from Lisa Helps’ thoughtless policies and bullying of taxpayers.

What does Lisa Helps’ handling of pot stores and tent city portent for the oil spill in the Gorge Waterway and dealing with the derelict boats there?  Are you worried yet? I am.

Illustrative of my concerns, I offer you the following letter. It was shared on Twitter by Ms. Shellie Gudgeon, former Victoria City Councillor, 2011 – 2014

Lisa Helps is running Victoria as though she is the queen. She is the elected mayor who is supposed to serve the people. Instead, she uses stall tactics to bully the electorate into submission in order to achieve her objectives.

Those are my opinions

What are yours?