Senate's smoke-free asylum

IN Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, later made into a hit film, the story of the oppression of inmates at an Oregon mental hospital provided a hilarious metaphor for the psychological evils of state control and institutional abuse. Under the authoritarian hand of Head Nurse Ratched, the characters are browbeaten into obedience and submission, subjected to shock treatments and lobotomized if necessary. In Canada, we have no need for fictional stories: Real life is often a not-so-funny metaphor for survival in a mental institution.

Consider smoking, a pleasure enjoyed by about seven million Canadians. At the moment, smokers are surrounded by dozens of Nurse Ratcheds, bossy politicians, activists and medical practitioners who are hounding anyone connected with the tobacco industry, as if individual choice and the economy are to be controlled by doctors who don't like the health effects of certain kinds of behaviour. In Toronto, debate is raging over a law that bans smoking in all bars and restaurants, mainly because the inmates are rebelling and refuse to obey. In Ottawa, the Senate is about to give third reading to a Draconian tobacco law that makes it illegal for tobacco companies to sponsor events and gives federal officials power to search and enter every convenience store in the country and seize products.

Among the Nurse Ratcheds lording it over Canadians who smoke we find Senator Colin Kenny, assigned the role of Liberal heavyweight on the Senate legal affairs committee that has just completed its review of Bill C-71, an act to regulate the manufacture, sale and promotion of tobacco products. In classic demagogic form, Mr. Kenny has been going after everybody opposed to Bill C-71 as if they were mental incompetents.

After representatives of Tennis Canada and others who receive tobacco sponsorships pressed for changes to the act, he called them all "surrogates" for the tobacco industry who are "effectively addicted to tobacco money." To the head of a sports organization, he asked: "Why are you here acting on behalf of the tobacco companies, making their case for products that will kill Canadians?"

Not long after these outbursts, Nurse Kenny proposed a hypocritical compromise--an amendment to the bill that would allow the federal government to provide sponsorship funding to sports and arts groups, using money that would be raised from the tobacco companies through a special tax. Playing a tangled game of mental manipulation with the poor inmates, Mr. Kenny said a special fund would be established by the government on behalf of the tobacco industry. As a result, if Tennis Canada receives money from a tobacco company to support the du Maurier Open, it's a surrogate participating in an evil relationship; but if the cash is laundered through the Liberal government, which will take credit for its distribution, sponsorship is acceptable.

When it comes to addiction to tobacco money, nobody beats the governments of Canada. They collect billions annually in taxes from smokers, many times the profits earned by the industry. Yet Mr. Kenny spent a good part of his Senate time allotment haranguing a couple of tobacco industry officials. In one demagogic rant, which made the national television news, he blasted the tobacco companies. "You bob and you weave and you duck and you finds ways, you bring high-priced lawyers with you and you find ways to con the Canadian public into buying your product."

It is always instructive to hear a blowhard parliamentarian, armed with the power of the law, backed by billions in tax dollars and surrounded by scores of bureaucrats and other apparatus of the state, smearing a constituent for hiring "high-priced" lawyers. How much has Ottawa squandered over the past decade floating unconstitutional laws, imposing absurd taxes and funding special interest groups and anti-tobacco lobbyists?

Politically, Mr. Kenny had the good sense to stay out of the Senate committee debate when Joseph Chung, an executive with the Ontario Korean Businessmen's Association (OKBA), pleaded with the committee to amend the oppressive legislation and at least remove its most menacing provisions. Members of the association include 1,900 convenience stores operated by Koreans. Annual sales of OKBA members are about $600-million, with about 60 per cent attributed to tobacco sales. Perhaps not wanting to upset the Korean vote, Mr. Kenny didn't accuse OKBA of being tobacco industry surrogates who are killing Canadians.

Mr. Chung tried his best to outline the Cuckoo's Nest of sneaky rules and oppressive restrictions contained in the bill. Among other things, Mr. Chung complained that the legislation becomes law the day it receives royal assent, leaving retailers and others no time to comply. Without a transition period, everybody involved in tobacco sales could be instantly breaking the law.

The law will give the government massive arbitrary powers to introduce regulations that could force all convenience stores to remove all cigarettes from public view. The loss to retailers could be substantial. Retailers who fail to meet the as-yet-unwritten rules are open to arbitrary entry, search and seizure. Nurse Ratched would have loved it.