There are lies, and then there are absurd lies so ludicrous that no one could possibly believe them. The Conservatives are spreading the second kind of lie: they’re telling new Canadians of Chinese and Punjabi origin — in their first languages — that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are going to put brothels and safe-injection offices in B.C. and in Ontario neighbourhoods like Richmond Hill and Markham.

Anyone fully at ease in their new country would know instantly that Ottawa would sooner set up bearpits in playgrounds than build brothels anywhere. We are not a sexually harsh country, not as such. It is to laugh.

But they’re being told this in an official Conservative ad http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-negative-ads-ethnic-media-1.3270527 asking “Do Justin Trudeau’s Liberals share your values?” There are three dire photos: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/conservative-ads-in-chinese-language-newspaper-accuse-trudeau-of-wanting-to-open-brothels-drug-injection-sites a burning joint near a hairy white man’s lips, a purplish-looking man injecting heroin into his own strapped arm, and a young woman showing her belly as she stands on a dark street with headlights approaching. Why she isn’t indoors in her warm and toasty brothel isn’t explained.

Trudeau is photographed with longer hair than he has now, clearly the exemplar of a moral slide intended to make immigrants wonder why they came to this benighted country in the first place. Opium dens, ISIS hostels, oh Canada, cleanest of nations, what has happened to you?

But here’s what the Conservative ad is really saying: immigrants are stupid.

Mohinder Singh, spokesperson for a non-partisan local Sikh council in B.C., says the Conservatives are manipulating communities like his. “Growing up in an immigrant home, I know how difficult it was for my parents to understand what was going on in politics,” he told the CBC. The ads are “inconsiderate” and suggest that his community “doesn’t seriously consider all the issues affecting Canada as a whole.”

So Jason Kenney came to your chicken dinner. Throw in a racist ad and the ethnic vote is in, the Conservatives think. But the ads, personally backed by Harper who says Trudeau “wants” to “make drugs more accessible to our children,” twist the truth into ringlets.

First, a certain level of legalization of marijuana is an idea whose time has finally come, as most Canadians agree. But children won’t be let near the stuff. Can you envision Reefer Madness with toddlers? Kids seeking brothel internships? Nor can I.

Alcohol is an immensely destructive drug, but I don’t want it made illegal. Pot is mildly unhelpful to a productive life — my university years were proof of that — and today’s pot is so potent that I can’t smoke it without being wrapped in quilts with my back to the thickest wall in the house and my snacks arranged campfire-style. But people shouldn’t be arrested for smoking pot.

Second, safe injection sites are a humane way to deal with drug addiction that otherwise leaves people dead in the streets after seeking escape from emotional misery. They are compassion embodied in a building. The Liberals, the NDP and the Supreme Court of Canada agree on this. No corpses in the gutters, it’s the Canadian way.

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And third, the only eminently respectable voice calling for the possibility of brothels has been the Supreme Court, in an effort to diminish the suffering of trafficked, beaten, desperate prostitutes. The court gave the Harper government one year to take action or else brothels would become part of the legal sexual landscape.

So Harper came up with Bill C-36 https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/06/10/why_did_prostitution_bill_go_off_the_rails_mallick.html which meant that men who rent women’s bodies would now be arrested. The burden was finally on men rather than prostitutes. But failing to provide sufficient money to help women out of prostitution and isolating young prostitutes even more, Harper deliberately confounded the court’s purpose which was to protect women’s physical safety.

I supported the bill in theory — criminalizing the buying of sex is a great feminist advance — but others, including Trudeau, did not because the bill didn’t do enough to help women. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/06/10/why_did_prostitution_bill_go_off_the_rails_mallick.html Harper has now twisted Trudeau’s perfectly fair assessment of C-36 into a drive for the very brothels the Supreme Court threatened to legalize.

Harper’s strange bill was spiteful, as are his ads suggesting a new government would effectively pimp women. The Harper government detests women. To suggest that Trudeau, a friend to Canadian women, feels the same way is mendacity of a high order, by which I mean it’s standard Conservative lying.

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