Dear editor,
In her recent letter in the Record, MLA Ronna-Rae Leonard says 鈥溾�e are a compassionate community鈥�.鈥�, although those who see the vitriol directed at the unhoused on local social media pages might be forgiven for being skeptical about that.
However, true or not, compassion 鈥� just like thoughts and prayers for the victims of mass shootings in America 鈥� is not enough.
According to Statistics Canada, BC is currently tied with Nova Scotia for the highest poverty rate in the country 鈥� just over 13 per cent - though the rate has decreased with federal government expenditures on the Canada Child Benefit and CERB payments. BC spends billions of dollars every year on shelters and support agencies run by non-profits though largely funded by government, increased policing and medical care, street sweeps and all manners of actions against the unhoused (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and others), but the problem of homelessness ever worsens. I wonder what it will take to spend that money on actual housing. I wonder what it will take to drive home the fact that dire poverty is the one constant among all unhoused people. I wonder what it will take for us to stop repeating the mantra that homelessness is complex, and recognize that its roots are the systemic deprivation and government-sanctioned suffering of the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
I personally am not delighted to hear that we now have money to spend on a 鈥渟ituation table.鈥� Many, many reputable and learned scholars, organizations, and think tanks have produced excellent research on poverty and homelessness over the decades (with their recommendations largely ignored by governments) 鈥� do we really need more discussion devoted to the social problems caused by homelessness?
One in nine Canadians live in poverty, which carries a social stigma and often results in active discrimination, along with feelings of being invisible, devalued, ignored (Canada Report on Poverty). Does this concern you? It should, because no country can remain free and democratic when this many millions of people are ignored. Read that again: democracy and freedom 鈥� the highest ideals of our citizenship 鈥� are imperiled when we allow governments to act as if some people matter less than others. The lessons of history show that well.
It is evident that homelessness affects all of us, though focusing on the petty crimes of those struggling to merely survive each day seems rather beside the point: no society can thrive which includes millions who do not.
It is time for politicians at all levels to act as if this is an emergency, and move more quickly, as if those lives really mattered.
And it is time for those of us who are warm and fed and housed to stop being complacent and smug and understand that ensuring those lives are as valued as our own is the only solution that ensures a healthy, free, and democratic society in the long term.
VivianLea Doubt,
Courtenay
