H’mmm

Hail, snow flurries, torrential downpours, driving rain, high winds and cold temperatures.

Obviously it is once again time for the City of Abbotsford to send in its minions, backed by the strong arm of the APD, to render the homeless even more homeless and destitute; turning them out of what shelter they managed to cobble together and expropriating any meagre belongings they possess.

With no housing the homeless can afford available, with shelters full and the weather a threat to health and life – why would city council not take the opportunity to reduce the number of living homeless on the streets of Abbotsford?

I see that another annual Abbotsford tradition, council’s annual scare/bamboozle/sell the fudget budget to the pubic, has begun with Mayor Peary opening this year’s season with “what services are taxpayers willing to do without.”

Why do any services need to be cut? The Ratepayer’s association was correct that we could save close to a million dollars by cutting the business development department, a department with no demonstrable benefit to the city.

There are several millions slated for parks. Just why are we developing parks when we cannot maintain our current parks? Given the usury level of fees the city charges who can afford to use all the current fields?

Then there are items such as why the Abbotsford Recreation Centre needs three people to run one centre?

Which raises an important question: why does the City not allow citizens access to the detailed numbers of Abbotsford’s finances and how taxpayer dollars are actually spent. Details that would settle questions such as how ARC is managed, allowing the public to determine whose source is correct, whether it is one person in charge of the pool and one for the rest of the facility OR one person in charge of the pool, one in charge of the ice rink and one person in charge of the operations of the Plan A extension.

Access to adequately detailed information would undoubtedly reveal abundant Fudget fat to cut, saving Abbotsford money and requiring no service cuts.

With less salesmanship and scare tactics, more detailed financial numbers and a budget process that would past muster with BC’s Auditor General, Abbotsford could get its financial house in order before citizens start to lose their homes to the City because they cannot pay their municipal taxes.

Only in Abbotsford.

It did not take the brains of a rocket scientist to predict that if the province granted council’s request for a 2 cents a litre gas tax it would not be long, given council’s spendthrift ways, for council to want to increase the tax.

Mind bogglingly, city council has outdone themselves with a 50% raise to 3 cents a litre – before the tax is even approved by the province.

Which is why I urge fellow Abbotsfordians to join me in calling for Mike de Jong, John van Dongen, Randy Hawes, Bill Bennett and Gordon Campbell to “just say no” to enabling city council’s spending addiction and give a NO to Abbotsford’s proposed gas tax.

The fudgeting process throws into stark relief the fact that the ideas of cost cutting, only spending on necessities and NOT spending on things that are not necessities are totally foreign concepts council and staff.

The root of Abbotsford’s financial mess, debt and the constant upward spiral of taxes and fees is council and staffs’s spending addiction.

Well that plus council and staff’s demonstrated lack of any ability for financial planning and realistic budgeting, highlighted by the reports of the need to subsidize the operations of the Sports and Entertainment Complex to the tune of $2 million a year. It turns out that those who questioned council’s promise, during the Plan A debate, that the Complex would make money had/have a much better grasp of arithmetic and financial reality than council and staff.

Still, the first order of business to avoid the embarrassment (not to mention the financial calamity) of council and staff spending the City of Abbotsford into Bankruptcy is doing something about their spend, spend, spend, spending addiction.

Perhaps we can arrange a group rate at Kinghaven? This would have the additional benefit of having council and staff spending time with people who live in the real world and would, perhaps, help council and staff to ‘get real’.

Mission councillor Paul Horn writing about the homeless issue urged the use of Section 28 of the Mental Health Act to lock the homeless up for their own good as you cannot trust “a person with an acute mental illness to make a major life decision”.

I suspect that having “an acute mental illness” and that this being why they are homeless will come as quite a shock to all those who thought they were homeless because they simply could not afford the cost of housing in the lower mainland.

People who the recession cost their jobs and prevented from finding employment before their Employment Insurance ran out and they discovered the harsh reality that in BC “assistance” levels are such that the entire “assistance” cheque would not cover their rent, much less luxuries such as food.

Or those who are working 40 hours (or more) a week but whose wages are not sufficient to cover the cost of living in Abbotsford or Mission.

FYI – the leading cause of homelessness in Canada is now Poverty and not mental illness.

I was conversing with a friend who lives under a bridge about what it says about Canadians that we tolerate a federal government that, if you have a bathroom is willing to use taxpayer dollars to help you renovate it, but should you have no bathroom has no leadership or money to address affordable housing or poverty.

A federal government with billions to bailout big business, but no money to help individuals facing a shaky financial future or even homelessness as their Employment Insurance runs out.

A government whose priorities are policies of corporate welfare and increasing the wealth of the wealthiest, but places no priority on slowing the growth of poverty in Canada, much less stopping or reducing poverty levels.

And it does say something about us that we not only tolerate but continue to elect governments with priorities based on greed and lacking in ethics or principled behaviour.

The BC government can find $3.3 Billion to spend on a bridge but cannot find the funds to keep the Adolescent Psychiatric Unit open in Abbotsford.

But hey, children and young people do not need appropriate care that reflects their age. Just throw them in with the adults and pray that there are no predators.

Another casualty of the Great Fraser Health Mental Health Massacre was the detox center in Chilliwack.

According to Fraser Health the utilization rate of detox was only 60%. Which comes as quite a surprise to all who regularly sought to help addicts gain admittance to this medically supervised detox service and who were told detox was full and the waiting list was from one to six months in length?

Was the facility only funded sufficiently to open 6 out of its 10 beds OR was it managed in such a way that 40% of its capacity was wasted?

As this was not the only service that was cut due to under utilization in the face of abundant demand we are faced with the disturbing possibility that management and operating practices waste 40% of the health care systems capacity.

Watching a news report of deaths in a house fire had me wondering where Rich Coleman was.

After all, if the death of a single homeless person from fire last year in BC has Minister Coleman violating the rights of the homeless with the draconian “Assistance to Shelter Act”, how is it this fire death and the many other deaths that occur as a result of house fires in BC do not have Minister Coleman rushing into enacting legislation to have the police force people out of their homes because they are fire death traps?

On the subject of Minister Rich Coleman, who as the Minister of Housing and Social Development is in charge of income assistance in BC:

Could sending Minister Coleman (rich.coleman.mla@leg.bc.ca) and Premier Gordon Campbell (Gordon.Campbell.MLA@leg.bc.ca ) the definition of assistance along with explanations and examples of what assistance means and what assistance is, possibly enlighten them to the reality that current levels of what passes for assistance in BC is in fact a major barrier to the survival of those who fall into the clutches of the system, much less getting off the system and on with their lives?

Worth a try as it would also serve to put politicians on notice that their priorities need to be ethical and principled behaviour.

People’s well-being centered priorities at both the federal and provincial levels would relieve the pressure on the Abbotsford Food Bank from the increasing number of people depending on the food bank to eat.

In spite of our local politicians trumpeting Abbotsford as the most generous place in Canada, donations to the Abbotsford Food Bank at Thanksgiving where only a third of last year’s levels.

This decrease in donations comes at the same time information is emerging that across Canada  the numbers of those in need of help from food banks soared.

Could it be government’s lack of appropriate people priorities is not a matter of tolerance on the part of Canadians but is reflective of citizen’s priorities?

Waddle is the best word to describe people leaving the Salvation Army’s meal centre at lunchtime Saturday November 22, 2009.

Gentlemen from our East Indian community prepared and served lunch; then returned to serve dinner for the Emergency Shelter. On a previous Saturday the women from the East Indian community had prepared and served lunch at the meal centre.

Some in our community are taking action to reduce hunger in Abbotsford.

The food was plentiful and tasty to the point that many struggled to finish what was on their plates before waddling on their way.

Not that the food the ladies prepared was not tasty and appreciated but … sorry ladies, the men were on their game/had their game on and sent diners waddling on their way.

Thank you, it was delicious and much appreciated.