Category Archives: Provincial

Federal, Municipal, Provincial

Politician Boot camp.

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I have started collecting the bits of paper that seem to be demanded these days for employment, such as First Aid level 1. While reading some of the recent comments by various politicians at all levels it occurred to me that it would benefit citizens immensely if politicians were required to complete a boot camp to reacquaint them with the reality most of their constituents face daily.

Instead of orientation that focuses on the ins and outs of bureaucracy and power, boot camp would ensure a solid understanding of the reality of life for the average citizen. All elected politicians would be required to be certified as having successfully completed boot camp in order to hold the position for which they were elected.

We would start by testing ingenuity, adaptability and fortitude by dropping politicians into an unknown city and requiring them to survive homeless and at the mercy of the systems they are or will be responsible for. By starting with the toughest challenge first we quickly weed out those wretches unfit to hold responsible office. This test also needs to be first because fairness requires we send the politicians onto the street with the highest reserves of stored energy (fat) and rest possible.

The second stage of training requires the aspiring politician to hold a minimum wage cleaning position and to survive on the wages earned at the minimum wage. This will reacquaint the aspirant with the concept of “working for ones keep” and provide direct experience with the difference between a minimum wage and a living wage you can actually live on. It also holds the promise of teaching the aspirant the value of a dollar and to clean up the messes they so often leave lying around the political, financial and spiritual landscapes.

The final stage is to hold a sales/service position at $15 an hour. This will hopefully provide instruction in the concepts of budgeting and avoiding wasteful spending. A sales/service position was chosen in hopes of giving experience and instruction in what is meant by service.

At the end of the process the politicians would be granted a certificate for a “Reality Check”.

I can hear the politicians claiming this would be a waste of taxpayers money. The certification already providing beneficial effects – the politicians have developed a concern for wasting taxpayers money! Further, with all the reality shows on television by filming and syndicating this process we can not only pay for the certification process but with skillful marketing make a profit.

Watching and listening to politicians these days it is clear they have no understanding of the reality most Canadians deal with and live in day to day, with no interest in gaining understanding. If they want to be in government of Canadians they should be required to have an understanding of all Canadians – not just the wealthy, big business, special interests and their own self-interests.

Homeless, Provincial

“D’oh”

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For Gordon Campbell quoting Homer Simpson would have been a verbally succinct method of conveying his real message on Homelessness.

Instead, in the way of politicians, he wasted peoples time by making them wade through a sea of words to arrive at the same place: Campbell and the Liberals have none of the fresh ideas or approaches needed to begin to reduce the homeless and addicted on our streets. With homelessness growing so quickly and into such a major issue Campbell and the Liberals had to do something, no matter how “Homer Simpsonish” (i.e. REAL DUMB) the actions were.

In desperation the Liberals have fallen back on the old political strategy of wastefully throwing taxpayers $$$ at the problem to make it appear they are addressing the issue. After all, if they are spending millions of hard earned taxpayer $$$ it must be going to accomplish something positive, right?

Wrong. Wasting money to open shelter beds 24 hours does not create a single new space for the homeless, although I concede it will pump more dollars into the pockets of those in the homeless industry/economy.

Unless of course an unannounced part of the plan is to use the beds in shifts in order to double (12 hour shift) or triple (8 hour shift) the effective number of beds available? Or perhaps the unannounced plan is to chain them to the beds, keeping them out of the public eye in order to create the illusion the problem is disappearing and thus solved?

I used the wording “something positive” in speaking of what opening 24 hours will accomplish because I know the opening 24 hour policy will give rise to negative effects. In speaking with those who run operations open 24 hours a day in our area they have stated that the one big change they would make is not to be open 24 hours – for a host of reasons.

Experience with the longer hours (basically 24) that come during an extreme weather response demonstrated that with 24 hour operations came/comes a host of headaches. These problems could be endured for the length of an extreme weather alert, but can be expected to compound at shelters that run 24 hours a day. The discussions I have witnessed among those experienced with shelter operations have always given rise to lots of problems and no real benefits – at least to the homeless.

What will this government, obviously bankrupt of any new and effective ideas, turn to next as a “solution” – internment camps in the interior?

We do need both more shelter beds and drop-in facilities for the homeless. Most of all we need to change how we deliver aid services to the homeless in order to help them recover themselves and their lives.

But such a course will require creativity, accepting reality as it is, risk, patience and change. In judging the likelihood of this based on Gordon Campbell’s recent statements I can only conclude:

D’oh.

Federal, Homeless, Municipal, Provincial

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five. Grouch Marx

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A friend took me to Mission the other afternoon to visit the Union Gospel Drop-in Centre and speak to the people there as I had never been to the Drop-in. We found the leaders of the Union Gospel Mission’s mission in Mission out walking the streets and serving ice tea on a hot day as a way to reach out and stay in touch with their clients and those in need on the city streets.

While speaking to them about the homeless situations in both Mission and Abbotsford the subject of opening a Drop-in Centre in Abbotsford arose and I issued an invitation and urged them to pursue a place in Abbotsford since Abbotsford is sorely in need of an afternoon/evening drop-in/supper meal centre.

We also spoke of the benefits of adopting the wellness recovery action plan that Fraser (mental) Health puts on in communities in the FVRD and how a wellness plan would have significant benefits for those seeking recovery from addiction or those simply seeking to get their lives back on track form whatever had disrupted their lives.

Afterwards I sat down to have a coffee with some of the clients and chanced upon a copy of the new September/October issue of The Inner City Pulse, the Union Gospel Mission’s newsletter for the lower mainland. On page seven of this issue I found three stories about some rather interesting children.

A five year old who donated her birthday presents to benefit many other children who were in need. An eight year old, who seeing people living on the streets of Vancouver’s downtown eastside, collected blankets for these homeless people. An eleven year old who founded K.A.R.E. (Kids Actions Really Energize) to encourage people and local businesses to donate clothing and non-perishable food items for those in need.

I was contemplating these children as we crossed the Mission Bridge on our way back to Abbotsford, a community sadly in need of the lesson about generosity of the spirit which these children embody.

The children could also teach our self-styled leaders something about tackling seemingly overwhelming problems in society. They did not talk the situation to death; nor seek to study it to death; nor spend their energies saying all the right things but doing nothing. They did not pursue grandiose plans; nor seek a comprehensive solution where none exists; nor lose sight of the reality that at some point of dealing with a problem action is required.

These children took action to meet a need they saw.

The observer affect tells us that the act of observing will make changes on the situation/problem being observed. The uncertainty principle tells us that when we try to quantify the qualities of ending homelessness, these quantities can only be determined with some characteristic ‘uncertainties’ that cannot become arbitrarily small simultaneously.

You study a problem, you change the problem. The uncertainty principle defies attempts to measure or quantify the problem with exactness. Any action taken to put a plan in motion will change the nature of the problem and render the original plan moot.

Homelessness involves people and uncertainty: we are dealing with a chaotic system with its implications of little agreement about what should be done and even less agreement on how whatever should be done can be done.

Without starting you will never finish. We need to pick a point, any point, as the start point. With a place to begin we simply begin at the beginning and continue to the end.

The biggest hurdle to ending homeless and addressing other social ills is an apparent inability to start. A concept so simple a child can understand it and in understanding it set examples such as those above in how you end homeless – you start.