Out of the Cold & Into the Jails!

Let’s face it; Victoria has a massive homelessness problem. In fact, a large portion of British Columbia has a sizeable minority of citizens living on the streets, including Vancouver. Now there a number of solutions for this problem, raise the minimum wage, give them long-term care beds, build shelters, etcetera, etcetera. So, when Mr. Campbell announced he was going to addresses the homelessness issue, we all expected some progress to be made. Unfortunately, rather than announce the creation of some new shelters via the economic recovery plan from the federal government, Gordon announced that the provincial government would implement a law to force homeless people into jails during “cold temperatures”.

Let’s begin with why the provincial Liberals are planning this. With the 2010 Olympics slowly coming to Vancouver, and the homeless numbers growing ever larger every month, Gordon realizes that if he can get them off the streets, his native town will look like a gem in the eyes of the world as they gaze upon Western Canada’s largest city for the month of February. I bet “cold temperatures” will be defined as anything up to 20 degrees Celsius, thus no homeless will be on the streets for a month, and then the bill will most likely become null and void.

Finally, let’s discover why this is breaching the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As guaranteed in the document I just stated, every Canadian has a right to live where they want to. Granted, you can’t live on the roof of a building, or in a Tim Horton’s, but you can certainly live on the streets. Now while people have died in cold temperatures on the streets, the last thing the government should do is determine what is cold and what is not, and force homeless people to go into our already overcrowded prisons. The true way to solve this problem, is to open up homeless shelters which allow couples, and dogs to enter, thus they will feel comfortable sleeping there for the night. Next, the municipality should attempt to provide employment opportunities for them, and finally allow them to purchase a designated affordable home, and if the minimum wage was established at $10 an hour, the latter portion of this plan could be carried out much quicker. While this plan won’t clear our streets completely, it will at the very least reduce the number of people sleeping on Main Street.