Surviving The Fall, 38

Gentle Reader, I wrote this sixteen years ago, in 2002, just after the then newly minted BC Liberal government had pushed through some of the nastiest and most pernicious legislation in living memory. I crafted together a contingency plan. Here it is for your reading discernment and study. Happy Sunday!.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................We are facing in this province the greatest human rights debacle since the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. As it becomes increasingly difficult for one to obtain social assistance while employment also becomes more scarce and harder to find we re heading towards a major social catastrophe. In April 2004, the first wave of welfare recipients will have exceeded the two year limit. Unless either this pernicious bit of legislation is repealed, or unless sufficient contingency plans have been put in place, we will be facing a catastrophic nightmare. This issue must be confronted on three levels, simultaneously: No effort should be spared in coercing the Campbell Liberals to repeal the two year limit, the three week wait, as well as the other drastic cuts they have made in social services funding. People on disability 2 should not have their cases reviewed, and single mothers should be allowed to stay at home with their children until they are at least six. Basic income rates should be raised to accurately reflect the rising cost of living, thus permitting recipients of assistance to live in some modicum of dignity, while being encouraged and motivated wherever possible towards re-employment, government funded employment training, and all levels of post-secondary education, including all university faculties, government-funded. The punitive attitudes that most Canadians harbour towards the poor and unemployed must be effectively and consistently challenged! In the event that these legislations cannot be significantly reversed, then a contingency plan will have to be developed and immediately put in place. I see this alternative as involving participation and funding from both federal and civic levels of government, involving also the participation and facilitation by church, community, political and volunteer groups, and wherever possible the (gag!) business community. There should also be federally funded legal aid made available to persons who will wish to litigate against the Campbell Liberals for their persons and lives being endangered and destroyed due to legislated disenfranchisement. Other provinces, and, if necessary, other nations, should also be briefed and encouraged to receive as economic refugees, certain numbers of our welfare exhaustees. This will certainly make Canada a global laughingstock should we ever have such countries as Costa Rica receiving refugees from our own British Columbia! The contingency plan would involve funding from Ottawa and the civic governments jointly pooled in order to continue giving economic assistance to those British Columbians whose welfare has run out, while also continuing to encourage and support them towards training, education and employment. The churches and community and volunteer organizations would have to redouble their efforts in working together along with the business community and federal and civic funding, with anything that could be squeezed out of Victoria, to develop on three levels restorative housing to the homeless and vulnerable: emergency shelters, intermediate shelters, and low-cost housing. Vacant buildings and lands should be immediately re-appropriated by the city, with assistance from Ottawa, for the purposes of developing intermediate shelters and stable, affordable housing. Supermarket chains and corporations should be encouraged, and if necessary, coerced, into providing free food assistance. 3. A campaign towards public education and awareness of the issues of legislated poverty and its deleterious impact on the quality of our lives as individuals and as a community needs to be immediately launched and AGGRESSIVELY PURSUED, using every possible medium and outlet to disseminate this information. Unless these steps are effectively taken we are going to be faced with an alarming increase of poverty, violent street crime, murder, suicide, child and spousal abuse, prostitution, and drug trafficking. We will see vermin and disease ridden shanty towns springing up such as are commonplace in such cities as Manila and Rio de Janeiro. Our streets will be choked with beggars. This does not have to be inevitable, but we have just eighteen months remaining in which to act. As long as even one person has to go without food or housing, this can only bring shame upon us as a society.