All posts by James W. Breckenridge

Addiction, Caveat emptor, Consider, Issues

Bacons and the drug war.

Leave a comment

Listening to the news coverage of the arrest and murder charges against a Bacon brother I was left shaking my head.

What had me shaking my head was the implication and statements in the report that this was somehow a major success in the drug war in the lower mainland – it wasn’t.

It was a success the legal system and the family of the innocent people killed in that Surrey condo. An extremely expensive “success” that requires millions of dollars more to carry through and attain convictions.

Leaving one to ponder just how many more of these multi-millions of dollars “successes” we can afford and how are we going to pay for them?

But in terms of the drug war in the lower mainland the only real effect it will have is to change some of the players. Reality: even if the police went out and arrested and jailed everyone in the illegal drug business in the lower mainland right now, in a matter of hours people would be stepping in to take advantage of the lucrative employment opportunities in the drug business, in days the business would be flourishing again with a new cast of characters and be back to “fully staffed” in short order thereafter.

The drug trade sings its siren song of impossible promises of pleasure in the same manner as politicians and governments make impossible promises and when reality turns out to be something quite different it is the victims of the promises who suffer the consequences. When circumstances intervene to remove players through arrests or election losses the players are simply replaced by others.

As is the case in government we will have no effect on changing behaviours in the drug business until such time as citizens accept the reality of these businesses and choose to change our behaviours in order to bring about changes that will produce the positive outcomes we want – good government and taking the billion dollar profits and violence out of the drug trade.

Until such time we as citizens are willing to change our behaviours, rather than continuing to make the same choices and employ the same behaviours hoping that this time things will turn out differently (which is insane), we are going to keep on getting the same pointless and unacceptable results.

The difference at this point in history, as opposed to our past, is that Canada can no longer afford this type of behaviour. Economic, environmental and social systems no longer have any slack or fat in the systems. Every dollar wasted in programs and policies that do not achieve positive outcomes inflicts damage, pain, suffering and negative consequences on a wide range of Canadians and Canadian society.

Government or the illegal drug business: Canada cannot any longer afford to merely change the cast of characters. We have to think, think, and think. Then make the difficult choices that, while we may wish we did not have to make them, reflect the real world we live in and will affect positive results and a bright future for all Canadians – not just the privileged few.

We have squandered our easy choices on ineffective behaviour and as a result have left ourselves having to make hard choices if we want to remain Canadians and a Canada that makes us proud to declare “I AM Canadian.”

Municipal

Moe Gill’s Conflict of Interest

Leave a comment

Despite Mayor Peary’s comments and Councillor Moe Gill’s decision on the issue of conflict of interest, I will not be setting my personal ethics at the minimally acceptable level allowed by law.

I was raised with and to have high standards govern the manner in which I conduct my life. It was never about setting my standards by what you can get away with.

As a point of information to Mayor Peary and Councillor Gill I also have an expectation that people making decisions on my behalf, such as politicians, will practice those same high ethical standards. Not slipshod, lowest common denominator minimal ethical standards and behaviours.

I concede that to date my expectation concerning ethical standards and behaviours has proven unrealistic as evidenced by the behaviours of politicians at all levels of government – municipal, provincial and federal.

With specific reference to Moe Gill’s voting on the gravel pit application I would judge, with apologies to Mayor Peary and Councillor Gill that the ethic’s bar was set below minimally acceptable ethical behaviour.

A quick web search reveals that “personal interest includes an interest arising from family, marriage or common-law relationships.”

Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia’s list of types of conflicts of interest includes “Family interests, in which a spouse, child, or other close relative….” Of particular interest on this website is an example of conflict of interest that cites a brother to brother relationship.

I fail to see how one could claim that the fact a decision will have a direct and substantial effect on a member (in this case members) of one’s family will not influence one’s thinking. Voting other than to benefit one’s family member would have serious family relationship and conflict consequences.

Thus one is predisposed to vote for an outcome favourable to family and is therefore in a conflict of interest.

As an aside – when wants to approve something one can always find “acceptable” reasons or reasoning to justify the decision you want to make.

Moe Gill has a clear conflict of interest here and when the matter comes before council again he MUST recuse himself on grounds of personal involvement.

Consider, Issues

Wellness should not depend on Luck

Leave a comment

I get interesting email ideas and questions from students spanning grade school to university about homelessness, addiction and mental health. This is due to the fact that if you google Abbotsford and homelessness, at or near the top of the results is homelessinabbotsford.com with its email link to me.

In recent weeks I had spoken to several university students doing papers for their classes with questions on homelessness, addiction, mental health, the current system and what I would do to end homelessness and address addiction and mental health.

One comment I made to all the inquirers was that if you set out to deliberately design a system to not only keep people down but to beat them down, frustrate their efforts to get back on their feet and strip them of self esteem – it would look pretty much like our current system.

In a twisted quirk of fate I am, as I write this, currently living one of the (many) nightmares that those on the Ministry of Housing and Income Assistance disability constantly live with as we struggle to rebuild our lives.

At $375 per month the rent portion of welfare is ridiculously inadequate. It takes the $375 plus all, nearly all or more than all of the $235 ($282 on disability) monthly living allowance to pay the rent for a safe, healthy home environment.

Yes one can find places cheaper but those places are neither safe nor healthy. When you are working on recovery and wellness a home space that is both healthy and safe is vital.

I have watched people who were honestly struggling to find and stay in recovery and wellness, have their efforts destroyed by being forced to live in unhealthy and unsafe housing. This is one of the reasons I say that it is as if the system is designed to break people down and keep them down.

I feel so strongly about the importance of environment to wellness and recovery that when I had to move out of the supported independent living spot I was in I chose to move back into my car for the two additional months it took me to find a safe and healthy place. A place I have been in for near a year and a half and that supports my continued recovery and staying in wellness.

Given that my life is still moving forward in a positive manner the decision to live in my car for those two months, while an inconvenience, was the right decision for my recovery and wellness.

I said additional months because I had spent the two months before I had to move out searching for someplace to move into. When a place I judged acceptable for pursuit of recovery and wellness failed to be found I moved into my car rather than become another victim of being forced into an unhealthy environment.

Four months. It took me four months to find my place and I have a large network of people and contacts that were helping me look. Indeed, it was one of these people who not only found my place but whose landlord recommended me to my landlord.

One of the problems of having found oneself homeless is that you do not have a ready current reference for yourself as a tenant. Couple the lack of references with the prejudice that is attached to the term homeless and the problem is not only finding housing but being accepted as a tenant.

Given the rent levels in Abbotsford and the problems that simply being homeless causes in being accepted as a tenant it is far harder for the homeless to find safe, healthy housing that most people realize it is.

Safe, healthy affordable housing is a scarce precious commodity that is an integral part of wellness and recovery. The community of Abbotsford must demand that governments at all levels, municipal, provincial and federal, make a priority of bringing into being the hundreds of units of this type of housing desperately needed in our community.

Losing safe, healthy affordable housing and ending up homeless and on the streets again is mentally and emotionally devastating.

My monthly cheque covers my rent. Now fortunately being on disability I am allowed to earn up to an additional $500 a month. Phone, insurance, gas, internet, pool pass, old debt repayment and office supplies leaves me with a surplus of $20 – $30 a month as long as gas stays under $1 per litre. As it rises above that $1 level money gets tighter and tighter for me as it does for most people.

And no the pool pass is not a luxury. Swimming is, for me, the difference between walking and not walking; for being able to get out and accomplish things relatively pain free and being confined to bed where simply getting up and going to the bathroom leaves me covered in a cold sweat from agonizing back pain. Swimming keeps my back and back muscles in shape so that most days I am mobile and the pain level is such that I can live and deal with it.

I still cannot fathom how it is that Income Assistance does not consider a phone a necessity if one is going to find a job or simply for emergency use.

Not only does my budget not contain money for food, there is also no money to put away for those emergencies life throws at us such as car repairs or any other of the many somethings that require money to address. Honesty requires me to admit that using a change jar over the past 18 months did allow me to save up the $100 I recently had to spend on a new car battery.

A belt on my car broke. Now a broken belt is an annoyance but at $23.42 falls within the discretionary spending limits of my budget.

Unfortunately, shortly after installing the new belt the real problem announced itself with a horrific squeal and the engine temperature gauge soaring.

I was afraid it was the water pump which would be the end of the car because there was no way I could afford the cost of the repair and where would I find another $100 car that was as reliable as mine had proved to be for the past 18 months?

Sitting there with my anxiety threatening to turn into a full blown panic attack the ringing of my phone was a lifeline of a distraction. The friend who had helped install the new belt in the parking lot of Canadian Tire called to see how it was working. When I related the new belt had been eaten by the engine and that I had concluded it was the water pump and a disaster as I had never had an alternator that needed replacing seize. “Oh no it could be the alternator” he said.

A trip to the car revealed the water pump turned fine but the alternator stuck and when it turned you could hear the bearings grind. The pulley wheel on the alternator also had a large lump of melted belt material on it.

Hmmm. Not a total disaster then as an alternator is a cheaper repair still….
That is cheap in auto repair terms which in the case of an alternator range $190 – $350, depending on finding an appropriate rebuilt alternator or being forced to buy new.

Even at best case scenario of $190 that $190 has to come out of my budget someplace. Rent must be paid. Insurance comes out of the bank automatically. I have to swim to walk.

I can minimize my driving by not attending any of the committees, meetings or board meetings I participate or am a member of. Such actions would be extremely unhealthy to take from the mental health aspect of my life and would have consequences for others and the community as a whole.

Even cutting back gas it would still require not paying other bills in order to have the cash to pay for repairs.

This is why a car repair or any emergency that requires as little as $200 is one of the nightmares those on limited incomes live with as a day to day reality.

You get behind and you have started down the slippery slope that leads to homelessness, where even the $23.42 cost for an engine belt is now a problem pushing you out the door and onto the streets.

It is a nightmare you live with because even if you have been fortunate enough not to have been down this path to the streets (and I have been down that path) you know people who have been; know people currently in this or a similar situation who are struggling to stay off the streets.

A possible reality that gnaws at you day after day, undermining you mental health, until and unless you learn to accept that there is nothing you can do about it except let it go and focus on wellness and recovery.

Until the laws of probability catch you and you are face to face with such an emergency. At which point any gnawing worries are lost in the face of anxiety, panic attacks, depression, agoraphobia and the possibility of homelessness.

Your life implodes, mental health wellness and recovery disappears into the black pit you mind becomes and you are back on the streets struggling to survive – never mind get well or into housing.

This is why I have a WRAP plan; a Wellness Recovery Action Plan. When the *bleep* hits the fan and you are staring at the black abyss of plunging back into the dark depths of your mental illness; when your brain is heading so far into overdrive that rational thought is beyond you; when your thoughts are racing at the speed of light in endless circle; you can pull out your emergency sanity kit and break out of the downward spiral.

Forget base jumping or bungee jumping for shear heart pounding terror there is nothing like teetering on the edge of madness looking down into the abyss.

Which is where I found myself the other day and the fact that I managed to back away from the edge is why I find WRAP an invaluable tool of recovery and mental health.

It was by following my WRAP plan, that when it developed that an alternator for a 1987 Plymouth Turismo of the subspecies Duster is a rare bird meaning that I was facing putting a new alternator in, I dealt with it.

While I do not know all the details of the final outcome of this matter as I write this, I am calm about the matter. Mainly because as far as my mind is concerned the matter is dealt with since it is in the hands of competent and good people and the little hiccup, the weekend delay in not getting it resolved until Monday, is neither here nor there.

Little hiccup? There was only one alternator in the warehouse and when it was installed and tested it was found to be faulty. Getting a replacement in will take several days, hence the delay until Monday in getting my car back.

When the fine gentleman responsible for the repair apologized for the problem I told him I considered it an inconsequential minor inconvenience and I was just truly grateful that the matter was, to all intents and purposes, resolved. That having the matter resolved allowed me to find my serenity and that was the important concern for me.

Sitting here typing this I am calm and relatively serine because of having a WRAP plan. I facilitate WRAP groups to “pass on” to others the boon that I have found in the plan.

I say relative serenity because, as I shared with a friend, I was and am most fortunate to have people to reach out to who could and did help me out on the matter of the alternator. Thank you seems so inadequate to express the immense gift they have given me. This is not the type of gift you can repay, but you can pass it on to others.

But what about those others? I had and have people I could reach out to for help dealing with my car problems. Our current assistance system is loaded with people dealing with the same financial reality, the same grinding poverty, that live with. What happens to those people when one of their financial nightmares occurs?

Without help my most viable option would be standing on the street somewhere with a sign asking for donations to repair the alternator, the brake pads and rotors or deal with whatever small disaster needs a relatively small amount of cash to deal with it. My $200 share of the repair may yet find me out there with a sign.

Standing there humiliated and knowing that most people think it is money just for drugs (admittedly often the case) but having no other choice but to swallow your pride and beg.

As I said the system beats you down and strips you of any self-esteem.

The soul devouring reality of disaster being one small emergency away is a fact of life for all those without supporters to whom they can reach out and ask for help.

My luck is not the type that is going to win me the 6-49 millions; my luck is the more valuable type that has put people who will help me over the rough spots into my life.

Luck is not what a persons wellness, recovery and future should depend on and any system were a person’s wellness, recovery and future depends on luck is in need of serious change.

Municipal

Tax, Tax, Tax then Spend, Spend, Spend

Leave a comment

Mayor Peary’s statement “We are truly, truly scrounging around for any money we can find …” teases Abbotsford’s beleaguered and impoverished taxpayers with the possibility the world wide economic meltdown may finally bring Abbotsford City Council to the realization that money does not grow on trees.

Unfortunately Mayor Peary’s statement “Here is the hard reality: we cannot support the city alone on property taxes anymore” makes it clear that City Council still views the citizens as having bottomless pockets to feed City Hall’s insatiable appetite for spending as if money does grow on trees.

Mayor Peary, here is the hard reality: It was city council’s spendthrift financially irresponsible spend, spend, spend ways that put Abbotsford in it current financial bind, so forgive me if I am not feeling terribly sympathetic.

It is hard to be anything but apprehensive when the Mayor’s statements underscore that City Council’s heedlessly reckless financial thinking and behaviours still have not been forced into line with economic reality.

When you are short of funds you economize, cutback and/or reduce expenses to the level of one’s income.

Unless that is you are Abbotsford City Council, who just keeps feeding their addiction for wildly ungoverned spending; whining “…we cannot support the city alone on property taxes anymore.”

So it is that City Council is looking for new and better methods to destitute its citizens by plundering them of their cash.

Cities surrounding Abbotsford set priorities and make the necessary hard choices and spending reductions to bring their spending into line with the money raised by property taxes.

Citizens need to tell council: “NO! Most emphatically NO! You were the ones who set the property tax increase at 5.5% deal with that reality.” Otherwise taxpayers will suffer the consequences as year after year City Council finds new ways to introduce numerous new taxes so they can continue to waste dollars and spend, spend, spend

When it is no longer the muggers and thieves you need to protect your wallet from but Abbotsford City Council – it is time City Council learned to live within its means, not continue to spend as if they were children run amuck with their parents (taxpayers) credit card.

Municipal

The Great Gas Tax Grab

Leave a comment

One can hardly be surprised that Mayor Peary and Abbotsford City Council are opposed to Translink. After all it would interfere with their great gas tax grab.

First it was parking fees in city parks, now it is gas taxes. Just what kind of budget did Council pass? Incomplete and under funded it would seem. Exactly what was the purpose in passing a budget that lacked adequate funding to pay for all the services?

A budget that it seems failed to include roadwork, and who knows what other infrastructure, acutely needed for the functioning of our city.

City officials seem to see nothing out of the ordinary in setting a budget with a 5.5% tax raise they themselves admit was not adequate to cover the costs of operations with out additional sources of revenue (taxes) such as the parking fees.

Leaving one to wonder what other unpleasant surprises await taxpayers as the year progresses and the “budget” plays out?

With building starts off (84% in February ’09) how much will last year’s actual revenue fall below projections?

Remember that Council burned its way through much of the City’s reserves on undisclosed Plan A costs and cost overruns. Thus it will not require much of a revenue shortfall to place Abbotsford in a deficit position at the end of the 08/09 fiscal year.

Since, by law, municipalities are not to run a deficit any deficit will need to be made up out of taxpayer’s pockets.

With City business so bad last fall that council only needed to meet twice a month, beginning to trim spending last fall would have been the prudent and responsible course of action to take.

I suppose citizens should not be surprised that council did not act in such a financially responsible manner. After all, faced with the current economic climate city council chose to increase spending, not seek savings. Increasing spending to the point council needed to try to sneak additional tax increases in disguised as and called “parking fees”.

Should not the millions of dollars of roadwork the mayor speaks of have been addressed in the budget? Instead of just being pushed into the future as part of the $50 million in deferrals? Abbotsford is threatened by this towering tidal wave of deferred but needed infrastructure projects.

But hey, as citizens are crushed flat by onerous taxes, city fees and levies, the city falls apart around us or run out of cash sometime during the 09/10 fiscal year – we have a new Arena complex to play and party in while ignoring fiscal reality and fiscally responsible behaviour.