Chamber of Commerce/Indo-Canadian Business Association/
FV Real Estate Board Council Candidates Meeting
Opening Statement:
I am James W. Breckenridge
I came to Abbotsford to provide the key support in the plan that allowed my brother to live sober.
Since then I have been a professional – a Chartered Accountant – a businessman, a sole proprietor and….
When Mr. Barkman didn’t supply the details following his announcement of a plan to solve homelessness in Abbotsford [February 2014] I thought he had decided to wait until the municipal election campaign to set out how he plans to bring about Abbotsford not needing housing for homeless persons in 2 years.
The campaign for seats on Abbotsford’s City Council has begun and Mr. Barkman is running for re-election, but there has been no mention of any Barkman Homeless Plan.
At least one assumes that Mr. Barkman meant he has a plan to end homelessness in Abbotsford when he voted to turn down $$millions of dollars$$ of provincial funding by voting down the ACS Housing First project stating: “We need housing now, not in two years.”
Because, if Mr. Barkman didn’t have a plan to end homelessness in Abbotsford, and Abbotsford will need housing for the homeless in two years, surely Mr. Barkman should have voted to accept the millions of provincial dollars and to build the ACS housing proposal?
After all it would have been nonsensical [or as John Smith called it – irrational] for Mr. Barkman to vote against building housing the city would need even more desperately in two years.
Unless………… “We need housing now, not in two years” was simply another example of an Abbotsford city councillor excuse mongering and the totally vacuous, totally absurd “We need housing now, not in two years” was the best pretence Mr. Barkman could fabricate for voting to turn down millions of dollars from the province and to continue Abbotsford City Council’s policy of increasing the number of homeless on the streets of Abbotsford?
In which case Mr. Barkman voted down the ACS Housing First proposal for reasons he is unwilling to publicly admit to.
So Mr. Barkman, did you vote NO because you have a plan or for self-serving reasons?
Watching the Misadventures of Abbotsford City Council I wondered why somebody didn’t do something about this debacle.
Then I realized I AM SOMEBODY.
Deniability: noun; 1. the ability to deny something, especially on the basis of being officially uninformed; 2. the ability to deny something, as knowledge of or connection with a repugnant activity
Politicians and politics have always been long on promises and short on delivery, but over recent decades the promises have become longer and delivery extremely short.
As if that was not bad enough, over recent years politicians and politics have become long on deniability, while responsibility has headed towards non-existence.
The federal government downloads as much cost and ‘stick it to the provinces’ as it can; the provinces point fingers at the federal government and distance themselves from responsibility by downloading and sticking ministries and crown corporations with responsibility for problems; municipal governments point fingers at ministries and the provincial government insisting it is all the responsibility of the provincial government and they bear no responsibility for acting; the voters stick the politicians and politics with all the responsibility for problems by insisting politicians not tell voters anything they do not want to hear and punishing anyone who dares to speak of reality on an issue.
And so it does not matter how despicable, unconscionable or inhuman an action or action is because………nobody bears any responsibility for what occurred or occurs. And so the despicable, unconscionable and inhuman move from being the results of an error to being rare to being uncommon to not that unusual to ‘that is the way it goes’.
It is how the despicable, unconscionable and inhuman become no big deal; where the question becomes “what is wrong with that?”
Where it is business as usual for Vancouver Costal Health to have an employee take a frail, elderly woman from Squamish and drive her into Fraser Health and dump her in Abbotsford – a city she has no knowledge of or connection to – not at a Fraser Health facility, but at the emergency shelter.
Apparently there are no resources or facilities in all of Vancouver Coastal Health healthier or more appropriate for a senior citizen than an emergency shelter in Abbotsford.
Where a non-Vancouver Coastal Health medical professional notices the blood stains on the elbows of the sleeves of the maltreated senior’s shirt and after looking at her elbows gently helps her to the nursing station so the wounds on her elbows can be treated and bandaged.
While the Vancouver Coastal Health employee states that acute had said her elbows were cared for; before scurrying back to Vancouver Coastal Health.
While the senior explained she had hurt her elbows when she fell and had to crawl for help.
Nursing and shelter staff are well aware that an emergency shelter is no place for any senior citizen…….but what choice do they have? Toss her on the street?
As inappropriate as the emergency shelter is for this frail elderly woman, she is at least somewhere were the staff [people, her fellow human beings] are compassionate and caring.
I moved to Abbotsford 20 years ago to provide the key support in my brother’s sobriety plan.
The key to his plan was starting his day with the 6:40 AM attitude adjustment meeting at the Alano Club. Divorced, with custody of his two young children, he needed someone who would be considered appropriate and responsible to leave his children in the care of should the matter of custody end up back in court.
It was considered unlikely that any judge would feel leaving the kids in the care of his big brother, the children’s uncle, a Chartered Accountant, was irresponsible behaviour.
In those twenty years I have been a professional Chartered Accountant, The Boss, a business and systems consultant and a small business owner.
As a result of mental illness several of my 20 years in Abbotsford were spent homeless on the streets of Abbotsford.
Stubbornness, the love of reading and learning instilled by my parents and luck allowed me to overcome the barriers raised by homelessness and achieve mental wellness; which in turn permitted me to become and stay housed.
It was a journey that resulted in knowledge and understanding of homelessness, mental illness, poverty, addiction, people and life that I had had no interest in learning, but that could be gained in no other way.
Achieving mental wellness required me to learn not simply about mental illness but to be conscious about who I was, who I wanted to be, the type of person I wanted to be, to heal old wounds, to change negative, harmful negative core beliefs to positive beliefs and to practice good mental hygiene.
It is a journey that has made me comfortable in my own skin, allows me to laugh at myself and accept my quirks, sense of humour, thought processes and creativity.
It also, in a very real sense, hijacked my life. Looking for employment I have accumulated a stack of ‘thanks but no thanks’ letters stating I am too ‘over qualified’ for the job; with prospective employers with employment that fell into the ‘qualified but not overqualified’ category the stigma resulting from the public perception of mental illness resulted in the prospective employers being to nervous about mental illness to give me the opportunity to demonstrate that dealing with mental illness had a positive effect on me and my abilities and my performance.
I am not sure what would have been the result if I found myself in the same frustrating, no employment, no prospects of employment, grinding poverty, homeless state of affairs before I had taken my journey of self discovery but it would not have been pretty.
Although I was living in my car, I took advantage of my 1 hour of internet time a day at the Library and started a blog/webpage about my view from the street and became involved in the community and issues; found a place to reside and achieved a precarious financial balance.
Comfortable in my own skin I found that I could run for Abbotsford City Council, where once even the thought of doing that would have terrified the old ‘before’ me. That not getting elected, while frustrating because important issues were not getting addressed, did not defeat or crush me.
I believe that the business and finances of Abbotsford need to be run responsibly, prudently, professionally; with solid planning and budgeting to ensure the city has a sound and sustainable financial foundation.
I believe in responsibility, not in excuses; in doing the right thing even when painful; in delivering, not in grandiose false promises; that if it is happening in Abbotsford council is responsible for seeing an issue is addressed, not in pointing fingers at other levels of government.
I believe that city council and government needs to deal fairly, with a level playing field for all citizens; that no person or group of persons should be ‘more equal’ than others.
Sitting on one’s posterior allows problems and issues to grow unmanageable and wastes the valuable commodity of time; repeating the same behaviour over and over as if this time the outcome will be different not only can be defined as insanity but it allows the problem and/or issue to worsen and wastes resources.
If you cannot think of a different approach, take a look at ways other municipalities and governments successfully addressed the issue; ask the residents of Abbotsford for ideas – as Linus Pauling said, the best way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas.
With people in the equation, the probability is that it is NOT going to be neat and tidy.
Sometimes you have to feel the fear and act anyway.
I believe in writing about issues; in using good ideas; that you do not TELL people how to behave, you SHOW people by the way you live and behave; in leaving Abbotsford in better shape than it was when you came into office.
Once again I will try to convince voters that Abbotsford needs solid financial understanding and actions; that Abbotsford needs a variety of backgrounds, understanding and lived experience on city council; Abbotsford needs responsible, rational decision making that takes into consideration the future and future consequences of actions.
That Abbotsford cannot afford the outcomes and consequences that were a result of the decisions, actions and behaviours of the current [and recent past] mayors and councillors; that a change in mayor and councillors is a must.
I will ask that voters to allow me to actively participate in bring about the needed changes by electing me to Abbotsford City Council.
A few background facts:
I was raised and went to school in Georgetown Ontario, a community a little north and west of Toronto; attending Holy Cross Separate School and Georgetown District High School.
After graduating from Grade 13 I went to the University of Waterloo to study Mathematics, then moved to Saskatoon to study Commerce at the University of Saskatchewan. I chose the U of S because of the excellence of its reputation for Accounting, although when my father told me an old, good friend of his was the Dean of the College of Commerce at that time I took it as a positive sign it was a good choice.
I articled with Coopers & Lybrand in Saskatoon, wrote and passed the Uniform Final Exam earning the right to use the designation Chartered Accountant.
At the time Fate sent my life off into strange and unfamiliar territory I had 25 years of progressively challenging business experience.
Those 25 years and my experience with mental illness and homelessness result in me viewing and analyzing life and events from a unique point of view.
The best gift my parents ever gave me is a love of reading; a love that has saved and benefited me in a number of ways; a love that led to my passion for science fiction and fantasy and a collection of truly bad science fiction moves from the 1950’s and early 1960’s; a love that has left my home somewhat crowded as a result of having every science fiction and fantasy novel I have read.
I believe that if you live in a basement suite with children living upstairs it is unreasonable to expect QUIET; that if the jumping and playing for the children causes your ceiling light fixture to flicker – go to a thrift store, buy a floor lamp and don’t use the ceiling fixture. It is the job of children to play and be noisy; it is the responsibility of adults to encourage them to play, explore, learn, grow……..and be noisy.
While I enjoy people who know me, have read my words or have had someone tell them about me telling me that they will vote for me for Abbotsford City Council, I still am surprised; hopefully a good sign that my ego, while admittedly healthy, will not drive my decisions and behaviour if elected to council.
I was born in Canada; I am a Canadian citizen; most importantly – I AM CANADIAN.
Several hundreds of thousands of my words and thoughts can be found at www.jameswbreckenridge.ca
It is said that a camel is a horse made by a committee.
If only Abbotsford’s Homeless Task Force ’s Report came that close to reflecting the state of affairs in Abbotsford, the lower mainland and throughout BC of homelessness and the government ministries that impact upon homelessness in British Columbia.
Unfortunately for the Homeless-in-Abbotsford, the Task Force made a duck-billed platypus.
The Report fails to consider the current and future state of resources available to address homelessness and the related issues that impact homelessness such as mental health.
The report is built on the false foundation of assuming that the resources called for by the report will be found, ignoring budget and financial reality that has not simply imposed limits on resources but has imposed reductions on the resources available.
The provincial budget for the current fiscal year and the budget projections over five years make it clear that the actual resources available will dwindle year by year.
The question is NOT are we spending more dollars this fiscal year BUT what % increase is needed to purchase the same resources this fiscal year as were purchased in the prior fiscal year. If the increase in spending does not meet or exceed the % increase needed [as was the case in recent years, is the case in the current year and is the case in the future budget projections] you have a decrease in resources.
Planning based on false assumptions about resources not only results in a plan that is worthless, but can lead to wasting resources to accomplish little or nothing; resources that could have been used elsewhere to good effect.
The Task Force’s call for City Council to immediately create a staff coordinator position for homelessness is such a waste.
The idea of the staff coordinator stems from the notable career of Judy Graves as Vancouver’s homeless advocate. Ms. Graves could make contact with a homeless person, find them housing and connect them to the services the homeless person needed in a single day.
When Ms. Graves spoke to the Task Force this summer, she noted that the effectiveness of the outreach teams in Vancouver had suffered serious negative consequences as a result of the scarcity of resources in Vancouver and the competition between the teams for those scarce resources.
Scarce resources no longer permit finding housing and connecting a homeless person to the services the homeless person needs in a single day.
It would be better for the homeless in Vancouver to have fewer outreach teams and the money thus saved used to provide resources to house the homeless.
With the limited resources available in Abbotsford such a staff position would give little or no return for the money spent. It would be far more beneficial, in terms of effectively addressing homelessness, to spend the $100,000.00 not on salary but on rental subsidies.
Unless you have abundant resources frittering away resources on shelter beds or a coordinator is a misuse of resources that could be utilized to greater effect elsewhere.
The Task Force also – Ignored? Did not address? Failed to recognize? – that finding a person housing is quite do able………the person managing to stay in that housing…….well, there is the rub as they say.
Someone commented to me recently that he couldn’t understand why Mr. X had been homeless until recently housed.
What the statement ignores is that Mr. X was homeless after falling out of the housing he was in. And that before he was in the housing he was in when he became homeless….he was homeless, having fallen out of the housing he had been in prior to becoming homeless once again….. And that before he was in the housing he was in when he became homeless that time….he was homeless, having fallen out of the housing he had been in prior to becoming homeless once again…… And that before he was in the housing he was in when he became homeless….he was homeless, having fallen out of the housing he had been in prior to becoming homeless again…… And that before he was in the housing he was in when he became homeless….he was homeless, having fallen out of the housing he had been in prior to becoming homeless once again…..and so on and so on.
Success or failure in housing the homeless lies in the services and supports that provide the opportunity for an individual to do the work to accomplish the change in themselves needed to achieve wellness and sustain housing.
The form and content of the report, intentionally or not, fosters a sense of complacency, – no problem, we have it covered – and promotes rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic – as the rising levels of homelessness threaten to overwhelm us.
If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.