Category Archives: Issues

Homeless, Issues, Municipal, Politics

Abbotsford’s Ethical, Spiritual D-day

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Understanding, Choosing, Wisdom.

Our lives, our society, are the sum result of all the choices we make, both consciously and unconsciously. In control of the process of choosing, lies control of all aspects of our lives.

Positive control of the process of choosing requires choosing wisely; choosing wisely requires understanding. Without understand and wisdom, chance is left in control of our future.

On Monday February 3, 2014 Abbotsford City Council will decide whether Abbotsford Community Services can build the First Stage Housing they have proposed to use to help the homeless, those faced with mental health and/or substance use challenges, to begin the process of recovery.

Housing that would start to answer the question council’s decades old  policy of chasing the homeless  endlessly around Abbotsford has ignored – “Where else can they go?”.

Housing First is a model of recovery recognized by psychiatric professionals as an alternative approach to the traditional approaches to treatment; an approach pioneered in the 1990’s by Sam Tsemberis [a faculty member of the Department of Psychiatry of the New York University School of Medicine] and the Pathways to Housing organization in New York City.

The results achieved using Housing First have resulted in it being recognized as a ‘best practice’ for governments and service-agencies in their fight to end chronic homelessness; have resulted in the use of Housing First by governments and organizations in countries around the world, including Canadian cities such as Calgary, where Housing First is part of Calgary’s plan to address and end homelessness.

The mistake often made about Housing First as a result of its first priority being to provide housing, is that Housing First is not about abstinence. However, in understanding the Housing First approach one understands Housing First is about dealing with a person’s substance use and/or mental health challenges – after housing them. It is an approach that has proven to get people into treatment faster than the traditional approaches do.

An outcome that reminds us that, when addressing homelessness, mental illness and substance use, we need to remember that People are at the center of the process and when People are central to anything, it is a given that outcomes will have a large iffy [full of unresolved points or questions] factor.

But these are just facts, and while facts are important to choosing wisely, a wise choice also requires understanding and awareness of what other, less obvious or hidden decisions will be included in the choice(s) made.

Whether the City of Abbotsford and the APD step out of the 19th century and into the 21st century; whether a start is made on addressing chronic homelessness, mental illness and substance use on Abbotsford’s streets, are not the only decisions that will be made by Abbotsford City Council in their Yea or Nay on the ACS housing proposal..

Council’s Yea or Nay on the ACS proposal will decide – and declare to the world – something far more fundamental and important: What type of community Abbotsford chooses to be.

Not the type of City Abbotsford proclaims itself to be.

But the type of City revealed in the actions and behaviours of Abbotsford; for it is actions and behaviours, not words, that true colours are shown.

Will City Council choose for Abbotsford to set out to become, in the reality of deeds, the City that Abbotsford unfoundedly claims to be?

Or will City Council choose to continue to be the City its behaviour, such as the use of chicken manure as a poor man’s biological weapon against its mentally ill and homeless citizens, declared Abbotsford to be to fellow Canadians and the World.

“You can speak with spiritual eloquence, pray in public, and maintain a holy appearance… but it is your behaviour that will reveal your true character.” 

Steve Maraboli, Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

behaviour, Homeless, Issues, Municipal, Politics, This is so Stupid

Fear? Or Business as Usual Dumb?

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What is City Council so afraid of being revealed during the court proceedings scheduled to start Monday – four short days from today – that they were about to send in their armed officers, a police force referred to by Justice Kathleen Ker as “a place that time forgot“, to clear the park and avoid having to face a judge on Monday?

Now I do not claim that moving into the parking lot and erecting a 8ft high wooden fence is anything but…….Dumb. But anyone who knows Barry Shantz does not expect strategic thinking. Demands, shouting, aggression, a nobody else matters attitude, disruptive behaviour and provocation – that is what you expect.

As to whoever put up the wooden fence…..with friends like that who needs enemies?

Looking at the walls on television, the homeless ensconced  behind the walls and the police outside the walls preparing to attack…….my mind conjured up visions of little boys playing Cowboys [more properly Cavalry] and Indians.

Faced with these new developments the city should have remembered the advice Napoleon gave his Marshals: “the enemy is making a false move, why should we interrupt him?”

The intelligent thing for the city to do was……nothing. Go to court Monday, point to the behaviour that built a walled fort in a public parking lot and say that is why we need the court to order Jubilee Park vacated by these hooligans.

Instead the City seized the excuse and the cover provided by the actions of the homeless with their wall to strike quickly and render the question of court on Monday moot.

Given the lack of reason demonstrated by both sides it is lucky that DJ Larkin from Pivot Legal Society secured a court order. Thereby denying both sides the opportunity to do something incredibly stupid; stupid being an ability both sides have demonstrated having and being willing to use.

Apparently the four days until court on Monday was to long for either side to go without an Act of Stupidity.

Speaking of stupid is as stupid does, watching City Council’s behaviour over the years council has made it abundantly clear that when it comes to dealing with homelessness they like to consume several extra bowls of stupid before dealing with the issue.

The attempt to commit an Act of Stupidity Thursday afternoon is well within councils normal operating procedures. Or perhaps council didn’t want to set a precedent by going to court as though the homeless actually had rights.

 

Still, one wonders if City Council’s panicky attempt to avoid court by striking to force the homeless out of Jubilee on Thursday was a desperate attempt to avoid the need to appear in court, face a lawyer acting on behalf of the homeless and have………What? come out.

Sigh. If they had just left it be, but NO, city council felt compelled to overreact and focus attention on the homeless hiding behind their walls as the police build their barricades……and those images flash around the world making the City of Abbotsford appear even more ridiculous.

You know this level of weapons grade stupidity is the behaviour one expects from Americans.

Just how low have we sunk, and when did we lose touch with what it was to be Canadian?

Homeless, Issues, Municipal, Politics, This is so Stupid

One or the Other, but not Both

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From James’s ‘That’s So Life’ Files:

At the end of the shift Monday I took the elevator down to the garage to collect my car and head home only to find my car, that had been running perfectly when I arrived, did not want to take me home. Because it was a stick shift I was able to coax it home.

Arriving home I got out of the car, popped the hood and found to my surprise:

 

It certainly explained the behaviour of the car. Although how the oil cap that was on my car at the time I arrived at work was no longer on my car when I finished work 8 hours later is currently a mystery I would very much like to have solved.

I checked to make sure there was still oil in the engine and there was enough that there was no need, or room, to add more.

Feeling relieved that I had not been running the engine without oil I headed into my place, collected a camera and returned to the car to take photos of what had happened, the problem I needed to address to get my car running again. My plan was to return inside, download the pictures, use the internet to get feedback on the pictures and find transportation to secure a used oil cap from a used parts dealer to replace the missing cap and become mobile again.

All the while keeping my fingers crossed that all I need to do is replace the missing cap to become mobile once more.

I sit down at the computer, download the photographs, started my preferred web browser and………….no Internet.

Not unusual, but when nothing restored access to the internet I got up and checked the television to find that all of my [basic] television channels were “not authorized”.

I turned off the television and sat there waiting for the meteorite to crash down and put me out of my misery, hoping the universe was through playing cat to my mouse.

Wondering if the Universe had realized its error all those decades ago and was resetting to give me the life I had ordered; because this certainly was not the life I had ordered.

When it became clear that the Universe had no intention to either stop with the cat and mouse, or to correct its mistake, reset and give me the life I had ordered – that insidious little black thought crawled out of its containment and whispered about how I did not have to suffer this shit and that, although the car’s none running condition to cement bridge supports out of play, there was that great carving knife I had just found in a Thrift store Monday which would go through flesh like a hot knife through butter……..

………..and decided the wisest course of action was to let it go, go to bed and have a long sleep; dealing with things in a calm, rested manner tomorrow [Tuesday].

Arising Tuesday afternoon I set out for the Library, finding out bus fares were now $2.25. Arriving at the Library I signed onto a computer and made my way to the Shaw website and set up a chat. Shaw wanted payment by credit card because it is immediate cash in their pockets, I will spare you the grizzly details but Shaw was reasonable about getting paid by transfer from my bank account.

Leaving me to exit the Library, return home and make the agreed payment to Shaw.

Then sit down and write about how my day went because I still need to set up transportation to replace the oil cap and contact the shelter to let them know I am currently not mobile and until I can get a new oil cap I cannot get to work to cover any extra shifts.

Not to overlooked the fact writing it down is a way of dealing with, putting it in perspective and letting it go.

It occurs to me that Shaw’s warning system [threatening system] is by automated phone calls. With my phone number currently out of service any call by Shaw’s automated phone system would have gotten the automated message that my phone was out of service to which it would have regurgitated its threats of “pay or else” never recognizing that it was making its threats into thin air.

Now there is an interesting mental image: the human race suddenly dies off. As more and more accounts fall into arrears threatening phone calls are made by automated systems to other automated systems, services are cut off by automated systems setting off more calls made by automated systems to automated systems………and on and on…..and should any alien species pass this way they would find a planet full of automated systems threatening each other in a rising cacophony of……….what may be a fitting epitaph for our current society.

There is a science fiction short story in there as the aliens struggle to understand why the dead alien race built all these automated systems to threaten each other and a few other obvious discrepancies of our society. Only you write it in such a manner that it is not revealed that this is an alien race visiting a human lifeless Planet Earth until the last paragraph.

Which still leaves me with the need to deal with the missing oil cap; a situation that demonstrates the pitfalls of poverty that sit there waiting to dump you into, or back into, homelessness.

It is far harder to move from homeless to housed – and stay housed – in this society, economy, point in time than the general public would think it is. Not because the homeless want to be homeless but because of the barriers to becoming housed and all the things that can happen that become barriers to staying housed.

Addiction, behaviour, Homeless, Issues, Municipal, Politics

It’s either Yes – or Kiss the Money goodbye.

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Bruce, John, Dave, Les, Patricia – you were paying attention weren’t you? You did hear what Finance Minister Mike de Jong stated so clearly?

Finance minister  Mike de Jong, in an November 28, 2013 interview with radio station 107.1, made it abundantly clear to Abbotsford’s citizens, mayor and council what the bottom line is for the proposed Housing First project at Abbotsford Community Services to help the homeless.

“It will be for the City Council to decide whether they want to accept the offer that the provincial government has made. I’m hopeful because I know how great the demands are. And if Abbotsford were to decide not to proceed then there are any number of communities that will be happy to take that money.”  Mike de Jong

Either the mayor and city council rezone the ACS property and the housing gets built OR the money will go to a community where the community, mayor and council actually want to do something to address homelessness and affordable housing in their community.

A community, mayor and council who are interested in doing, as in taking action, not simply uttering the right buzzwords or saying they want to do something but – wail, lament – Abbotsford has no money for the homeless; wealthy well housed, well connected old boy businessmen YES, but NONE for the homeless.

A community, mayor and council who, when the provincial government offers million$ of dollar$ for capital expenses and more million$ of dollar$ to fund operations and programs over the life of the project act quickly to do what is required to secure the funding for their community.

Unlike Abbotsford where the NIMBYs are guaranteed to say NIMBY you don’t; where far to many others in the community start coming up with excuses about how they are all for this type of project but……..it needs to be located in the ‘perfect’ location and this is not it; where council begins looking for excuses to say NO, to NOT take the provincial governments money as soon as the project is publicly announced; where the mayor stands at the microphone at a public forum wailing about how the city is to poor and the senior levels of government have to ‘step up’ with funding……while at his right hand sit three representatives from BC Housing with million$ of dollar$ for capital costs and more millions$ of dollars$ for operations on the table.

Clarification: the money will go to a community, mayor and council who are interested in doing something positive and effective.

After all, Abbotsford’s mayor and council are interested in doing something about the homeless – attacking them with a poor man’s biological weapon of chicken feces; using their police force*** against the homeless; destroying the camps and belongings of the homeless – in the dead of winter.

In fact, based on behaviour to date, Abbotsford’s mayor and council seem interested in any action BUT an action that would be positive and effective.

A council that squanders million$ of dollar$ on vanity projects, seemingly wants to squander the opportunity to receive millions of dollar$ of provincial money, squander provincial goodwill and squander future funding of projects by the provincial government.

Business as usual at Abbotsford City Hall.

*** A police force that Justice Kathleen Ker referred to as “a place that time forgot” and stated such actions are “inexcusable in the 21st century.” Justice Ker also stated “The treatment Mr. Moonie received while in the custody of the APD fell not only below general community standards of decency, but it also reflects treatment that denied Mr. Moonie any modicum of respect for his inherent dignity and value as a human being,”.

A police force where it was necessary to: “Resolution reached over police tent-slashing in Abbotsford”

Homeless, Issues

APD: Colonoscopy Needed?

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Many people remain unclear what the big deal was when the emails of the APD about the homeless, made public by a Freedom of Information request by Pivot legal society, showed Chief Constable Bob Rich’s attitude, words and language in regards to the homeless were………shall we say less than professional?

People dismissed the emails as ‘police black humour’.

I am not about to argue that the use of black humour is not acceptable. We are human beings and as human beings black humour is a wellness tool for those such as firefighters, paramedics, ambulance attendants, police officers, emergency room doctors and nurses whose jobs are highly stressful; jobs that involve dealing with people under trying circumstances.

But Bob Rich is not simply a police officer – he is the Chief police officer in Abbotsford, a position of leadership. And leaders are held [or should hold themselves] to a higher standard of behaviour because leaders, especially of a police force, set not simply the tone and boundaries of behaviour but the ethos [the fundamental character of spirit that informs the customs and practices of a group].

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. Norman Schwarzkopf

Unless Bob Rich is held to, or holds himself to a higher standard, you end up with a force that is judgemental and feels free to act on its judgments and prejudices. You end up with a force of bullies; bullies who see nothing wrong in vandalizing the camps and belongings of the homeless.

The problem with bullies, especially ones who feel their job grants them power to make demands of others, is that the bulling gets worse and expands to include more and more victims.

Bullying also leads to Leo Award weapons grade Stupid behaviour. Ill-advised behaviour that leaves citizens wondering if officers use that bump between their shoulders for anything other than a hat rack or if perhaps the APD needs a visit to a proctologist and/or a colonoscopy to determine how many officers have their heads firmly inserted in their………..fundament.

On a recent Thursday night on Gladys Avenue…………

For over 5½ years in Boundary Park on Gladys Avenue [across the road from the MCC construction] an eclectic group of individuals has put on what was known as the Thursday Night BBQ, serving a meal to the hungry.

Over that period of time police officers had dropped by from time to time. Sometimes to see what was occurring and other times, knowing that you could find the homeless there, looking for someone; as happened recently when the police were seeking to find and transport to the hospital an individual who had been reported as suicidal.

With reasonableness on both sides, any issues were resolved via discussion and compromise.

But two weeks ago, weapons grade stupidity arrived in two APD vehicles; a car (614 WJP) and a SUV (0680).

Crossing Essendene heading south on Gladys Avenue I found those two APD vehicles sitting with their lights flashing blocking the south bound lane of Gladys. I had to carefully pull out and around the APD vehicles (it is dark by 5 PM these days) to proceed south on Gladys.

Thinking something serious must have happened, once past the APD vehicles I pulled over. As I was getting out of my car an APD officer approached and told me I had to park on the other side of the road and that the APD vehicles and officers were there because of a traffic hazard.

Let me state right now that yes, the west side of the road is signed no parking. It is the east side (the side where the MCC construction is taking place) that is signed for parking.

Let me also state that those who are bringing the supplies necessary to serve the meal are not parked at the edge of the road. Their vehicles are pulled completely off the road into the park.

There are always several vehicles parked (and pulled well over) along the no parking side of the road. Those who park on the ‘wrong’ side are mobility challenged [oxygen, walkers, canes, crutches etc] for whom parking on the ‘right’ side of the street and crossing would be both a hardship and a danger. People who would be a traffic hazard if they were crossing the street.

Five and half years with no one being hit; some drivers and dinners annoyed, but neither drivers nor dinners injured.

And while it is dark at this time of year by 5 PM, if you don’t notice the generator powered work-lights that brightly illuminate the food prep and serving area – you shouldn’t be driving.

These…….challenged officers were wandering around, leaving their vehicles completely blocking a lane of traffic and forcing drivers to carefully, slowly, safely, manoeuvre around the APD vehicles and officers.

As General Schwarzkopf noted character is the most important ingredient in leadership..

Which is why if Bob Rich is not capable of holding himself to a high standard of professional behaviour, the APD needs to find someone capable of holding themselves to the high standards and behaviours needed to provide leadership to a police department in this day and age.

Otherwise you end up with unprofessional officers who feel free to vandalize the belongings, harass, bully and violate the Charter Rights of those perceived as undesirables, as problems, as somehow less human and without any power to enforce their rights to be treated with dignity.

You end up with a force of officers who run around harassing people about traffic hazards when they, the APD officers and their vehicles, are the dangerous traffic hazard.