Internment Camps?

Watching the news during the first weekend of February was disquieting, raising questions and concerns about the Campbell government’s ability to address homelessness, mental illness, addiction, poverty and poverty reduction not only in a suitable but a just way. I was also left with serious doubts about the government’s capability to deal with these issues in an effective and fiscally responsible manner.

Two years ago I wrote that if the Campbell government continued to suffer from a lack of ideas, leadership and some boldness they would be digging in the archives for the old plans to the World War II camps used to intern Canadians of Japanese ethnicity.

No leadership, no ideas, no innovation, no boldness and you find time ticking away creating political pressure to DO SOMETHING! Anyway of rounding up the homeless and getting them out of sight before the eyes of the world turns to BC for the Olympic Games in 2010 begins to look tempting.

Sounds a little farfetched?

Until you have Health Minister George Abbots talking about reopening Riverview to begin getting the homeless mentally ill of the streets and interned out of sight. Of course this is for “their own good”. Given the number of homeless estimated in the report for mental health it is clear that just Riverview could not house all 15,500 homeless. You would have to find other “accommodation” for the balance.

The government did talk about using old prisons or other such facilities in the interior as places to set up residential programs that would help people get a trade and ready to get back into society, “for their own good”. I heard the other day about just such a two year program running right now although of very limited space.

You would have to come up with some sort of plans for camps to house the residents of a program expanded to 15,500. Perhaps the archives …

Politicians, political pressure and political expediency have me remembering the caution that “the road to hell is paved with good attentions”.

The government’s plans to look at reopening Riverview to house the homeless “for their own good” is a plan to step onto a very steep, very slippery slope. It is a slope that as someone who has suffered homelessness and mental illness fills me with disquiet and foreboding.