“Are we serious about social planning or is this lip service?” asked Coun. Lynne Harris. “I would like to see some real action taken”

Only one person out of all the members of council and the city administration seems able to see the Real World and what is taking place on the streets and in the social structure of our City. In the same article about the social planners report the reporter writes: “but there will be no quick fix to cure some of the problems highlighted.” Evidence, based on the experience that the city uses lip service not action to address social problems, suggests that no real actions will be taken in spite of councillor Harris’s expressed desire to actually act on these social problems.

Since last year the refrain from the City has been ‘we will act as soon as the Social Planner reports on what we need to do.’ I do not know about you but to me this says the Social Planner was suppose to actually do some planning, not write a report with a long list of social ills and conclude this pressing issue needs more procrastinating than the years of no action, ‘DOH, what problem?’ the city has already wasted in permitting the situation to grow and fester into a mountain. One can only wonder how many more ‘Planning Reports’, how many years of ‘study’, how much more lip service and what other excuses the ‘recommended’ Social Sustainability Advisory Committee will come up with over the coming years and decades for taking no action.

Social planner Jodi-Lyn Newnham did get one thing correct when she wrote “What will differentiate Abbotsford from other communities is how we choose to respond.” As was clear from the statistics cited on the CBC Canada Now report of April 5, 2005 about the website www.homelessinabbotsford.com and the social situation in Abbotsford, all other cities are achieving some successes in addressing their social ills. Of course they are actually facing their responsibilities and needs and taking action on them. Abbotsford has definitely differentiated itself from other communities in choosing to respond by sitting around paying lip service to the problem instead of acting and improving the social situation as other communities have done. Something for the City council and administration, together with the citizens they represent, to be proud of?