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Date: | Tue, 20 Aug 2019 08:51:53 -0600 |
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KENNEY GOVERNMENT WANTS THE HOMELESS TO DIE
(My comment on the much-subscribed Change Alberta Facebook site which is
largely commentary by myself)
If there was a cancer clinic in your neighbourhood that created parking
problems and you lobbied to close it down, you would be regarded as a
monster. It's a health facility and the health of the vulnerable, when
they include the middle and upper classes, is regarded as paramount by
most citizens. And you wouldn't get away with saying, "at least keep
away the lung cancer patients. Most of them got themselves into that
condition by smoking."
So why is it OK for homeowners and business owners who colonize rough
areas of cities through gentrification to oppose health services for the
poor and often homeless folks, generally Indigenous and racialized, who
were there before them? Addiction is a medical issue. Psychiatric
research demonstrates an 80 percent comorbidity between addiction and
mental health issues. In turn, mental health issues are more common
among the oppressed sections of society for historical reasons. The
ravages of residential schools, dispossession of their lands, and the
larger societal effort to commit genocide against Indigenous peoples
lives on despite words of apology from Canadian governments largely
unmatched by actions to aid Indigenous efforts to regain their
millennial cultures. People born with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, a
kind of life sentence at birth, mostly end up homeless. And yet the same
people who would pour disdain on someone who dismissed lung cancer
patients for their smoking often think it is is just fine to ignore the
needs of addicts while emphasizing the "community interest." Somehow,
the homeless and the poor are removed from the gentrifiers' definition
of community.
Jason Luan and Rod Knecht, who put the interests of exclusion-minded
"communities" above the interests of those requiring the medical
attention of supervised consumption sites, should be viewed as Canadian
versions of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte. He simply has the
forces of law and order murder homeless addicts. Canadians are too
polite to allow so direct a policy but the more shameless among us are
cold-blooded enough to shut down services that would keep them alive
when they are not willing or able to avail themselves of rehabilitation
services that, in any case, are scarce and often ineffective.
The decision by the Alberta government to inspect only the so-called
"social and economic" consequences of supervised consumption sites and
ignore their role in keeping vulnerable people alive violates the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The federal government should
act to shut down such an inspection or at least refer it to the courts.
While Jason Kenney supported the let-them-die side regarding Insite when
he was the number 2 man in the Harper government, the Supreme Court
ruled that that side was violating Charter rights. Nothing has changed
except that Kenney is now a provincial premier. His intentions regarding
medically supervised consumption sites have not changed. But neither has
the law of the land. He should be stopped in his tracks by the federal
government.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/consumption-site-review-alberta-drugs-luan-committee-1.5252093
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