Login / RegisterGregor Robertson responds to lawsuit against city: "Being homeless is not a crime"
Vancouver's mayor has responded to a constitutional challenge filed by a formerly homeless Vancouver man against city restrictions against sleeping outside. Here is Gregor Robertson's statement:
Today a lawsuit was apparently filed against the City regarding portions of the City’s Street and Traffic Bylaw, Parks Control Bylaw, and City Land Use Regulation. Although I have not seen the lawsuit and cannot comment on the specifics of the case, I want to address a number of issues.
Being homeless is not a crime. I have asked the City Manager and Chief of Police, once they have reviewed the details of the lawsuit, to provide me with current information on bylaw tickets issued to people who may be homeless. The City is committed to ensuring that our bylaws are enforced appropriately and are not punishing those who are homeless.
Our goal with all bylaws is to strike a balance, and they should not be punitive towards vulnerable citizens. This is why I personally made it a priority when first elected to eliminate the previous administration’s Project Civil City. We want to strike a balance between helping and protecting our most vulnerable citizens while ensuring all members of the public can fairly use and access our public spaces. We will await the outcome of the court process, and if there are adjustments that need to be made, we will do so.
"Striking a Balance" equals retaining police discretion, which means differential aka discriminatory application of the law. This is no picnic for officers on patrol, let alone for the general public wherever they may choose to sit, squat, picket, or otherwise protest, let alone be forced by circumstance to seek shelter.
The rule of law, let alone public morality, requires a political decision, where none has been made here. We still live in King Sam's UnCivil City, and needs laws AND policy to make it less so.
It would be nice if we had a coresponding document entitled the Charter of Duties and Responsibilities, which a functioning adult citizen of Canada should be required to demonstrate in order to lay claim to the protections in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The ability to file a tax return, obtain shelter, clothing and food should be among those responsibilities.
If one cannot adequately take care of one's self, one should then become a ward of the state. As a ward, one would receive the attention, training and support necessary until one is able to demonstrate those duties and responsibilities.
Laws like this one that the City finds itself defending are generally enacted so that an intervention can take place when people fall through the cracks. On the face of it, it looks harsh. It's not; however, in the absence of a Charter of Duties and Responsibilities this is the only way to address someone who is incapable of taking care of themselves.
On a side note research needs to go into finding out who a CANT actually help themselfs, and tell the rest to get a job and go fck themselfs. Our city enables homelessness.
It is utterly outrageous, callous and frankly clueless to suggest that because a person is unable to attend to these things to your satisfaction because of the deep seated structural and institutional barriers which have been placed in front of them and which are replicated time and again in every ministry, at every turn, and buttressed by ineffective governmental policies, that that person should not have the right to protections under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. How ridiculous. If it wasn't so absolutely cruel it would be laughable.
This is kind of like a fascist pipe dream. Actually, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms exists JUST SO people will not be considered to only be privileged by shelter, clothing, and food if they are "responsible" to a role in an ideological economy. THAT idea of yours is AGAINST the Rights and Freedoms and people like you but with more power to make these kinds of bylaws and "Responsibility" checks are the reason the Charter of Rights and Freedoms MUST BE SPELLED OUT SO DIRECTLY as to un-complicate the idea of "social welfare."
Some people do not support themselves but they have a right to exist. I will not condone euthanasia of the homeless or autistic to suit an economic hegemony of being "responsible for yourself."