Photos: Vancouver activists encircle Canada's Olympic pavilion with call for action on homelessness

lolling at all the waste that this protest produced.
meters and meters of red plastic, loads of chemicals sprayed in the air, plastic ponchos that cant be recycled.

Those are tarps - they have a hundred uses. Mainly, keeping rain off the people at the tent village.

Get a Job. Get a Home. Problem fixed.

Having the goal of 'ending homelessness' is setting yourself up for failure to start with. Some people are just not capable of holding down a job/apartment/stable life, and paying them to do nothing isn't going to solve the problems in their lives.

This doesn't apply to all homeless people. How about a national strategy for the mentally challenged (who genuinely need help) before we worry about housing and paying welfare to everyone who thinks it's a better option than working an entry-level job?

Well done, protestors! You found a creative way to get your message on poverty and homelessness across, and an incredibly important message it is indeed.

Human beings need a home, security, rights, nutritious food, education, health care, and that's about it! Give them even a rudimentary but adequate version of those simple and relatively inexpensive things, and voila - like magic - they generally take off. Because people are actually designed to enjoy being productive, happy members of society. Deprive people of any of these basic requirements of life, and people fall apart, subject to misery, discomfort, fear, sleep deprivation, stress, malnutrition, disease, etc. Under these circumstances, they often turn to drug abuse, prostitution and crime to try to ameliorate their misery.

The cost of all this drug abuse, crime, disease, mental illness and misery is huge - much higher than just providing all the citizens with their basic needs so that they have a necessary foundation for getting on with a happy and productive, fulfilling life.

It is bad economics not to provide every citizen in society with their fundamental requirements for health and personal development from the moment of conception.

And on top of this, it is not the loving, responsible, sane thing to do either, when our society could easily afford to end all this misery and provide joy to the lives of millions.

Our priorities are wrong. Our politicians are the wrong people. They represent the interests of the largest multinational corporations. This is very bad for the people of Canada. Canadians, please reflect on this for a minute. We need new politicians. We need you - normal, healthy, caring people to get involved in a political party and make it a better party. Or run as an independent candidate for office and speak up. Or support someone else who is running as an independent. Whatever in your analysis will be the most productive way to get involved in the political life of your country.

Are you proud of Canada because some Canadian athletes did well? Are you proud of Canada because our troops are willing to kill and die or be horribly injured to defend it? Then you should be willing to participate in the political life of your country. Find meaningful, independent sources of information like Agora, the Tyee, GlobalResearch.ca, etc. Try to develop informed opinions about a few topics. Then contribute your time, energy, enthusiasm, and ideas to making Canada a better place, a place with more happiness and fewer miserable, frustrated lives.

The current crop of politicians will never do this, because that is not what they are paid to do by their taskmasters - the big banking, armaments, oil, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness and mining interests. But please get involved. This is the only way the situation will change, so that we as Canadians can be proud of more than our athletes, but can also be proud of the true Olympic spirit that moves through us all - for the betterment of our entire society and the world.

Typical. The olympics are only here for 2 weeks and the homeless issue will be here long afterward. What do tourists have to do with the housing issue? Leave them alone. You're acting like petulent children who didn't get the candy bar you wanted.

In the days of nation-building, Canada had a tax system that was amongst the most progressive anywhere.

"In 1949, PIT [personal income tax] rates ranged from 15 to 84 percent and there were 17 brackets. In 1994, the range was 26.35 to 46.4 percent and there were 3 brackets." In 2009, there were four federal brackets: 15 percent, 22 percent, 26 percent, and 29 percent on an income over $126,264.

Throughout the ten year period from 2000 to 2010 there have been huge tax cuts, both personal and corporate ($100 billion over five years by Paul Martin -- and a further $100 billion, including GST, by the Harper government) there has been an aggressive rejection of any criticism of this gutting of the federal purse. Anyone talking about tax increases would expect to be immediately attacked and ridiculed.

One element that seems to be ignored in this entire debate is the role drugs have played in all this. It is so bad down here we have dealers running cheque cashing stores. People are having their brains melted by crack and meth. How many of the homeless are the product of this, and why has this not even been a topic for anyone on any side of this?

Its a meaningless statement. Its just hatred and classicism an excuse to attempt to be cruel - stupidity.

Actually get a job get a home Isnt funny. While your so content with yelling "why should my tax's be paying for the olympics", ill turn around and yell "Why should my tax's be paying for other peoples homes?"

Honestly i have nothing personally against homeless people. But these homeless have ways of getting out of their situation. They have the ability to Do something about themselves. It is a choice to do the drugs and waist their lives away, not an inevitability.

Ive personally seen a society where people are BORN into homelessness, and they not only have Zero welfare, they have Zero change to get out of their poverty.

So no its not a meaningless statement, nor hatred and classicism. Its certainly not cruel, but it is cold. Its cold logic, Why would i pay for some body else to have a home, when they cant even support themselves? When i have myself and my own to look after?

I dont know them, and if they are unable to support themselves, then they need to make some serious life choices. Like get a job.

and then Get a home.