Smith says weapons discovery at Edmonton homeless camp highlights urgency
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
173.1794
Summary
In this episode, we talk about the growing problem of homeless people sleeping on the streets in the winter, and how to deal with it. We also talk about some of the dangers of sleeping in the snow, and what can be done about it.
Transcript
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These cities are in a rock and a hard place. I mean, if they don't enforce, if they don't take
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down these tents, we know how the activists will react when the fires happen, not if and when the
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people are, you know, overdose or intoxicated to the point where they freeze to death and not
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realize it. The city and authorities will get the blame for not having gone in there. But right now,
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of course, they're getting the blame and being called heartless for going in and tearing down.
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Like, is there ever going to be an acceptable answer to this? Actually, as Dave was speaking,
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I was just thinking, if you had all the money and all the power in the world, what would
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a solution be that could work? I could not think of one that does not require the active participation
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of the person that you're trying to help. That is the challenge. I remember an article that you
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wrote, Corey, probably three or four months ago, in which you mentioned the dilemma posed
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by encountering a person passed out on, I think it was on a park bench,
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laying there in stark misery. And is it the right thing to walk on by? Or should you intervene? And there
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are people saying, I'll just leave them alone. And yet, that seems the cruelest outcome to just leave
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somebody in misery. And yet, if you take care of them today, you will find them there again tomorrow.
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So what exactly is, it is an incredible dilemma, because I think in this city, and I bet it's the
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same in Edmonton. I mean, this is not a Calgary-Edmonton thing. There is an enormous reservoir
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of goodwill, of people who want to help other people. The homeless center down there at the end
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of Fourth Avenue was built on the basis of private donations, mostly, I have to say, from the oil patch.
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I remember, you know, back in the Calgary Herald editorial board, these guys coming in and talking
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about how they were, this is what we need to do, and it's going to be like this, and it's going to
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be like that. And we're really going to make a difference. And there's a thousand homeless people,
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and there will be a thousand less by the time we've finished. Well, good, how do you not support that?
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And we did, we supported it wholeheartedly. But, you know, it hasn't worked out that way.
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Well, to me, you have to spend real money in the mental health area. And I think it's been
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criminally underfunded forever in Canada. And that's what these people need the most,
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is some mental health, get their mental well-being.
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Bad and addiction is treatment. And the two are tied closely together. I mean, a person who's
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addicted often has underlying mental health issues. It takes the same sort of treatment to
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try and get them functional or safe again. But that's the elephant in the room. A lot of people just
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still refuse to discuss when it comes to the homelessness encampments. They start
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wondering, well, what about the single mom with three kids or the person who got displaced because
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his job got laid off? That's not who's in those camps. Quit pretending it is. They're at the shelters.
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They're availing the services that are there, and they should. The ones in the camps, typically,
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most of them are addicted. They're often dangerous. It's something else, you know, people don't like
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talking about. But there's truth in this. We're seeing with the weapons in Calgary, it was firearms,
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not just pellet guns and machetes and samurai swords. And they're often very addicted. You can't
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put, how can you put with a single mom and three kids, the guy who's gone psychotic on methamphetamines
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in the same room? You can't do that. It's not an appropriate place for them. We need to talk about
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warehousing them somewhere. Nobody wants to say it, but I don't see any other. You look at a case in
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Calgary before Christmas, three homeless guys. It was in an outskirts neighborhood. I think it was
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Country Hall. So they obviously took the LRT to get there. They broke into one of the cabins, not
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cabins, a garden shed at the Home Depot. And they went in there to get out of the cold and set a fire,
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and all three of them ended up burning to death. So it's, you know, it's not just an encampment down
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here at this, the far reaches of this, every city that's going to have to deal with it.