I went to the "Save Our Streets" Rally
A recap and some reflections (this is a long one).
Last night, the PG Chamber of Commerce and Downtown PG jointly held a rally at the CN Centre.
Here’s the poster for the event, in case you missed it:
It’s important I begin this newsletter by saying that the frustration with the state of downtown is both real and justified.
I don’t think there is any way you could deny the real experiences shared by business owners about how our downtown feels right now (or, honestly, just regular people who deserve to have a safe and enjoyable downtown). The business owners are owed a place to be seen, they deserve to be heard, and I’m grateful the two organizations gave a space for that to happen.
That said, as you might expect, I have a lot to say about the rest of the event so with that preamble set in place, let me begin by telling you about the Voices For Change: Safe Streets Rally from my perspective, and end with some thoughts and reflections about where I feel we’re at.
What does a “Safe Streets” rally look like?
I took my seat and had a quick friendly chat with the folks behind me - 3 concerned citizens, maybe in their early 60’s, the middle gentleman playing Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” loudly from the speaker on his iPhone. I got the sense we may probably wouldn’t agree politically, but I appreciated their good vibes.
On the CN Centre Jumbotron, above the stage, images flash of homeless people sleeping near fires on downtown streets, broken windows, pallets leaned against the side of buildings as make-shift shelters, and other various property crimes.
The Jumbotron completes its cycle of crime images and moves to the downtown poll results.
“How safe do you feel downtown?” is the first poll question on the screen.
“VERY UNSAFE” sits on a bar graph, a skyscraper, relative to its neighbouring metrics.
The next slide is a tabulation of rubbish collected while patrolling downtown.
WE FOUND:
"6666 Needles” sits in the first box, overlaid onto a picture of dirty needles.
At this point, I have to admit, I chuckled to myself because the ol’ scary DEVIL NUMBER just had to make an appearance to really make that point crystal clear that needles = scary.
The event begins.
The panelists take to the stage and the MC for the night, Neil Godbout, introduces the event with a genuinely heartfelt speech about what the event is aspiring to be and acknowledges that there are no simple solutions to these complex problems: that this is a place to share, and the beginning of a movement.
Neil also introduces a somewhat novel concept for a rally of this kind - the audience will be answering poll questions for the duration of the rally and the live poll results will be shown on the Jumbotron screen above:
A local downtown business owner, Sheldon, is invited to the stage, and attempts to articulate his feelings about the state of downtown before yielding the microphone back to Neil mid-sentence, overcome with grief, sadness, and frustration. I’ll pause here to revisit my initial point: Sheldon’s story completely broke my heart and I’m really glad he had a moment to share - it was powerful and clear.
The next speaker, Tony Hunt, the Director of Loss Prevention for London Drugs has been flown in from Vancouver and is invited up to tell us about the crime rates, not just in PG, but for retail writ large and the kinds of experiences he observes.
And, if I’m being honest, the aforementioned business owner speaker very much aside, this is where I started to teeter on the edge of the “what the **** are we doing here?”
Tony feeds the audience a few statistics about crime rates across his stores, emphasizes his concern for teenage retailer workers with the climax of his speech: the story of a heroic teenage worker trying to stop a razor blade shoplifter, and then concluding by taking a few jabs at Mark Carney’s bail reform announcement today.
The next speaker, Dr. Barbara Kane, a Psychiatrist, and a noted advocate for involuntary care and the renewal in psychiatric hospitals takes the stage to give us a history lesson on what life looked like prior to 2012 when BC had the ability to involuntarily institutionalize addicts and people in severe mental health crisis in the Riverview Hospital. Upon hearing of her advocacy for the idea of returning this kind of care, the crowd erupts.
I hear a distinct “lock ‘em up” from a crowd to my left.
Above her, the poll question: RANK THESE GOVERNMENT PRIORITIES FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT with “Urgently adding socialized housing” falling to the very bottom by a wide, wide margin.
Dr. Kane continues on to bring us through the many ways in which the voluntary health care system (UHNBC) bears an untold burden as a result of those suffering with addiction and mental concerns. These points are, in my opinion, incredibly salient and, as someone with many friends who work in healthcare, accurately described the crisis our system has been stuck in for years, maybe decades.
She returns to some of her talking points around involuntary care - presenting it as a compassionate solution to these many problems.
More cheering from the crowd.
It was around this point, I left the rally.
Not because I think I have some better plan to save our streets, or because I’m trying to run away from an opinion I don’t agree with, not because I didn’t want to hear what the remaining speakers had to say (I really did) but… rather, because, like I said earlier: “what the **** are we doing here?”
What the **** are we doing here?
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my niece, Rosie.
She’s almost 5.
I think about the world my parents lived in when I was 5 and then, an even wilder experiment, I think about the world their parents lived in when they were 5.
When my dad was five, it was 1963. In Canada, Indigenous people had only been allowed to vote for three years and residential schools were very much alive, well, and working hard to strip Indigenous culture from Indigenous youth.
When I was 5, my Dad still smoked indoors. Gay marriage was still a complete taboo, let alone being legal - homophobic slurs and jokes were not just accepted, they were ordinary. Conversations around mental health disorders like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder all fell comfortably in the “they’re crazy” or “just lazy” bucket.
The point I am trying to make is that every generation has its moral blind spots. These things that we somehow look past, justify, or normalize - until we can’t.
When Rosie is 35, I wonder what moral blind spot she will have clarity on when she looks at the world we lived in.
I fear I was looking at one tonight.
Banner images on a Jumbotron of a homeless person’s poor attempts to make a shelter. The images of their desperation to get money to buy an addictive, toxic drug that controls every aspect of their life plastered beside statistics about how unsafe they make us feel.
“We found 6666 needles.”
How many people died from the unregulated, toxic drugs they were using those needles to ingest?
An expert telling us we can strip people’s rights, traumatize them through an expensive, ineffective system, then release them back into the same world that broke them..
Why was there no panelist from The Foundry? Or the Fire Pit or Carrier Sekani’s Tachik Lake treatment centre? Someone to tell us all the work being done to save youth from life on the streets or infuse culture into reliable, evidence based voluntary care.
Why did people cheer when presented with the most inhumane version of saving someone’s life?
But the business owners.
One of the speakers said, “we need to think of the business owner’s mental health" and the crowd roared.
I cheered and clapped too. We really do.
I wrote about my own experiences of crime and safety downtown.
But, to be honest, I am so sick and honestly, so bored of pretending like the only lever of power we have to help these poor businesses is a stainless steel box to lock all of the homeless people in.
Yes - criminal reform to deal with worst of the worst. Yes - the justice system needs to better handle violent and repeat offenders. Yes - a crackdown on drug trafficking. Yes - better health care supports for all levels of treatment. Yes - subsidized housing and rehab.
Listen - a real, very respected doctor took the stage to give evidence that involuntary care might NEED to be on the table here and yes, I still need a lot of convincing but I’m not someone who is going to just outright disagree with an expert like her. I’m open to it.
But do you want to know how much control City Hall has over all of these things?
Almost none.
This is a picture from the Farmer’s Market on Saturday:
This is what drives me crazy.
City Hall doesn’t control the justice system. They don’t control drug policy or provincial health funding. They can’t legislate mental health reform from a council chamber.
But they can decide whether you can walk from one end of downtown to the other without crossing a four-lane moat named Dominion St. They can create spaces for pedestrians and places where there’s somewhere to sit that isn’t a parking curb.
They can make it easier for a bakery or brewery or a juicery to set up shop in a cool old corner building on George St. rather than having to choose a strip mall on Central.
The Farmer’s Market should not just be the only time our downtown feels alive, it should be a glimpse of what is possible every day.
So when our City Councillors make their long Facebook posts about the many ways they’re upset about crime downtown, or show up at events to wring their hands about the crime and drugs - I hope they start talking about some of these other things they can actually do.
Tell me about the initiative to completely pedestrianize George St.
The government funding you’re seeking to gut the old Home Hardware and turn it into a year round market (a la The Forks in Winnipeg).
That every week for the winter months, you’ll be seeking funding to have a night market in the Canada Games Plaza with rotating vendors.
The advocacy to try and create a true downtown campus for UNBC and CNC students with new transit lines to help them access these hubs.
-
We’re not going to “fix” homelessness/addiction crises this year. Even with the Province’s promise of an involuntary care centre, we won’t see the impact of that for years, possibly longer.
Our downtown businesses bearing the brunt of these overlapping crises need help now so I’m imploring our City Councillors to stop playing only to the fear people are feeling but to start inspiring Prince George with solutions that will change our downtown before it’s too late.
Alright - that was a long one. Props to you if you made it all the way down here.
As always, thanks for reading.
"Why was there no panelist from The Foundry? Or the Fire Pit or Carrier Sekani’s Tachik Lake treatment centre? Someone to tell us all the work being done to save youth from life on the streets or infuse culture into reliable, evidence based voluntary care."
This! I didn't attend last night although it was tempting, but decided that it would be an exercise in frustration. Your comments on the polls and imagery on the Jumbotron was enough to make me agree that I made the right decision. I'd probably be yelling WTAF an awful lot in the stands.
Why do we hear so little about the successes, as well as the challenges with getting voluntary supports like voluntary treatment and ongoing supports for success?
Locking people up forever isn't the long term answer, although people want simple solutions to make it all go away. And dammit, if we have involuntary beds, I want to see how the government will measure "success" if that is what we are doing.
ugh! Thanks for attending, Darrin, and sharing your usual thoughtful, nuanced opinions on the topic of downtown and city responsibilities, versus whatever the Jumbotron was.
Edit: Side note: Brian Skakun showed up at the picket line yesterday. Talked to the BCGEU picket captains, did a photo op. I stuck to my PEA table while I puzzled out why he was there.
My father was involuntarily hospitalized under the mental health care act for a few days this year, and it was TRAUMATIC. So much so that getting him to go back to the hospital has become a challenge.
Talking with friends they know people in similar situations who no longer seek help because the involuntary experience was terrifying.
It constantly breaks my heart to see the lack of empathy we have for each other. And I can’t help but think that sometimes there is a reason the masses don’t get to make decisions. We don’t all know what’s actually going on, or even the capacity to grasp the research and experiences of others.