Some babbling about rights. . .

I have been thinking about rights lately and about how fragile they are. Recently a friend telephoned me and told me I had better be careful having a blog. He heard a story on the news about a person who was stopped at the American border because the border guards had some kind of alert on their system because of the type of stuff he blogged. . .

it is called freedom of expression, a right enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms & the International Declaration of Human Rights. To be scared about saying what is on one's mind for fear of repercussions constitutes an incursion into this right, and by being too scared to state our opinions empowers those who would stifle our rights. In my opinion, we cannot be scared to stand up for what we know with certainty to be right - and I am going to keep speaking out probably until my dying day when I believe it is important to say something. I may not be right, I may be easily contested, but at least the speaking out generates discussion & thought & permits me to feel a certain amount of integrity to myself & what I believe is right.

On the fragility of rights, I think back to the Enbridge Northern Gateway baseball tournament held this past summer. Interestingly, the coordinators of this event just won an award for "making a difference" by local MLAs Pat Bell and Shirley Bond. What was missing in the bright advertisement about the award is the piece about the security guards assaulting the protestors who attended the game for the sake of raising people's awareness of the risk of oil spills should Enbridge's pipeline project proceed. One of the protestors told me she felt very violated when one of the burly security guards grabbed her - another protestor had someone kneel on his chest. Although they had all bought tickets and were only distributing information about Enbridge, they were all arrested by the police, removed from the premises & told by the police that they were not going to be pressing charges against the security people for assault. This violation of their rights was missed completely from the community award now being presented by our local politicians.

Lately the issue of rights has also shown up in the pages of the Prince George Citizen, and discussion around Prince George about the "homeless'' people who congregate downtown (I have many more thoughts about the people downtown Prince George. . . . more later). The below letter appeared in the Citizen in the past several days about the BC government's new law aimed at getting homeless people off the streets:

Dead Rights
Written by mick kearns
Monday, 28 September 2009

Renowned Canadian author W.O. Mitchell (Who has Seen the Wind) had a wonderful phrase that he used to describe his method of weaving various things that had happened in his life into a single narrative. It all happened, just not all at once as he described it. W.O. used to say “Everything’s the truth, the whole thing’s a lie.” A homeless woman burns to death in her makeshift shelter after refusing police requests (three times) to take her to a shelter. The B.C. government introduces legislation to force homeless people into shelters during extreme cold, or police will lock them up for the night for their own protection. “Absurd,” says B.C. Human Rights president David Eby.“Staying out in the streets is a homeless person’s right. People shouldn’t be forced to do things they don’t want to do,” says Central Interior Native Health director Murry Krause. Both statements may have an element of truth in a country where everyone has rights, but only the honest and hardworking have responsibilities. But the whole thing is a lie. The homeless do not have the right to die on our streets. Throwing more money at this problem is not the solution, just as we found with the billion dollars spent on the Lower East Side with little effect. Tuesday night the city held a public meeting on councillor Krause’s idea to build a Downtown Health and Wellness Centre. Not only will this save money, according to Krause and Dan Milburn, city manager of long range planning (although at this point they don’t know how much), but it will allow Krause to “provide better service to his clients, while minimizing the disruption to the retailers and people working and shopping downtown.”The plan calls for the consolidation of the needle depot (exchange), the Native Health Society, and The Firepit. Because Murry’s plan calls for supportive housing in the same building, it is unlikely, according to Milburn, that the facility could be located across Queensway and away from the downtown due to noise and air quality concerns. This may all be the truth, but the whole thing’s a lie. This facility will still have a negative impact on the surrounding businesses or public facilities wherever it were to end up. At the same meeting a 65-year-old woman spoke about her fear of going downtown with her friend to shop during the daytime. She then went on to show the pair of scissors she carried in her pocket for protection.“I’ve lived here my whole life and downtown has become sad,” she said wistfully. At the same meeting, one of this city’s landmark downtown business owners, Ted Moffat of Northern Hardware, talks about having caught five shoplifters just that day, and how theft is costing him $100,000 a year. “I’m tired,” he said. “Maybe it’s time we moved out of the downtown.”“Let’s not focus on the negative
and lose sight of why we are here,” responded mayor Dan Rogers, who was in attendance.” Meanwhile, on the same day, employees of another destination shop downtown, The Pastry Chef, had their vehicle windows smashed yet again for the few pieces of loose change contained inside. “The panhandlers are so aggressive, they follow the customers from their cars, right into the store,” said owner Petra Haus. The Wellness Centre concept was part of yet another study called “Smart Growth on the Ground” (cost between $400,000 and $600,000), which, along with the mayor’s Task Force, was the latest exercise in social engineering on how to save our downtown. Everything’s the truth, the whole thing’s a lie. While the civil servants at City Hall and the consultants do their studies, and the mayor, fellow councillors and the members of his Taskless Force talk, the people who pay the bills, and who elected them, suffer. We need action on the downtown now. We have become the refugee centre for northern B.C. for the poor, dispossessed and drug-addicted, and all the social ills that go with it. As Ted Moffat remarked, “We’ve had them long enough, it’s someone else’s turn.” We couldn’t agree more.

This letter outlines the bones of debate that's been going on for many years in Prince George - at least for the 10 years + that I have been hanging around this city . . . on the one hand the supposed "bleeding hearts" that would advocate for these people & try to bring about improvements to their lives, on the other hand the "rednecks" who would like them all rounded up and taken somewhere, anywhere, to be out of sight. . . more on this later (guess it is pretty easy to see which side of the debate I fall on. . . ok, I guess "social worker" kind of gives me away), but I do have some thoughts about these people.

I do not get the point of this new law the BC government is planning to implement to get people off the streets - in my view it would easily be challenged pursuant to the Charter so I am not sure where the BC Attorney General's advice is in all of this. . . reactive politics trumping reason. Already we have the Mental Health Act and Adult Guardianship Act which permit removal of persons who are constituting a risk to themselves or others & are cognitively vulnerable. The problem is though sometime the supporting infrastructure, resources and police knowledge of the laws - especially the Adult Guardianship Act - are really lacking. . . Now we are going to have yet another law (which will likely violate people's Charter rights) layered on top of these laws that are not even being used as effectively as they could be? What a waste. . .

So what am I saying?
There is a lot to be said about rights. They are something to be appreciated.
They are fragile indeed. We have to believe in rights as a starting point, that they are something worth believing in & expecting.