— Feature, Musings —02.07.2024 02:07 PM
My latest: Belleville’s problem is everyone’s problem
BELLEVILLE – Brian Orford is a Belleville native, age 44. He looks a lot older than that. He looks profoundly sad, like he’s seen it all.
He probably has.
Brian knows the streets, here, and he knows the people who live on the streets. He knows, too, all of the 17 people who overdosed over a 24-hour period this week.
People figure they all overdosed on the same batch of opiate – but possibly with GHB mixed in. The date rape drug. There’s talk of tranq dope heading this way, too. That’s the scary one, the one that causes addicts to lose fingers and toes.
“A lot of people here have switched to those other drugs,” he says. “It’s pretty dangerous.”
It is. Nine had to be rushed to the Belleville hospital Tuesday night, to literally save their lives. They overdosed right out front, Brian says, along the grimy wall at the John Howard Society drop-in centre in the bottom of the United Church on Bridge Street. They are all his friends, he says.
When that happened, the city of Belleville issued an extraordinary warning to the public. They actually warned people to stay away from Belleville’s downtown core. For safety reasons.
Like it was a war zone. Which, these days, it kind of is.
Brian Orford says that big cities are sending the homeless and the drug-addicted to smaller towns like Belleville. To make them someone else’s problem. He’s not the only one saying it, either.
“There’s been two or three buses,” Brian says. “They get offered a free lunch and the bus takes them here.”
It’s happened two or three times in the past few months that he knows about, he says. “It’s people other places can’t handle,” he says. “But there’s so many people here already. And there’s no resources.”
Staff who work with the homeless in Belleville – staff who don’t want to be named – confirm what Brian says. They nod their heads. They’ve heard it too: big cities like Toronto are dumping their homeless and drug-addiction problems on smaller cities like Belleville.
There’s the talk of blue buses slipping into town at night, and dropping off bewildered people on cold and lonely sidewalks.
“We’ve all heard that,” says one. “The buses are coming from other places, like Toronto and Ottawa.”
Down the block from where the overdoses happened, the city’s mayor and chief of police – and a posse of other officials – are holding a press conference. The mayor is Neil Ellis, an affable straight-shooter who used to be a Member of Parliament.
Asked about the rumors about big cities dropping off homeless and addicted people in Belleville, Ellis doesn’t dodge or weave. About 66 per cent of the homeless in the area are from the area, he says. “But the homeless don’t vote,” he cautions. So they’re not entirely sure.
Ellis doesn’t confirm that people are being dumped here. But he doesn’t deny it, either. “This problem is front and centre for every community in Canada,” he says. And the federal and provincial governments need to do a lot more, he adds.
His chief of police, Mike Callaghan, nods his head vigorously. He, too, says Ottawa and Queen’s Park have been mostly AWOL. Callaghan hasn’t been able to hire new police officers for years – while Belleville has been growing by leaps and bounds.
A few blocks North of City Hall, the Grace Inn is one of the few places around that can offer a bed to a homeless person. And it’s been completely full since it opened, just before the pandemic – there’s only a couple dozen beds, while Belleville has a homeless population of at least 200. (And full disclosure: this writer has donated to the Grace Inn in the past.)
Jodie Jenkins, the impressive chair of the Grace Inn, says he has heard “for a while now” that homeless and addicted people are being dumped in Belleville. But, he says, “based on our data specific to the shelter, it doesn’t line up. Almost 80 per cent of our guests at the shelter are from the immediate and surrounding area.”
So, stories about mysterious blue buses dropping broken people onto Belleville’s sidewalks at night will remain that for now – stories. And, when you think about it, it doesn’t matter.
Because, as Mayor Neil Ellis says, the problem is everywhere. And moving it from one city to another doesn’t change the reality.
And the reality is this: the problem keeps coming back, everywhere.
And it keeps getting worse.
They are sending them to Brantford too.
I don’t believe the “sending people to other communities” stuff until I’ve seen hard evidence. I’ve heard that rumor in numerous small cities in Ontario. They all think Toronto and Ottawa are secretly sending them all their problems. I feel like its a red herring which draws attention from the real problems of homelessness / drugs across North America. As far as I’m concerned anyone who is in my community now *is part of my community* and deserve to be treated as such. I feel like the “people from out of town” stories are a bit of *othering* of the most vulnerable and I don’t have much time for it.
Also, such a program, if we term it as such, requires a budget, logistics, vehicles, schedules, staff and whatnot. The idea that Toronto or Ottawa or whoever is doing stuff like that and keeping it under the radar is ridiculous and gives far too much credit to the supposed nefariousness / deviousness of local civil servants. Get real.
The problem is multifaceted:
1. More drugs are coming in because the cartels / organizations pushing it are too sophisticated for our border services to keep up.
2. More lethal drugs are easier to manufacture than they were before.
3. The middle class is being crushed which is adding impossible stressors to many people who are already on the edge. People are losing hope and have nothing inspiring left to live for. Without that, substance abuse is the only answer available.
4. People are being introduced to drugs by their health system at a rate never experienced before.
5. Safe / safer injection without any coercive tactics towards treatment is obviously failing. They aren’t saving lives, they are just prolonging them. These organizations / facilities need to become more effective and accountable towards treatment.
Sean,
People think most of the drugs come into the country through Ports of Entry or clandestine border crossing. These days, plenty come in through maritime containers. Remember that Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) does not have the personnel to inspect more than 1-3% of containers in any given port. That says a lot whether we’re talking drugs or stolen cars quickly shipped out of Canada in a maritime container destined for afar.
Warren,
My top charities have always been the hungry and then the homeless. The hungry just got a donation. Time to donate once again to the homeless in Quebec City and Montreal.
Warren, I really appreciate that this man’s first and last name are the first and second words of the article. Its subtle but it matters. Everyone needs to remember that we are talking about individual human beings.
Some countries (many countries) punish drug dealers a lot more harshly than Canada. A whole lot more harshly.
So, until we get serious about our criminal justice system here in Canada, these things will keep happening. It’s the same reason we have very high crime here in Winnipeg.
Steve T – Yes, I believe it is firing squad in China for example.
I don’t believe we need to go that far in Canada but there should be a punishment on par with attempted murder for fentanyl dealers/ traffickers.
Well, just ditching some of the ridiculous get-out-of-jail-free facets of the Canadian justice system would be a good start. Special interest groups have a number of these, for all sorts of things.
Next would be a two-strikes or three-strikes provision. For the vast majority of serious drug offenders, it’s not their first rodeo when the get arrested.
We should have solved homelessness by now. The guy featured needs a permanent address so he can access supports. That’s the first step – to give homeless people, irrespective of their drug problems, a permanent address – after that they can access supports and maybe clean up, maybe get back to work – but none of that happens without a fixed address. Surely a wealthy country like Canada, and the provinces and municipalities as well, surely they can do something about this basic human need.
Start by taxing the silly Toronto baby boomers at something that approaches their neighboring municipalities and use that money to fund that and they can go **** themselves with the federal support(I mean bribe).
Given the number of immigrants and students Trudeau allowed into the country, how would we expect to solve homelessness?
Team Trudeau is making it more difficult, and costly, to build anything.
most of the posters assume they all have a drug problem, which is usually the case, but mental illness is often times the underlying issue driving them to the street – we have to do better than a shit hole shelter, we have to extend permanent housing so they can get assistance and access the treatment and care they require.
We also focus on privileged middle class people when we talk about housing. The tragedy being the folks in their twenties can’t afford a new house – well people on fixed incomes can’t afford their rent, and they require rental subsidies. Their subsidies are fixed, but their rents are rising. These days, it’s either a disabled person who can’t access subsidized rent, so they’re living on the street, or in shelters – or its a disabled person in subsidized rent and their rent is going up 200 bucks at a time, potentially forcing them to the street. This really is a national emergency.
Because that privileged middle class, mostly the ridiculous spoiled Toronto baby boomers sitting on their multi million dollar houses due to the wealth shift of the last 8 years(Justin’s remaining base), have Justin’s ear and and have convinced their ridiculous spoiled pampered selves that they are progressives while drinking from their Brandy snifters at their weekly book club meetings.
Curious,
Amen.
This could happen to almost anybody – a bout of cancer, a serious accident, job loss, mental distress – it doesn’t take much and all that you’ve accomplished goes out the window – nobody cares about your degrees when your lugging groceries home, and going broke after months of cancer treatment – some of the people you “other” when you’re walking past them on the street, they’ve already survived more than any bravado laced story about making it on your own – for a lot of people, they have to experience devastation before they really get it.
Billionaires cannot get richer if the poor don’t get
poorer, plain & simple. It’s a mathematical fact.
Mathematical fact?
Bull.
You are assuming it’s a zero sum game. If I (or anyone else) increases wealth, i.e. creates a bigger pie, everyone gets richer.
In Finance it is a zero sum game. Look at Zero Hedge.
And guess who got richer in the last 8 years which I have been saying for years.
Robert,
I tend to be more on your side of the argument. Tax cuts for the rich clearly don’t lead to increased employment for workers in the businesses that they own. That’s bullshit. The rich are all about conspicuous consumption before all else and that’s where the tax cuts generally go. Meanwhile, the middle class gets the shaft time and time again as their so-called tax cuts inevitably amount to crumbs at the rich person’s table. It’s always about a wide disparity in tax relief, in favour of the wealthy.
I’ve always been against tax cuts for the rich, the billionaire and millionaire class. Tax cuts should ALWAYS be targeted toward the middle class and the working poor. Not one fucking dime for anyone else. Period.
As for large business tax cuts, zippo for them too unless the tax cut solely is based on creating jobs for new workers. Otherwise, not a cent for large businesses. On the business side, tax cuts only for small businesses, to help them survive, compete and create new jobs.
Totally agree, Ronald.
I agree that tax cuts should be focused on small to medium sized business, and the working poor and middle class. I used to sell group health benefits and disability insurance/pensions to small and medium sized business. They’re more innovative, extremely hard working and a lot of them enjoy hiring new staff as one of the perks of prosperity. I’ve also worked for big multinationals in business to business sales and they treat staff like numbers.
What Finance are you talking about?
Macroeconomic Finance.
Robert
Zero Hedge?
Do you mean the same Zero Hedge that the Washington Post described as “Zero Hedge launched in 2009, mostly featuring news and commentary about financial markets from a libertarian perspective. In recent years, the blog has amplified right-wing conspiracy theories on a range of topics”?
Billionaires cannot get richer, if the poor don’t get poorer.
Who are the biggest “billionaires” around?
Hint it’s not Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos.
A) governments.
B) pension funds
Should we sell off all the government assets? Or just give them away?
Should we disburse pension funds?
After all, based on what you said, governments and pension funds cannot get richer without the poor getting poorer.