Over the last few weeks I’ve twice met with a fairly large group of friends over lunch. On the menu was soup, sandwiches and salad – and for dessert, well, we thought we’d simply try to come up with solutions to the problems of homelessness, drugs and gang wars raging in Vancouver.

Given the task at hand, we even had a few glasses of wine to see if the answers would come any easier – but, alas, we found no magic bullet even with the help of some Pinot Noir. Yet it was still a very interesting and worthwhile exercise, since in our group we had people with real-world experience in politics, policy, policing, gangs, addiction treatment and rehabilitation, housing, and media. We all learned a lot, I’m pretty sure.

My own conclusion at the end of these meetings was clear:  a successful fight against homelessness, drugs and gang wars needs one key ingredient – a very large and healthy dose of political courage at the city and provincial levels. Without that, these battles will be lost. And I don’t know if I see that courage around in sufficiently large amounts today.

The power of the courts
First, the good news. We heard from credible sources how gang violence is cyclical, and naturally ebbs and flows over time to a rhythm that none of us can foresee. We were reminded that major take-downs of leading crime gangs have recently taken place. We heard details on how the provincial government has put money and energy into tearing down rattrap hotels in downtown Vancouver and replacing them with better facilities. We’ve seen lots of things that are cause for hope.

But, now for the bad:  we also heard about significant challenges in three distinct areas:

1. We heard how police at all levels have difficulties with court rulings on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that seem to thwart common sense efforts to corral the bad guys, collect evidence on them, take the proceeds of their crimes out of their hands, put them away for a long time, and keep them out of the revolving door that appears to spit them back out on the streets in short order.

2. We heard provincial policy makers and social workers speaking about the frustration of not being able to treat obviously mentally ill people without their consent – again, out of fear of infringing on Charter rights. Nobody will deny, for example, that most of the people on the corner of Hastings and Main in Vancouver are mentally ill. Yet virtually none of them will undergo voluntary drug treatment – which is frustrating, as experts tell us that these people and other mentally ill addicts can be helped and treated effectively even if they enter a program involuntarily.

3. And we heard from people who’ve moved to Vancouver and are shocked by how seemingly blasé we’ve all become to accept, and even support to some extent, levels of homelessness, crime and mental illness in the streets that are unheard of in other parts of the country.

These three areas above are all sensitive and - especially the first two - are politically volatile. It would take a lot of courage to approach these head on, but anyone who does deserves our support. Sadly, however, it appears there’s little appetite on behalf of our provincial government, or any other in the country,  today to think of possibly employing the “notwithstanding” clause in Section 33 of the Charter to reverse or to challenge laws that effectively leave mentally ill people to their own defences on our streets, and that stack the odds in favour of the bad guys over our law enforcement professionals in their combat against drugs and crime.

You have to wonder at what point the pendulum will start to swing the other way, shifting the power back from the courts and into the hands of our elected officials, and who will have the courage to lead the long overdue charge in that direction. 

“It simply ain’t so.”
But even before we start thinking of taking on the courts and Charter, maybe a place to start would be to simply find the courage take to address the third point above. Our City officials already have the tools they need, in the form of bylaws, to win some lower level but highly symbolic battles against the chaos and lawlessness that we see on our streets and accept as part of our everyday lives here in Vancouver, most notably in the Downtown Eastside.

Because if we can’t have the courage to win the “easy” battles, can we really believe that we have what it takes to win the “big” ones?

In a column in this Sunday’s Province newspaper, Sgt. Mark Tonner, a Vancouver police officer, tells a fascinating story about how Vancouver police were recently accused of using city bylaw tickets to clear the streets for the Olympics. The VPD apparently launched a major campaign last December in the Downtown Eastside, enforcing bylaws against J-walking, smoking within six metres of a public entrance and other similar rules. The result: robberies down 40 per cent; break-ins to homes and business down by the same amount; and fewer pedestrians running dangerously through traffic.

Sgt. Tonner outlined why these measures work well: anti-smoking bylaws are more efficient than a criminal charge in dealing with crack users, who usually smoke within six metres of a public entrance; less time writing reports means more time on patrol and greater safety for tourists and locals alike; raising the bar on pedestrian behaviour allows motorists to “take back the streets”,  something that is clearly not the case often on the corner of Hastings and Main.

But, here’s the tragedy of this whole situation.

“There has been such a squawk over this campaign I doubt there will be another like it soon,” writes Sgt. Bonner. “It’s as though police should conduct a poverty assessment before enforcing the law, as though we should check with left-witted lawyers before each campaign is launched. A picture is painted, in which advocates fight for freedom while police troll for helpless victims. It simply ain’t so.”

Unbelievable. If Sgt. Bonner’s comments reflect reality, what this means is that our top cops or our top civic officials don’t have the courage to enforce our bylaws because strong opposition from a group Sgt. Bonner calls “anti-authoritarians”. So, instead, our police turn their attention to giving out $109 tickets to commuters who dare ride their bikes two abreast across the Burrard Street bridge. Instead of handing out tickets for the theft of shopping carts, or stopping the flagrant sale of drugs down at Wreck Beach, we instead write new rules allowing chicken coops in back yards across the city.

This lack of courage on enforcing the rule of law on the easy stuff here at home is really tough to accept, especially when every few days we open the pages of the newspaper and see what’s happening in Afghanistan. While our police and civic officials are backing down in front of the anti-poverty groups and losing control of the streets here in Vancouver, 120 courageous young Canadians have lost their lives in the fight to help establish the rule of law and take back the streets in a country controlled by drug dealers and bad guys of a different sort.

Something’s not right here, and we all know it. It takes courage to admit it, and even more courage to fix it. Whether it’s in our courts, or on our streets, or in our legislature or in city hall, we need to support those who have the courage to stop this, and turn it around, and move the pendulum back the other way.

Cordially,

Rick Peterson