oh if only I had...

Have you ever had the cause to think that maybe you've missed your calling? That maybe somewhere along the way you missed a path that, if taken would have put you in a drastically different place today. In the immortal words of Blue Rodeo, ever "Wonder what you are doing here"?

Personally I couldn't be happier with the place I'm in today even though like many people I think, I ended up here almost completely by accident. So I haven't really had the occasion to wonder to much, but last week a co-worker and I were talking and this conversation combined with some recent events in our city have got me thinking...

I think that most of us are in a similar boat, we get up 5 days a week (often at a time that seems way too early), battling traffic in some variety we go to work, clock in and provide a several hours of whatever it is that we are good at for (in most cases) the ultimate benefit of someone else. Hopefully we like what we do and the people that we do it with so that the time we spend at work doesn't kill us in one way or another. Then we go home, spend a few hours of the day doing the things that really define who we are, with the people that we really enjoy being with, go to bed, wake up and do it all over again. Then, after a week or two in reward for our efforts we get paid and in turn we pay a whole bunch of other people, just to keep the cycle moving.

Whether or not we like our work or the people we work with, I think that we can all agree that there is always something else that we would rather be doing and we think about this each morning that we drag ourselves out of bed and through the ritual that takes us to work and back. Question is why do we put ourselves through this?

If your like me (and I like my job and the people I work with) you do it because you have to. We do this to support the lives that we've been given, to pay for the roofs over our heads and the food in our stomachs. Hopefully we do it so that we can also afford to do the other things that make us happy but like it or not, we also do it to help contribute towards our communities and in turn to help support the lives that have been given to others. Even when those others seem to do very little to support themselves!

So what would I do if I could go back and do it all over again? Given the chance I think I would become an advocate. I have to be careful here because the truth is that we are all advocates to some degree. Most of us have something that is important to us that we try hard to protect or make conditions better for, but I'm not talking about this kind of advocate. I'm talking about the truly devoted advocates that don't do anything else but advocate. Full-time advocates! Hard core advocates that don't really advocate for anything in particular anymore, they just advocate and they do it with loud voices, heavy fists and lots and lots of props! So many props that most of us can't hear the message anymore because we are so distracted by the props.

I want to be one of those advocates that have become more important, have begun to take themselves much more seriously than the causes that they initially became advocates for!

Last week the village idiots that make up the Anti-Poverty Committee took their brand of advocacy (complete with brightly colored props) to the streets of Vancouver again and, in two separate incidents attempted to send an increasingly unclear message but succeeded in doing nothing more than terrorizing innocent people and destroying property. Hiding behind the very real problem of homelessness in Vancouver and British Columbia as well as paint suits and masks, members of the APC last week attempted to draw attention to what they call "the contradiction between the BC Liberals, the Olympics and the thousands of people living in the streets". This despite the fact that the BC Liberals have committed to an unprecedented 2400 units of housing in Vancouver alone since last April.

Two weeks ago Premier Campbell and Housing Minister Rich Coleman announced another $23 million to purchase 6 more SRO hotels in the downtown east side (DTES) which will provide homes for another 330 people. This means that the province has now purchased 16 buildings all in an effort to solve the problem of homelessness on our streets. Will these hotels, combined with the 1 200 units being offered by the City completely solve the problem? Of course not, but its a step in the right direction and its a step that no one has ever taken before in British Columbia. The APC, rather than acknowledging this step refers to these purchases as "a few crummy hotels" or "a change in slumlords". An interesting judgement passed on a project not yet completed.

Never mind the fact that the APC have historically used props and fear tactics to make their points. Never mind that they push women off podiums to steal mikes that allow them to swear in front of children. Never mind that the cause becomes lost as they bully their way into the spotlight with no regard to who they step on along the way and lets just pretend for a moment that there is a legitimate message buried somewhere in the rhetoric. What is it? Well according to people like Jill Chettiar, Thomas Malenfant and David Cunningham what the APC want (this time) is a share of the $2 billion surplus being held by the provincial government. They want a piece of our savings account.

The problem that I have with the APC's demands is two-fold. First, while I fully support the efforts that the BC Liberals have made so far with the purchase of some 16 SRO hotels, I'm not in favour of more similar housing in the DTES. I just can't see how concentrating homelessness or social housing into one area (the DTES) is going to solve the problem. One need only look around some of the existing SRO's to see that this is true. I do support the idea of more social housing throughout the province, in communities like Langley, Abbotsford, Hope, Kelowna, Prince George and so on. Housing needs to be built and support provided in the communities that the people currently living in the DTES are from. This includes Calgary, Regina, Toronto and the other places in this country where conditions make living in the street impossible.

My second issue goes back to how this post began. The $2 billion surplus that the government is holding is ours, we worked for it and we contributed to this with our sweat, our ideas, our taxes and I can't help but wonder the size of the pie that represents the contributions made by the APC and similar groups. At the end of the day how much have the advocates contributed in the only real way that will change conditions for the homeless? How much money do they bring to the table?

The next question then is how does their share of the contribution measure against the cost of cleaning up after them?