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Letter to the editor: Candidates need to get real about ‘collaboration'

In order to truly collaborate with other levels of government, our city council has to be seen as credible and willing to take a leadership role in actually helping people living on the streets.
Moccasin Flats dump
Heaps of garbage have been dumped at the west entrance to the Moccasin Flats homeless encampment at the end of Sixth Avenue. The residents are hopeful the city will install a dumpster and that people arriving in vehicles will quit dumping their trash there.

A lot of candidates in the current municipal election are using what I consider a politically safe word "collaboration" in this election when talking about the human crisis happening on our streets in Prince George. Such a life-and-death crisis deserves leadership on the local level that actually provides humane solutions to problems instead of making the problems worse like our current council has done through their policy decisions.

Access to a toilet, clean drinking water, a shower and a garbage dumpster at encampments are all small things the city could do that would make a big difference to those struggling to get their life straightened out. Yet most candidates in this election seem to be fearful of losing votes to people living near the Moccasin Flats encampment along with some business owners and voters who still think addiction should be handled by the police and bylaw officers. So instead of doing the humane thing of legitimizing centralized locations for temporary encampments until housing is found, candidates continue to dance around the issue like our current council and most likely will keep dancing around the issue for their entire term, solving nothing.

In order to truly collaborate with other levels of government, our city council has to be seen as credible and willing to take a leadership role in actually helping people living on the streets. Why would the province or federal government want to work with the city when they have spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on legal costs attempting to evict people from encampments?

Or violating court orders that upheld the right of these encampments to exist by bulldozing tents and belongings and then denying they did anything wrong until evidence to the contrary was raised?

Or through the continued support of the so-called Safe Streets Bylaw that fines people for being homeless or addicted to drugs that has not been enforced but used as a justification to hire more bylaw officers to sit in their vehicles at Moccasin Flats and intimidate residents there through surveillance as noted by the federal housing advocate Marie-Josee Houle on her visit last month?

Or the fact that council in July 2022 rejected a motion put on the floor to bring other levels of government together to discuss the current crisis yet funded a bub office space complete with a staff member to allow for more collaboration not too long ago?

Council didn't even bother to meet with the federal housing advocate when she was in town either.

In the same July 2022 meeting, some councillors didn't want to pay for dumpsters and porta potties, suggesting that was not a city responsibility and staff was overstretched yet they didn't mind spending just under $2 million of grant money from the provincial government meant to help people living on the streets on another office (transfer station) and more RCMP patrols and security at civic arenas.

It is disgusting that they will squander so much grant money on expensive office spaces and law enforcement and completely ignore the basic needs of the unhoused who have nowhere to go. For the provincial and federal government, staying as far away from the Prince George city council and not trusting them with a dime of grant money intended to help people living on the streets would be the wisest move they could make until a future council can demonstrate some level of competency on this file.

So, to current city council candidates who actually care about the human crisis on our streets, if you can't tell voters you would be willing to support providing the basic necessities to these encampments and repealing the Safe Streets Bylaw, your collaboration claims are as hollow as the promises made by candidates who are suggesting through their policy statements that more policing will fix our problems downtown.

Richard Parks

Prince George