CollingwoodToday welcomes letters to the editor. They can be submitted via the website or emailed to [email protected]. Please include your full name, address and phone number for verification. The following letter was submitted in response to previous articles about homelessness in Collingwood.
Regarding the editorial about tent cities and having lived 13 years homeless coast to coast, I'd like, if I may, to point out some things...
The issues Canada is dealing with (homelessness, poor collective mental health, drug abuse, overdoses and astronomical housing prices) all began in Vancouver and moved eastward in a decade.
I lived on the infamous Main and East Hastings "social experiment" and cultural quarantine for a long time and predicted back in 2010 that these issues would snowball and spread like gangrene through the national body.
We need to tackle several issues at once and cannot rely solely on government to do all the work. Apocalyptic in scope, we need all hands on deck (Yup! You too Mr and Mrs. Reader. Hate to tell ya...) or else our sanitized utopia will become a vast first world slum in under a single decade.
Speaking to a kind woman at length who bought me supplies, I stated that buying me and others food is great(symptomatic Band-Aids are better than a kick in the head), yet the systemic apathy appropriating it remains in place. People say "well, here's a sandwich!" and think "I pay taxes so I've done my part" while this year alone nearly 300,000 live without shelter on the razor's edge and fall like dominoes daily...
Yet, on the streets 13 years and through research, I've talked to activists, social workers, politicians, journalists, CEO's and tons of fellow street-people coast to coast and solutions are within reach!
1. Adopt a housing-first policy like Northern European countries, which is much cheaper in the long run. The numbers speak and, without that, zero progress can occur on any other of the related issues.
2. Restrict the sale of pseudoephedrine (over-the-counter cold medicine) to prescription only to stop methamphetamine. It changed drug culture, caused homelessness and crime to explode and bleeds emergency services dry nationwide which, yes, inconveniences consumers yet such policy in U.S. states show that meth use/crime plummeted dramatically.
3. End the monopoly foreign investment entities have that makes property and housing inaccessible. Tax foreign currencies to equalize our market already.
4. Tighter and more stringent port and border security as well as a relentless scrutinizing of the dozen pseudoephedrine manufacturers on our continent.
5. Individual contribution and compassion rather than nonchalant apathy and resignation. For once, meet our government half-way and stop expecting an ant to piggyback a gorilla.
6. Raise public awareness. Speak up and be counted! Never look away... If one hurts, we all do.
We are in the twilight of western civilization. Playtime's over people! Humanity is "we" based and not "me" based!
When we point the finger of blame at government and others out of heartless laziness, we got three fingers pointing back at ourselves.
Tyler J. Dunlop
Collingwood, Ont.
