This is a video by a local YouTuber about the slums of Saint John. Locals claim it is the worst slum in Canada, although I doubt that.
What most prompts my reaction is the interview with “front-line worker” Melanie from a non-profit. She stresses that the real problem is poverty; she repeats this for emphasis. Yet she also says, correctly, that homelessness, drug use, and mental illness are a growing problem everywhere, “around the world.” Is poverty growing everywhere? According to the statistics, just the reverse.
Why then does she say such a thing?
Firstly, because she is ideologically motivated. The system is not broken, she explains. The system was designed wrong from the start; it is all about colonialism, oppression and misogyny.
But where does this ideology, in turn, come from?
Melanie reports with satisfaction that at last the government seems to be listening to the front-line workers, that the solution is to “bring us to the table,” and hear what these workers say they need.
Not the addicts or the mentally ill, note. The front-line workers.
In the real world, this is probably a bad approach. The jobs and power of the front-line workers depend on there being a continuing problem and “clients” to “serve”; their interest is to ensure that matters never get better.
Hence they usually turn to ideology about “the entire system.” That guarantees permanence of employment. Poverty as explanation works the same way. As Jesus rightly says, “the poor you will have always with you.” At least in relative terms, poverty can never be eliminated. So, a good job until retirement.
They will also have incentive to exaggerate the problem; and gradually redefine terms to make everyone officially poor, addicted, and mentally ill.
In sum, if you want to make sure a problem never improves, set up a government bureaucracy to fix it. Witness the troubles of indigenous Canadians.
So what is the solution?
The veteran in the video seems to think the need is for more money for mental health. But Jordan Owens, the interviewer, hints at the problem: mental health treatments have not worked. They are also hugely costly, when our heath system is in crisis. Just a wealth transfer from average taxpayers to highly-paid medical professionals.
Given that the immediate problem, and the problem that is growing, is drug addiction, how about attacking that directly? Make it illegal, and throw them all in jail. Thus the current controversy over whether hard drugs should be recriminalized in B.C.. Although “decriminalization” has clearly been a disaster in BC, I cannot support making drugs illegal, on the grounds of bodily autonomy and the right to the pursuit of happiness. As a practical matter, I also don’t see how it does much. In N.B., and elsewhere, police have largely stopped enforcing the laws anyway. They do not have the resources. They arrest some junkie, the matter works its way through the court system, they perhaps spend some time in jail—they can’t pay a fine—and then are back out on the street. All at great taxpayer expense. Given that many of them are mentally ill, with delusions of persecution, having the police harass them is not a great idea in order to achieve compliance. It is almost sure to create an escalation of tensions and public disorder. And certainly not good for homeless, mentally ill, addicts.
The problem is that the real problem is despair. How do you cure despair? These are people who have given up on life, on the world, and on themselves.
If I were in government, I would set up a sanatorium away from the city, and so away from kids and temptations to steal—as well as from their problems. Maybe convert some of the many motels that are no longer prospering since the road trip declined in popularity. I would send these people there for as long as they want—any who wanted shelter. No medical interventions, no pokes or prods. Three squares and beyond that left alone, in a quiet room to themselves. But no drugs on the premises. Art supplies, writing materials, Bible, Talmud, donated religious literature. Chaplains encouraged to visit; a common room for services.
The mad thing is, this is just about exactly what we had two hundred years ago, sitting on top of a pastoral hill overlooking the Reversing Falls. And the cure rate was quite high. We abandoned that for a materialistic medical model. Things have been going downhill ever since, and we are now in the maelstrom at the foot of the Falls.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
