Please don’t feed the homeless
Dear Editor:
Your article below…
It seems from what I am reading from your article that hypocrisy really does not recognize any boundaries. This is regarding the many cities across Canada where we see homeless to abound amongst many other social statements of lost hope and then again; these Majors seem to be living in a planet where they see their socialism being threatened by the evidence of their own policies disastrous results.
This definitively is applicable too to the other levels of government, because they are as responsible in this quagmire, and the answer, as clear and crystal as it can appear before their eyes; becomes so elusive due to the significance of the acknowledgement of that reality.
The collectivist –read; socialist, communist, progressive, or merely leftist- system does not work.
The taxation system, meant to provide for everybody by nanny government; is killing the people of this country, slowly and surely and the Majors are concerned, not with the reasons for the massacre, but with the cities and towns looking bad and thereby, their own images being affected by the sight of these people getting a last sense of hope.
Hope is what the three levels of government sell through one of the most drastically extreme taxations systems in the world, and this hope does not materialize because it means the pyramid system works.
Where, households need to put husband and wife to work, so that one of those salaries goes completely towards paying taxes and half of that yet pays for the bureaucracy built to ‘force’ the system to look like working while politicians tear their garments in outrage because billions are ‘lost’ because people cannot, sorry; are not paying the load prescribed by the elites, and then on top of these taxes; sales and goods and services taxes need to be paid, and then on top of that, additional taxes are applied to fuel and travel and liquor and cigarettes and everything politicians can sell as sinful, while everything moves by fuel and people from Canada need to travel to deal with the Winter and governments in Canada, to get away from them if at all for a week or two, and many other areas where governments sell the idea that they are protecting us against ourselves for our own good… but don’t let anybody else show any mercy on the homeless because, they are make them look bad.
How good these taxes are doing?
Babies can be killed in the name of choice while the question of human live and dignity can be kept secret and the state must protect the women and doctors that allow such a crime making them believe is not a crime and so the government finances this in one way or another, but please do not feed the homeless because they tarnish the image of this country and its beautiful cities and make them look bad.
Sodomy can go rampant and enjoy privileges that trump our basic freedoms and fallacious same-sex marriages are instituted and financed by governments and AIDS, HIV and other VD and our basic freedoms are persistently taken away by duplicative tribunals pretending to protect our rights, but only focusing on what is politically correct and on which of course; in their minds, sodomy is number one.
And the taxes confiscated so ruthlessly form the people; then is utilized to support each and every campaign that for the politicians, make Canada look good before the eyes of the world which supposedly is thirst of sodomy and killing babies, but feeding homeless is making them look good and must be stopped.
The list goes on and on and families are broken and divorce is just as easy as blinking an eye and preservatives are gifts of prosperity and children brainwashing with the ‘benefits’ of discovering sodomy are encouraged in our children’s schools, but the homeless are fed by churches and how dare churches get into the business which is meant to be the exclusive monopoly of this nirvana called collectivism in Canada which is over and above everything ‘centrist’ because being at the centre; excuses everything while allowing everything and so it is the comfortable point of equilibrium of which the best collectivist societies can keep exploiting, sorry; benefiting their people while showing a good face… now tarnish because the homeless are being fed.
César Fernández-Stoll
Cambridge, ON, Canada
Please don’t feed the homeless
Church group lambasted for park program in Abbotsford, B. C.
Brian Hutchinson, National Post Published: Saturday, May 24, 2008
ABBOTSFORD, B. C. - The Christians and the crack addicts meet for breakfast every Thursday in a downtown park. Church folk offer cold cereal, muffins and coffee. Sometimes, they hand out socks. Drug users mumble their thanks and shuffle off in small groups to park benches and picnic tables, and devour the food.
It is not a happy scene. Sadly, it is too familiar. This could be anywhere in Canada, where church groups are often the agencies of last resort for growing numbers of the homeless, many of whom are drug users. But here in B. C.’s bible belt, feeding the poor and the afflicted is cause for concern.
“The breakfast we help provide is just a simple act of kindness, a way to reach out to people who need help,” shrugs Christoph Reiners, pastor of Abbotsford’s Peace Lutheran Church. “Cheerios build relationships.”
According to others, Cheerios cause trouble. If some city leaders had their way, Pastor Reiners and his volunteer band of breakfast servers would call it quits, pack up their picnic baskets and get out of Jubilee Park.
The place is overrun with pushers and drug users, to hear these critics tell it. “More drug dealers are being attracted to the park because there are more addicts and homeless coming as a result of these groups giving them free food and clothes,” the president of Abbotsford’s Downtown Business Association declared last week.
Robert Bos made the comment after Pastor Reiners was summoned to Abbotsford City Hall, where a trio of municipal councillors pressured him to call off the weekly breakfast outreach.
Senior citizens are scared to use the park, the pastor was told. Citing open drug use, parents will not allow their children to play there anymore.
Pastor Reiners was shocked. He had preached in Winnipeg’s toughest neighbourhoods before moving here five years ago. He thought he was doing a good turn for the community. God’s work.
No one denies that drug use in Jubilee Park was an issue before they began serving breakfasts there. Homeless people had already staked out spots around the park. But the pastor and the breakfast program likely drew more attention to them.
Abbotsford, says the pastor, “is in a bit of denial. People are used to the idea that this is an idyllic small town.” An hour’s drive southeast of Vancouver, Abbotsford, with its many churches, has long had a reputation as a Christian centre. Even with its stunning scenery, the mountains and the rich farmland that surround it, it is like any other community in Canada: threatened by drug use and uncomfortable with the rising tide of homeless.
The total number of homeless people in B. C. has been estimated to be 10,000. The problem is especially acute in the province’s Lower Mainland, where the weather is mild enough during the winter that people can survive outdoors.
Figures compiled by a provincial housing agency and published this week by the Vancouver Sun indicate a crisis: Crowded shelters in Metro Vancouver turned away people 40,000 times in an eight-month period last year. Women and children were turned away 16,000 times.
Some travel down the highway and land here, thinking the situation might be better. In fact, it might be even worse, suggests Les Talvio, director of ministries for the Cyrus Centre, a local “inner city mission.”
Services are in short supply. Mr. Talvio names a number of shelters and drop-in centres that have closed recently. All of them were within a stone’s toss from Jubilee Park. It’s no surprise that the homeless still gather here.
“This is their turf,” Mr. Talvio says.
Mr. Talvio helped initiate the breakfast outreach program last summer. Pastor Reiners and volunteers from Peace Lutheran soon joined in. Despite pressure from City Hall, they have not stopped delivering and serving food. They will not call it quits; they are defiant.
Mr. Talvio was the first to arrive on Thursday this week, at 7:30 in the morning. Pastor Reiners arrived a few minutes later; just behind him were two carloads of church volunteers, most of them seniors.
A dozen scruffy men and women were in the park, waiting. Hardly the hordes that city councillors and Mr. Bos had earlier described. They lined up at the folding tables set up by the volunteers, and received their cups of coffee and bowls of Cheerios.
Some were already high. Kent, 33, is a crack cocaine addict. A native of Williams Lake, in the B. C. interior, he moved to Abbotsford last year to participate in a drug recovery program. Upon completion, he found himself back on the street. Soon he was looking again to score.
“I didn’t need to go into Vancouver,” he says. “I found what I was looking for right here. This is a very spiritual centre, with a lot of addiction.”
Kent’s hands shake as he talks. His clothes are filthy. He slept the previous night on a piece of cardboard outside an Abbotsford hospital, where he claims he had been denied access.
He says his leg is infected with necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating bacteria. “There’s a lot of that going around right now” he declares. Whatever the problem, the leg is in bad shape. The dressing wrapped around it is stained and oozing pus.
Kent is at rock-bottom. The only thing he had to look forward to this week, he says, was breakfast on Thursday in the park. That, and a few words of encouragement and advice from strangers, the only people in this “spiritual centre” who seem to care.
