BC May Force People into Shelters
filed in Canadian Current Events, Civil Rights on Jan.03, 2009
This is rich. British Columbia’s Minister of Housing and Social Development Rich Coleman told the Victoria Times-Colonist that the government was engaged in a review of the BC Mental Health Act, partly with an eye to begin forcing homeless people into emergency shelters on cold nights. This comment came in the wake of a Vancouver woman dying when her cardboard shelter caught fire.
Obviously, there are many reasons any reasonable person might not want to stay in a typical inner city emergency shelter these days: lack of privacy, bedbug infestations, lack of security, inability to bring in pets, children or belongings, noise etc, not to mention the possibility of being targeted for rerouting to a psychiatric hospital where they could be forcibly treated with electroshock or sedatives. But people like Coleman can apparently still feel a pang of compassion when people actually die as a result of being homeless, so his response is to FORCE them into a shelter to avoid his feelings of guilt.
What Coleman demonstrates, then, is the whole problem that emerges when we over-psychologize what are essentially political and economic problems–problems which, in this case, have dramatically worsened in BC since Coleman and the Liberals came to power. Well, the CMM Thinktank has come up with some radical alternative proposals: What about instead increasing subsidizing housing? What about instead raising welfare rates so people can actually afford rooms and apartments?… Naah, that’s just thinking waaaay too far outside the box, isn’t it? It’s so much easier to just take away even more of people’s most basic rights…
January 3rd, 2009 on 10:30 pm
It’s amazing to me how many progressives in the U.S. fall for this dog and pony show of blaming homelessness on mental illness rather than low benefits, high rents, low wages and lack of alternative emergency shelter such as paying for motel rooms or using Single Room Occupancy set ups so folks can be safe if they come in off the streets. Especially needed is housing that doesn’t come with strings such as having to take medication attached.
January 4th, 2009 on 12:43 am
Oh gawd yes, it’s shocking how many progressives and even civil rights organizations are not at all critically thoughtful when it comes to “mental health” issues, isn’t it! In fact, the extreme right, the Libertarians and arch conservatives are much more critical generally, because they’ve always had their traditional concerns about “state intervention” in our private lives. Have you noticed that?
While if you read the article cited above, you’ll see BC Civil Liberties protesting, yet still advocating for more mental health services instead… Many progressives assume the mental health system is like a generous, altruistic welfare system, whereas in many ways it actually is more akin to a repressive policing system.
January 4th, 2009 on 4:11 pm
This type of thing has been proposed for Toronto at least a couple of times in the late 1990’s and has been happening for years in places like New York City.
Former Toronto city council member Tom Jackobek (known as ‘Jerkobek’ in some quarters) proposed deploying teams of ‘outreach workers’ to detain homeless people inside huge inflatable plastic domes.
He claimed he wanted to avoid involving the cops in such situations but what he seemed to forget is that such civilian-initiated detentions can only occur in cases where an indictable offense has been committed.
Whether or not it had to do with the patent illegality of any such detentions, the scheme never flew.
A couple of years later Mike Harris clone Ernie Eves proposed a similar schmozzle but fortunately the Tories were voted out of Queen’s Park before he could get it off the drawing board.
Compassion has nothing to do with ‘initiatives’ of this kind. It is all about social cleansing, an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach that aims to prevent the well-to-do from having to witness the consequences of their privilege.
February 5th, 2009 on 11:57 am
People, please read BC’s Mental Health Act. Everyone is missing a vital point – the law in BC already allows homeless people to be picked up and detained at will.
BC’s MHA has all of the powers needed by police or doctors to involuntarily apprehend and detain anyone – absolutely anyone. Why? Well, it used to be that people could be involuntarily apprehended if they were considered a danger to themselves or others (that alone has got holes big enough to drive a Mac truck through because the opinion of the police officer or the doctor is never challenged by the courts, nor is the doctor or police office required to give any supporting evidence of their opinion’s validity.)
But, a few years ago, the MHA was amended to include another reason why someone could be involuntarily detained — if the police officer or doctor suspected that a person’s health might deteriorate. So, if someone thinks you’re about to come down with the flu, seriously, you can be detained and treated against your will. And treated by whatever means they wish, probably antipsychotic drugs at some point, no doubt, because you’ll likely protest, and that will be seen as either delusional or psychotic behaviour if you object to being detained.
This is from the official Act itself. The MHA states a person can be involuntarily apprehended for these reasons:
“to prevent the person’s or patient’s substantial mental or physical deterioration or for the protection of the person or patient or the protection of others,”
Plain and simple, if the police or medical authorities want to apprehend and detain anyone under the MHA, they can. And they do. They did that to my 86 year old mother, right in front of me, my husband, and a registered nurse who works as an advocate for the elderly. All other hard evidence, medical and otherwise, said my mother was in no danger whatsoever. In fact the doctors lied about their reasons for apprehending and detaining my mother, and that was confirmed in court. But that doesn’t seem to matter in the courts. There is no provision in our laws for the possibility that doctors might make an error or have other motives for acting other than the well-being of a patient. And there certainly isn’t any punishment if they do so.
So given that BC’s laws are already robust enough to scoop up people at will (and the government is well aware that this goes on all the time), people should be wondering why the BC government is pushing for even more draconian laws.
Besides, Coleman’s logic is just ludicrous. Just because one homeless person died in a fire, does that now mean that anytime anyone, let’s say in a First Nations’ reserve dies in a fire, that all First Nations people should be housed in concrete camps (no wait, we’ve already done something like that, haven’t we?). Or how about detaining all families/people who’ve had a fire in their home, because obviously they can’t be trusted to prevent every danger they might face, so it would be better to detain them in an institution somewhere. We had one tragic homeless death in BC this year. One is always too many, but it was just one. What about all the deaths due to speed racing, and nothing much is done there. What about all the taser deaths? How about the 20 people who died from Listeriosis but the government hasn’t gotten around to doing much about that. This push to strenthen the MHA is very suspicious. I smell Campbell’s government taking advantage of a disaster for their own ends.
Instead of debating with Coleman over his ludicrous, silly trial balloon, we should be vigorously campaigning to have that clause removed. It is so open-ended it practically invites abuse (“to prevent the person’s or patient’s substantial mental or physical deterioration”)! Hell, we’re all physically deteriorating every day, that’s life! What’s next, mandatory exploratory surgery?! Oh, yah, they can do that too. And they do exploratory mind-altering (chemical) surgery every day on seniors in “care” homes without their knowledge or permission. That’s our lovely medical “community” at work for us.
BC’s Mental Health Act, the tightest in the so-called developed world, allows for police and doctors to act with impunity (but sadly not with personal or professional integrity). And the courts only stand by and watch. Surely we citizens should be very alarmed at these frightening powers handed to police and doctors. Especially doctors because at least the police have some civilian oversight. The doctors are a “self-regulating profession.” They answer to no one but themselves, and are literally above the law. And they wield this fierce weapon called the Mental Health Act with which they can apprehend, detain and treat (i.e.drug) people against their will, or pretty much do what they wish.
Think I’m exaggerating? Well, several months ago it was briefly announced in the media that in the past year alone 10 BC doctors had been found to have sexually assaulted their patients. They were “disciplined” by the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons (the type of discipline they received was not publicized, and they were allowed to continue practicing as doctors). But better yet, not one of the doctors was ever charged with any crime. How’s that for impunity? Anyone else in society would have been charged, or at least investigated by police, especially if they admit to the crime! But not doctors. And the ones that were “caught out” well, you can bet they are only the tip of the iceberg. This is is “self-regulation” all right. What it really means is “self-protecting.” And that comes with an unforgiveable cost.