It's cruel and stupid to close group homes

The provincial government can dance all it likes, and certainly has, around the sticky issue of whether it’s closing group homes for people with developmental disabilities.

But it is. So let’s give up this crazy pretence that B.C. isn’t closing group homes, when the fact is that anyone with an ear to the ground knows it’s already well underway. I mean, come on, guys - the least you can do is be honest.

Here’s Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman in the legislature April 13, as captured in Hansard during a strategically worded cat-and-mouse game on the subject with New Democrat MLA Shane Simpson.

“We don't do forced moves, if that's what the member is getting to,” Coleman told Simpson. “We do, though, sometimes, when we have a redesign or have to have a repositioning with regards to our facilities, work extensively with the families and the advocates to walk them through what other opportunities are available in addition to maybe moving to another facility, if there's a capacity issue.”

Whatever that tongue-twister means, you can see now that he was already parsing things carefully to clear the way for government and Community Living B.C. to cut $22 million in spending. (He’s also caught in a lie, because forced moves are happening.)

CLBC savings are to come from phasing out group homes and cutting support services.  I heard a heartbreaking story of a fellow who has gone to “work” with great enthusiasm for 20 years now at a program that fills his days, but will soon have nowhere to go.

The government likes to portray the issue as being more about having to spread the same amount of expenditure out over an ever-larger group of people and families who really need the help, as opposed to cutting services. It’s a “capacity issue,” as Coleman noted in April.

Whatever. Call it what you will, group homes are closing and services are being cut for people who are completely vulnerable without the right supports. Anyone who cares about rights, fairness, homelessness, abuse prevention, health-care costs down the road or even just plain human decency ought to be completely up in arms about what’s going on for people with developmental disabilities.

Mental illness and mental handicaps get mixed up all the time in the public’s mind. What I’m talking about here are people with low IQs, for all the reasons that such things happen. They often have physical disabilities as well, and some have mental illness complicating things.

I get the government’s point that they’re a drain on the public purse. Then again, so is the government itself, and all the rest of the vast public and political functions we pay for.

Smart government isn’t about singling out specific groups of people for misery because they cost us more. It’s about priorizing spending in ways that best satisfy voters while not burdening future generations with the fruits of our screwups. How does the stupid cruelty of cutting services to people with developmental disabilities benefit anyone?

The Victoria Foundation’s Vital Signs report this week highlighted the priority our region puts on social care. But if we really mean it, we should be jumping up and down right now on behalf of people with developmental disabilities.

We’re not talking big numbers. All told, just a third of the 36,000 British Columbians with developmental disabilities get any help from CLBC, and only 2,400 live in group homes.

The theory is that people moved out of their group homes will go onto enriched lives in a less structured, more independent housing arrangement.  A few group homes may linger on, but they’re no longer an option for new people coming into the CLBC system.

The whole thing has been done extremely quietly, and perhaps it would have all been a done deal by now were it not for a few anguished cries from family members of those getting the boot from the homes where they’ve lived contentedly for years, even decades. That government and CLBC seem surprised to have encountered resistance just underlines the disconnect with the real world.

British Columbians ought to be celebrating the network of group homes and day programs built by previous generations of taxpayers who invested in a better future for people with developmental disabilities. Do we want to be the generation remembered for tearing it apart for fleeting savings?

It’s wrong, and shameful. But families can’t win this on their own.  Learn more at www.momsnetwork.ca, and add some muscle to an important issue.

There's been some terrific (and terrible) commentary and writing about Canada's prostitution laws since the Ontario Superior Court struck down three key laws around the sex trade last week. Here are a couple pieces from the former category, one from SFU professor John Lowman in the Vancouver Sun, and the other from the Ottawa Citizen by Steve Sullivan, Canada's federal ombudsman for victims of crime. Nice to see some smart, thoughtful writing on this subject.

Court ruling finally brings sex workers out of the shadow

You’ll be reading this today, or maybe even weeks from now. By then it will be old news that the Ontario Superior Court tossed out the bulk of Canada’s prostitution laws.

But it’s Tuesday, Sept. 28 right now, 11:01 a.m. I’m sitting down to write this mere minutes after the first amazing email landed in my inbox with the news. I’ve been crying happy tears ever since. I’m still in the buzz of the moment, so please don’t mind me if I get all emotional.

Years of battle lie ahead, of course. Brothels, living off the avails and communicating for the purposes of prostitution were all rendered legal in Ontario with the decision, which ultimately has implications coast to coast. The first thing the Crown’s going to do after everybody gets past the shock is file an appeal. Then it’s off to the ultimate arbiter, the Supreme Court of Canada.

Still, there’s no going back from what has already changed. The moment Ontario Superior Court Judge Susan Himel handed down her decision Tuesday, sex workers finally became people. They became flesh-and-blood women and men, out there working for a living like the rest of us.

"By increasing the risk of harm to street prostitutes, the communicating law is simply too high a price to pay for the alleviation of social nuisance," Himel wrote in her 131-page ruling. The danger sex workers face “greatly outweighs any harm which may be faced by the public.”

Court decisions seem like pretty sterile documents by the time the public gets a look at them. But there’s real pain, and incredible bravery, in the process that brought about this most recent judgment.

The sex workers who appeared before the court were subjected to intense and prying questions by prosecutors. I still remember the day a friend of mine came back from giving her testimony, the broken way she looked. It had been a hard and humiliating experience.

These women put their lives on public display as few would be willing to do. Without them, there would have been no case. I hope they are celebrating like crazy this week.

University of Toronto law professor Alan Young and the legal team who took on this challenge worked for free. They went to extraordinary effort to build a story that spoke to the law while also bringing the voices of Canada’s sex workers and advocates to the fore. There would have been no case without them, either.

When all of this got underway, I couldn’t have guessed how the court might finally rule. At that level, the law is not often something that the common person can understand.

But then I learned a few months back that the legal test was essentially whether Canada’s prostitution laws caused more harm than good. And that’s when I knew there was a good chance that the sex workers were going to win.

Our laws are well-documented for hurting and killing sex workers while doing nothing to curb the industry. If harm versus public good was the test, there was no question in my mind.

Even when the laws aren’t enforced - which is mostly the case in Canada for the laws around keeping a bawdyhouse or living off the avails - they cause harm by shutting sex workers out of the mainstream and deepening stigma.

It took me a long time to form my views on sex work, through many twists and turns in career and personal experience. I now feel unequivocally that adult, consensual sex work must be legalized.

But it took me years to get here, and I respect that not everybody will greet Judge Himel’s ruling as a gift from the heavens. Some may even see it as the end of the world.

But what is the argument for anyone being subjected to injury, death, immense shame and stigma just because another segment of the population believes the way they make their living is immoral?

Perhaps you can’t imagine doing the work and wouldn’t want it for your own daughter. But is that really reason enough for laws that ramp up the danger and difficulty for other people’s daughters and sons?

People struggle with the idea that sex work could ever be part of their community. But the truth is that it already is. Thank you, Judge Himel, for seeing the people in the shadows.

Wow, we are living in kooky times when a U.S. newspaper does a straight-up story about how homeless students have a tougher time than other students when schools in their neighbourhood close down. Pretty unsettling story not so much because of what it's actually about, but because it treats the concept of homeless students like it's a normal thing.

Check out the fascinating buzz going on at the CCSVI Facebook page, where the piece I wrote today about multiple sclerosis got posted. This is clearly one hot topic among people with MS.