HELPING PEOPLE IN THE STREETS

Tourists this summer, in cities such as Toronto and Ottawa, step around
homeless people in downtown streets and wonder about the social conscience
of this society. Strangely, right-wing Conservative MPP Jim Flaherty is one
of the few politicians who is keen to tackle the problem.

Mr. Flaherty is running for the leadership of Ontario Conservatives for the
second time. When he ran a couple of years ago, he was almost depicted as
Attila the Hun for advocating a "scoop law" that would authorize the arrest
and detention of people who camp out on the streets. Mr. Flaherty is once
again highlighting the policy in this leadership campaign, saying in a
policy document: "In a province as prosperous as Ontario, it is inhumane to
look the other way while people with drug and alcohol addictions and mental
illness live on the streets."

In March, Mr. Flaherty told the Citizen: "If we look at something like
homelessness in Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, Thunder Bay ... and we put money
to help resolve the problem as cities do and the province does -- lots of
money on that issue. I see the results being failure, many people still
living on the streets in squalor and ill health and dying. We just had a
person in Toronto die from a little fire in a cardboard-box shelter in the
shadow of the multi-million-dollar condominiums of the Rosedale Ravine.
That, as a society, is unforgivable, an unforgivable failure. So we need to
address that.

"Whether it's because of drugs or cognitive injuries or schizophrenia, as a
civil society it seems to me we have the obligation to go one step beyond
worrying about the problem, and that means having teams of people who can
go and say, what is your issue, what do you need, and fulfil that need."

In a recent Toronto interview, he expressed frustration with government
studies and projects on homelessness that don't help the homeless.

Mr. Flaherty is right.

Public streets and parks are not the private enclave of anyone who decides
to camp out on them. Certainly the homeless can use these spaces, and even
protest government policy in these public venues. But these public places
should never be treated as private just because someone squats on them.

Government has an obvious moral obligation to help society's most
vulnerable people. Mr. Flaherty has said that more social housing isn't the
answer because the homeless have many health and social problems beyond
lack of housing.

The question now becomes how to help. Mr. Flaherty has a chance to convince
Ontarians that he's sincere about helping the homeless if he provides a
plan on how to tackle the problem. Creating new group homes, and employing
people to help people cope, would be good progress on this front.

But what do we cut to find the money for such a program? And how do we
build social housing at a reasonable cost? Political leaders need to move
beyond general campaign promises to convince voters that they are sincere.