Legislating poverty in Vancouver: The 'Safe Streets Act'

June 7 , 2004
Harsha Walia

Vancouver Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt has proposed a private members bill that would make it illegal to panhandle near bank machines and bus stops, or to wash car windows on a roadway. Benignly titled, the Safe Streets Act is a continuation of the vicious attack on the poor and the homeless.

The proposed legislation would make aggressive begging and squeegeeing a crime, as well as impose penalties for unsafe disposal of used syringes, condoms, and broken crack pipes. Mayencourt also wants the provincial Trespass Act amended to permit shopkeepers to ban repeat shoplifters from entering their stores. Currently, only property owners are allowed to refuse entry to business premises.

In Ontario, a similar Safe Streets Act was enacted in 2000, amidst a barrage of massive cuts to social services and a relentless campaign to stigmatise the poor. Among the very first acts by Mike Harris’s Tory government was the slashing of welfare benefits by more than 21 per cent. Subsequently, the government cancelled all support for social housing construction and instituted a mandatory “workfare” program for welfare recipients.

In British Columbia, the Safe Streets Act and Trespass to Property Act are only the latest in a long list of exclusionary practices that have emerged with the rise in the politically conservative climate. On the one hand, policies of social cuts and hardened tenancy laws have contributed to an increase in poverty and homelessness, while at the same time the government excludes and criminalises victims of its own policies from public space and public view. The B.C. government has escalated the war against the poor in the past three years. It has devastated the lives of the working class, the poor, and other marginalised communities: cutting jobs, resulting in an eight per cent unemployment rate overall and a 25 per cent jobless rate for youth; establishing the new ‘training wage’ at $6 an hour; slashing housing programs; and making massive cuts to welfare, legal aid, and women’s centres. Now the people directly affected and rendered destitute and homeless by their policies are being criminalised for their acts of basic survival.

The prevalent discourse behind such legislation that re-articulates the war on the poor is one in which society is divided between those who give and those who take: the taxpayer versus the “welfare bum.” There are those who contribute and those who do not. And those who contribute require legislation and criminal justice enforcement to protect them and to render invisible the face of the displaced. Many have compared this legislation, and its Ontario counterpart, to the vagrancy laws of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, notorious for their arbitrary interpretation and enforcement. For example, the Act prohibits soliciting in an “aggressive manner” and soliciting a “captive audience.” This very notion of a “captive audience” works to construct the public as vulnerable victims constantly held hostage by those begging for survival. “Aggressive solicitation,” which is an assertion of a poor person’s rights and entitlements, is used to justify the barrage of conservative policies and legislation of the B.C. government. This unquestioned link between safety and street people is as horrific as the racist stereotyping of immigrants and refugees as a threat to national security.

The Safe Streets Act has been drafted in such a way as to avoid claims that it is discriminatory. It does not make it illegal to beg for money or to be homeless. “This law is not about people, but about behaviour,” Mayencourt said. Theoretically, registered charitable organisations could be arrested for trying to solicit donations. In fact, of course, it is poor people and homeless people whom this bill is criminalising.

From a legal standpoint, it is interesting, but perhaps not surprising, that the Safe Streets Act in Ontario and the panhandling bylaw in Vancouver have both withstood constitutional challenges on the basis that the laws deny freedom of expression, violate equality rights, and deny life, liberty, and security of person. The judgement delivered about the Safe Streets Act in R. v. Banks (Ontario Court of Justice, 2001) states: “Poverty in itself is not an analogous ground of discrimination under s. 15. Poverty is not immutable, like race, or constructively immutable, like religion. The defendants failed to establish that the Act discriminates against the extremely poor. The restrictions in the Act do not apply only to the poor.” Anatole France in the early 1900’s stated: “The majestic quality of the law forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets and steal bread.”

The Canadian constitution is meant to — at least on the face of it — protect principles of fundamental justice. If fundamental justice does not include a right to economic survival, including a right to work to earn a living, then what use are the other so-called freedoms? As Noam Chomsky has written: “Freedom without opportunity is a devil’s gift, and the refusal to provide such opportunities is criminal.” The Charter accords rights that can only be fully enjoyed by people who are fed, clothed, sheltered, and have access to necessary health care, education, and a minimum level of income.

The legislated attack on the poor has undoubtedly intensified in order to protect business interests. The Safe Streets Coalition, made up of 30 community and business groups including the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, B.C. Chamber of Commerce, Royal Canadian Legion, and Tourism Vancouver, backs the Safe Streets Act. The political arm of the state and the corporate arm have increasingly become merged to protect the interests of the elite. Whether on a local, national or global level, the assault on genuine democracy and markets are intrinsically related. Their roots lie in the power of corporate entities that are autocratic and increasingly interlinked and reliant on powerful governments.

At present, there are large-scale protests to oppose global imperialist wars and anti-globalisation protests across North America to protest the policies of the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. But there is a large disjunction between those who protest such manifestations of Canadian foreign policy and the local anti-poverty struggles, and other community struggles of indigenous peoples, immigrants, and refugees that take place on a day-to-day basis. Increasing numbers of students, academics, and unions speak of the discontents of global capitalism and injustice, but the local effects of capitalism — the fact that people live and die on the streets in Canada, mostly displaced indigenous peoples — from the policies of our governments render not a single voice of discontent. Capitalism, inequity, poverty are alive and well in the streets of Vancouver.

As activist Jaggi Singh wrote about the Harris government in Ontario: “One aspect of globalisation quite often underlined and targeted is these Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) that the IMF and World Bank imposes on a variety of countries. What are SAPs? They are cuts to subsidies to fuel and to food in a variety of countries, the privatisation of wide sectors of government, cuts to social spending, creating competitive practices by ensuring flexible labour or by getting rid of a variety of standards. These are imposed on countries such as Indonesia or Mexico. Well, Ontario has had its very own Structural Adjustment Program, but unlike the other Structural Adjustment Programs, Ontario’s was not enforced, but voluntarily undertaken by the government.”

With preparations beginning for the 2010 Olympics, gentrification of downtown Vancouver will only increase homelessness. Rent increases are already on the way, along with an increase in eviction notices. The political and economic forces behind the Olympics are promising massively expanded ski hills, new resorts on undeveloped mountains, and hotels and roads connecting them. In Whistler, real estate value has gone up by 15 per cent. Most of this expansion is reaching into land claimed by indigenous communities — land and territory that have never been ceded under any treaty and which were affirmed in the landmark Supreme Court of Canada Delgamuukw decision in 1997. The Secwepemc and St’at’imc people, and now the community at Cheam, are fighting ski resort development. The Native Youth Movement has launched a No Slopes Campaign to protect Aboriginal title and lands, while anti-poverty groups join them in opposing the Olympic bid’s effects on gentrification and homelessness.

Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Mulroney used to tell those who criticised their government’s cutbacks that there is ‘no alternative.’ There is no alternative under this system. If decent jobs, living income, adequate housing, health care, and education as fundamental human rights are ‘impossible’ under this system, then we have to look beyond capitalism. Whenever and wherever global and local elites meet to further their plans for corporate-sponsored globalisation, we will be there to oppose them. In Vancouver, the fight back will intensify and marginalised communities will continue to protect their life and dignity and their rights to basic survival.

The streets would be safer without politicians

As a fag, I want the streets to be safe. Like many others, I grew up with the common fear that to be “out” on the streets would mean a beating or death. While it was a slight childhood exaggeration, it was, and unfortunately still is, happening. Two years ago a gay man named Aaron Webster was beaten to death in a Vancouver park. In 2003, a transgendered sex trade worker named Shelby Tracy Tom was murdered in North Vancouver. Despite these 2 high profile cases, gay bashings continue throughout the Lower Mainland. Last summer several bashings were reported in Vancouver’s gay village. In the various incidents police allowed the perpetrators to walk away, didn’t follow-up on license plate numbers and other vital information, or just plain ignored victims of bashings while on the scene. You would think then that a piece of legislation, entitled the Safe Streets Act and brought forth by a gay politician from that neighbourhood, would address the safety concerns of queers on the streets. Unless of course that politician is Vancouver-Burrard’s Lorne Mayencourt. Mayencourt, along with a medley of business groups, has formed the Safe Streets Coalition. The group is proposing legislation modeled after similar laws brought in under Ontario’s Mike Harris Conservatives. The Safe Streets Act would make it illegal to squeegee cars as well as panhandle near bus stops, automated teller machines, parking lots, phone booths and other public spaces. Failure to comply would result in fines and/or jail time. Mayencourt claims that these laws are not out to target poor people in general, rather their focus is on “aggressive panhandling”. To justify his regressive law he likes to cite a case where an elderly senior in his riding left a corner store, was followed home, and the perpetrator forced his way in to her apartment and robbed her. For such a law and order aficionado, you would think Mayencourt would be aware that laws already exist against home invasion and other such aggressive acts. But if there are already laws to deal with aggressive behaviour, why a specific law for poor people? A look at the supporters of the legislation reveals that it is pro-business groups like the Vancouver Board of Trade and the Downtown Business Improvement Association that are pushing for “safer streets”.  By safer, they clearly mean free of poor and homeless people, a population that has risen greatly under the past 3 years of BC Liberal rule. Mayencourt and the BC Liberal government’s cuts to welfare and disability benefits, social housing and many other public services have undeniably caused an increase in the poverty that we see on the street. The business community doesn’t like the look of it so they demonize poor people as aggressive and push to criminalize and incarcerate them. As the legislation cuts out a viable income source for many people living on the streets some are forced into the sex or drug trades. Mayencourt’s riding is comprised primarily of renters, seniors and queers. Nonetheless he has supported legislation that has cut tenant rights, temporarily eliminated seniors bus passes, increased Pharmacare costs, and abolished the Human Rights Commission. His ‘Safe Schools Taskforce’ had absolutely no recommendations to protect queer youth, but now his ‘Safe Streets Act’ specifically targets street youth, including young queers. Mayencourt feverishly attacks the poor with morally bankrupt legislation, despite having been financially bankrupt not once, but twice in his life. Homelessness, poverty and its causes need to be addressed by our communities as a whole. It’s time politicians, businesses and lobby groups stop punishing those who are poor, especially when it is those same groups that have created the conditions that manifest poverty. We must actively challenge and oppose those that attack members of our community to suit their own needs.  Our community and streets will be safer for it. -blain  quak@resist.ca