WELCOME HOME FOR LESS Homemade Solutions DRAWING THE LINE

 

WELCOME HOME FOR LESS

Homemade Solutions

DRAWING THE LINE

Written by,

Sharleen Cainer, BSW RSW

Last week was an eventful week for Welcome Home for Less. We staged a small rally to elevate the understanding of the needs of the underhoused, unsheltered and the vulnerable sector of the population.

Homelessness and the unsheltered seems to be the marker, or where we draw the line, about when we decide that something must be done, must be addressed, and must be accomplished. Global News was there to cover the rally and it sparked some interest which we wanted to carry forward to the Regional Council, who had invited us to present our concept. We are bringing forward our modular emergency housing to take care of the unsheltered by this winter.

Apparently, city hall does not have administrative staff on Friday's. How do we know that? We know this because right before they left for the day, they cancelled the meeting we set up with them for Monday. Their automated response indicated that they would return urgent emails. We sent two emails, that yielded the same automated response for both, that they will respond to urgent emails only. I am supposing the agenda of the meeting is not so urgent for them. I would say it is not a good look when hundreds of constituents are without shelter while they utilize 3-day weekends.

I explored the issue of declaring homelessness as an emergency under the Emergency Preparedness Act. The problem with this strategy is that homelessness is considered a systemic or social issue, which the emergency preparedness act does not address. There was a court case last month in Toronto, where a group of homeless individuals rallied to petition the court stating it is their constitutional right to have a home in hopes of creating a precedent. They case did not go in their favour because of it that being a social, systemic issue.

When Toronto went to court to argue the point of an impending disaster that was escalating due to having reached the breaking point on several fronts, they introduced The Province of Ontario Emergency Response Plan defines an emergency as depicting "a situation, or impending situation that constitutes a danger of major proportions that could result in serious harm to persons or substantial damage to property or other health risk". An especially important and pivotal point of this legislation is that "Should these situations threaten public safety, public health, the environment, property, critical infrastructure and economic stability" there are ways to engage emergency preparedness. The government has strategically created an emergency plan that lets them off the hook for the emergencies they create through their polices and the systems they institute.

Let us review a little history here. The GM plant enjoyed a love hate relationship with Oshawa for over 100 years. There were many veterans that returned from war and began working at the GM plant. In those times, a man was expected to go to work and be able to support his family. That ideology was supported by the wages that were earned. A wage at GM could house and feed a family. As the cost of living rises, and the wages are not reflective of a cost of living, people then begin to worry and act. Between labour strikes and large bail outs for GM, I am very sure it is safe to assume that GM did not come out on the losing end. There was over a billion dollars that was received by the company over time.

Those of us who remember the Free Trade Agreement may recall that it was initially introduced as The Free Trade Agreement between the USA and Canada. I wrote a paper at that time stating it would become an agreement between Mexico USA and Canada. My thesis was that the United States, who strategically sits in the middle of both Mexico and Canada would begin to declare bankruptcy for their Canadian plants and move to Mexico ( I got a D on my paper by the way). This all takes money of course. One of the first company to fall was Massey Ferguson. They had a deferred tax of $30 million when they went to Mexico. General Motors closed their doors some years later after receiving a large bail out of over a billion dollars.

General Motors opened their plants in several Mexican locations in May of 2020. Up until relatively recently, as in a few years ago, there were very few rules and regulations in place to protect workers. Now, the Mexican workers have labour laws and unions that reflect the laws and rights of those in North American unions.

So, what makes the move to Mexico so attractive? Minimum wage is somewhere between $4.50 and $5.85 an hour depending upon where in the country the plant is located. General Motors packed their bags, went to Mexico, opened up shop with full compliment of staff for a fraction of what they paid to workers here, after they received a spectacular bail out.

Each industrial job that was created by GM, had a spin off of nine other jobs. Oshawa has a population of 300,000. The total number of jobs lost to the Oshawa voting public because GM left was approximately 18,000. This is an unprecedented number, and the death of individual bank accounts was a slow decline for many. Then all of a sudden there is a world pandemic, and the beleaguered of Oshawa then began to fall off the bottom rung of the ladder.

The Emergency Preparedness legislation needs to change so as to incorporate the systemic and social issues that are created by the governing policies that lead directly to the state of homelessness. The sheltering systems are understaffed, overfilled, and outdated. They cost an inordinate amount of money that could be better utilized and better serve the public. Welcome Home for Less has been invited to present an innovative plan to the region that will reset and address the needs of the unsheltered on the streets. We have requested to be rescheduled on November 17th, 2020. Please address comments or concerns to welcomehomecontained@gmail.com