PovPolPodcast Episode 1: Ranting about the News

Nigel rants about a the COVID-19 pandemic and the impacts it has on people in poverty, racism in Calgary and in Canada, as well as the demonstrations in the States.

Written and Produced by Nigel Kirk. Support us on Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/povpolpodcast Music: "Poor Boy" by Pedro Santiago

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RELEASE: A Response to the National Housing Strategy

For the past couple of days, people have been wanting to know my response to the National Housing Strategy revealed by Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Government, so here I have prepared my response:

RELEASE

A National Housing Strategy is long overdue, so while I'm grateful for the discussion on the subject, and the acknowledgement of the homelessness crisis in Canada, this is NOT the strategy we need.

There are good things in the strategy, to be sure. The Government has finally decided that the right to housing be guaranteed and recognized. The UN has been reminding us of this constantly and if you ask any homeless person in Canada, I don't know a single one of them who would deny wanting a home and needing one. I acknowledge that this is a step in the right direction. Additionally, for many organizations that provide affordable housing, updates are greatly needed. There are too many spaces sitting empty right now because they need refurbishment and funds to upgrade those units are desperately needed.

However, my view about the strategy as a whole is that it falls far short of what is needed in this country. Members of the homeless community are dying every day in Canada, and the Government would have us wait until after the next election - almost two years away - before making any commitments. The homeless cannot afford to wait.

Furthermore, a previous private members bill regarding a National Housing Strategy - that all but four Governing MPs voted against - included amending the Canadian Human Rights act to include protected status from discrimination against the homeless community. The proposed strategy as far as I've read includes no such measure. What this means is that the Liberal Government literally voted against human rights for the homeless community, and have endorsed continuous acts of hate crimes, violence, abuse, mistreatment, segregation against the homeless community. This is not just simply a class issue. Indigenous peoples make up a disproportionately large amount of the homeless population in Canada. Women are often homeless because they are fleeing abuse, or struggling to make ends meet as single parents. This is a class issue, yes. But it is also a race issue. A gender issue. This means that people who would normally be protected under the Charter are not protected, strictly because they are homeless and the Government has determined it is okay to discriminate and abuse members of the homeless Community.

And with the strategy only calling for a 50% reduction in homelessness, that still leaves a large number of homeless individuals who need protections.

In short, this strategy falls far short of it's potential and does not do enough to protect the homeless community. I call on the government to not only implement protections for our societies most vulnerable, but to enact them immediately.

Signed,
Nigel Kirk

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Homelessness as Culture

The argument that homelessness is a cultural identity is not a new concept, with much written on the subject since the early 90's as peer-review submissions as well as thesis submissions for requirements. While I can't give full proper citations because I don't have subscriptions to academic journals, I can offer the following papers in no particular order which discussed the matter according to their abstracts:

• Ravenhill, Megan Honor. A Culture of Homelessness: An Ethnographic Study. Dissertation. London School of Economics. UMI 615614
• Davis, Ruth E. "Tapping into the Culture of Homelessness." Journal of Professional Nursing, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1996, pp. 176-83
• Phillips, Kaitlyn. Homelessness: Causes, Culture and Community Development as a Solution. Thesis. Salve Regina University. 2012

While those papers don't fully discuss the implications of homelessness as a culture, nor do they - as far as I can tell based on abstracts - argue that homelessness should be considered a cultural identity, I think it's important that the argument is recognized. Homeless persons communicate with each other differently than how they communicate with non-homeless persons. There is a segregationary aspect surrounding homeless persons where non-homeless persons are more likely to associate with each other rather than non-homeless persons and as such, community, relationships, shared experiences and a common shared identity arise. This is in part due to the nature of how class and social position work, however, government failings and policies have accelerated this to the point where the concept of homelessness as a cultural identity can no longer be ignored.

Speaking anecdotally, I had been on and off the streets for about 9 years. I have been enjoying my current apartment for over a year. But I still identify as homeless. It's part of my cultural identity and even still, despite being housed, part of my community. This isn't entirely unique to me. Efforts to "integrate" homeless persons into broader society result in many guest management issues as people try to maintain their communities in the face of disbursement. Some residents sleep on the floor in their own homes despite owning a bed because homelessness is ingrained in who they are. For many who had experienced some of the longest periods spent in the shelters or on the streets, almost every decision they make is influenced by the time they spent there. The oppression, segregation, human rights abuses, criminalization, and lack of adequate services we experience frames our worldview and what we feel we need to feel safe and secure.

Of course there is intersectionalism. Homelessness isn't the only identity we can carry. Just like it's possible for someone to identify as both black and gay, or as a woman and trans, cultural identity within homelessness is intersectional and compounds on many other ways minorities are already marginalized. A person who is indigenous and homeless then find themselves assaulted by discrimination on two fronts: being indigenous and being homeless. They may face some discrimination for being indigenous without homeless discrimination, or vice-versa, but more often face discrimination for being both simultaneously.

So if "homelessness" is not simply a state of not having a home, but is an identity and culture, there are serious implications that go with this. Firstly, it means in Calgary we have a minority group of 3500 individuals with no human rights protections currently facing voter suppression, segregation, and criminalization. Homelessness needs to be included in Human Rights Legislation, as well a change in societal attitudes towards the homeless communities and culture. I stated in a classroom recently "Personally, I think it's wonderful that we're starting to accept than people can use the bathrooms that match their gender identity, but we're still arguing over whether homeless persons should use a bathroom at all!"

Secondly, and this is equally important but a harder pill for some people to swallow: current efforts to "end homelessness" is cultural genocide. Organizations are ignoring the concept of homeless persons having a unique identity and needs and forcing integration into the mainstream of society on them. Furthermore, housing efforts do not make any attempt to preserve homeless culture and preserve homeless communities and the relationships formed among those who lived on the streets. They make no efforts to guarantee services for people who identify as homeless exist in their communities. Because the standard for acceptable living and rules governing how must one behave in their own home are not created with homeless as identity in mind, it is also setting up homeless persons for failure to which they lose their housing. Strategies to "end homelessness" removes the right of self determination from homeless persons, self determination in how to obtain adequate housing and self determination to preserve their culture in their own home.

Furthermore, it displaces and breaks up communities, scattering homeless persons all over the city (or in some cases, ships them to another city or province), destroying the bonds, relationships, and social supports that create a feeling of comfort and security for the homeless community.

The right to cultural preservation doesn't have to conflict with the right to adequate housing. We do need a complete overhaul in how we address this. Firstly, recognition of homeless persons as a minority group is imperative. Furthermore, homeless persons need to be consulted as to our definition of adequate housing. Efforts must be made to ensure homeless communities and relationships are not broken up when housing the homeless and that services unique to the needs of homeless persons are available in the areas they are moved to. Also recognizing the right to self-determination means that homeless persons should not be forced to move or relocate anywhere if they feel their current situation is adequate without penalty and those who do opt to move into housing must have a say in where they move to without fear of penalty and must be allowed to decline offers if they feel housing offered does not meet their needs.

Cultural sensitivity must be written into tenancy law. Clearly we don't want fire hazards from overcrowded accommodations, but guest management is an issue with homeless persons because it's how we preserve our culture and maintain our relationships and communities, and must be taken into account when housing homeless persons.

If agencies and governments adopt a homelessness as culture approach to addressing the lack of adequate housing for homeless persons, we can save lives, save resources, preserve a culture, and create dynamic and vibrant communities, as well as ensure human rights and dignity for 3500 Calgarians, 10,000 Albertans, and almost 300,000 Canadians.

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Fixing Housing First

Housing First is not working in Calgary. And by all rights it should, after all it's the simplest concept in the world: Put homeless people in homes. Yet, since 2009 Calgary has housed over 6,000 persons from the shelter system, with the number of homeless individuals only going down 2,000 in that same time, (based on the last homeless count in Calgary).

So what's not working?

First, the only argument used in ending homelessness is the economic argument: Putting people in homes reduces cost to taxpayers in the form of healthcare and maintaining shelter services, services which are subsidised heavily by the Provincial government.

But really, the only motivation that should suffice is "It's the right thing to do."

While working with the Calgary Homeless Foundation on their Charter of Rights for the Homeless, a constant source of frustration for me was that anything we came up with was unenforceable. Shelters of course posted the documents on their walls, but in no way were obligated to grant any of these rights or facilitate these rights for anyone. And the Calgary Homeless Foundation lacks the teeth to make shelters submit to the charter because they only control housing programs, so a client is not subject to these rights until in a CHF-funded program, and even then, the rights still only apply to that program, not to the shelters an individual may reside at while going through the process of applying for housing.

We cannot afford to keep shelters and housing programs separate. Most, if not all of Calgary's shelters that serve the homeless have some form of housing program, but keep the operations of the shelter divorced from the operations of housing. This leads to a variety of problems from the perspective of clients, notably:

• information regarding housing programs is miscommunicated by different front line workers as the workers themselves are not given accurate information because of the divide.
• clients are encouraged to use the shelter's affiliated housing program when better options may be available
• shelters continue to abuse clients or implement policies that set the clients up for failure rather than foster an environment in the shelter that allows room for dignity and personal growth because the shelter is not funded by any body that holds human rights for the homeless as a standard.

The best solution that I can think of is to end the divide between shelters and housing programs. Shelters must be considered part of the housing process. This encourages shelters to foster a safe and dignified environment with more of a case management focus rather than mass micromanagement.

In one particular shelter, some of the changes that have occurred include lockdowns upon arrival to segregate the homeless community from the rest of the community, removal of plugs from the walls so clients with cell phones and laptops cannot use them if they wish to, and instituting a policy where guests cannot leave the mat areas between certain times. Each time, there was a couple of complaints and then after a few days, we all went "Okay. This is my life now."

While there are reasons for these policies - some that are acceptable, some that are not - I'd be scared to have that kind of power over someone. To be able to control someone to the point where they just accept anything I do that impacts them negatively. That's how adapted we've become to being controlled. We don't know the same freedom experienced by the mainstream of society, so we don't know how to handle any freedom once we've moved out. And if we don't know that freedom, we'll just end up being back in the shelter again. If the shelters are not divorced from housing programs, shelters will be more likely to be dignity focused, and also accountable for ensuring a minimum standards of human rights at the shelter level.

Housing First should work. But dignity should never wait until someone owns a set of keys. You send someone who feels like a human being worthy of housing into a house, they'll make it a home. You send an empty shell of a man into house (or apartment), and the apartment will be an empty shell no more meaningful than the shelter itself is.

Fix housing first. Guarantee dignity and respect for persons experiencing homelessness.

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A Homeless Perspective on the Refugee Situation

Yeah. I read the news a lot. I also have social media accounts that I utilise. I voted in the last federal election. And I personally support bringing in refugees. Of course, some people are opposed to this. Some of them are opposed because of bigotry (which is not okay). Some of them are concerned about the U.N. Screening process, or about the costs to the taxpayer (which are okay if these are your genuine concerns, and you're not using them to mask your bigotry).

But in letters to the newspaper editors, comments on blog posts and in social media, I'm seeing something disturbing: People trying to pit the homeless community against the refugees. I'm seeing people saying we shouldn't take the refugees in because we should focus on helping the homeless. I'm seeing them use us as homeless people as an excuse to oppose refugees.

Excuse my language but:

Who the fuck are you to speak for the homeless? And where the hell have you been for the past ten years, which have been among the most oppressive for the homeless population?

Seriously, I've read letters sent to homeless charities stating that decades-long donors will pull their funding unless the charity publicly opposes bringing in refugees (which, by the way, I'm pretty sure could be argued as to the partisanship of the charity), I've seen comments on blogs and online news sites, full of swearing, complaining about how we should be helping the homeless and not take in a single refugee.

We are not your tools to justify your hatred.

Now, the homeless community itself partially shares your sentiments. From those I've talked to, we're not all on the same page obviously. It's a contentious issue with diverse views. Two things I've learned though are that we mostly recognise when someone needs help, and that it's unethical to order people to help us in exclusion to others in need. And secondly, that this is an opportunity. If we're capable of helping refugees in need, then we have the resources to help the homeless too, and to deny the homeless their basic fundamental human rights is no longer going to be excusable.

And a third that I'm coming to realise is that we're aware that for the first time in ten years, the mass public is suddenly interested in helping us. And we're pretty upset that it took a crisis in Syria for that to happen, and we do want to know why so many people who talked down to us, mocked us, said we deserved our lots in life, perpetuated the systemic abuse and denial of our dignity, suddenly think they are our allies and speak for us.

And we are going to want answers.

I personally, once again, welcome all our refugees to Canada, and wish you nothing but safety and good will. But to those who oppose refugees coming in for any reason, please, do not use us as your excuse to justify your views, and let homeless people and their advocates and community speak for themselves.

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Something's Wrong in the National Election

I've been very vocal on Twitter about my intent to decline my ballot this year. A declination of ballots is a legal right that I (and every voting eligible citizen) holds. It is not staying at home on election day. Rather, it is taking the time to go to the polling station and tell them that absolutely none of the parties have adequately addressed the issues that are important to me this election.

You see, all three parties are talking about the middle class, and what they would do for the middle class. And I think supporting the middle class is great, if the middle class were still around. This isn't the 1950's when the middle class made up the large bulk of the population. This is 2015. The middle class has been ever shrinking and getting smaller. Even the landscape of the top earners has changed dramatically.

In 2013, if you made $190,000 dollars, then you were among Canada's top 1% earners. Adjusted for inflation, in the 50's and 60's that would have made you middle class. And even with the adjustments in value, that still would have let you be a lot more affluent back then than it does now. It's one of the reasons why I distanced myself from the Occupy movement - the bottom tier of the top 1% is not as affluent as we often imagine.

To help the middle class is great, but it only helps the middle class when people are in the middle class. And so for it to be worthwhile to pitch all those efforts, you need to move people into that class. And that means the middle class is going to have to grow on both sides - some of the affluent but not elite will have to move into the middle class. But more importantly to me - we need to move people from the lower class into the middle.

This is where there has been a clear lack of talk among all the major parties. There has been almost no discussion among the leaders about poverty and homelessness. The criminalization of poverty has gotten steadily worse in most of Canada - despite being unconstitutional - and 40% of adults living in poverty are employed full time. Programs to protect those in poverty or at risk are becoming significantly harder to get, and health benefits in most provinces are being scaled back at astronomical rates. Most poverty reduction efforts are handled and funded at the local level - which has the advantage of the locality more likely to know what's needed in it's area, but suffers from only local funding.

We need more than jobs. We need to ensure workers are actually earning enough to sustain their families. A simple increase in wages will not work, as an increased demand for goods combined with higher bottom lines from higher wages will drastically inflate prices and put us back in the same spot.

Tax credits are great, and I appreciate the fact that many people in poverty are not required to pay taxes when their earnings fall below a certain amount. But a lot of programs that could benefit people in poverty are rather distributed to the middle class - which again, is shrinking - because they are only provided through tax credits. A tax credit for purchasing public transportation monthly passes is great, but not to someone who earns less that $13,000 a year and still has to rely heavily on transit to get around. Many cities have affordable transportation for low income earners, but many do not, and this is a federal election.

What is needed is a comprehensive, poverty reduction strategy. And a guarantee that programs introduced in this strategy will be accessible by people living in poverty. And that's the problem, isn't it? I want to believe a Universal Childcare Program would help, but if Quebec is any indication, most of the childcare spots are still taken by the more affluent individuals while children from poorer households are stuck on waiting lists. We need more than token programs and charismatic talk. We need ideas that work for the poor.

Now for homelessness. A leader who will not fight for the homeless will never have my vote. We need less program housing and more affordable housing. We need less housing that punishes us for being in poverty or for being poor by telling us how we need to be to maintain our housing, and more housing that is affordable for those living in poverty where the only things that determine if you can sign a new lease is if an individual can pay the rent, not damage the place, and not use the place to commit crimes. We need less talk of building more housing, and more shovels in the ground actually building the housing.

We need removals of barriers to vote - we need more acceptable ID's and to make it easier to vouch for people who want to vote. We need an easier way for the most vulnerable people in society to challenge the criminalization of homelessness and poverty. It violates the charter to discriminate based on class or social standing, but a charter based challenge that may go to federal courts is extremely costly, thus ensuring that the criminalization of the poor and especially the homeless forever goes left unchallenged.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of issues that are important to me as an individual. And these are all things that are being left out of the public discourse during election time. If a party wants to earn my vote, start talking about these things. I think we're already clear by now about your stances on the middle class on the economy. Let's talk about something new: the vulnerable.

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Bill 10, Bill 202, and the Melodrama.

Warning: this is an unusually long post!!

This week was a very bittersweet. As a supporter of gay rights, I was extremely frustrated and disappointed. As a blogger with a sense of humour, I was extremely overjoyed. Premier Jim Prentice gave comedians across Canada an amazing Christmas gift this year in the form of Bill 10. Bill 10, The Act to Amend the Bill of Rights to Protect our Children was Prentice's attempt, to play bobbing for eggs without getting egg on his face. The end result was... well, it was Prentice getting a lot of egg on his face.

To start, a little background. It's been common practice since the dawn of time that students taking sexual education may be removed from the class if parents don't give written consent. I honestly don't know how common that is in other provinces, as I've lived my whole life in Alberta. However, Alberta took it one step further in 2010. As of September 1st 2010, Parents had to be notified if sexual orientation would be discussed in classes, and that parents had the right to exempt their children from participating in these classes. Presumably on religious grounds, I would imagine. As far as I know, Alberta is THE only province that does that.

Then this fall, Alberta Liberal MLA for Edmonton-Centre, Laurie Blakeman announced that she would propose a bill that did three things:

1. Reference the Alberta Human Rights Act and The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms within the Alberta Education Act.
2. Repeal Section 11.1 of the Alberta Human Rights Act that allowed parents to remove their children from classes that discussed sexual orientation
3. Legislate that school boards provide Gay-Straight Alliances on site where students request them.

Of course, that third objective was the point that brought the most contention. Ms. Blakeman introduced her Private Members Bill on November 20th and the Progressive Conservatives - well most of them at least - panicked. By Most, I should mention there was one PC MLA who supported the bill. The runner-up in the leadership race behind Prentice, Thomas Lukaszuc. This is where it gets weird.

Ms. Blakeman announced her intentions to present Bill 202 on October 15th. That gave Prentice and his at the time not-yet-elected Education Minister Gordon Dirks a lot of time to come up with a response. Granted, both the Premier and the Education Minister were involved in by-elections trying to win their own seats (Spoiler: They did). But I figured, ince they weren't at debates, and there were many times where as many as 14 PC MLA's were in town to try to help Dirks win his seat in Calgary Elbow, there was plenty of time where all of them could have been huddled up at campaign headquarters and at least mentioning possible responses in passing. After all, it's not like they were busy campaigning:

With Apologies to Martin Hanford.

That aside, Ms. Blakeman's Bill passed first reading in the Legislative Assembly.

Now, while all this was happening, the Wildrose Party (Sometimes called the "We really miss Ralph Klein and want to go back to the days of running the province on autopilot during an economic boom" party) was having it's own little fun times. After a disappointing by-election, party leader Danielle Smith requested a leadership review. Then withdrew her request because of overwhelming support. The Wildrose went ahead with it's convention and voted against broadening it's definition of equality beyond "all Albertans" Leaving some minorities - including members of the LGBTQ community wondering if "all" included them. After all, it certainly did not include them during the Klein Era.

Smith supported expanding the definition to include gender, race, and sexual orientation. The Convention however, did not. And when Laurie Blakeman announced Bill 202, Smith again said she supported it. It seems however, most Wildrose MLA's did not, most vocally, hard-line social conservative Rob Anderson (though he did say he would support second reading, and add amendments to make it more to his liking in committee, so they had that going for them).

Yet, Danielle Smith still has the overwhelming support of the Party! Despite, you know, not being able to agree with them on anything.

Back to the Progressive Conservative ruckus. A week after Blakeman introduced her bill, Prentice called a hasty press conference announcing that Bill 202 was essentially moot, because he had an even better bill, that presumably was not written yet at that time. Less than a week later, in Prentice's absence, Bill 10, The Act to Amend the Bill of Rights to Protect our Children was introduced by three Progressive Conservative Members. Sandra Jansen, Mr. Dirks, and Justice Minister Jonathan Denis.

Now why the ruckus? Bill 10 does... well, it does absolutely nothing! It was championed by Jansen with the now viral quote "We're moving forward incrementally" on the subject of gay rights, and by "incrementally" the meant "enshrine status quo into law."

Now how does Bill 10 do nothing? Firstly, the one bright spot on it all was that it would officially add sexual orientation to the human rights act as protected from discrimination. Now, while I do think that is important, it is also important to note that this is really a formality, since courts have already declared it as protected and that to discriminate against someone on the grounds of sexual orientation is indeed a form of discrimination. So, while the gesture is nice, it doesn't change much. especially since the rest of the bill itself - and all Alberta Laws are supposed to be done within the confines of the Alberta Human Rights Act - continues to discriminate against the LGBTQ community.

The second part of the bill that does absolutely nothing but was highly trumpeted by the Progressive Conservatives is that - like Blakeman's original private member's bill, it removed the controversial section 11.1 of the Alberta Human Rights Act that allows parents to remove children from classes where sexual orientation is discussed. Sounds great, right? Well, it would be amazing, and a victory in itself, if not for the fact that one of the other things Bill 10 does is introduce an amendment to the Alberta Education Act that - you guessed it - allows parents to remove their children from classes discussing sexual orientation! Thus, not only completely nullifying the removal of section 11.1 from the original act, but also violating the portion of Bill 10 that is supposed to prevent the government passing laws that discriminate against the LGBTQ community.

Thirdly, the bill went on to state that students could request a Gay-Straight Alliance in their schools. If the school refused, they could appeal to the school board. If the school board refused, then students could appeal the decision before the courts, up to the Queen's Bench.

Now, of course, therein lies the largest problem: Firstly, I'm not sure how many students have an understanding of the complexities of the legal system, in particular elementary and middle school students. I'm also unsure of how many have the resources to take up such a challenge. Or how many might have parents that may be opposed to the thought their child joining a Gay-Straight Alliance, thus removing parental support in the process. Or maybe a student is in the closet to their parents. There are a million reasons why this is a bad process.

That's not why this does nothing though. The reason why this does nothing, is that I'm pretty sure if a student had the resources, supports and knowledge to appeal to the courts, I'm pretty sure the courts were already an existing option. I mean, when there is a human rights issue, the courts are always an option! This bill, essentially spelled out the practice that in reality was already in place! So again, more status quo.

Now, I don't know how much of the discussion surrounded wasting taxpayer dollars on a Bill that would change absolutely nothing in practice and implement a series of formalities that were already the practice of the land was done in "the Ledge." Politicians aren't exactly know for pointing out the obvious. After all, if it was obvious to politicians, Bill 10 would not have even come forward. But here's where the fun really begins:

Prentice was out of the province during the entire discussion, and the Education Minister has been conspicuously silent both during question period and during press conferences and media interviews. So the entire week of debate between Bill 202 and Bill 10 happened during another time when our Vanishing Ministers were busy performing an encore of their famous by-election performance. Granted, Dirks was in attendance at the Legislature. He was just awfully silent and seemingly invisible.

During this period, Bill 202 was completely removed from the legislative agenda, essentially ending any further debate on the bill and killing it before second reading. Bill 10 passed first reading, and passed second reading with an amendment that actually changed something... and not exactly for the better. It gave our invisible/silent Education Minister the power to intervene if a school board refused to support a Gay-Straight Alliance. There was one small problem: There is no guarantee it would be on school grounds or have affiliation with the school.

This was the death-knoll on Bill 10. There were several things wrong with this amendment:

1. The whole point of Gay-Straight Alliances is to provide students a safe place on school grounds for students. Students should not have to leave school to feel safe.
2. The intention of Bill 202 is that Gay-Straight alliances would have the same support as other clubs at the school. This isn't much to ask really. A room to meet in, a teacher to preside, A budget isn't really that necessary (most of the clubs I was part of had no budget) . A page in the yearbook, and the opportunity to hold the odd event about bullying and gay rights. If gay rights are THAT big of a problem, they could at the very least hold events to raise awareness about bullying, but I prefer to not have to hide things just cause a few people don't like them.
3. Giving the power to the Education Minister. Yeah... look at the background of the current Minister. Tried to introduce religion classes into public schools as Chair of the board of Trustees of the Calgary Board of Education. Was the President of one of the most successful bible colleges in Alberta (at the time of his tenure). A college that made students sign a contract saying that they could be expelled if they practiced homosexuality or premarital sex. An Associate Pastor at one of Alberta's largest megachurches. A church that goes to painstakingly long lengths to identify in it's articles of faith that it's views on homosexuality and transgender persons.
   
   Here's a small hint. It's not a very flattering view.

Now, I don't really want to flat out declare that the Minister would not be fair or otherwise be unable to perform his duties as minister. But I do think the LGBTQ community has a few good reasons for thinking he might not. I've met the guy before, as I was a student at his college. He's kind, compassionate, friendly and vibrant. Then again, I'm straight and was paying him money to go to his school so maybe it's my privilege speaking.

Besides, if he isn't even speaking up in support of LGBTQ students now in the legislature on a bill that is directly involved in his portfolio, why would we expect him to do so if he is given the job of negotiating Gay Straight Alliances?

Anyways, as I stated, Bill 10 passed second reading with the amendment. Oh, and also they halted debate on the bill at the end of the day and forced a vote. Because, you know, human rights and such nonsense aren't quite so important as to be debated until things are right. It's better to pass a bill that went from making zero changes to not accomplishing at all what it was intended to do in the beginning.

And then swoops in Prentice.

To his credit, the Premier apologized and took responsibility. But half of it almost seemed as if he was trying to appear like some sort of PCAA saviour. He was absent during almost all of the Bill 10 debacle, and suddenly shows up out of nowhere and suspends the third reading indefinitely. For a bill he wanted. A Bill that should never have been introduced in the first place. He cited the bill's "clear divisiveness" and admitted it's become more dividing than Blakeman's original bill. He cited that the bill failed to strike a balance between parental rights and those of the LGBTQ community. He said the bill needs more consultation, because apparently, the parents should decide the rights for the children, instead letting children discover their rights on their own.

All I can say is that hopefully, his consultation determines that he should give Blakeman's bill a second reading. Because killing a bill in the Legislature is hardly a "free vote" that he promised everyone.

And maybe, while we're on the subject of rights we could say something about youth as a visible minority, since apparently, parents should decide the rights of the youth, instead of giving the youth enough agency to determine their rights themselves.

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Some Afterthoughts and Looking Forward

It was a wild ride. I joined the campaign late, but when I did, I immediately felt like a fit in. Like I belonged. Volunteering for Greg Clark and the Alberta Party has been absolutely amazing, with experiences I could never replace. From getting the motivation to write a seven page paper on how to make engagement more democratic to helping an elderly gentleman - confined to home and his wheelchair for some time now - get into a vehicle so his family could take him for a drive for the first time in years. Repairing damaged signs - even those of our rivals - to the fun and sometimes hostile social media wars.

Everyone, I thank you. Every volunteer for every candidate of every party, you have all made me feel special this past week and a half. It has been an absolute delight to work on this campaign for Greg Clark and the Alberta Party.

So, the question is "what now?"

My Alberta Party membership expires in 2019, so obviously, I intend to get involved in the next general election. I also am eager to get involved with my constituency association (I live in Calgary Currie). But I also have a normal life to get back to. I need to look for a part-time job, I need to get involved with my Community Association, I also need to get back to my true passion: poverty reduction and homeless human rights.

I fully plan in getting back to being involved with Calgary Action Committee on Housing and Homelessness. I missed a meeting with the Calgary Homeless Foundation this past week so I could work on the campaign. This also grants me some free time to work with CHF and Poverty Talks! on getting a "Longest Night of the Year" memorial for homeless persons who passed away. I'm going to be busy.

So, looking forwards, I have a lot of work to do. We can end poverty in Calgary. We can guarantee the homeless still get to live with a basic standard of dignity and end discrimination. Together, we can make a better world for everyone - but everyone has to be at the table.

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