Poor Showing

So there I was, stopped at Quadra and Yates in the midst of my regular morning bike to work, when I realized someone was standing next to me. Focussed as I was on the traffic light, intent on getting ahead of the cars before Mr. I’m Too Important to Stop Using My Cell Phone While Driving My BMW can squeeze me into the parking lane, I hadn’t even noticed anyone approach, let alone start speaking. I turned and found myself face to face with my first panhandler of the day. “Do you have 50 cents?”

Now remember, I’m dressed for cycling: tights, gloves, windbreaker, toque, helmet. And I’m in traffic. My admittedly less-than-gracious reply? “What? No. Where would I keep 50 cents? Besides—traffic.”

Apologizing, she scuttled off to the next person, leaving me feeling guilty for my brusqueness. Panhandlers on the street, I’m used to; panhandlers at left-turn signals, I’m starting to expect; but this was my first time being hit up for cash as a cyclist, and it surprised me enough that I didn’t have time to engage my internal politeness engine. But what was I to do—grab a few coins from my handlebar ashtray? Stop and dig my wallet out of the pannier? Fish for spare change in my tights? (And you thought that was my bike bell jingling.)

While this may have been a new poverty encounter for me, it was just another sad example of the change we’re all lacking right now. If you think you’re seeing more people on the street these days, odds are good you’re right. Sean Holman reports that B.C.’s welfare rolls are up 15 percent this past year and the government’s covering it by cutting services to low-income and disabled people. I believe him; it’s exactly the kind of move the provincial Liberals would make, have made, and will continue to make as long as they remain in office.

Our child poverty rate and minimum wage remain the worst and lowest in Canada, yet Victoria and Vancouver both just cracked the top-10 of the world’s most severely unaffordable housing markets, according to the sixth annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. The Cultural Olympiad was a constant headline grabber at the Winter Games, yet the current devastation of the provincial arts sector pretty much guarantees the death or exodus of countless arts organizations in the next few years. (Case in point? Victoria native Crystal Pite is moving her acclaimed Kidd Pivot dance company to Germany, where they’ve offered her cash to come and create.)

Vancouver’s Olympic legacy includes a snazzy airport Skytrain line, an upgraded highway to Whistler, a swish convention centre, all sorts of snappy athletic facilities and a soon-to-be brand new roof for BC Place. Victoria gets a fresh batch of cuts to the public service sector, which means more layoffs, less cash flowing around the city and fewer people with 50 cents to hand out. Make sense? It does if you’re one of Campbell’s Liberals.

In my dreams of late, I see a general poverty protest. I envision those most impacted by Campbell’s sad legacy of cuts during this golden decade staggering toward the Legislature, like extras in a zombie flick, surrounding the building and trapping the Liberals inside—where, like the Donner party of old, they only survive by eating each other (although from the ironically well-fed appearance of housing and social development minister Rich Coleman, that may well have started already). Slowly, the lurching masses pull the Legislature apart and start selling it stone by stone on eBay, just to survive . . .

Hey, I didn’t say it was a good dream. But unless real change is in the offing, it might just come true. M