It’s up to each of us if we want to help our neighbours
By Lethbridge Herald on April 1, 2023.
Editor:
After reading Alvin W. Shier’s letter on March 24 wanted to say I agree with you. It can be overwhelming all the different agencies asking for help. However, please bear in mind that during the last few months the UCP have waged a slash- and-burn prgram against nonprofits.
So many have had to reduce their services or close down altogether. Take the recent example of the YWCA having to bow out of a project that would have helped women and children in need.
The demand on food banks is exploding, the shelves are empty and some in this province have been forced to close.
If government does not support non-profits then the burden is passed on to us. It is no one’s fault that they were born with or develop a physical or mental disability. It is no one’s fault that they got thrown out of work because of downsizing. And I agree we cannot help everyone.
I have three main charities that I support, it is all I can do. Sometimes that help does not need to take the form of monetary aid but in volunteering, like the folks you saw when leaving that store.
I have had three cancers; thankfully there were people who volunteered their time to support me and charities that helped with things like headscarves, wigs and medication.
I am so thankful to the ladies at Tom Baker who brought tea, coffee and cookies to cancer patients.
This was always the Canadian ethic, love thy neighbour.
Either government will take your taxes to do it or as in the case of Alberta, the government expects you to decide if you want to help a group or an individual. It’s up to you.
Ruth Kereliuk
Lethbridge
13-12
There are many good non-profits, but there are many bad non-profits who are there for themselves and not for their clients. They only want to get their salaries and promote ideals that do not help the clients get out of their addictive state, because they know if there are no addicts, there is no need for the non-profit!
Vancouver DTES is the best example of how non-profits have taken over, even dictating to government. The population of the greater DTES is around 20,000, yet almost $400 million per year is paid into about 300 supports and housing programs to non-profits, with only 1/3 paid from donations, the rest from various levels of governments. That is just a small area of Vancouver and a minute part of BC.
Non-profits are billion dollar industry in BC and when you take a closer look, management are very well paid and in many cases they have acquired significant assets and lands in some cases.
The non-profits associated with the addiction crisis are thriving without seeing any significant benefit to the addicts, instead you see them slowly killing themselves while being enabled and even encouraged by those non-profits. Harm reduction has failed completely in BC!
If you think it has worked, then why, after 20 years of harm reduction policies have the numbers of fatal overdoses, addicts, homeless and crime continued to rise and the issues spread throughout the province to other cities, like cancer metastasizing and embedding in those other communities?
If it worked, those stats should have been declining at some point! Provinces with more safe consumption sites/related non-profits have the highest rates of fatal overdoses!
Many valid non-profits who succeed in helping their clients with their programs have been hit hard by the loss of donor dollars that now pour into the non-profits for addicts . . . Cancer Society, Heart and Stroke Foundation, etc. while food banks are overwhelmed by the addicts who often throw away part of the food they just got within a few blocks of the foodbank.
Our approach needs to change in how we deal with addicts, focusing on mental heath and addiction treatment. Any other criminal acts that kill over 4,000 Canadians per year would see actions taken on a monumental scale to reduce the needless deaths.
And for the YWCA . . . they are still operating, but ended a housing program for addicts. They had an illegal safe consumption site operating in their building and within a couple of weeks saw 3 fatal overdoses along the others they had and a meth lab was busted in the building as well. The management hung themselves by allowing these illegal acts and that is why they lost government funding!
The costs of this crisis continue to grow along with the needless loss of lives!
Your local tax dollars from property taxes/city revenues paid over $14 million last year directly because of this crisis and with tens of millions more from federal and provincial funds just for Lethbridge. Your tax dollars are being burned up when they could have been used for effective treatment programs! The same thing happened in BC . . . they put all the money into enabling the addicts and little in to treatment.
How many more police officers must be killed because of addictions? How many more families destroyed by fatal overdoses or impacts of the addictive personalities?
Thank you Ruth for all your volunteer time. I believe most of us (if we are able and don’t require help ourselves from the food bank) should be volunteering at one of the local food banks.
Side note – It’s too bad our lawmakers don’t believe in ‘help thy neighbour’ when it comes to addiction and crime.