Archive for June 2020
The Pandemic Presents The Chance To End Homelessness In Canada For Good
It’s hard to social-distance at home if you don’t have a home.
There is a story about homelessness in HuffPost.ca that is part of After The Curve. This is an ongoing HuffPost Canada series that makes sense of how the COVID-19 crisis could change our country in the months and years ahead, and what opportunities exist to make Canada better. The story can be accessed at:
CHRIS YOUNG/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Doug Johnson Hatlem, a worker at The Sanctuary, a respite centre in Toronto, carries tents to be distributed to members of the homeless community on April 19 2020.
Housing is a human right! Now is the time to use our resources to make truly affordable housing available to everyone in our communities. Governments are demonstrating that there is no shortage of money, just a dearth of “political will”, or what used to be called “intestinal fortitude”.
Is anyone still counting the number of days of “COVID Confinement”? Or, have you moved on to counting the number of weeks, or months?
With our attention currently focused on the pandemic, and systemic racism, the media and others seem to have forgotten that the Earth is concurrently in a climate crisis. Toronto author Tom Rand prefers to label this situation as a time of “climate disruption”[1].
Some aspects of our natural environment have improved while “the economy” has been operating in slow motion. Air quality has improved in many cities because people are driving and flying less; carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have not risen as much this year as in the past years; we hear the birds in the morning rather than traffic, and so on.
Many people are now looking forward to a “return to “normal”. Do you remember what “normal” was doing to the Earth’s environment?
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A world of species extinction and hyper-consumerism
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A world of an ever increasing disparity of wealth / equity / and racism
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A world of the car culture and the combustion engine belching polluting gasses
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A world of homelessness and lengthy lines at foodbanks
BUT, we don’t have to return to that “normal”. We can work together to make a better world on three levels: personal, community, and as a society. Now is the opportunity to make a difference because change is in the air, and many people don’t want to return to the “old normal”. As Dr. Kwame McKenzie said in his blog, “Normal was the problem.”[2]
What would the “New Normal” look like? Some examples, for our consideration, are:
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A society that puts people – and inclusion – first, recognizing our inter-relatedness with all people, and all of creation
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A society that does not pay $40 Billion in annual subsidies to the fossil fuel industry
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A society that retro-fits housing and other buildings to reduce their carbon footprint
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A society that uses public street space for additional forms of transportation, such as buses, bicycles and pedestrians
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A society with a progressive income tax system that includes meaningful taxes on wealth and the elimination of tax loopholes
As Gandhi said, “ Be the change you want to see in the world.”
My question is about how I make this “new normal” happen?
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How do I want to live as a person of the Christian faith in the “New Normal” – both individually and as a part of my faith community?
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How can I be effective in advocating for an economy that puts people before profit, and includes people of all cultures and skin colours?
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How will I live with respect for other people, and the Earth, in the “New Normal”?
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How will I seek justice for the Earth and its people, love kindness, and walk humbly with the Creator?
“The next few months are precious. Things have changed quickly.
We can imagine the “New Normal”. Naomi Klein
[1]Tom Rand, The Case for Climate Capitalism, ECW Press, 2020
Image from Wikimedia Commons.
The Day After: Animals
The Day After: Animals marks the first installment in an ongoing curated series from Canadian Dimension that asks contributors to imagine the perils and possibilities that will ground our collective response to or emergence from the COVID-19 crisis.
Canadian Dimension will ask Canada’s leading scholars to respond to questions of human-environment relations to consider our post-COVID future:
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What opportunities make you hopeful and what risks do you see at the human-nature interface?
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How can we build an ethic of care for socioecological systems?
allanbaker 