No Canadian belongs in a tent, fighting to keep rats at bay, languishing — at terrible risk of dying — due to our failed drug and housing policies

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I visited one of our country’s many and burgeoning homeless tent encampments last week. None of the residents wanted me to take a photograph of their face.

“I don’t want my mom to see me like this,” said one man who appeared in his thirties. Another would only allow photos of the unbandaged and bleeding venous ulcers on both of his shins, a familiar sight from my days of outreach nursing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It seemed important to him that I share the evidence of his physical deterioration. But absolutely not his face.

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If anyone deserves to feel shame over the fact that Canada — rich as it is — has thousands of citizens subsisting in squalor on our streets, it’s not those surviving this unnecessary and intolerable hell. This grand failure cannot be blamed on our suffering masses. Nationally, we have an estimated 235,000 homeless persons — and more every year.

We are days from a provincial election in B.C., and a year — or less — away from a federal election. Both provincial and federal Conservative parties have laid the blame for homelessness and tent encampments at the feet of Canada’s left.

The political right blames the excesses of “harm reduction” (including B.C.’s “safe supply” programs and our scandalously terrible drug decriminalization “pilot project”), a dearth of detox and treatment beds, the dreadful state of our post-pandemic economy, rampant immigration, and lethargic housing starts (the latter two causing a supply and demand crisis). The left blames “stigma,” inadequate “safe supply,” and greedy capitalist landlords. The truth might lie somewhere in between on housing costs, but plainly skews right. Things are worsening under a Liberal and New Democratic watch. It’s a ludicrous argument that we need more of the same to fix what’s........

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