Canada

Buddy just can't connect the dots that minimum wage doesn't cover housing anymore, that he's been holding it down for years, that he weakened rent control that kept low income people housed, and that he's been letting his buddies build just detached houses and luxury condos.

It's just so dumb, and even dumber considering that he literally has the magic wand and to drastically improve things. Just a significant enough hike of the minimum wage would automatically put a damper on more people ending up on the street, overnight.

Even if you work you can't afford a home. You'll still be homeless. So what's the fucking point?

What about the damned millionaires and billionaires who never want to pay their fair share but somehow are gifted benefits for their businesses by government all the time.

Welfare is a problem in every first world system

It's not the bottom of the poorest using up the welfare money in a country

It's the top wealthiest people who don't want to pay their fair share yet also want to take more out of the government just because they can.

"Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.”

Better not build any bike lanes that could interfere with cars either! We wouldn't want people to be able to bike to work.

Man this guy is a complete ass.

...does he not realize that homelessness relates to the mental health crisis?

Amazes me that people are stupid enough to think people simply choose to live like this.

It's true that it is pretty hard to maintain a job while living in a tent.

I work with homeless people. It is obviously true that many have mental health and addiction issues. It is also true that many could work if they had to. And, it is true that there are often alternatives to living in an encampment. The homeless shelters tend to empty out in the summer and lots of people move into the encampments, because why not? They can spread out more, have their own space, they don't have to get up at a certain time, and in some encampments in parks the view is pretty darn nice. Also, someone comes around to bring you food and water and takes away your garbage. Lots of people donate camping supplies, too. This means that the encampments are larger than they need to be if the available shelter spaces were used to maximum capacity.

So, Ford is partly correct. The encampments do not need to be as large as they are. He is also correct that some of the million people on welfare could work. Unfortunately, it is hard to sort those who really need help from those that are just lazy, which means that the truly needy continue to suffer.

At the same time, the government needs to get back in the business of building affordable housing and providing gainful employment for people with very low skills and motivation who can't hack it in the private sector. In the old days, those people would have provided farm labour or manual road/rail/canal building, but all of that is now mechanized. So, instead, we let them rot on welfare while they get weaker, sicker, and more depressed. We really need to get back to requiring some form of work from those receiving public welfare. It doesn't have to be hard labour, but is has to be something other than sitting around doing nothing and getting depressed.

There are more people on OW and ODSP than there are jobs available in all of Ontario. But the solution is for all of them to fill out an application and start working at WalMart. Okay, Douggie.