BT Calgary Blogs

The farewell speech delivered in Calgary last night by the Duke of Cambridge, although comparatively brief, was nonetheless an encompassing review of the nine days he and the Duchess spent in Canada – and it included a sensitive reference to the veterans the couple met and frequently chatted with during this remarkable royal tour.  William acknowleged their bravery, their sacrifice, their service to nation – and in so doing did not omit our contemporary veterans who now return from Afghanistan.   

In that context, what do we make of the decision, recently rendered, to throw 20 elderly Canadian veterans out of their Calgary homes because  an Alberta government agency and a private assisted care firm could not reach agreement on a renewed lease?  What do we make of evicting the infirm, the helpless, the aged, the battle-scarred, in the name of money ?  What do we make of  public servants whose tidy bureaucratic world of ledgers and beans, calculators and plus-minuses, would put 20 vets  on the street as they live out their final years?  And nine other old boys, too, caught in the push for profit.

I have a pretty good idea what Prince William would make of it.  He would find it appalling, and he would doubtless wonder why in the name of everything just and rational Alberta Health Services (the government agency), and Chartwell Seniors Housing REIT (the private business) could somehow manage to evict old soldiers simply because AHS doesn’t pay enough money to adequately stuff the Chartwell till.  

Now I understand that Chartwell is a business, and not a company obliged to lose money on its operations.  I also understand that from time to time, a government – whether provincial or federal – does in fact have an obligation and indeed a duty to underwrite financial deficits with tax dollars for good cause.  I have no doubt, not the slightest, that in this case the money would be provided willingly, if not enthusiastically, by the Canadian public.   After all, the provinces and territories, and the feds, hurl millions of dollars every year at a strawboard plant here, a pottery company there, a research paper examining the sexual tendencies of newts somewhere else.  There are in fact a great many people of dubious objectives, and no accomplishment in this country who live on government grants, who know how to work and milk the system, and who every year tender florid, self-congratulatory, and even mendacious submissions to government(s) in exchange for another annual salary. 

The harsh truth of the matter is that government grants are more often than not issued in the name of political expediency:  the presumption that money awarded today will result in votes tomorrow.  It’s a form of patronage – but if the patrons happen to be a tiny band of 20 veterans whose votes would be neither here nor there, and will by death or infirmity be reduced, probably, to 15 or 10 or fewer ballots by the next election, well why worry, then?  Decent compensation in their case would not likely lead to political reward in turn. 

So in one of the most revolting cases I can recall of government NOT in the service of its people, these 29 old boys, vets and civvies both, are homeless.  Their expectation of a few more years spent in comfort and safety has been obliterated by the inability of well-fed, well-clothed bureaucrats and private sector managers to agree that perhaps these men should not be subject to the rules of red ink as against black, and might actually have earned the right to assistance - which in the realm of a $3 billion dollar provincial deficit would be the proverbial drop in the ocean.

A week or so ago, Calgary Liberal MLA Kent Hehr rose to the defence of Calgary condo owners whose units have allegedly been reduced to crumbling wrecks by way of indifferent construction, offhand regulation, and perhaps outright malfeasance.  I have no argument with Hehr’s intervention on behalf of the condo residents, although I note that since his one day of media time, he’s offered no additional comment on the issue, and so far as I know, has taken it no further. 

But I do wonder why Mr. Hehr, or any Liberal, or Brian Mason, or any New Democrat, has not seized on the plight of our 20 veterans and gone to their aid as Hehr did for the condo owners.  And I wonder in particular why Liberal leader David Swann, who’s driven the Stelmach government into a very tight corner on an assortment of health care problems, apparently hasn’t figured out that the uncertain future of 20 evicted veterans is another and compelling case in point.   (It would be too much to expect the gaggle of political seals in the Calgary Conservative caucus to utter a word, but I make the point in order that the record shows they’ve not).  

The fact is nobody has offered to help, nobody has expressed the slightest concern, nobody has responded to ghastly injustice laid upon 20 men who should be the last of Canadian citizens to be abandoned by their politicians.  But they have been – and I suspect that Prince William, were he fully apprised of the situation, would not be amused.