To the editor:
While Pierre Elliot’s boy Justin opens his arms to Syrian refugees, he has to be slapped in the face in Vancouver by someone dying from an overdose of an illicit drug to even acknowledge the fact the government in Ottawa has turned a blind eye on the illicit drug and homeless problem that is running rampant across Canada and must be addressed at the federal level and not the municipal or provincial level.
It is my opinion that in many cases, homelessness is but another form of addiction and should be treated in a similar way to drug addiction.
However there must be something put in place to encourage such persons to seek immediate help as well as something for them to come out to. Being dumped back onto the street to the same-old, same-old isn’t a hell of a lot to look forward to for anyone.
So some of these persons don’t have a university degree. Such a degree isn’t necessary to make the tooth picks that are made in China from the raw material that we so gleefully ship there for the employment of China’s underprivileged and unemployed. Why do we send our good raw material to China and the middle east and get in return such junk as we are getting at present?
The high-tech products that we have to buy from such countries are bad enough without having an alternative but to buy products which require minimal skills to manufacture here and would be a starting point for those coming out from a rehab. centre.
C.W. Holford, Kelowna