Vancouver, My Beloved...

Vancouver is the most expensive city in North America. More expensive than the city of New York...maybe even more expensive than London. (I’m not convinced on that - but maybe London only seemed more expensive because I drank a lot more when I was there. As did everybody else. Cheers, mates!)

As the cost of living skyrockets, wages are plateauing in hard-hit sectors and benefits being cut across the board. (My union cut my massage benefits, and I was sad.) Costs continue to rise. Housing strategists claim Vancouver’s ridiculous housing prices are due to a lack of land - nestled between the mountains and the ocean, there’s nowhere to go but up (in price). And since a functioning city depends on its people’s ability to function, and our collective ability to occasionally go grocery shopping, it seems like a recipe for impending doom. Much like an expanding city built on an extinct volcano and due for a major earthquake with a rapidly eroding infrastructure...which it is.

Others see Vancouver’s metaphoric rock-and-hard-place situation as an massive opportunity for social change. Environmentalist decriers of urban sprawl rejoice that Vancouverites have nowhere to sprawl to. Advocates for social justice see the rising visibility of poverty as political leverage. Proponents of all things green continue to have very high hopes.

And there is a solution. But it seems to be the exact opposite of what the current federal and provincial governments have in mind.

Take, for example, health care costs. Time and time again it has been shown that positively investing in individuals’ health yields greater returns down the road...that whole ounce of prevention to pound of cure adage, multiplied. Canada is proud of touting its ‘universal health care,’ but seems oblivious to the fact that health care cannot exist without nutrition, housing, drug coverage, or the ability to buy a bandaid when you’re cut and bleeding.

The most vulnerable are losing their ability to buy birth control, because clearly that makes fiscal sense. We continue to lack adequate shelter for the homeless, or a national housing strategy...and yet we know that housing someone actually saves $100,000 a year in health care costs. Investing in programs like parks and recreation has been shown to reduce the disparities in health between the rich and poor, saving massive health care dollars. And adequate childcare and education spending have been shown to have direct and immediate, as well as future health care benefits, as well as being a poverty reduction tool, which is good for the economy.

And can we not just make cigarettes illegal and have done with it already? Enough is enough. Smokers, your time has come. Free rehab and massage for you.

The Vancouver government is not responsible for many of these things. Federal and provincial idiocy are largely to blame. But we can demand better, and we can do everything within our power, locally, to act.

Positively invest, people. And give people on welfare their birth control back. We’re not the Vatican, let’s stop being ridiculous.