Dell on Good Intentions Gone Bad

Another wet morning and my dogs are hurting again. Dorg is lying on top of my feet so that will warm them and ease the pain.
To pick up from my last post: I had stated I believe social policies and their supporting agencies have become part of a systematic means to criminalize Canadians. PM Harper calls for more jails and longer jail sentences, this despite a cost expected to break the backs of Canadian taxpayers. [see Dell on The War on Drugs]. With the best of intentions, laws and the social agencies originally formed to help families have, over the last decades, become power tools.

The horror of having government agencies running your life has always been the nightmare of the poor and minorities. Having discovered the "help system" can be used to castigate whomever, that is exactly what is happening. Those in power have seen the effectiveness of employing the police and supporting agencies, including the legal system, to create more poverty and despair. Are people getting rich on this misery? You betcha!

Agencies serving troubled and disabled young people in their care, usually cease involvement after the ward turns sixteen. In fact, they will make a point of returning children to their original families just before this time,  thereby avoiding mandated financial responsibility. Those still in care who outgrow the agency, end up living at a group home. I am not talking community living or regulated group housing, but something else.

Large homes are bought as an investment. The owner runs a lucrative business renting to young people in need of housing. He will charge the exact amount social services allows these young people for room and board and provide them a single bedroom with shared bath facilities. With no staff to speak of, the owner may have from four to eight young people bringing in between $3,2000 to $6,400.00 a month. You do the math. The remainder of the social services cheque that is given to the boarder is his own, but it isn't much, and many unscrupulous landlords find a way to get every cent of these cheques into their own pocket. It's easy money. They don't have to police their boarders, either. They simply set them up for a police charge and the system takes over. You think I'm making this up? Not so.

I personally met a young man with learning disabilities [18 at the time] who was living in just such an arrangement. When the landlord, an alcoholic with a mean streak, objected to this young man coming in after nine in the evening, the young boarder was arrested. Another resident's unopened monthly cheque had been found in the boarder's dresser drawer. This young man couldn't read and his own cheque was directly deposited because he didn't have sufficient skills to negotiate banking matters. He told me he had no idea how the envelope got there because his door was locked and only the landlord had a key. Charged, he was released prior to his court appearance, with conditions that suited the owner/landlord: curfew. The charge itself never made it to court. Instead, the Crown used a Mental Health Diversion. Unable to read or write, this very sweet young person signed the form, unaware that he had placed himself under the ongoing control of a mental health agency. There was no crime and he did not fit the profile for Mental Health Diversion. The entire system worked to serve the needs of the landlord/owner.

In an earlier post, I described the typical scenario of the destruction of a family. Courts now routinely require the involvement of agencies; a systematic form of control in which counsellors do assessments, recommend psychiatrists who then recommend medications for adults and/or children, and ongoing agency interventions; all this as part of addressing, or as a requirement of, sentencing. This is the fuel that keeps the system going: money made by creating misery and criminalizing the population.

Having created a miserably unhappy citizenry, it is no surprise that drug abuse has reached epidemic proportions. Yet, as I pointed out in 'Dell on The War On Drugs', the warring is only a war in name. In reality it is punishment or control of individuals and NOT meant to stop the burgeoning drug business (prescribed or illicit) nationwide. Why on earth would they want to "make war" on the very lucrative business of drugs? There are millions if not billions to be made by increasing misery.

Whole industries depend on rehabilitation to create jobs and secure funding.

Why do doctor's rarely sign forms for medicinal use of cannabis? Would drug companies want people using non-addicting cannabis instead of their very addictive prescription drugs?

The saddest part of this situation is the number of Canadians working in these agencies, who unwittingly believe they are doing good work.

In the next post or two, I will tell the tale of a small town family, the police and service agencies, lest you think the problem is confined to large cities.

I'm off to have my one perfect cup of coffee and give Dorg his run along the shoreline.