The meeting went well.
There were 60 people present in the small room even thought the Daily Gleaner wrote there were 30 people. < I’ll get to that Irving paper later >
The first presenter was Dan Weston and he gave a good little speech on Poverty.
Afterwards came Hugh Parker.
He has a case with the Human Rights Commission to get his CCP while he’s on a disability pension.
I’m not too familiar with all the details so I can’t really comment.
I went outside for a smoke to calm down because my turn was next.
In the hallway, I bumped into Father White.
He recognizes my voice from the talk of the Town show.
He just got transferred from Saint John to the Capital.
I found him a nice guy and maybe they meeting would give me a sign that everything will be ok?
Once Melynda Jarrat mentioned my name? You could hear a pin drop while I made my way up front.
I started by saying that I love Fredericton so much that I moved here.
It’s the only City that I know where the snobby bureaucrats and the poor are walking side by side on the street!
I gave a blast about my experience on 114 Brunswick street.
Ken was there in the audience. He was one of the tenants at that awful place.
The Human Rights Commission accepted the complaint and it should be a good way to have the Lord Government make some changes to the landlord and tenant act in this Province.
I told the audience that the act is the worst in the country.
Vivenewbrunswick.com made his investigation and you can visited at
vivenewbrunswick.com
I continue on for around 20 minutes and I made the poor citizens laugh with my stories of Maurice the caretaker.
There were in shock once I told them that Maurice cleaned the kitchen counter with a floor broom!
I continue on and after I finished I received a good applause from the audience.
After the meeting, I was congratulated for a fine presentation and it made everyone feel good about themselves after they left the building.
I promised the audience that I will not stop until I see some changes in the act.
Bernard Lord couldn’t believe the buildings he seen in Saint John Harbour.
Well? A start would be to add roomers and boarders in the Rentalman act!
I don’t believe that he will act on this emotional issue.
Today, I was surprised of the amount of people who congratulated me on the streets for a job very well done.
One guy told me that I wasn’t at the meeting but everyone is talking about it!
Well? I did my job and the Irving paper didn’t believe so because they never mentioned nothing from my speech!
I really don’t care but it reinforce my statement that the Irvings are indeed giving the orders that Charles’s views should be ignored at any cost!
What can a person do?
Nothing!
I don’t care because I have my blog and I’m very happy!
I would love to thank Melynda Jarrat for a job very well done at the meeting.
She was very direct and straight forward!
Here’s the story on the Daily Gleaner!!!
Daily Gleaner | Provincial News
As published on page A4 on November 10, 2005
Official poverty line needs to be defined
By DARCEY MCLAUGHLIN
For The Daily Gleaner
The Fredericton Anti-Poverty Organization held a
public forum Wednesday night to address the problems
faced by the poor.
The forum touched on a number of topics, including
housing, human rights and government benefits. There
was also discussion about two cases in front of the
New Brunswick Human Rights Commission.
The main topic for the evening, however, dealt with
the need for a defined poverty line. While the federal
government does have something called Low Income Cut
Offs, it does not have an official poverty line the
way the United States does.
Dan Weston, the organization's co-ordinator, spoke to
the crowd of approximately 30 people and addressed why
he believes the country does not have an official
poverty line.
"In a country and a culture awash in statistics, it's
strange why there's no official poverty line. The
reason, of course, is because if there was one there'd
be too many people living below it," Fenton said.
"I think the whole concept of a poverty line is
obscene. Just like shelters and food banks and
community kitchens are obscene. I think it's obscene
that in a country as rich as Canada there is a
necessity for a poverty line."
Fenton said many organizations, both in the private
and public sectors, have looked at the issue of the
lowest basic need for poor people, looking to define
what people need to survive.
He went on to say these organizations, from the Fraser
Institute to Statistics Canada, should also look at
the end of the economic spectrum.
"Wealthy people can choose not to work because they
don't have to or they don't want to or never have. And
when they do work, you can bet they are not cleaning
floors or hammering 2x4s.
"In fact, they probably don't even fold their own
clothes or even comb their own hair, and yet in the
media they own, poor people are poor because they're
stupid or it's their lot in life," he said.
Fenton went on to say studies don't take into account
what is removed from the public purse by the rich.
According to Fenton, a new approach, looking at the
highest income group, might be needed.
"For the academic and the government statisticians,
here after the poverty line is a second line that you
can consider and that's the equal line," Fenton said.
"How well would everyone be doing if we had a
co-operative, sharing-type distribution of the
country's resources and the resulting wealth?"
9 comments:
This is i n the Telegraph Journal this morning. A good start would protest the poor people in the landlord and tenant act!
NB Telegraph-Journal | Saint John
As published on page A1/A4 on November 11, 2005
Premier pledges crackdown on slum landlords
Cities to get power to ticket owners of substandard apartments
Click to zoom (Cindy Wilson/Telegraph Journal)
Michelle Hooton, left, the Progressive Conservative Party’s candidate in Saint John Harbour, and Premier Bernard Lord in Saint John Friday. Mr. Lord says his eyes have been opened and he will help cities get tough with slum landlords.
By Bruce Bartlett
Telegraph-Journal
On a gritty section of St. James Street deep in Saint John's South End, alongside boarded up buildings, Premier Bernard Lord said Thursday his eyes have been opened and he's helping cities get tough on slum landlords.
He was with Michelle Hooton, the Conservative candidate for the Saint John Harbour byelection, who has taken him with her while campaigning in some of Saint John's poorest neighbourhoods.
"I've seen some things that went beyond the descriptions that had been given to me," said Mr. Lord. "I have to tell you I have been moved by what I saw."
Municipalities will be given the authority to issue tickets to landlords whose buildings don't meet minimum property standards, said the premier. He promised to introduce changes in to the law in this session of the legislature to increase compliance by landlords and also raise the standards.
"We want to improve the living conditions of people," Mr. Lord said. "I've seen some people with their families and their children and clearly they need better protection."
The government is also committed to giving boarders who rent rooms protections similar to tenants who rent apartments under the Landlord and Tenants Act.
In 2003 the government revised the law to make it tougher on slum landlords and now wants to move further, Mr. Lord said.
There are about 1,000 problem cases in Saint John, but substandard rental units whose landlords ignore work orders exist around the province, he said.
Bill Edwards, the city's commissioner of buildings and inspection services, said the existing law has been time-consuming to enforce, but these changes should make for quicker enforcement.
"If individuals know we have the authority to issue tickets they are going to discover it makes more business sense to repair their buildings than it does to habitually pay tickets," he said.
Shawn Graham, New Brunswick's Liberal Opposition leader, was happy to hear Mr. Lord's announcement but wondered what took him so long.
"Three weeks into the campaign, Bernard Lord must have knocked on a few doors and seen this as a priority," Mr. Graham said, pointing out that the Liberal platform, unveiled Oct. 21, had this as a priority.
The Grits had promised to introduce a private member's bill to allow city building inspectors to identify substandard buildings and bring about stiffer fines, while cracking down on slum landlords by enforcing work orders.
Dan Robichaud, the NDP candidate for the riding, said he would prefer to see more money coming from the government to help landlords bring their buildings up to standard.
In a lot of cases people just don't have the money to fix all the problems with their buildings, so fining them won't help, he said.
Saint John's building inspection office has been pressing the province for the power to ticket landlords since at least 2001, when the newspaper did a series of articles on slum landlords.
It exposed that enforcing numerous safety violations by a given landlord may take well over a year of court appearances and result in only a modest and ineffective fine, often $200 or less.
WOW, NOTHING BUT A PHOTO OP FOR M. HOOTON WITH THE PREMIER...THAT IS THE ONLY RESON IT GOT SOME HEADLINES....WHEN THE IDIOT WAS ON THE RADIO, HE NEVER MENTIONED THE SLUM LANDLORDS!!! IT WAS ALL SAME OLD STUFF AND HE WAS SO LONG WINDED WITH HIS ANSWERS, HARDLY ANY CALLS GOT THROUGH TO GET THE MAIN ISSUES OUT IN PUBLIC WITH HIM....IT WAS REALLY A WASTED HOUR FOR B. LORD, BUT AT LEAST S. GRAHMAM ANSWERED THE QUESTIONS PUT TO HIM, HE DIDN'T EVADE THE ANSWERS
For some reason the Mayor, some Councillors, City Manager, inspectors and some politicians don't understand or just don't check things out. Most landlords don't have any money to fix up the old buildings go after someone who can't make ends meet that makes alot of sense. For the millionaires or Billionaires let's help them with their taxes and give them concessions, grants, low interest loans so they can improve their buildings, Irving has purchase several buildings and that is alot of responsiblity so let's give our tax dollars to them.
Let them use their own money! Use the money they save on not paying their taxes.
Let's go after the low life after that what they know best, Premier Lord and Hooton want to go after them, good job.
Where were they when we wanted them to collect taxes for 25 years from billionaires no lets freeze their taxes? Why do these people only complain and another one from Lord we don't know what is going on and those people. Yes I'm one of those people who like to be treated with dignity and respect, pay my share and a little for necessities and maybe someday have enough for a rainy day. None of us have security. Thankyou Premier Lord for caring so much to pretend you care; I'll only give you that.
Give Hooton the Booton!
Yes, Bernard Lord is pretending that he cares. He is desperate to win by-election. Otherwise he does not give a hoot. Where he lived for the forty years of his life on Mars that his eyes are opened now.
He has lot of growing up to do. He was not ready to be the Premier and I do not think he will ever be. It is a sad saga in the history of NB.
Yes, the tenants rights thing has been in legislation since the seventies so it's not like it's new.
The surprising thing is the NDP claiming the government should 'pay' them to fix up their homes. It's not completely crazy though as the fear of the government is that owners will simply stop renting to tenants and fix up the buildings to be sold or used as condos. For rich landowners its an investment and they may feel it's not worth their while. However, I'd like to know exactly WHO the landowners are and WHY they can't afford to maintain them. All maintenance is tax deductible, and if necessary, the government could simply provide a loan guarantee that would let the tenants buy the place. WHere this has been tried in the states there is a lot more pride of ownership, whereas people who don't try the idea usually labour under the presumption that 'poor people won't take care of them'.
It was good news to see the tenants rights thing at least get mentioned, there's no such thing as bad press.
We all know Mr.Lord will definitly be in no hurry to enforce any rules of any kind for sometime to come because he would have to face the reality of what he is saying.
He would have to give the City of Saint John as well as the Government of New Brunswick it's share of Tickets for abuse and neglect to his own housing projects.
If it's verification you want or need to prove this point let's step away from St.James street in the south end and let us focus on the Government run low income housing units in the North end of the city of Saint john.
It looks like a war torn 3rd world country down in there,It is so bad that even the government run housing is so deplorible it makes you sick to you stomach.There are doors held together with sections of plywood mail slots that are falling off the doors some have boarded up windows there are large piles of garbage strewn about the property it is so gross and mismanaged I wouldn't live in them for free for fear of infection of mold spores,mice,rats ,etc.
There seems to be a large amount of big dogs in that area along with trail after trail of dog crap among other things you really can't believe.
I used to think the south End of Saint John was in a terrible state of disrepair until now.I definitly believe we in the south end can recover with a little volenteering and community effort to keep what we have and to improve on these things.
We definitly could use a few more low income housing units down here but our streets along with tree and plant growth is doing well considering.
But as far as the north end.
This government would do well to just bulldoze the whole area and start over from scratch.
I think that this forum which was spearheaded by the Fredericton Anti-Poverty organization is was one of the best that I have attended sofar. There were major issues that needed to be addressed including the issue of tennents rights for roomers and borders. Charles, I think that you did a great and superb job getting the point to the audience as did the other speakers. I am hoping that things can truly be resolved through this process and that rights of all who find themselves marginalizd by an unfair Legislation will be able to live as equals under the law.
Don't assume that somebody else will do it, if you are reading this then email your MLA about tenants rights. Only if they know that the people know about this will they stay on top of it.
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