Welcome back!
Welcome to the second batch of Dispatches from the Left!
Late last year, we ran a fundraiser for the Sask Dispatch – we told you if we raised $10,000 we’d build a new website, publish more reporting, and start an email newsletter. To our surprise and delight, we passed our goal and raised $10,800. Thanks to you, our new website is in the works, we’re preparing to publish some amazing stories, and we’re now launching our e-mail newsletter. We’re excited to start bringing anti-capitalist, anti-colonial analysis of all things Saskatchewan to your inbox every other week.
If you have feedback or suggestions, email sara@briarpatchmagazine.com! We love to hear from you.
Here are some of the stories we’ve been following this week.
Freezing deaths in Saskatoon
Two people have died of cold exposure in Saskatoon already this year, the results of a combination of institutional failures and the COVID-19 pandemic. In January, a man and a woman were found frozen to death in the streets of Saskatoon less than three weeks apart. Physical distancing requirements due to the pandemic mean there are fewer places for unhoused people to shelter in. Places that used to hold 20 or 30 people can now hold only five to 10.
Nick Page via Flickr
These deaths are entirely preventable. While long term strategies for ensuring everyone in Saskatchewan is safely housed must be pursued with the same dogged tenacity that the Sask Party has used to fight for the doomed Keystone XL pipeline, there are short term solutions that can be made workable if the government is willing to expend the resources needed to save people’s lives. The hotel industry in Saskatchewan — like hotel industries everywhere — has seen tens of millions of dollars in losses due to the pandemic. While it’s difficult to estimate the number of people who are sleeping rough at any given time, if we estimate that there are 2000 people in desperate need of housing in Saskatchewan right now, to temporarily house them in hotel rooms at the standard rate for 90 days, which would get them through the worst of what winter has to offer, would cost roughly $20 million. That’s less than the $23 million in federal money that the federal government has given the province to provide support for vulnerable people. It’s a solution that keeps people safe while offering a boost to an ailing industry that doesn’t expect to fully recover until 2023. No matter how it’s done, people need to be housed, and it needs to happen now.
For people to be freezing to death in Saskatchewan cities is a tragedy beyond comprehension. No matter the cost, the government needs to take immediate action.
New FreshCo another blow to grocery workers
Empire Company Ltd., the corporation that owns Sobey’s, is in the process of converting the Sobey’s on Albert St. in Regina into a discount FreshCo. It will be the fifth grocery store to be converted to the discount banner in the province. Empire announced that they would be transitioning stores across the country to FreshCos in 2017. With the Canada Food Price Report forecasting a three to five per cent increase in the cost of food in 2021 - the largest increase since the report started 11 years ago - discount grocery stores should be a welcome addition to neighbourhoods.
US Department of Agriculture via Flickr
Unfortunately, the discounts have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere isn’t Empire’s profits. Jobs and services are cut when full service grocery stores transition to the discount model. Workers lose their jobs or have their hours cut, services like bagging are scrapped, and wages and benefits are reduced. Far from giving poor people a break when it comes to buying food, discount groceries create new inequality, turning what were once stable, well-paying jobs with pensions and vacation time into precarious, minimum wage positions. They divide up bargaining units and undermine worker solidarity.
The average Canadian family of four is expected to spend nearly $700 more for food in 2021. For the average individual, that price is close to $200. Discount grocery stores aren’t the answer. Instead, we should be imagining what food sovereignty can and should look like in our communities. In Saskatchewan, that means thinking about what’s needed in urban and rural, northern and southern communities to ensure that everyone in the province has access to nutritious, culturally appropriate, and reliable food sources, without being beholden to companies like Empire.
Read more: Sask Dispatch reported on the contract “downgrade” that Safeway workers experienced when the first stores were converted to FreshCos in 2019/20. And our sister publication, Briarpatch, published this story on food cooperatives in Canada in 2015.
Overdoses
On February 3, CBC News reported that workers at the Lighthouse — a centre that provides emergency shelter, supportive living, and affordable housing to Saskatoon residents — had used Narcan to revive seven drug users who had overdosed in two of the affordable housing units, almost certainly saving their lives in the process.
The Coroner’s Service of Saskatchewan reports that 377 Saskatchewan people died of overdoses in 2020, a number that is more than double the 2019 deaths and more than quadruple the amount of drug toxicity deaths reported ten years ago. And if this January’s overdose numbers indicate a trend, then 2021 will prove to be even more deadly. Thirty-six people died of overdoses last month.
The Lighthouse Saskatoon via Facebook
The Lighthouse story shows both how quickly drug use can turn lethal when the supply is toxic and how many lives can be saved when drug users have access to secure housing and people trained to use Naloxone. People are going to use drugs — pretending that they aren’t, or that criminalization will pressure them into quitting — costs lives. Ensuring that people have safe, supportive housing without the requirement of abstinence is a huge step towards ensuring that drug users can live safe and dignified lives. A safe supply, where drug users can access untainted drugs through healthcare professionals instead of on the street, as is being done in BC, is another strategy for protecting the lives of drug users.
Like the homelessness crisis, the overdose crisis is a problem that we know how to solve. People are losing their lives because no level of government is willing to invest the financial and human resources necessary to solve the problem. And people are dying because of it.
Read more: From last January, our story on how the criminalization of drug users, a narrow focus on opioids, and a one-size-fits-all strategy for tackling drug treatment has hindered Saskatchewan’s ability to build a comprehensive strategy for keeping drug users safe.
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