I’ve been working in communications and social justice for much of my career, and it takes a lot to shock me. When I started to scroll the news on April 14th, I was stopped in my tracks by a statistic leading the headlines.
As of March 31, 8,248 people were experiencing homelessness in Winnipeg. At this time last year, it was 5,698, which represents a 45% increase in the number of people who cannot find a stable, safe and affordable place to live.
Imagine the entire population of La Broquerie woke up without shelter tomorrow. Or the entire city of Dauphin. Imagine how we would rally, set up shelters and programs and services as soon as we possibly could. And yet in Winnipeg, around dinner tables, on coffee breaks and in online spaces, we debate how we should help and some debate if we should help at all.
The inhumanity of it takes my breath away. Homelessness sits at the intersection of housing, mental health, trauma, poverty, colonialism, and systemic gaps that have existed for generations. If you’ve never been close to it, it can be difficult to fully grasp the weight of what people are carrying each day: the instability, the exhaustion, the loss of safety and dignity.
Our health and social service systems were set up in a colonial way: they run on budgets and service purchase agreements and staffing complements. Many years ago, at a Catholic Health Alliance of Canada conference, I asked Niigaan Sinclair, an Anishinaabe writer, editor, professor, and activist, what a reconciled healthcare model would look like. His answer: “A place where we have time to sit down and get to know each other, where we get to care for each other as people.”
I responded that the hundreds of health and social services leaders in the room wanted that, too. Nobody working in the system wants the system we have; they’d all take more time to be human, to connect, to be with people who are suffering.
On days when it all feels a bit hopeless, a bit dehumanizing, I remind myself of this: our desire to care for others is stronger than our desire to give up on a system that isn’t meeting our needs.
I look at the members of the Indigenous Advisory Circle who invited folks from RCN to ceremony last month: many can admit that when they were first approached by a Catholic organization, every instinct in them said no. They chose curiosity over judgment, they chose to build relationships, and they know that while we are not perfect, we are true and honest allies. We have been gifted a beautiful name that tells that story, a gift full of grace, forgiveness and hope. Please click here to read the story of that name from Grandmother Helen Robinson-Settee.
I think of every staff person in this network who has ever laid awake at night wondering what will happen to the person under their care, and I am reminded that as long as we don’t give up on each other, we’ve still got something.
8,248 people just lived through a Winnipeg winter without knowing where tomorrow’s night’s bed would be found. Across Réseau Compassion Network organizations, about that many people show up for work every day, as administratiors, social workers, nurses, kitchen staff, maintenance staff and more, all with the goal of walking alongside those in need. Through addictions and mental health supports, housing programs, healthcare and public health, our organizations are working towards a world where no one is left behind.
There is a long road ahead for us as treaty people, and for our organizations, too, but I am awfully glad to be surrounded by people who choose to walk it every day, and all those in community who choose to walk it with us.
– Jocelyne Nicolas, Communications Specialist