“Syringes, homelessness and crack pipes rule in a Quebec park” was the headline The duty of Friday, August 2, written by Sébastien Tanguay. We described the situation at the Moulin-de-l’Hôpital park in lower Quebec City, which is overrun with problems of poverty, homelessness and drug addiction (and certainly mental health problems, which we choose to keep quiet about).
Other vulnerable people in our society, children and the elderly first, are summoned to denounce this worrying situation. Neighbors feel “psychological distress” in front of a spectacle they would like not to witness, deploring that this scene is not “hidden” as before.
Faced with the problem, the journalist describes three reactions. The first is to flee, to avoid the park, to turn a blind eye. The second is repressive: but what are the police and other authorities doing? The third is to look for a scapegoat, easily found by some in the population of young people in difficulty (and workers) who frequent the nearby Maison Marie-Frédéric. Which the police and the director of the organization currently refute, but how many of these young people will be the excluded of tomorrow?
If you were treating a diabetic patient’s skin wounds, would you just disinfect and put on a nice sterile bandage? Wouldn’t you explore circulatory problems and get to the root cause of the problem, the unregulated blood sugar?
Systemic
The state of the Moulin-de-l’Hôpital park, which sadly resembles so many other parks in Quebec, is the peripheral symptom of a systemic problem. The system is sick and we are turning a blind eye to the origins of the disorder.
We claim to want to provide good living conditions for the most vulnerable in our society, children, families and the elderly first, but what do we actually do? The repressive temptation is there – to increase the barriers, to live in seclusion, to chase away what we do not want to see.
The blame for the excluded is then expressed in multiple ways, with the desire to force the emigration of those who are disturbing to other places (with associated repression). Meanwhile, our public services have been impoverished for several years, psychiatric care and community organizations are underfunded, social divisions are worsening. And we witness this slow societal deterioration by being too weakly moved by symptoms – such as the increase in homelessness and hard drug addictions, but also the growth of mental health disorders and endemic violence – which should alert us to the general state of our society.
These are not just minor skin wounds that belong only to others. These outcasts are ours; they are our children, our sisters, our brothers, our neighbors. No one lives in a vacuum.
Wrong Way
What model of society do we want in Quebec? If we want parks where human diversity has its place and plays together, we are currently on the wrong track. The article from Friday, August 2 demonstrates this well: a serious social divide exists within our walls.
We have insidiously adopted the American way and we are giving priority to personal enrichment to the detriment of collective enrichment. This one, that of all, requires a change of direction, a real project of society that recognizes as a real wealth living together in a society that cares for everyone.
Our priority must be to better finance the public system to put an end to the increase in the number of excluded people. Moreover, aren’t those who frequent the Parc du Moulin-de-l’Hôpital today trying to remind us that there was a hospital there with its hospitality and care? We must certainly prevent harm and know how to supervise, but let’s not remain blind to the deeper causes, because we will all pay the social price.