Hey, Mr. Mayor… can you spare an apology?

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/05/2009 (5718 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For a change, someone wanted to interview me.

La Presse reporter Agnès Gruda was calling from Montreal with some questions about Faron Hall, the homeless man whose bravery in the freezing, fast-flowing flood waters of the Red River has put smiles on faces across Canada.

She wanted to know if I thought Faron Hall, the human new face of poverty, had changed people’s attitudes about the homeless.

No, I told her.

People’s attitudes about the street-level poor aren’t so easily altered.

Although, when I thought about the reporter’s question later, there was one person who might have come away more enlightened by getting to know a man like Faron.

Mayor Sam Katz.

* * *

There was something lost on most of Winnipeg in the feel-good glow of watching Katz present Faron with the Mayor’s Award of Valour.

The award looks like an oversized coin. And our homeless hero is also a panhandler.

That combination would virtually drip with irony, even if the ceremony hadn’t taken place near the river where Faron swam out to save a life on Sunday.

Why so?

Because our mayor is the political architect of an anti-panhandling bylaw The National Anti-Poverty Organization is challenging in the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench as a violation of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Ostensibly, the bylaw was supposed to make our streets "safer" — the mayor’s word — by targeting so-called "aggressive" or persistent panhandling.

But critics point out that style of panhandling is already covered by the Criminal Code. And that the bylaw is so wide-ranging and so punitive its real intent is to rid downtown streets of all substance-abusing poor beggars.

Including, it would seem, someone like the mayor’s brave new pal.

That’s why University of Manitoba professor Arthur Schafer thinks Katz was being a hypocrite at Wednesday’s awards ceremony.

Schafer, who is to be called as an expert witness in the case, was outraged by the bylaw that makes it an offence to panhandle near bus stops, bank machines, financial institutions and pay phones the poor often "mine" for forgotten coins.

The bylaw penalty for panhandling in out-of-bounds places is a fine. Or jail time if the panhandler can’t pay the fine. And how many panhandlers, Schafer asks, can afford to pay a fine?

Schafer argues that Katz and council have effectively turned, "Buddy can you spare a dime?" into a crime.

And wonders how, in a free society, someone can be put in jail for peacefully saying, "I’m in trouble, I need help."

What makes that even more disturbing is contrasting it with what happened Sunday.

Faron Hall, the homeless panhandler, heard someone in trouble, and he risked his life to help.

* * *

Before the city, indeed the nation, was introduced to Faron — the new face of poverty — there was a University of Winnipeg survey and report that attempted to do something similar with the rest of the city’s panhandlers.

Reflect panhandlers as people.

People who need help.

Help through employment opportunities, housing, and help with mental-health counselling and substance-abuse treatment.

It’s not something all the city’s panhandlers necessarily want.

But it’s something they deserve.

And a job is something that Sam Katz seems to be willing to find for Faron after he said he wanted one.

But, at the ceremony Wednesday, Faron said there’s something else he wants for the homeless.

"More understanding."

The mayor was standing beside Faron so he heard those words. I just hope he was listening, too.

Because if Sam Katz really wants to honour Faron Hall, really give him something that would restore respect and dignity to others like him, the mayor would move to rescind the city’s anti-panhandling bylaw.

And apologize to the panhandlers of Winnipeg.

I’ve even got a suggestion for a fitting beginning.

"I beg your pardon," should work.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca