Pollievre compares major B.C. city to a 3rd world country. People living there say that's not right
CBC
Garth Gorrel and his wife, Debbie Houghtaling, have been camping along the Okanagan Rail Trail at the north end of downtown Kelowna, B.C., for two years.
Gorrel, a former steelworker in Kamloops, and Houghtaling, who used to do online clerical work for an Alberta-based janitorial service, both lost their jobs due to layoffs at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hoping to find employment, the couple relocated to Kelowna but had no luck. Unable to afford a rental apartment, they made the decision to shelter outdoors.
"We're staying right there — home sweet home," Gorrel said, standing near their makeshift residence consisting of two tents, a vegetable garden, and their dog Kismet.
"Don't get in people's way, and you will be fine."
In May 2021, the City of Kelowna set up what it calls an "outdoor sheltering site" on the Rail Trail where people could sleep in tents between 6 p.m. and 9 a.m. every day. The main purpose of the designated camping site was to discourage people from camping in city parks and other public spaces. The city has since expanded the allowance and estimates about 100 people are camping there daily.
However, the couple didn't anticipate encountering strangers intruding on their lives, driving through the encampment area, filming, and hurling derogatory remarks at the campers.
"They drive by and say "crackheads" or one guy went by with a megaphone [saying], 'Don't do drugs.'
"We're not all drug addicts," Houghtaling said. "You feel like you're on display."
She believes that those filming are a paycheck away from experiencing homelessness themselves. To her surprise, one of the videos they captured was uploaded to TikTok over the weekend.
Two days later, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre tweeted the TikTok video, gaining over 11,000 likes.
"These images are not from a faraway third-world country. This is Kelowna after eight years of Trudeau and the NDP," Poilievre wrote in the tweet.
Houghtaling finds it absurd that a politician would choose to use a TikTok video that lacks any context about the Rail Trail campers.
"Why has he not even come down and spoken to anyone here or driven by and filmed it himself?
A program aimed at preventing homelessness on Prince Edward Island that was halted last year due to funding issues is back up and running again with support from the provincial and federal governments.
Large crowds of people lined up around the block outside a pair of packed community halls in central Alberta on Wednesday night, to attend town halls focused on the idea of the province seeking independence from Canada.
The sight of a cyclist in January in the Yukon can prompt confusion from some onlookers — but historians say bicycles were being used to get around the territory in winter long before cars.
On Prime Minister Mark Carney's first day of talks in Beijing, the government agreed to co-operate with China more on clean and conventional energy after years of difficult relations between the two countries.
The city says it is one step away from returning the Bearspaw feeder main to full service, with a final water pump scheduled to be turned on Friday morning — if the pipe continues to remain stable.
When David St-Pierre saw the snow outside his window in Brossard, Que., south of Montreal, he decided to chance the metropolitan region's shiny light-rail transit system once more.
A Calgary lawyer who falsified court documents and repeatedly lied to a client, causing the man to miss out on parenting time with his youngest child, pleaded guilty to forgery on Thursday.
The Crown has stayed an assault charge against Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Jeremy Tunraluk.
Alberta’s minister of hospitals says a province-wide strategy has begun to ease the strain on the acute care system as frontline doctors continue to declare that provincial hospitals are dangerously overcrowded.
As snow squalls continue to blanket southwestern Ontario, school boards in the London region announced the closure of all schools Thursday morning, and police are reporting closures and collisions across the area roads.
A Canadian citizen has died in Iran “at the hands of the Iranian authorities,” according to Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand.
On Boxing Day, Victoria Lethbridge and her partner took their dog and baby out for a morning walk in brand new snowshoes around the corner from their home in Hickman’s Harbour.
When a U.S. company made its data centre pitch to some concerned Saint John residents late last year, he called the city an untapped “gold mine” for artificial intelligence projects.