I’m currently involved with a coalition of veteran organisers putting together a campaign of antifascist rallies across Canada, one of which will take place at Centennial Square in Victoria next Saturday: UPDATE: I’ve just withdrawn my support for the event in question. The remainder of the article is still pertinent.

I’ll be one of the speakers, and I’ll have a few things to say about fascist menace creeping into the politics of the homelessness crisis, all the way down to the municipal level. I’d say the most blatant example I can come up with happened right here in Victoria, on July 18’s Committee of the Whole meeting, during which Councillor Jeremy Caradonna publicly appealed to the Prime Minister to declare a state of emergency and have the army round up homeless people, drug users, and mentally ill patents, to march them to a concentration camp at the Bay Street Armoury.

Here’s the full transcript of his intervention:

“In fact I’d like to make a personal appeal to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to consider working with the Department of National Defence to direct Canadian peacekeepers, Canadian peacekeepers, to organise a domestic humanitarian mission, not only to Victoria’s downtown core but all the downtown cores, affected by homelessness, mental health, and addiction. This is a humanitarian crisis, and Canadian peacekeepers are well-trained in dealing with humanitarian crises. It’s just that the difference here is that it is a domestic issue, not a foreign one. We should treat this as though it is the crisis that it is. Pretend that a plane crash in Victoria, or a tidal wave hit the city. What would we do then? Imagine there were 250 people who were all of a sudden out of a home because of a natural disaster; society would rally together to do whatever it took to help those people. But we’re not doing that for the unhoused. We continue to kick down the can down the road and not making the interventions that are required. The federal government in contrast does have the resources, has the land, and has access to Canadian peacekeeping forces and other agencies. Right here in the city of Victoria we have an armoury, over on Bay Street. It’s an enormous building, I was in there not long ago, it’s a gigantic building, it’s completely empty. Imagine if Canadian peacekeepers were helping out the unhoused move them to the armoury, get people triaged, get people stabilised, get them to treatment, get them into housing. If the housing doesn’t exist, let’s build it. The Armed Forces are able to build modular housing in a matter of days. My point being is that senior governments do have the resources to solve this issue; they just choose not to. And over the decades the issue has been downloaded [sic] to local governments like Victoria. And we’re not alone. There are many other local governments that face the same issue. But it gets exhausting when certain entities within this community and many members of the public assume that we somehow have the capacity to solve it, as if we’re choosing not to but we could. We actually don’t, at least not in the current incarnation of this city, and our resourcing [sic]. Maybe in the future if we become a city state we can, but at the moment we cannot. So yes, let’s enforce our bylaws, and yes, let’s bring some order, wherever we can, but let’s be under no illusion that we’re somehow solving the upstream causes, of homelessness, or mental health issues, or addictions. We are as overwhelmed as anyone else is in dealing with this issue. So this is an SOS. This is my personal appeal to Prime Minister, but it could also go to Premier Eby, and any other decision maker at the senior level of government. We need the cavalry to come and rescue us, and the cavalry never seems to show up.”

I’m dumbfounded by how little outrage, or even exposure, this generated. The mainstream media barely mentioned it as a footnote. Advocates I told, even up to very recently, didn’t know about it. Granted, it’s delivered with a inch thick of sugarcoating but it’s still straight out of the Nazi playbook. And since talking about fascism has become fashionable at the onset of Trump’s second presidential term and the unprecedented constitutional crisis it generated, let’s bring it up again. Because such talk should never be allowed to creep into civil discourse, especially draped with flowery language like “humanitarian mission”.

At 1MVFI we’ve had this conversation about the level of language we should use, and I for one opined it’s about time to call things the way they are. Let’s have a look at the dictionary definition of fascism for starters:

fascism

[ fash-iz-uhm ]Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

I dare say the proposal checks all of the definition’s boxes. If nothing else, appealing to the highest authority in the country to invoke emergency powers and dispatch the military is tantamount to declaring martial law. It is a matter of utmost gravity never to be invoked lightly, especially in response to crass policy failures at the municipal level.

There can be no question he’s proposing concentration camps, by the way. Before we move on, let’s have a look at the definition of the term:

concentration camp

[ kon-suhn-trey-shuhn kamp ]Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

1. a guarded compound for the mass detention without hearings or the imprisonment without trial of civilians, as refugees, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc.

The Bay Street Armoury has the arch-typical appearance and design for such a camp. And any claim that admission would be voluntary should be summarily dismissed as preposterous, in the midst of a campaign of forced displacement targeting the unhoused community, which is so drastic that it is currently subject to a legal challenge under Article 7 of the Charter. Likewise, as BC has recently resumed involuntary treatment for addiction in carceral facilities, it is obvious that drug users would be forcefully swept off the streets into such a facility. Besides, what else would the military be called for?

Oh, read the above carefully, and Caradonna, ever the weasel, actually proposes the troops would magically build modular housing for these poor folks in a matter of days, right? Well, if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Besides, these modular homes have themselves nowhere to go under Caradonna’s master plan, which entails moving those already at Caledonia Place to nearby municipalities. And that means those poor folks would be stuck in the concentration camp indefinitely, while the honourable councillor keeps blaming every senior level of government and every other municipality for the self-inflicted injury.

As for his authoritarian tendencies, they extend as far as wishing for Victoria to become a city state (once again read the fine print!), and lashing out at those he disagrees with such as recently against his colleague Stephen Hammond, whom he publicly called a liar during the Crystal Pool debate at City Hall, and was reduced to apologising under threat of censure. And while I’m at it, I’d like to point out any campaign targeting the unhoused is inherently xenophobic, as racial minorities such as indigenous peoples are overly represented, to say nothing of migrants such as refugee seekers.

So there you have it. It’s about time we call a duck a duck, and a dick a dick. And Caradonna for one is one gargantuan dick wielding the levers of power against the most vulnerable among our neighbours, while envying those who wield even more power than he does. There is no room in civil society for such travesty of governance. If you agree in any respect, come on Saturday to demand the likes of him out of politics, because in these turbulent times the civil rights gains our previous three generations fought and bled for are under threat of annihilation, and “never again” is right now.