VICE-REGAL VISIT TO CANADA'S POOREST URBAN NEIGHBOURHOOD

Governor-General balks at sanitized urban tour
Rideau Hall tells city to refrain from cleaning up Downtown Eastside in advance of Jean's walkabout and meeting with homeless
JUSTINE HUNTER
January 23, 2008

VICTORIA -- Governor-General Michaëlle Jean hopes to see the unvarnished version of homelessness on the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside today.

In an effort to avoid the controversy that met a similar visit by her predecessor, officials at Rideau Hall have instructed the city to make no special effort to clean up the streets in advance of Ms. Jean's walking tour of Canada's poorest urban neighbourhood.

"She's not doing tourism here," Isabelle Serrurier, a spokeswoman for Rideau Hall, said yesterday. "Her Excellency is really set on seeing things as they are. There is no point in going if she is not going to see what it is like every day."

In 2004, anti-poverty activists jeered then-governor-general Adrienne Clarkson, saying she was seeing a sanitized version of their community. The mayor's office later confirmed that city workers had hosed down the streets before then-mayor Larry Campbell conducted a guided tour.

This time, facing the likelihood of similar protests, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan has bailed on plans to be at Ms. Jean's side. [See David Eby's blog for clues as to why Sam isn't showing.]

Instead, city Councillor Elizabeth Ball will join the Governor-General for her tour, which starts at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, where they'll meet with homeless women who use the facility's services.

Cynthia Low, a manager at the centre, said Mr. Sullivan would have been a magnet for protests. "He's never visited us and now he wants to come with the Governor-General. It's irritating to some of our members," she said.

Still, David Eby of Pivot Legal Society said he hopes the visit will force Ottawa to pay attention to homelessness.

"At a national level, issues of the Downtown Eastside are still not getting attention, and if she can help, that would be good," he said. "If it is just a hand-wringing photo-op, it won't do much good."

A spokesman for the mayor's office said Mr. Sullivan was trying to organize his schedule to join Ms. Jean, but by yesterday afternoon his substitute, Ms. Ball, had been confirmed.

However, Mr. Eby warned that the visit may still attract an angry response from residents.

"At the end of the day, the constituents I deal with are tired of being studied and analyzed and visited. It's not a neighbourhood that has been particularly welcoming to visits like this."

What will Ms. Jean see? "She's going to see a lot of open drug use, a lot of homelessness, lot of people with visible signs of disease and illness, probably reminiscent of Haiti [where she was born] and the developing world," Mr. Eby said. "And she'll have to ask herself how this could happen in a wealthy city like Vancouver."

That will be on the agenda at the Governor-General's next stop, a closed-door meeting with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' big city mayors. The mayors plan to unveil a national proposal for a strategy on homelessness this afternoon.

Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe, who will attend the meeting, also said he hopes Ms. Jean's attendance will help raise the profile at the federal level.

Link to article