Did you know that the fate of Riverview and its 244 acres of grounds rests not with Coquitlam (and its Mayor), or with the urgent needs of the
mentally ill (for example, hospital-prone schizophrenics, or the frequently
sick and homeless), or with the Film Industry, or with fans of the arboretum,
or with any spurious Heritage society.
No: none of the above. The answer
actually lies with Vancouver’s own Fraser Institute.
Canada’s largest and most powerful neo-liberal think tank
has not only been dabbling in rating schools in B.C., and across the country,
it has helped shape the Tea Party on the Right of the Republican Party in the
United States, and it has contributed “private” ideas to the Conservative
government under Stephen Harper. Its
members include prominent non-British Columbians, for example, Mike Harris,
former Premier of Ontario responsible for ushering in the “common sense
revolution”, and the late “King Ralph” of Alberta, who left British Columbians
with a taste of his disregard for the mentally ill while he was Premier there.
The Fraser Institute holds in very high esteem the work of a
little-known (and short-lived) French economist and legislator, Frédéric
Bastiat, who wrote during the turmoil of the mid-nineteenth century. It is his
ideas that are propagated which are having a determinative effect on the fate
of Riverview. In his most famous essay
“The Law” Bastiat argues that “property, like the person, is a providential
fact”.[1] Further to his argument he elaborates “man is
born a property owner” and that “property is a divine institution and that its
safety and protection are the object of human law.” [2]
Clearly Bastiat, like the Fraser Institute, is thinking only
of private property – not public property, so Riverview as a consequence is now
considered a prime real estate option above all other costs. Any development there has to make its own money,
or at least “break even” (when it is the province that has brought Riverview
and the mentally ill to ruin). This is consistent
with the Fraser Institute’s vociferous case for privatized health care.
But Bastiat’s most famous declaration appears in “The State”
where he claims in 1848, a year of Revolution: “The state is the great fiction
by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.”[3] In other words, when one reads (and considers
accepting) dogmatic economists such as Bastiat there is (as has been the case) no
room for the mentally ill at Riverview – or for a restoration.
Fraser Institute ideology has made its way into “provincial”
thinking. It also explains why the
province argues that the absence of a specialized hospital can be made up for
by a number of local facilities which supposedly serve patients better in their
respective regions by bringing them closer to their families. But just because a mentally ill person can
now be treated in Prince George does not mean we should eliminate the original “public”
role of Riverview and its lands. Besides, judging from Vancouver’s Downtown
East Side alone and the problem of concurrent disorders, B.C. needs hundreds of
new beds, if not more, not just a couple dozen here and there.
Absence of treatment is mistreatment, and the public should
think much less of the Fraser Institute - and consequently think much more
without - given its role in helping to undermine the fate of Riverview.
No comments:
Post a Comment