Lorne Mayencourt, BC Liberal MLA, recently spent five nights living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), getting an up close view of the lives of those people his government has helped to keep in, or push into, abject poverty. Mayencourt’s brief poverty tourism does not appear to have won him any new friends in the DTES, perhaps because earlier this year he introduced the Safe Streets Act into the legislature, which aims at criminalizing the poor under the pretext of reducing “aggressive pan-handling.”

The MLA, apparently not satisfied with the learning experience, held a press conference revealing his little field trip into the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. “I have slept in parks. I have waited in breadlines. I have stayed in an SRO (single-room occupancy hotel),” Mayencourt boasted, adding that he felt the City of Vancouver could be “letting loose the possibility of a housing crisis,” by closing down the Marr and the American SRO hotels (MLA goes homeless for a cause, August 26, 2004).

Activists responded quickly, with Downtown Eastside Resident Association (DERA) director Kim Kerr heckling the politician during his street corner press conference.

“People here spend night after night on the street after your party throws them off welfare,” Kerr said (Vancouver Sun, August 27, 2004).

And pugnacious city councillor Jim Green blasted back at Mayencourt, laying the blame for the homeless crisis at the feet of the provincial government. The two politicians feuded publicly last year, after Green denounced the Liberals’ two-year time limit imposition on welfare recipients. Mayencourt, at the time, denied the welfare cuts would cause more homelessness, lambasting Green and accusing him of “poverty pimping.”

“The real issue here is, why should you be using homeless people, people that are vulnerable, to advance your political career. That is disgusting. I find it awful.” (cbc.ca, “Vancouver councillor a ‘poverty pimp,’ says MLA,” October 23, 2003)

But Mayencourt was not humbled by the negative response from city councillors and anti-poverty activists. Perhaps the MLA’s unconventional summer vacation is part of a larger Liberal strategy to put a more “human face” on their assault on working and poor people in British Columbia. He has even started his own weblog to document the experience, explaining his alleged motivations in his first entry, dated August 21:

“I’m going to spend a few days and nights living as some of the poorest residents in this city, in the hope of hearing their ideas on how to improve their housing and their security. Maybe I can find a new perspective on the neighbourhood.”

Read the rest of the blog at your own stomach’s risk. Lorne’s brief communion with the people, rather than being evidence of his devotion to the poorest of his constituents, provides more evidence of the remarkable disassociation members of the provincial government have from the victims of their policies. Anecdotal, naïve, and even banal, the MLA’s daily ramblings — recorded orally and later typed up — fail to grasp any of the connections between public policy and public welfare.

Mayencourt’s stunt brings to mind potential field trips for the rest of the BC Liberal caucus. Given this government’s wide-ranging attack on social services and workers’ rights, poverty tourism possibilities abound. Minister of Skills Development and Labour Graham Bruce could spend a week developing his skills at picking berries, alongside 12 year-olds earning $6/hour or less. Advanced Education Minister Shirley Bond could spend a semester, perhaps studying political science, trying to hold down a full course load while working two part-time service sector jobs. Or, Minister of Health Services Colin Hansen could try surviving for a few weeks at one of the thousands of new, privatized, low-waged cleaning jobs in hospitals and other care facilities.

A sojourn into poverty like Mayencourt’s is, in fact, often evidence of a patronizing contempt for the poor, but perhaps in this case it will help ease the MLA’s conscience as he continues to implement regressive legislation like the Safe Streets Act. A field trip to the DTES does not amount to consultation, as this government has been systematically ignoring the demands of poor people’s organizations throughout its rule.

One example of a more constructive trip into poverty is the 2001 work of American author Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed. Ehrenreich took time out of her comfortable, middle class existence to work in some of America’s hardest, lowest-paying jobs — all in order to write about the difficulty of squeezing out a living working at places like Wal-Mart and Molly Maid. Though the book is an important documentation of the working class’ conditions on the job, its author always had an out, and indeed she never stayed at any one gig for longer than a few weeks. Mayencourt’s out, among other things, included $70 cash and the cell phone he took with him for his “authentic” experience on the streets.

Tourists merely visiting the lives of the poor, then, will not be the harbingers of social change, regardless of their motivations — and in Mayencourt’s case these are more than suspect. Political organization and struggle, especially by oppressed and working people themselves, is the only force really capable of putting an end to government policies like those of the B.C. Liberals, and the systems they uphold.

To that end, and avoiding tokenistic approaches, we would all be well advised to investigate the true impacts of the policies of Mayencourt and his neo-Liberal colleagues in B.C.’s legislature.

Derrick O'Keefe

Derrick O'Keefe

Derrick O'Keefe is a writer in Vancouver, B.C. He served as rabble.ca's editor from 2012 to 2013 and from 2008 to 2009.