My Alberta: When Did Humans Stop Being the Priority?

I took this photograph while travelling through Alberta.

Behind this man is a thriving commercial world. Businesses. Cars. Customers. Employees. Money changing hands.

Billions of dollars move through the fast-food industry every year. Billions of meals are served.

And out front sits a human being holding a piece of cardboard:

HOMELESS

PLZ DONATE

I stood there looking at the contrast.

Not because I wanted to judge the man.

Not because I wanted to judge the people driving through for something to eat.

Not because I wanted to attack the business.

I kept thinking about something much bigger.

Since when did human beings stop being our priority collectively as a community?

I've Been This Person

That's important for me to say.

I've been this person.

I've also been the worker working long hours and long days while watching wages barely change as everything around me became more expensive.

I've known what it is like to struggle.

So when I see someone sitting on the street, my first thought isn't:

Get a job.

Work harder.

Not my problem.

I wonder what happened.

Because there is a human story sitting there that I don't know.

And I don't need to know every detail of that story to recognize another human being.

Working Doesn't Guarantee Security

We have built much of our understanding of poverty around a simple idea:

If you work hard, you'll be okay.

For many people, that promise is becoming harder to believe.

You can work and still struggle.

You can work full-time and have difficulty paying rent.

You can work overtime and still watch your purchasing power disappear.

Rent goes up.

Food goes up.

Fuel goes up.

Insurance goes up.

Utilities go up.

Transportation goes up.

Everything seems to take another little piece.

But wages don't necessarily follow.

So people adapt.

They work more.

They eat cheaper.

They postpone dental work.

They don't replace something that's broken.

They use credit.

They stop going places.

They stop doing things.

They cut and cut and cut.

Until eventually there isn't much left to cut.

Then something happens.

An injury.

A layoff.

A vehicle breaks down.

A relationship ends.

Someone gets sick.

Hours at work are reduced.

Rent increases again.

And suddenly the distance between being housed and being homeless isn't as great as we like to imagine.

"Get a Job"

I've heard people say it when they see someone experiencing homelessness.

Get a job.

I've heard:

Work harder.

They made their choices.

Not my problem.

But think about what we're saying when we reduce another person's entire existence to those few words.

We don't know what happened before that cardboard sign appeared.

We don't know about the childhood.

The family.

The job.

The injury.

The disability.

The trauma.

The rent increase.

The relationship breakdown.

The mental health crisis.

The lost identification.

The years of trying.

Maybe some poor decisions were made.

I've made poor decisions.

Most human beings have.

But somewhere along the way we seem to have decided that certain people's mistakes make them less deserving of security, dignity and belonging.

I don't believe that.

Look at the Contrast

That's why this photograph stays with me.

There is nothing particularly unusual happening in it.

And maybe that's exactly what makes it disturbing.

Cars are moving.

People are eating.

Employees are working.

Businesses are operating.

The economy is doing what an economy does.

And a man is sitting outside asking strangers for enough money to survive.

All of those realities exist within a few metres of one another.

We can become so accustomed to seeing poverty beside prosperity that eventually we stop seeing the contradiction.

Young People Are Doing the Math

I think about young people growing up in Alberta today.

We tell them to work hard.

Get educated.

Find a career.

Save money.

Build a life.

Buy a home.

Start a family if they want one.

Prepare for retirement.

But they're doing the math.

They're looking at rent.

They're looking at home prices.

They're looking at groceries.

They're looking at tuition.

They're looking at wages.

They're looking at what it costs simply to participate in ordinary life.

And some of them are asking a question that previous generations should take seriously:

How am I supposed to do this?

That isn't necessarily entitlement.

It isn't necessarily laziness.

Sometimes it's arithmetic.

What Is Prosperity?

Maybe we need to reconsider what that word means.

A province can produce enormous wealth.

Corporations can make billions.

Property values can rise.

Businesses can expand.

GDP can grow.

But if the people doing the work increasingly cannot afford housing, food and the ordinary necessities of life, can we really call that prosperity?

An economy is something human beings created.

It isn't a force of nature.

Markets, wages, housing policies, taxation, social programs and labour laws are all human systems.

We can change human systems.

The question is whether we have the collective will to do it.

This Is My Alberta Too

My Alberta isn't only mountains, prairie sunsets, small towns, farms, rodeos, cities and beautiful places.

It's people.

All of them.

The business owner.

The employee behind the counter.

The person driving the truck.

The family trying to pay the mortgage.

The senior trying to stay in their apartment.

The young person wondering whether they will ever own a home.

And the man sitting outside with his belongings beside him and a cardboard sign in his hands.

He is part of Alberta too.

I don't know his name.

I don't know his story.

I deliberately blurred his face because his dignity matters more than my photograph.

But I saw him.

And perhaps that's where change begins.

By refusing to stop seeing one another.

Because if our economy is working while more and more of the human beings living inside it aren't, we need to ask ourselves a difficult question:

Who exactly is it working for?

My Alberta is an ongoing journey through the people, places and contradictions I encounter across the province I call home.