Buchanan scraps proposed shopping cart ban

This past summer, town council in Vernon, BC approved a similar ban, but the councillor who proposed it insisted just weeks later that the Town not go through with it after the BC Civil Liberties Association said they would challenge the ban’s constitutionality.

“It’s got nothing to do with people that are disenfranchised or homeless. It’s not ‘Oh my gosh, we have to come up with something to make it more difficult for you,” Buchanan continued.

Asked what or who it has to do with if it isn’t the city’s homeless, he said, “A lot of instances, and I had one here the other night, there were four carts strung together.”

Buchanan was also asked – twice – what such a ban would mean for a person who was only using it for his or her belongings.

“Well, a lot of folks are using them for bottle collecting,” he said first before being asked a second time. “That would be something that we’d have to figure out. I was at Safe Harbour’s AGM and the executive director is saying that housing is the number one issue.”

Buchanan said fellow councillors Ken Johnston and Dianne Wyntjes told him his proposed policy would ostracize homeless folks, something Johnston spoke about to rdnewsNOW.

“I hope we never have to visit this issue again, and I say that without being cocky or flippant because, essentially, what we have is really a symptom or an indication that when people don’t have a place to go during the daytime or the ability to store their possessions, well what can people do? Backpacks are fine, but often there’s a little more goods than that,” Johnston said. “These shopping carts are just a symptom of a much larger problem.”

He went on to say that shopping carts are a homelessness and poverty issue, not one that should be viewed under a criminal lens.

“The ability to even enforce this was in extreme doubt right off the top,” Johnston said. “I don’t think anybody chooses to live their life by pushing a shopping cart down the street. Again, it’s symptomatic of having no place to go. I give Buck a lot of credit because he’s very passionate about crime… he withdrew it and I appreciate that.”

Johnston also noted OSSI funding which council approved Monday night to go towards new daytime programming for homeless folks at a yet to be determined location. He said that is just one more method which may help get to the root of the problem and cause the shopping cart issue to, “die a natural death.”

by Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

Buchanan scraps proposed shopping cart ban

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