“The city should have a holding facility, ideally the former police station.”
Based on these comments, one might think that Quebec City is dealing with dangerous criminals. However, they were made in reference to homeless people by a well-known restaurant owner in the Saint-Roch neighborhood, Napoléon Woo, who was running in this fall’s municipal election.
Mr. Woo didn’t stop at saying that the poorest people should be put in prison. He also railed against a “culture” of homelessness that he believes should be abolished. According to the businessman, homelessness exists because of… the social safety net! People choose to live on the streets because it allows them to avoid working and provides them with free housing and food, without the risk of freezing to death. Precarious workers in the neighborhood were happy to hear Mr. Woo say that “no one needs to work to live in Quebec City.” Have we been living in a utopia without knowing it all this time?
Sarcasm aside, Mr. Woo, refusing to retract his outrageous comments, withdrew from the election campaign after only a few days, stating in an interview that he was “sick of the media.” In truth, his comments did not go down well with the community and committees, who were quick to denounce such lies.
Marx wrote in Capital that “the accumulation of wealth at one pole therefore means at the same time an accumulation of misery at the other pole.”
This poverty is manifested, among other things, by an increase in homelessness, particularly in the Saint-Roch neighborhood of Quebec City. It is a situation that has been worsening in recent years with the rise in housing costs, while shelters in the neighborhood lack resources.
Last week, a passerby, speaking to a friend from the neighborhood who was witnessing a police intervention against a homeless person, said to her, “It’s completely hypocritical to criminalize being poor. I live in a four-and-a-half apartment and I can’t make ends meet…. Before, these people bothered me, but today I know that I’m one paycheck away from being in their shoes.”
This man was absolutely right. The ruling class criminalizes people who have nowhere else to go but outside.
The tactic of divide and rule no longer works as it used to. Mr. Woo’s hateful lies about the oppressed did not go down well with the population, as a growing segment of society that had previously been prejudiced against the homeless now identifies with their plight.
Those who cause people to be homeless are the same people we struggle to pay rent to every month. They are the real criminals.
– Kelly-Anne et Giovanni, Quebec City
