Small Cities, Big Issues: Reconceiving Community in a Neoliberal Era / Edited by Christopher Walmsley and Terry Kading

Small Cities, Big Issues SMALL CITIES, BIG ISSUES Reconceiving Community in a Neoliberal Era Edited by Christopher Walmsley and Terry Kading Copyright © 2018 Christopher Walmsley and Terry Kading Published by AU Press, Athabasca University 1200, 10011 – 109 Street, Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8 ISBN 978-1-77199-163-6 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-77199-164-3 (PDF) ISBN 978-1-77199-165-0 (epub) doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991636.01 Cover design by Martyn Schmoll Interior design by Sergiy Kozakov Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Small cities, big issues: reconceiving community in a neoliberal era / edited by Christopher Walmsley and Terry Kading. Includes bibliographical references. Issued in print and electronic formats. 1. Small cities—Canada—Case studies. 2. Sociology, Urban—Canada—Case studies. 3. Canada—Social conditions—Case studies. I. Walmsley, Christopher, author, editor II. Kading, Terrance William, 1962-, author, editor HT127.S63 2018 307.76'20971 C2016-907220-7 C2016-907221-5 This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada for our publishing activities and the assistance provided by the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons License, Attribution– Noncommercial–NoDerivative Works 4.0 International: see www.creativecommons. org. The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author. To obtain permission for uses beyond those outlined in the Creative Commons license, please contact AU Press, Athabasca University, at [email protected]. To Kico (2004–2017), homeless in Kamloops when we met him but whose presence in our lives made such a difference in all the years thereafter, and to all those individuals and community organizations whose collaborative efforts to improve our communities so often go unrecognized. Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction 3 Part I Displacement, Isolation, and the Other 1. Homelessness in Small Cities: The Abdication of Federal Responsibility 23 Terry Kading and Christopher Walmsley 2. Zoned Out: Regulating Street Sex Work in Kamloops, British Columbia 53 Lorry-Ann Austin 3. Needles in Nanaimo: Exclusionary Versus Inclusionary Approaches to Illicit Drug Users 75 Sydney Weaver 4. Being Queer in the Small City 105 Wendy Hulko 5. “Thrown Out into the Community”: The Closure of Tranquille 125 Diane Purvey 6. Fitting In: Women Parolees in the Small City 147 Jennifer Murphy 7. Walking in Two Worlds: Aboriginal Peoples in the Small City 167 Sharnelle Matthew and Kathie McKinnon Part II Building Community 8. Social Planning and the Dynamics of Small-City Government 193 Christopher Walmsley and Terry Kading 9. The Inadequacies of Multiculturalism: Reflections on Immigrant Settlement, Identity Negotiation, and Community in a Small City 213 Mónica J. Sánchez-Flores 10. Municipal Approaches to Poverty Reduction in British Columbia: A Comparison of New Westminster and Abbotsford 235 Robert Harding and Paul Jenkinson 11. Integrated Action and Community Empowerment: Building Relationships of Solidarity in Magog, Québec 275 Jacques Caillouette 12. Small City, Large Town? Reflections on Neoliberalism in the United Kingdom 295 Graham Day Conclusion: The Way Forward 323 List of Contributors 331 Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, through the Mapping Quality of Life and the Culture of Small Cities Community-University Research Alliance at Thompson Rivers University. We are grateful for the ongoing support provided by Will Garrett-Petts, associate vice-president, Research and Graduate Studies, and former project director of the Small Cities CURA. We also wish to thank Pamela Holway, senior acquisitions editor at Athabasca University Press, for her numerous editorial suggestions and her dedication to this book. Thanks to Ross Nelson for the maps found in this collection. And last but far from least, we extend our deepest appreciation to our partners, Lise Tessier and Keely McKibben, whose advice, support, and love made an immeasurable contribution to the book’s completion. ix doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991636.01 Introduction Small cities in Canada today confront serious social issues resulting from the neoliberal economic restructuring that began in the early 1980s. Drastic cutbacks in social programs, income supports, and the provision of affordable housing, combined with the offloading of social responsibilities onto the municipal level, have contributed to the generalization of social issues—most visibly, homelessness—once associated chiefly with our largest urban centres. Early acknowledgement of this trend came in 1999, with the introduction of the federal government’s National Homelessness Initiative, the largest com- ponent of which was a program known as the Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative. Although most of the $305 million originally invested in this program was intended for Canada’s ten largest urban centres, 20 percent was reserved for fifty-one smaller communities, all of which “had a demonstrable need to address homelessness” (Canada, HRDC 2003, 8). The stubborn prevalence of both visible and hidden homelessness in all urban centres, irrespective of size, attests to the inadequacy of provincial and federal responses to issues such as drug and alcohol addiction, ineffective or absent mental health care, and the economic insecurity produced by precar- ious employment, all of which contribute to poverty and homelessness. Social and economic inequities are, moreover, exacerbated by the persistence of racist attitudes, directed not only against Indigenous peoples but also against racialized immigrants. In 2010, a federal report on immigration identified “a need for programming to address issues of racism and discrimination in Canada, given the increasing diversity of the population; the continued exist- ence of racism and discrimination against newcomers and (visible) minorities; and the distribution of immigrants to rural areas and small cities, which have 3 doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991636.01 traditionally been comprised of fairly homogenous populations” (Canada, CIC 2010, ii). In this collection, we reveal the broader forms of discrimination and social exclusion evident in local attitudes, policies, and actions directed towards individuals who are perceived as threats to mainstream values. We call into question the myth of Canada as a fair and just society, guided by principles of compassion, by exploring the social realities facing small cities in Canada. We aim to understand how citizens, community organizations, and local governments respond to the social challenges of urban life beyond the metropolis. We discuss community responses to social issues in small cities—whether they be exclusionary and reactionary or inclusionary and progressive and whether they take their shape from “big city” solutions or arise independently from local community action. We also uncover some of the distinctive attrib- utes of the small city as it struggles to confront increasingly complex social issues arising from federal and provincial financial restraint and the effects of global economic restructuring. Neoliberal Governance and the Small City In Canada, as elsewhere, lower taxes, balanced budgets, an entrepreneurial environment, reduced government regulation, and the philosophy of small government have become the defining themes of governance. Following the federal lead, provincial governments have endorsed these themes and have oriented their policies towards increasing private sector investment and creat- ing joint private-public sector initiatives. At its core, neoliberal policy aims to restore the profitability of the private sector—banks, corporations, local busi- ness initiatives—in response to the global economic problems that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s: high inflation and high unemployment, low or negative rates of growth, and rapidly accumulating government deficits. Neoliberalism seeks to address these problems by opening up new investment and consump- tion possibilities that are less constrained by government regulations and the limits of national markets (see Shutt 2005, 34–44). Although the embrace of neoliberal policy has not necessarily reduced government spending, it has served to link the degree of government financial support for specific social initiatives to the fortunes of the broader economy. This has resulted in a “feast or famine” approach to government spending that entrenches a short horizon with respect to planning (Howlett, Netherton, and 4 Introduction doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991636.01 Ramesh 1999, 271, 289). Under this approach, few areas of government activity are exempt from continuous adjustments or spending cuts in a period of economic uncertainty or decline. Although a wide range of government services continue to exist, they are prioritized such that when shifting economic conditions lead to the reduction of resources or increased costs in areas deemed essential, the result is spending reductions in areas considered expendable. In such circumstances, funding horizons become short and unpredictable, rendering

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