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Social policy in B.C. is a train wreck of monumental proportions, and evasive political rhetoric can’t disguise that dismal truth.

We’ve now got a permanent shantytown of increasingly bellicose and defiant homeless people burgeoning outside the provincial courthouse in the middle of Victoria — just in time for tourist season in the City of Gardens.

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Oh, and a new shantytown now mushrooms in Campbell River. In Vernon, a census last fall found the number of homeless camps had doubled from three to six since the spring.

We’ve got disgruntled Victoria businesses and homeowners dubbing themselves Mad As Hell and plotting how to shuffle the already dispossessed along to somebody else’s neighbourhood. Homelessness is a lightning rod in Maple Ridge and Abbotsford and Stanley Park.

Civil society suddenly looks increasingly uncivil.

We’ve got the courts ruling repeatedly that in the absence of anywhere else to go, people have a right to camp in public spaces. There is a cruel logic to this: If private land is off limits, public land is barred, there’s no permanent housing available, and simply becoming invisible is not an option, what are the homeless supposed to do? Well, they could just die.