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Leslie McKinnon, CBC News, Toronto:
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"First, there is no evidence of a 'rapid rise' in deaths of homeless people in Toronto, in the years Jack Layton was talking about."
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Wrong, says a 1997 article in The Toronto Star:
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"According to Diane Patychuk, city public health social epidemiologist, a look back at deaths of people with no fixed address or from hostels and drop-ins, revealed some 40 a year from 1979 to 1993. 'That's an underestimate,' she says."
"From Patychuk's study and the homeless population increase of an astounding 67 per cent over last year, activists have come up with an estimated 52 deaths, or one a week, as the current death rate."
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This is -- at the very least -- evidence. Dontcha think?
But it turns out Leslie McKinnon's real problem is that she doesn't even understand what Layton was saying in the first place:
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"It's impossible to find exact numbers, but here's what's known."
"The Ontario coroner's office only started records in 1999 for people who died in Toronto while they were homeless. The total up to 2003 is a hundred and eighty two. There's is also a study that tracked almost 9,000 homeless men in Toronto from 1995 to 1997. It found two hundred deaths, but not all the men were homeless for the entire two years."
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Two obvious problems:
The two year study in question measures deaths among men who were homeless at some point during a two year period. But the average homeless person is only without residence for 30 to 90 days. So, many -- if not most -- of these deaths would have occurred amongst men who were not actaully homeless when they died.
More importantly, McKinnon's cites two studies that both took place after 1995 -- after Paul Martin's affordable housing cuts began . To actually prove, or disprove, Layton's claim one would obviously have to compare a study that took place before Martin's budget cuts with a study that took place after the cuts. This is just what Toronto public health social epidemiologist Diane Patychuk has done.
McKinnon's report also falls flat in covering the political steps:
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"The facts are that it was Brian Mulroney's Tories that first substantially cut into Canada's record of building affordable housing. There was no fiercer critic of Mulroney's cuts than an opposition Liberal MP... Paul Martin."
"[Martin] 'When is this government going to begin to put money into affordable housing?'"
"When Paul Martin became Finance Minister, the deficit was the priority, and by 1996, the Federal Government was pretty well out of the housing business."
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Sounds like a defense of Paul Martin. But read carefully, these facts confirm that Martin excoriated the Tory government for cuts to affordable housing, but when in power himself made an about face -- eliminating federal funding for affordable housing all together.
The 'reality' hardly favours Martin.
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