Fred Hutton is the latest minister responsible for a policy ghetto.
You won’t find much on policy ghettos online or in libraries because the term isn’t widely used. In fact, outside of this space you likely won’t find it anywhere.
Oxford defines a ghetto as a “poor urban area occupied primarily by a minority group or groups.” It can also be a verb that means “to put in or restrict to an isolated or segregated area or group.”
A policy ghetto is the same thing except for an idea.
Policy ghettos are very popular in Newfoundland and Labrador. We have them for policies related to women (they’ve since added “gender” now it’s just a bigger ghetto), Indigenous people (used to be called “Native” Policy), francophones, people who live in Labrador, and now there’s one for “housing.”
The women’s policy office for example started out life in the 1970s when “women’s” rights was a popular topic. Women had the right to vote but they wanted more. Like equal pay for equal work. The office was until very recently just a small group of officials who advised the government generally on specific women’s issues.
Same was true of “Native” policy. It mostly handled land claims negotiations in the time when these things were starting out and “native” rights and issues became popular topics. Now it’s called “Indigenous” because that’s the popular word for people who used to be called natives or aboriginals. And it was a small office, like WPO, that advised generally on things related to that group.
Same is true for francophones.
The Labrador one is a local twist in a place, when not so long ago, the government party condemned a rival that wanted to spend $100 million of a multi billion budget annually in Labrador. Condemned them for risking bankruptcy for the whole province. That was the Danny Williams Pee Seas in 2007 slamming the Liberals who wanted to dedicate cash to Labrador. “Labrador” is 100% a social and policy ghetto in local politics. Labradorians know it.
Now we have housing.
Doesn’t fit the underclass, minority group tone of the rest?
Well, of course it does. It’s not about housing or homelessness. It’s about underclasses. People outside the groups that dominant local politics. And the housing department deals with people who get most of their basics of life from what used to be called social services, who work but who have very low incomes, and people who live in shelters and government owned housing.
Hutton has spent all his time talking about the people in the tents and talking to the groups focused on the people in the tents, one of which organized the tent city, sustains the tent city, and talks to the media about the tent city. even though housing affects everyone, he’s been focusing on one group.
In one respect, the tent city’s been a remarkable bit of political theatre that bore fruit in having a whole new ministry created solely to look after the few people we are talking about. But in a very real sense, the whole tent city shows how much “housing” or “affordable” housing is very much part of a classic social and policy ghetto in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The irony ought not to be lost on anyone, given the meaning of ghetto. And it’s not really irony, except in the sense of the Alanis Morissette song.
It’s something else.
As much as they fit a longer local trend, the creation of new policy ghettos and the elevation of some old ones to ministerial status in Newfoundland and Labrador is very much in keeping with an age outside Newfoundland and Labrador when segregation and racism are both trendy and progressive but are called by names like inclusion and anti-racism.
Take as a fresh example the story on the Ceeb’s website Sunday morning about a new drive for “inclusion” at Generic Canadian University in Newfoundland, which is actually about *segregation* both by sex and religion. There’s nothing about inclusion in the story because the people involved in organizing women-only exercise sessions at the university were never *excluded* from exercising. They simply organized a group for themselves the way other could organize one based on any physical or social characteristic.
The people who organized this exercise group wanted to segregate themselves while exercising - which is absolutely fine in a liberal democracy - but it is fundamentally wrong to call this any form of *inclusion* especially in the context of the story. The story fits the currently trendy interpretation, though, which in turn fits very well with the idea the local Ceeb, which basically reflects the editorial outlook from downtown Toronto, which is to say what is trendy in the United States.
Tents cities are a recurring theme in American politics and reflect American social and political ideas and problems. The more recent variety reflected in an Atlantic feature eight years ago (linked above) is no exception.
The Canadian varieties are different. They are not a common thing. And they are also very different from one another. In Ottawa, there’s a large encampment in Gatineau, next to a defunct ice hockey rink. In St. John’s, though, it’s conspicuously on the grounds of a provincial government building the name of which seems to hold some special meaning for local activists not familiar with local history and issues but able to spot a good political hook that will also catch the attention of local media.
If you wanted to or were forced to live rough, there are way better places to put a tent city in metro St. John’s, including the public campground behind Confederation Building. But on the exposed slope in front of the building next to a statue few know anything about or next to another building in the heart of the trendy downtown that stands out to most trendy activists only because of its name, you have an easy media shot. That’s 100% about easy media attention, which translates into political attention.
As for motivation, in Ottawa, we have an interesting expression of freedom from one resident of the Gatineau site: “It’s not easy living here, but it’s better than the shelter because there’s more live-and-let-live.’ … People have more privacy here and we look after each other. It’s a family.” That’s an under-explored local angle, at least among the local media stories.
There *is* a housing problem across Newfoundland and Labrador. Been there for decades as government after government ignored housing as an issue. Not just publicly owned housing but housing full-stop. They didn't even really just let the market look after things. They just neglected housing whether it was young families looking to start out or workers in western Labrador who couldn’t find a decent place to live at a price they could afford even though they made better wages than three quarters of the people in the province.
Both the policy ghetto and the mainland frame reflect the current political period we are in. Started in 2003 and it’s the third distinct period since Confederation. The period is marked by at least three characteristics:
It is more authoritarian and less democratic than the period 1972-2003.
The dominant groups (classes) are more interested in managing than leading, changing, or even adapting.
There was a dramatic concentration of social, economic, and political power in St. John’s.
Policy ghettos fit right into that since they are about managing political issues, as in controlling them rather than resolving them. Policy ghettos make it look like something is happening when it isn’t. And in a certain sense, what you have in all these ghettos is a part of game of management among the groups that dominate the local political scene. There’s no danger of upsetting the social and political order. No risk of a radical shift in government priorities. Nothing that would be actual change.
Notice how the public discussion is confined to only certain groups. Over the last 20 years, policy is not decided by individuals and groups. You only get to speak *and* be heard if you speak through a group. You can speak through the orchestrated consultations of the government’s EngageNL office, but there you’ll find your voice buried amidst the noise of the mob and any ideas that might catch on can be carefully culled by the officials who decipher the “consultations” before they get to a minister’s ear.
The other catch is that since most groups don’t speak publicly very much these days, there’s seldom any controversy over anything. Ah yes, this tent stuff looks controversial and there seemed to be a struggle within givernment but notice how quickly it all became very much part of the landscape. Supposed to be gone by Christmas Eve was the pledge yet the tents are still there through storm after storm of the winter. Pretty soon and it will summer and no one will remember the fuss. Yet it is not much of a news story anymore.
Don’t be surprised if at some point Fred Hutton suggests we need a Housing Accord to go with the Health Accord and the Education Accord. If something else minor bumps up along the way, they can declare a housing “think tank.” They are all versions of the easy way to shut everyone up completely. Like the “all-party” committee on universal basic income or the other one on electoral reform. Before there were accords, the Liberals had plans - the 2030 series was a favourite - and before that the Pea Seas had strategies for everything under the sun. No actual targets, dates, firm commitments or anything of the sort but their value was in the meetings and updates and consultations involved in developing the the strategy or plan or accord to keep all the potentially troublesome groups busy rather than organizing an effective campaign to get what they wanted.
And when the plan or accord or strategy finally emerged, every group had to support it because they’d been co-opted into silence already by their participation. Just like with with the Churchill Falls Genius Committee. Sucked in a bunch of people and then shut them up, which, like all these other strategies, controls the issue by guaranteeing silence (no public controversy) and if not complete silence, then by isolating the one or two voices as dissidents, malcontents, cranks, or just people rocking the boat.
Danny Williams labelled people in Stephenville not happy with the Abitibi shutdown deal he offered as “dissidents.” Kathy Dunderdale called a batch of anti-Muskrat Falls types “Known Critics” like we were usual suspects known to police. In a place that loves conformity, these sorts of labels reinforce silence and support the status quo. "Go along to get along" and “Know your place” are embroidered on the inside of our swaddling clothes so the words are pressed deep in the flesh before we are off the tit.
All of this falls under the more authoritarian and less democratic characteristic of the current period. Channeling discussions through groups is a very old-fashioned thing. An updated version of sectarianism, the basis on which society here was sorted until relatively recently. Not coincidental, you might say, that once the final vestige of sectarianism vanished with the end of religiously-controlled education in the late 1990s, we’ve seen the emergence of this new love of groups and group behaviour as a way to frame - and therefore manage - political discussion of any kind.
Even the parties are co-opted. There was no greater a show of impotence last week than the leader of the opposition waving around a government document tabled in the House of Assembly that was heavily censored using a law that was never intended for that purpose. Members of the House are entitled to see government documents without *any* redactions or omissions whatsoever. Yet, since since the late 1990s, the opposition parties have happily accepted getting only the information the government wants to release to them. That’s all part of the same business of managing and controlling.
What’s most amazing, though is that even though people can see all this going on and in some cases they even realize what it is - ask anyone in Labrador - no one has tried to turn the frustration into meaningful political action. Pierre Poilievre has done a masterful job of it nationally. Why not locally?
Well, locally for decades, you can almost see people rubbing the words left on their skin from the baby blankets any time the thought gets too strong.
And then - accordingly - they fall silently back in line.
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