J'accuse

>> Pointe St-Charles fights back with its own people's court

by JACQUIE CHARLTON

A sweet revenge fantasy was played out one afternoon this weekend by the long-picked-on citizens of Pointe St-Charles. Bringing their government oppressors, or at least videotapes of them, before a tribunal, they listened to the charges against them and condemned them all to a punishment so reasonable it might actually be heeded.

During five hours of sometimes-gripping courtroom drama, Saturday's Pointe St-Charles People's Tribunal heard testimony from residents speaking on diminished employment opportunities, welfare agent harassment and the effect on their lives of cutbacks to Employment Insurance, health care, housing, education and legal aid.

In defence, politicians including Paul Martin, Pierre Pettigrew, Pauline Marois and Louise Harel explained their anti-social actions to the tribunal via videotaped newsclips. In addition, a live mock defence lawyer in a black robe struggled to convince the crowd that the harshness of their lives was necessary to the well-being of the economy as a whole. In vain.

At the end of the day, the five judges of the People's Tribunal--Warren Allmand, president of the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Radio-Canada radio host Myra Cree, Women's Federation of Quebec president Françoise David, union activist Madeleine Parent and playwright and Pointe resident David Fennario--declared the politicians guilty of premeditation and condemned them to answer to the people of Pointe St-Charles; more specifically, to fulfil their modest request that Premier Bouchard come to the Pointe, without any media accompaniment, and listen to the people for a day, preferably before the vote on welfare reform is held in June.

The testimonies and verdicts will be sent to Premier Bouchard and a dozen or so other elected representatives and government departments at different levels, as well as the United Nations' Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights.

Roughly 250 spectators sat through nearly five hours of testimony. It began with a woman who described what it was like to have a job, but have no money left over--after her family's needs had been met--to ever hope of paying off their thousands of dollars in debt. "Even so," she told the court, "we are a success story, just because we manage to get by."

A taped testimony was next, from a single father on welfare who had been asked by his welfare agent to provide proof of having made 84 job applications within days. The man had to meet his agent with the results, but because the meeting was scheduled the same day as a job interview, he asked the agent if it could be postponed. The agent assented, but then proceeded to cut $150 from each of the man's welfare cheques for the next year for non-compliance with the rules. Some people's cheques had been cut so low after various individualized interventions that they could no longer afford a phone, said Jean Lalande of the Pointe's Welfare Rights Committee: "Welfare pretends that cutting people's cheques will help them find a job. Imagine finding a job without a phone."

The testimony continued throughout the day, providing information that was sometimes startling. In terms of life expectancy, Pointe St-Charles residents live 10 years less than Westmounters. Even less well-known is the fact that children in the Pointe average nine times more cavities than those in Westmount. Eighty-seven per cent of the households with children are headed by a single parent. High-schoolers have an 85-per-cent dropout rate. And 60 per cent of the population is functionally illiterate.

The recent cutbacks to social services that are supposed to alleviate all this, when described by the witnesses, seemed so stingy as to be almost laughable. Promoters of an adult education program who struggled for years to get a government grant, for instance, finally got $35,000, but saw it cut to $20,000 the next year, and then zero the next.

How did the defence react to all the damning evidence? Jacques Benoit, a community organizer with the Pointe St-Charles Community Clinic, played the defendants' lawyer with suitable hammy aplomb. "We're all suffering," or "Everyone must tighten their belts," or "It's the federal government's fault," he would intone. The audience responded by jeering, booing and vigorously pelting the man with peanuts, and by the end of the afternoon, glowed en masse with the satisfaction that justice had been served.