Richelle Wiseman

Last week, the Mayor of Vancouver stood on the steps of a downtown Catholic church to make an important announcement.  This week, he will table a motion to go before city council in April to make faith-based charitable organizations exempt from a city land use permit which could hinder services to the city’s poor.

Apparently, soup kitchens and shelters for homeless and poor people sponsored by churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples, cause line-ups, which annoy residents who live nearby these downtown locations.    In response to concerns of neighbours, city officials decided to require religious organizations to take out a “social service permit” which would involve hiring security guards to manage the lineups and to obtain personal identification information from homeless clientele.   

Mayor Sam Sullivan thinks those requirements are going too far, and will create unnecessary hoops for organizations keen on helping Vancouver’s less fortunate citizens.  

According to the Globe and Mail, a group of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh leaders got together to speak out against the new permit requirements, in defense of the church which started the controversy in the first place, Tenth Avenue Alliance Church, a historic evangelical congregation in the Vancouver core.

It was a courageous move for the mayor who is facing a civic election this year.  He has taken an important stand to acknowledge that religion does have a role to play in the public square, and surely, helping the poor is one of those roles. 

Who knew there are civic officials in Canada who want religious organizations to obtain permits to practice compassion, love, mercy, and generosity?  

The notion seems to be that places of worship are confined to worship, and that “land use” for such buildings is limited to private activities.  But this is to misunderstand the very essence of religious communities which historically, and intrinsically, seek to serve the wider community.   Most religious groups don’t distinguish between worship and “social service.”  In fact, many houses of worship would claim that serving the poor is itself an act of worship, and a natural expression of religious beliefs.  Indeed, across Canada, religious organizations have historically attended to a wide range of social needs by providing education, hospitals, hospices, orphanages, soup kitchens, homes for unwed mothers, shelters for homeless, the list goes on.  

So why the need for an additional permit to help people?  Surely the complaints of a few people with NIMBY syndrome should not be allowed to prevail.

Furthermore, the bureaucrats shouldn’t set up red tape around “holy ground”, when the city is grasping for ways to address homelessness and poverty.