From 1993 to 2001: How Canada and BC Declared War on the Poor

🏚️ "From 1993 to 2001: How Canada and BC Declared War on the Poor"

By Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita

In my last blog post, I wrote about how in 1993, the federal government made a devastating decision — they cut all funding for new affordable housing in Canada. That post struck a nerve. Because people are waking up. They're connecting the dots. They're realizing this housing crisis wasn’t just bad luck — it was designed.

But the story doesn’t stop in 1993. In 2001, British Columbia was hit with another crushing blow — this time from within.

⚠️ The Campbell Cuts: Austerity Masquerading as Reform

When Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals took power in 2001, they unleashed one of the most extreme austerity campaigns in Canadian provincial history. It wasn’t just belt-tightening — it was an ideological purge of compassion.

Here’s what happened:

• 💸 All funding for new provincial social housing was cut.
• 🧾 Welfare rates were frozen or reduced.
• 🔨 Eligibility for income assistance became stricter — some people were denied entirely.
• ⚖️ The BC Human Rights Commission was dismantled.
• 🧑‍⚖️ Legal aid was gutted.
• 🏥 Public healthcare workers were laid off en masse.
• 🧹 Women’s centers, advocacy groups, and support networks were defunded or closed.

The result? More people on the streets. More families in shelters. More seniors sleeping in stairwells. And not by accident — by policy.

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🤬 Was BC Being Punished?

Sometimes it feels like BC — particularly its poorest and most marginalized communities — were targeted.

We live on unceded Indigenous territory, land that was never surrendered, never sold, never given away. What better way to break the resistance, to control the land, than by displacing its stewards, criminalizing the poor, and making it impossible for working-class people to stay rooted?

Is it a coincidence that the city throws tents, walkers, ID cards, and medications into dumpsters while luxury condos rise all around?

Is it just “market forces” when Indigenous women, single moms, and Elders are priced out of their own ancestral lands?

Or is this the modern face of colonialism?

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💡 This Is About Power, Not Just Poverty

The housing crisis is not just an economic issue. It’s political, colonial, and deeply moral.

What happened in 1993 and 2001 weren’t isolated mistakes. They were deliberate choices, made to serve an ideology of profit over people, property over land, and silence over justice.

And every day since, we’ve watched the consequences:

• 🪦 People dying on the street.
• 🚨 Emergency rooms and shelters overrun.
• 🧠 Mental health collapsing under the weight of trauma.
• 🔁 A cycle of poverty made permanent by government design.

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📜 But We Were Promised Better

Canada is a signatory to the United Nations’ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — which includes the right to adequate housing.

In 2019, the Canadian government passed the National Housing Strategy Act, declaring housing a human right.

So why are we still throwing people’s tents in the trash?
Why are cities still banning encampments instead of building homes?

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🔥 It’s Time to Speak the Truth Loud and Clear:

• Housing is a human right.
• Poverty is a policy choice.
• The cuts of 1993 and 2001 were acts of social violence.
• Gentrification and displacement are modern colonization.
• We will not be silent while lives are destroyed in the name of “market forces.”

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🛠️ What We Must Demand:

1. Restore deep federal and provincial funding for non-market housing.
2. Rebuild the BC Human Rights Commission and legal aid services.
3. End the criminalization of poverty and protect the belongings and dignity of all.
4. Support Indigenous-led housing and Land Back movements.
5. Audit non-profits and developers who profit while people sleep in the rain.
6. Treat this as the emergency it is — with action, not PR.

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✊ This Is Not Hopeless

People across BC and Canada are rising up — in courtrooms, in council chambers, in encampments, in art, in song, in story.

We are not alone.
We are not powerless.
We are witnesses, survivors, and truth-tellers.

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If you are angry, good.
If you feel heartbroken, don’t shut it down.
Use it. Share this. Start conversations. Write letters. Demand change.

We owe it to those we’ve lost.
We owe it to those still fighting to survive.
We owe it to our future.

We will not be erased. Not from this land. Not from this story.

—
Tina Winterlik (Zipolita)
📸 Instagram | ✍️ Blog | 🌐 Zipolita.com
#HousingJustice #BCHousingCrisis #1993Cuts #2001Austerity #UncededLand #PovertyIsViolence #HumanRights #LandBack #ZipolitaSpeaks #DigitalHorizonZ