Canada

It's true that it is pretty hard to maintain a job while living in a tent.

I work with homeless people. It is obviously true that many have mental health and addiction issues. It is also true that many could work if they had to. And, it is true that there are often alternatives to living in an encampment. The homeless shelters tend to empty out in the summer and lots of people move into the encampments, because why not? They can spread out more, have their own space, they don't have to get up at a certain time, and in some encampments in parks the view is pretty darn nice. Also, someone comes around to bring you food and water and takes away your garbage. Lots of people donate camping supplies, too. This means that the encampments are larger than they need to be if the available shelter spaces were used to maximum capacity.

So, Ford is partly correct. The encampments do not need to be as large as they are. He is also correct that some of the million people on welfare could work. Unfortunately, it is hard to sort those who really need help from those that are just lazy, which means that the truly needy continue to suffer.

At the same time, the government needs to get back in the business of building affordable housing and providing gainful employment for people with very low skills and motivation who can't hack it in the private sector. In the old days, those people would have provided farm labour or manual road/rail/canal building, but all of that is now mechanized. So, instead, we let them rot on welfare while they get weaker, sicker, and more depressed. We really need to get back to requiring some form of work from those receiving public welfare. It doesn't have to be hard labour, but is has to be something other than sitting around doing nothing and getting depressed.