We Canadians know no depth when it comes to giving.

We give at the office.

We give at home.

We give at our children’s school, at our places of worship and even when we are on holidays.

We give at sports events, at the supermarket check-out counters and we give when we see the need in stories on TV and in the newspapers.

Come Chinese New Year, Diwali, Vaisakhi, Id and Christmas, we just give, give and give some more.

Face it folks, we are uncontrollable givers.

And we don’t have a problem with it, at least until of late.

Our giving nature has led to a swelling population of aggressive beggars in Vancouver.

They are everywhere and in your face with made-up stories of woe that range from needing two bucks to take the bus to hospital to wanting money for a phantom vehicle that has broken down a block beyond fantasy lane.

Try and shake them away and they follow you with a sense of indignation and entitlement to the contents of your wallet.

You can’t visit Vancouver these days without going home with souvenir tales of encounters with panhandlers.

The city is overflowing with panhandlers and street sleepers and nobody it seems wants to do anything concrete to rid "the most livable place on earth" of this human menace.

The more criminally inclined walk into restaurants and bars looking for unattended purses.

If you are trying to reduce your carbon footprint, chances are your bike will end up in a pawn shop while you are at work.

Bus stops stink of urine and back alleys are strewn with garbage tossed by dumpster divers.

Instead of the "good mornings" and "good afternoons" we are now saying "sorry I don’t have change" when navigating the streets of Vancouver.

In short we are losing our sense of pride in this city.

The feeble attempts by the police, city hall and provincial politicians have not deterred our aggressive and determined panhandlers.

More housing, more welfare and more social services is only going to do so much, because many of those on our streets are not homeless, they simply refused to be housed.

The poverty lobby never fails to grab an opportunity to make us feel guilty by saying that our government and by extension, all of us, are not doing enough to help people on the street.

The Safe Streets Act, the Trespass Act and other public-nuisance laws are totally ineffective in tackling our aggressive panhandler problem.

Listen up people.

The drug culture infects nearly every panhandler in the city.

When you give people money on the street, you are not helping them.

The chief reason why our population of beggars is growing daily is because we give and encourage panhandling on the street.

So here is a solution.

Pass a law in Vancouver making it illegal to give money to panhandlers.

Put up signs on the streets telling people that it is OK to say "No" to panhandlers.

And show the well intentioned that there are better ways to help.