With only days until the legislature rises and MPPs return to their ridings for the holidays, the Ford government is promising to introduce new legislation to dismantle homeless encampments in towns and cities across Ontario.
In a letter published Thursday morning, Ontario Premier Doug Ford outlined his plan to a group of 12 mayors who had asked him to use the notwithstanding clause to break up encampments.
“We are acting to put an end to the public disorder, drug use and trafficking and loss of public space that have resulted from the widespread growth in encampments,” the premier wrote.
“These are serious problems that are impacting communities across Ontario, with people rightly demanding action. Enough is enough.”
The planned legislation, which has only four days to pass if the government wants it in place before Christmas, has not been made public yet but will be led by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
Ford said it would include new funding to increase shelter beds for people being removed from encampments that get taken apart. It will also add explicit legal bans on public drug use and “new tools” for police to enforce those rules.
New resources and enforcement
Housing Minister Paul Calandra said the bill will include new resources for municipalities, which look set to be tasked with following through on removing encampments.
“We will be ensuring that we give resources to our municipal partners to ensure that we can have public safety but at the same time, we understand that those who are in encampments by and large from mental health and addiction and we’ll be providing additional resources to that as well,” he said.
Calandra said he had “heard loud and clear” from municipalities that they needed action on encampments.
The government is also pointing to other commitments it has already made as evidence it is taking a holistic approach to encampments.
An announcement during the summer of $378 million to create 375 highly-supportive additional recovery beds is one policy being held up. An annual spend of just below $700 million on the province’s homelessness prevention programs is another.
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“We think that the resources that we’re providing next week, and the enhancements that we’re providing next week, will allow our partners to remove encampments,” Calandra said.
“And if that is not the case we will not hesitate to take further action.”
The notwithstanding clause
Just a few weeks before Ford’s letter was sent, the premier had suggested he was ready and willing to use the notwithstanding clause to pass legislation to remove encampments.
Using the clause would have meant the law could have remained in place, even if a court struck it down as violating Charter rights.
That clause could have been necessary to keep the law in place because of a constitutional precedent set by decisions in British Columbia that established a right for a person to shelter themselves if accessible indoor spaces aren’t available.
London Coun. Sam Trosow, who is also a law professor at Western University, told Global News the legal precedent doesn’t say people have an “absolute right to live in encampments” but that they do provide limits to dismantling them.
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“What the court cases say is the city cannot clear them unless there are reasonable and appropriate alternatives where people can go,” Trosow said. “At that point, if those alternatives are there — which I would say in the case of most cities they are not there yet — once those alternatives are there, it would be OK to clear encampments.”
The legislation has not yet been tabled, and the government has not revealed details of what additional support it plans to offer to cities beyond more shelter funding.
Calandra did not say when asked whether the government was trying to create a new shelter bed for each encampment resident ordered to move.
“What we’re doing is providing additional resources — not only enhancing resources for shelters and temporary shelters,” he said.
A group of mayors
The policy announcement came in response to a request penned by a number of Ontario mayors, who suggested more urgent and extreme action was necessary to clear encampments.
Several municipal leaders had attempted to get a consensus within the 29-member Big City Mayors’ Caucus to request help from the province, including using the notwithstanding clause but weren’t able to get support from all members.
After failing to get census from the Big City Mayors, a smaller group led by Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall made the request the government appears to be responding to.
“We’re extremely encouraged,” Nuttall said at Queen’s Park on Thursday.
“I’ll be happy when we can provide all the services on the ground to help individuals who are looking for it. I’ll be happy when families can start to use parks again and don’t feel like there are concerns.”
When asked what level of force he was prepared to accept to remove encampments from parks, Nuttall said thankfully the situation has not come to that point yet, but he would look to provincial and federal standards to act in a “thoughtful and cautious manner.”
Local officials already work with people in encampments to offer them services and housing, he said.
“It’s not a one-night problem,” Nuttall said.
“We had an individual in Brock Park in the city of Barrie. That individual was told the police would be coming and dealing with this if he wasn’t going to accept the housing and accept the offers that were being made to him, and that individual moved on.”
Nuttall said he did not know where the man went.
The approach is different from the one advocated by major municipal organizations.
For the best part of a year, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, along with the Big City Mayor’s Caucus, have been calling for the government to take a coordinated approach to homelessness.
They have asked for a multi-pronged approach that tackles the root causes of encampments rather than simply breaking them up and suggested a new minister with homelessness as their sole focus should be appointed.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, who did not sign her name to the request sent to Ford, said she understood why some of her colleagues were struggling.
“They all have issues and some of them, because they are smaller municipalities, may not have the financial capacity that we do so it is hard for them to build shelters and built supportive housing,” she said on Thursday.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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