The Current - Frustrated mayors call on Ford to help end homeless encampments

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Some Ontario mayors are asking Premier Doug Ford to invoke the notwithstanding clause so they can clear homeless encampments in their cities. Matt Galloway talks to Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, who signed the letter; and Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, who says the solution lies elsewhere.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. In almost every city in Canada, and in some smaller towns too, you are likely to see people living outside in tents. It is a symptom of a housing and homelessness crisis, and it's been going on for years. Many encampments are in parks, and sometimes police are ordered to clear people out. That was three years ago in Toronto as police cleared tents from a downtown park. Ontario big city mayors say there are currently 1,400 encampments across that province,

and those mayors are calling on higher levels of government to help them with the crisis. All of them agree that they need more funding and more mental health and addiction supports, but some are asking for more, including use of the Notwithstanding Clause to remove encampments from public parks. This is a request that is being watched by communities and leaders of those communities across this country. Mary Ann Mead-Ward is the Mayor of Burlington and the Chair of the Ontario Big City Mayors. Patrick Brown is the Mayor of Brampton, Ontario. Good morning to you both. Morning. Thanks for having us.

Thank you for being here. Mayor Mead Ward, tell me what's going on in your city when it comes to people living outdoors. We certainly have people who are living in tents at various places. We don't have the scale of encampments that are present in cities, really large and small, across the province, rural, northern, big cities, small cities. And we're fortunate in Halton Region that we have been able to offer people a bed. And, you know, the recent court ruling said that you can't just clear out encampments if you have nowhere for folks to go. And that's a compassionate response. So we have a team of people, mental health workers, social workers,

that go out and visit with people who are living in tents. We offer them services. We let them know that it's not safe or ideal for them to continue living where they are. They don't always take our services, but we do have a place for them. That being said, our shelter system in Halton is 140% right now. So we are oversubscribed. We are doing everything we can, but we need help from the federal and the provincial government. What's been the response from people in your community? We'll get into more of this in detail, but just briefly, Mayor Meadward, what's been the response

from people in your community to a very visible sign of homelessness? Well, people are worried for, first and foremost, they're really compassionate and worried for the people who are living in tents. They want help to be provided. They ask me regularly, what am I doing to help people who find themselves in this situation? They also are feeling unsettled for themselves. And when they see folks pitching a tent near their property,

they wonder if they're, you know, do they have a propane tank? Is the tent going to burn down? Is that person going to be, you know, are they going to behave in a safe manner? And so it is really unsettling for everybody, and it's both. There's concern for people in those encampments and tents for their well-being, but there's also broader concern for the entire community. Mayor Patrick Brown, what does it look like in Brampton when it comes to encampments? Yeah, it's challenging. And so there's a lot of worry about the inability for municipalities to be able to deal with this growing challenge. to deal with this growing challenge. As always, when it comes to funding and support,

it always gets downloaded to cities. And this is something that we really haven't had a compassionate response to. We're allowing people to die on our streets every single day. I believe it's 21 or 23 a day addictions, related deaths in Canada in locations like encampments. And I can tell you in Brampton, in Peel Region, everyone in an encampment is offered a shelter bed. Part of the challenge, though, is that in our shelter system, there's a prohibition

on drug use. And so we really struggle with the ability to bring individuals in from encampments. Usually there's an intertwining with severe addiction issues. Fentanyl is a major killer in our region, and it's something we really struggle with. And so same question to you, Patrick Brown, that I asked to Maramid Ward, which is what's the response been from members of your community, from your constituents, the people who live in Brampton and Peel Region to, as I say, a very visible example of homelessness? Anger that in a country as prosperous as Canada, we can have people living in dangerous and precarious conditions. that for the last year, Brampton has been removing some encampments under the context that we've had encampments that were in floodplains, where there was propane tanks that the fire department felt was a significant risk to the nearby area. And so we have had some dismantling of encampments.

We know this is, I would say, a gray area for the municipal ability to remove encampments. But out of an abundance of caution and safety, you know, we have been. Mayor Meadward, as the head of the Ontario Big City Mayors Caucus, do you feel like cities are able to handle this issue? We're absolutely not able to handle it on our own. And the OBCM, and we are 29 mayors of the largest cities in Ontario. We represent collectively more than 70% of the Ontario population. So it's municipalities over 100,000. And we started the Solve the Crisis campaign.

There's a website, solvethecrisis.ca, in August, and said, look, we can't do this on our own anymore. Our shelter system that we fund with provincial dollars is oversubscribed. Municipalities are contributing money to build supportive housing. One of the best examples is in London. Kingston, Ontario has done some terrific work as well. But this is simply not something that was ever intended to be funded through the property tax base. And we it's not our lane, so we're just going to let this unfold. As Patrick said, people are dying on the streets. We're not going to do that. But we are stretched. We're stretched thin. We don't have the resources and the expertise. Our hospitals are becoming the new shelters. Our police officers are becoming mental health workers. It wasn't how any of that was supposed to be intended. And for the dollars

to build supportive housing, you know, the money that is spent to house somebody, let's say, in a hospital room overnight who's having an acute mental health crisis or is overdosing, we could help far more people if we directed it to supportive housing and preventive action. Patrick Brown, I can hear you agreeing in the background. Yeah, absolutely. The resource strain this puts on cities is extraordinary. And just to give you the appeal context, just with appeal police, and I sit on their board, in the last two years, we've spent 30,000 police hours waiting in the hospital for someone who is struggling with addictions on the street.

We've used up 150,000 police hours dealing with encampments and individuals struggling with, you know, obviously a severe case of addictions. And in some cases, it's the same individuals again and again. We had one case locally that we had to send a police officer to 53 times. This is not humane. This is not compassionate that we're allowing this to happen in Canada. And sadly, I don't think it's unique in Brampton or Burlington. I think you're hearing these horror stories across the country. And so in the wake of that, about a dozen mayors are asking the Premier of Ontario,

Doug Ford, to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to override a recent court ruling that would restrict municipalities from removing encampments without providing shelter options. One of the mayors who signed that letter is the mayor of Guelph, Cam Guthrie. He spoke with CBC's Power and Politics about why. Take a listen. Where is the rights of the mom that wants to go to the park or the elderly lady that wants to sit on the bench in our downtown core that's overtaken by encampments to enjoy our downtown? Where is the rights of other people, too? And this is where the friction is and where we need guidance and clarity around it for municipalities as we offer a pathway to health and shelter for people, but also try to keep safety and welcoming spaces clean and clear for everybody. I think that's a fair and reasonable position, and most people would actually agree with me. Patrick Brown, you signed that letter. Why did you do that? Well, first of all, there's a divergence of opinion, and Marianne does a

great job trying to bring all the mayors on the same page on these issues. I wasn't at the meeting where we had this. I sent a representative, Rowena Santos, who is also an FCM and a councillor in Brampton, to attend on my behalf. And we did support that motion. We're in a little bit of a different position because we have been removing encampments. But we do realize that they could be challenged. There could be injunctions. And making sure that cities have additional tools, I think is important. I go back to my premise, it's not right to allow 23 Canadians

a day to die in precarious conditions like encampments. We just can't accept that as our reality. I think right now, you know, my, my position, I'm sure my, you know, similar perspective with other mayors who signed this, this letter is, you know, the premier said, put it in writing. And I think many of us are just so frustrated at what, what has become a broken status quo. There's inadequate funding for mental health support. There's inadequate funding for shelter. How does, how does signing a letter that would ask the premier to override the charter in some ways with the notwithstanding clause address that? And one of the reasons why the notwithstanding clause is required is because of a ruling in Waterloo and Kingston that restricted cities from evicting encampments on constitutional grounds. The judge said that a lack of shelter space means that the bylaw, the ability to remove those folks, would infringe upon their charter rights.

So in signing that, Mayor Brown, what are you hoping to achieve? Well, hopefully it really draws more attention to a crisis that has been largely ignored. And so I think the concern is that decision in Waterloo could become a precedent elsewhere, inhibit a municipal ability to deal with not only a safety concern for the individuals living in encampments, but for the surrounding neighborhood. Obviously, we have a huge number of criminal incidents around the encampments as well. And so I think there's a plethora of challenges, and this is a plea for help. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so

many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Mayor May Ward, you did not sign the letter about the notwithstanding clause. Why not? Well, certainly I understand the frustrations and the concerns that Patrick and Cam and others have outlined related to this issue. It is a humanitarian crisis and it's affecting both people in encampments but also people living near those encampments.

The question is what is the best tool to resolve that? And I remained absolutely convinced that the best tool is for governments to provide supportive housing, provide mental health supports, addiction counselling, and that is the basis of the Solve the Crisis campaign that OBCM did lead, and that is the consensus from our mayors that that was the right approach. We launched that back in August. That is the solution, and when you look at the ruling, the ruling didn't say you can't clear out

encampments. They said you can't do it if you don't have somewhere for folks to go. So to me, it's not a solution to simply invoke the notwithstanding clause to clear out an encampment. Where are you clearing folks to? Where are they going to go? A neighboring park, a neighboring municipality? All we do then is shuffle this problem around rather than actually solve it. What would you say to the comments that Cam Guthrie made though specifically? I mean, I think everybody would agree that the long-term solution is housing, but his point was that people want to be able to use those public spaces comfortably. And he made the point in that comment that he feels that most people would agree with him.

Do you think he's right, that most people would agree with him? I think people are expecting that we do something to ensure the folks that are living on the street and on benches and in tents have a place to go. I think that's what we agree on, that we're a compassionate and humanitarian country. And it's not just a long-term solution. We do have, as I said, we are oversubscribed in our shelter system. We make room. We also have relationships with local hotels here in Halton where we can provide a bed for somebody immediately, and we do.

And so I understand the concern around long-term housing takes a little bit longer to put together, but we do have short-term solutions. I've had folks reach out and say, we have modular home solutions. That kind of scenario is playing out in municipalities that have really large encampments. So we have the ability to solve this now. We have the ability to solve it for the short, medium, and long term. But I think it's a distraction for us to fight about the notwithstanding clause when we know what we need to do. Mayor Brown, is there, and one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to you both about this is because, as I say, people across the country in cities and towns are

watching this to see what happens here in this situation. Do you think there is a way to strike a balance in sharing those public spaces between people who are living in encampments because they don't have anywhere to go because the shelters are full and the neighbors around those parks where people have set up tents? Well, you know, I have to say, how about when the shelter's not full? How about we've just increased our capacity? And so we are offering shelter beds. This sort of blurs into another conversation, which is what they're doing in BC now.

They're about to embark upon involuntary treatment. Do you believe that people, if there are shelter spaces available, that people should be forced to go into those shelter spaces? Should be forced to go into those shelter spaces? So right now we're offering a shelter space and we've got a challenge where people using opioids in encampments are refusing to go to the shelter that prohibits drug use. And so in that instance, yeah, I think the city has an obligation to make sure we don't have dangerous criminal activity in a public space. Imagine the child going to that park and accidentally having an encounter with fentanyl. That's not safe for the community. We have an obligation and responsibility to deal with this. In the meantime, winter is coming. I mean, it's now the 8th of November. And so I'll ask you both just in the last minute and a half or so that we have Patrick Brown first,

what do you think this year will be like for people who are living outdoors in your city? Precarious. And it's worrisome. And it's why I think there's not one single tool in the toolkit. I think mayors like myself are asking for numerous tools, more shelter support, more mental health funding, additional tools to deal with those with addictions who are unable to accept help. And so there's not one magic solution. Mayor Meadward, what do you think this winter is going to be like for, again, the constituency of people, as you said, who find themselves in a situation

where the shelter system is at 140 or some percent capacity and people are still living in tents? This is a humanitarian crisis. And if we saw this unfolding in another country because of a civil war or a tsunami or earthquake, we'd be sending in teams of people to help people and to rebuild. That's the kind of approach that we need to take here. And that's why the Ontario Big City Mayors has called this a humanitarian crisis. That's exactly what it is. And we care for the people that are in those tents, but we also care for everyone living in our community that is watching this unfold. This is a familiar story across the

country and people are watching what's happening in Ontario to see how this unfolds. Thank you both for being here. My pleasure. Thanks, Matt. Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and Burlington Mayor Marian Mead Ward. She is also head of the Ontario Big City Mayors Caucus. As I mentioned, this is a story that's playing out in big cities and small towns and everything in between right across this country. Your thoughts on what you've heard this morning in terms of dealing with the encampment crisis and addressing that crisis. You can email us thecurrentatcbc.ca. You can email us thecurrentatcbc.ca. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.