Safe Streets Act to be challenged in court

Fair Change Community Legal Clinic challenges law created in 1999 to curtail rise in aggressive panhandling. Law discriminates against people with mental health and addiction issues, it says.

Thestar.com
June 22, 2017
By Emily Mathieu

Gerry Williams spent almost a decade without a place to call home, trapped, as he puts it, by alcoholism and undiagnosed mental health issues as he was slowly buried under a mountain of debt.

“I am a very different person today, than when I was living on the streets,” said Williams, 46, reading from a statement at Queen’s Park on Thursday.

Over nine years, Williams racked up $65,000 in fines, through convictions for provincial offences, including loitering, littering, drinking in public and trespassing. He estimates $10,000 was tied to tickets issued to him through the Safe Streets Act, when he was panhandling to try to survive.

The law was created in 1999 to curtail was what seen as a rise in aggressive behaviour by people asking for money on the street, including through squeegeeing.

Close to two decades later, Williams stood at Queen’s Park to mark the launch of a constitutional challenge to the act, launched by the Fair Change Community Legal Clinic and filed in Ontario Superior Court, on Wednesday.

Fair Change executive director Joanna Nefs said it is the “the worst kind of law,” and one that disproportionately impacts people with mental health and addiction issues and costs the public $2 million in court fees and paperwork each year for fines that will likely never be paid. The convictions can also lead to ruined credit scores, stop people from getting driver’s licences, housing or decent work, she said.

“It hurts only the most vulnerable and it increases homelessness. The exact opposite of what it is supposed to do. When this happens in Canada we have a remedy: we challenge the law.”

Renu Mandhane, chief commissioner for the Ontario Human Rights Commission, called poverty one of the most pressing human rights issues facing Canadian society.
The provincial commitment to ending chronic homelessness in 10 years is welcome, she said, but laws that criminalize people who are trapped in poverty do not line up with that goal, or the human rights code.

“The Safe Streets Act unfortunately is one of those laws,” said Mandhane.

Fair Change and the many allies who joined them at Queen’s Park want the government to repeal the act, not fight it out in court. If it does proceed, they would aim for a hearing next summer.

“The government knows the legislation is discriminatory and wasteful,” said MPP Cheri DiNovo, who tabled private members’ bills in 2015 and 2016, calling for the act to be repealed. “We need to end the persecution of the poor,” she said in a statement.

Emilie Smith, a spokesperson with the Ministry of the Attorney General, said the notice of application is being reviewed, but she said the ministry would not comment on the case, because it is before the courts.

“Our priority is to ensure that every Ontarian has an affordable and safe place to call home,” said Smith, in an email. “That’s why we’re taking a cross-government approach to address how the issues of poverty, homelessness, mental illness and addiction intersect with the criminal justice system,” including the creation of a program to help vulnerable people navigate the bail process, she said.

Toronto Police spokesperson Mark Pugash could not provide statistics on the number of tickets given out by police, by press time. He said the law would be applied when there is clear danger to an individual or the public, for example, in the case where people were asking for money near moving cars along the Lakeshore.

“The danger speaks for itself. This is one tool to try and deal with it,” said Pugash.

Williams grew up on a reserve near James Bay. It was a traumatic and isolated upbringing, he said, in a family and community where generations had been forced through the residential school system.

“I was not equipped for city life when I left the reserve.”

He said his massive debt increased his anxiety, made it difficult to maintain his sobriety and manage his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, connected to his trauma as a child.

“I could never pay $65,000 in fines, or $10,000 or even $100,” said Williams, who relied on Ontario Disability Support Payments. “I lived paycheque to paycheque.”

In 2016, Justice Katrina Mulligan ruled his debt should be wiped out, sentencing him to probation and community service.

“I’ve been stuck in limbo,” Williams told the Star’s Alex Ballingall, outside the courthouse, in 2016. “My mind’s still on the street.”

At Queen’s Park on Thursday, Williams said he has been sober for three years. He has a home and has found work.

Telling his story, he said, is a part of his continuing recovery and a way to help people from ending up in the same position he was in.

“The law isn’t fair. It is wrong and should be repealed,” he said.