Clinic in York Region celebrates 'partial victory’ after Barrie halts proposed anti-homeless-aid bylaws

Amendments to Bills 67, 68 purportedly banned giving aid on public property to anyone experiencing homelessness

Yorkregion.com
June 26, 2023
Melissa Wallace

After being slammed by the general public and advocacy organizations, the City of Barrie backed away from its plans to amend Bills 67 and 68 which would have made it illegal to provide aid to people experiencing homelessness.

A social activist asked Community Legal Clinic of York Region (CLCYR) https://clcyr.on.ca, based in Richmond Hill, to provide a legal opinion on June 19, and they acted quickly to express concerns. The non-profit advocates for people in need and has provided free legal advice and representation to low-income residents of York Region since 1992.

In a letter to Barrie's council, CLCYR said: "To our knowledge, this move is unprecedented in Canada and would set us on a dangerous and dark path ... In our view the proposed bylaws are unlawful and will be struck down by our Courts, but not without first inflicting grievous harm on your most vulnerable citizens."

Jeff Schlemmer, CLCYR executive director, explained that if Barrie got away with enacting a law that said you couldn't give something to somebody, other municipalities could look into doing it, too.

"Till now, sanctions have all been against people who are homeless, which is terrible for starters, because we know that homelessness has gone through the roof in the last five years," said Schlemmer. "Most of these people are homeless for the first time, regular people whose circumstances have changed and they just can't afford to live.

"I think it's appalling for them to be criminalized for being poor, and now the extension, in this case, would apply to everybody. We would all be restricted in our ability to care for other people."

As word spread, the public took action. The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness set up a website for people to easily email their city councillors and tweeted that they had more than 23,000 people respond in a span of 24 hours.

On June 18, in a tweet that generated more than 472,000 views, a social activist named Jennifer van Gennip expressed disdain for the proposed bylaw, criminalizing the provision of survival items to unhoused people on public property. “It's undemocratic and it's mean. This is not how we take care of each other.”

At its June 21 meeting, council decided to refer the bills back to staff and said in a statement: "The intention of the bylaw was to get organizations like the Busby Centre to stop handing out food and supplies along the Barrie waterfront and instead move their outreach to private property. The need for this change was due to numerous complaints the City received from residents over many years."

The statement went on to say that Busby Centre sent a letter committing to stop handing out supplies along the waterfront, and would instead move their outreach to private property. "This is a positive step forward for council and as such, the proposed bylaw is not needed to proceed at this time."

Sharon Crowe, CLCYR's director of legal services, said she was happy with the decision, but not optimistic. "I consider this a partial victory," she said. According to her, the city's statement read as though there was a "problematic non-profit" that was driving the need for the bylaw and that they had "acted unreasonably for years." The statement, she said, also made it sound as though "we got it all wrong" and misinterpreted what they meant, when the language was very clear in terms of prohibiting food and donations. She also said there was no apology.

"I think their decision to back down on this is that allegedly Busby Centre is not going to be distributing aid on the waterfront which signals that the root cause of this is the visibility of the homeless. People are taking issue with the visibility of homelessness, but not homelessness itself. So there's nothing that transpired that would actually deal with any of the root causes of homelessness, you're just kind of taking it slightly out of public view."