After signalling for months they were planning to put forward a bill to remove homeless encampments from parks and other public spaces, the Progressive Conservatives put forward their plan for doing so on Thursday.
The Doug Ford government tabled Bill 242, the Safer Municipalities Act, which proposes a suite of new measures aimed at making it easier for municipalities and police to evict people from homeless encampments. The legislation also provides an additional $75.5 million in funding for cities to use to find “reasonable alternative accommodation” for the displaced encampment dwellers.
During a news conference on Thursday morning, Ford stood in front of the more than a dozen big city mayors who had accepted his invitation to ask for new anti-encampment legislation and thanked them for their “partnership in tackling the widespread growth of homeless encampments.”
“These encampments are taking over public spaces with illegal drugs happening out in the open and creating huge safety risks for people and communities,” Ford said. “Enough is enough. It has to stop, and it will stop.”
The legislation amends the Trespass to Property Act to "enhance penalties” for those who set up encampments, making “continuous” trespassing — staying more than 24 hours after being told to leave — an aggravating factor for judges to consider when sentencing somebody convicted of violating the act. It will also allow the courts to hand out longer sentences to people it considers likely to trespass again.
A “public space” will be defined by regulations after the bill is passed.
The legislation also proposes new rules explicitly forbidding the use of illicit drugs in public spaces. If passed, police officers will be able to tell encampment dwellers to stop using drugs or leave the area. If they refuse, they face a fine of up to $10,000 or six months in jail.
Bill 242 would also allow officers to “seize and remove any substances found in plain view” without a search warrant and have them destroyed or sent away for chemical analysis. Officers can also arrest people without a warrant and compel them to provide their “full name, date of birth and address.”
Asked how the government expects homeless people to pay a $10,000 fine, the premier said “that’s up to the police, that's up to the courts to decide.”
“The people are using illicit drugs in parks, we’re going to make sure that they are treated appropriately,” said Ford. “I don’t direct the police or the courts, but this is going to give them tools to make sure that people aren’t using illicit drugs — heroin, cocaine, fentanyl.”
Opposition parties, however, said the bill is effectively “criminalizing” homeless people.
“They’re being highly punitive. I understand we have a problem, and we want to get people off the streets, but we need to house them somewhere, and I would like to see the plan for where we are going to house them, other than in our jails,” Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie told reporters at Queen’s Park.
“This is not compassionate intervention, this is political grandstanding.”
NDP housing critic Jessica Bell agreed, telling reporters that “if someone has $10,000 to pay a fine, I doubt they’re living in a park,” and that it would be more “cost effective to find someone a home than to send them to jail.”
Attorney General Doug Downey danced around a question that asked if the province is using jails as a means to house people living in encampments, saying “we are not changing any of the penalties currently under the Trespass to Property Act.”
Exactly where individuals forced out of parks and other public spaces will go is a problem at the heart of the encampment issue.
Initially, the premier was keen on introducing an anti-encampment bill using the notwithstanding clause, empowering municipalities to be able to evict encampments, despite a 2023 Ontario Superior Court decision ruling that found evicting people when there is nowhere else for them to go is unconstitutional.
The PC government eventually dropped its plan to use the notwithstanding clause, although Ford has said he will use it if the courts strike down Bill 242 as unconstitutional.
Prior to the introduction of Bill 242 and its associated funding, the City of Cambridge began clearing encampments in what legal experts believe is in defiance of the 2023 court decision.
The government is attempting to solve this problem with additional funding for municipalities and shelter providers.
Of the $75.5 million offered in the legislation, $50 million is earmarked for “ready to build affordable housing” and will prioritize projects that can be completed and start accepting residents the quickest.
Ford said $20 million will go to “expand shelter capacity” and create “additional, temporary accommodation spaces, like tiny modular units.”
The managers of shelters who receive this funding will be required to report back to the province on the number of individuals moved from encampments into these new accommodations. They will also have to submit spending plans to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing for review and approval.
“But we can’t take someone out of a park and say ‘here’s a shelter,’ and they refuse to go into the shelter. That’s unacceptable,” Ford said.
Another thing missing from the bill, but not entirely off the table, is the mayors’ request for the province to implement rules allowing encampment dwellers suffering from severe addiction or mental illness to undergo involuntary mental health care treatment — also called “compassionate intervention” by its proponents, a term coined by Associate Mental Health Minister Michael Tibollo.
Asked about involuntary treatment, Ford said the government is “encouraging them to get treatment” instead, particularly at the new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) hubs the province is opening to replace the 10 supervised drug consumption sites that are closing.
“We want to help people, we don’t want to punish people,” said Ford.
The province is still “exploring new judicial approaches that provide the option of rehabilitation as an alternative to incarceration in the event of minor or non-violent drug crimes.”
Oshawa Mayor Dan Carter told reporters he still wants the government to explore the possibility of involuntary treatment.
“I can tell you, standing in front of you today as a recovering alcoholic and drug addict of over 34 years, compassionate intervention saved my life,” he said. “I want us to do everything we possibly can to save people’s lives, and if that includes compassionate intervention, it's worth a conversation.”
Thursday was the last day of the legislative sitting, which means the bill will not have an opportunity to pass through the legislature until after MPPs reconvene on March 3.