Karen Stintz: Give the homeless an address, not the right to an encampment

Photo by Peter J Thompson/National Post

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There was a time when governments made policy decisions based on data and expected outcomes that would benefit society. Now that job is being replaced by activists and the courts, who use false logic to drive outcomes that, by any measurement, result in social and moral failure.

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Encampments in our cities are one such example of failed policy responses. Can you imagine any political party running on a platform that promised to make homelessness a Charter-protected right? Yet, this has happened, and governments at every level are allowing encampments to fester on public property, robbing people of their dignity. Instead of rallying toward a solution that unites communities, Canada’s leaders have given in to laziness and small-minded recriminations.

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On one side of this fierce debate, advocates fight to protect the right of individuals to seek shelter in public spaces, arguing that poverty isn’t a crime. Poverty isn’t a crime, but it is also not an aspiration. On the other side, critics contend that municipalities should protect public spaces for their originally intended uses, and encampments were never one of these uses.

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The courts have sided with the right-to-shelter camp, providing the activists with a legal victory but a moral failure. Judges have ruled that clearing people from public lands without providing truly accessible alternative housing violates Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Region of Waterloo tried twice to clear a major encampment at 100 Victoria Street in Kitchener to build a transit hub, but the Ontario Superior Court thwarted both attempts, ruling that the region lacked adequate, low-barrier shelter space and effectively manufactured a constitutional right to camp on public property.

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Given that this ruling could potentially have national implications, the lack of response from the political class has been just as alarming as the court’s declaration.

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford criticized the rulings as “cockamamie” and “ridiculous.” Mayor Chow chose silence — her preferred political currency. To speak out would mean confronting the same activists who keep her in power.

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The federal response was equally silent. If the federal government were to say anything, it might also give legitimacy to the argument that the notwithstanding clause may need to be used on a regular basis until the activist judges get out of policy making and back in the business of ruling on the actual law.

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Asserting that the Charter offers a right to shelter on public land offers no solution for those who live on the margins of society. If the political class is not going to take on the activists or court overreach, perhaps at a minimum we could seek to restore the humanity of those who live on the very fringes of society.

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Both sides of the debate concede that homelessness is a complex systemic problem driven by intersecting variables: ill health, substance use, physical abuse, poverty and mental illness. The binary application of the Charter, which declares a right to encamp over the protection of public spaces, ignores the diversity of the unhoused population and doesn’t consider other parts of the community that are impacted.