I’m not sure it was the wisdom of Solomon, but city council probably made the right call on Wednesday when they chose to defer a decision on the Public Spaces Use Bylaw until similar matters before the courts are resolved.
If only every other decision made before and during Wednesday’s marathon meeting went just as smoothly.
When I entered the council chambers Wednesday morning, I wasn’t sure how the day was going to end. It came hot on the heels of Mayor Cam Guthrie’s announcement last week that he’s embracing Strong Mayor authority, so I thought it might be possible that even if there were just three other people in favour of the bylaw that Guthrie might use his veto to push it through.
At the same time, I felt there was an equally likely chance that Guthrie would punt. It’s what he did in November with his first crack at regulating encampments when, on the Friday before the meeting, an Ontario court shot down provisions in a similar City of Kingston bylaw. At the time, Guthrie said that the court decision forced him to put his own bylaw question on pause.
So what happened between then and now? Nothing, but that’s still the right question to ask.
The appeal in that case was still waiting to be heard on Jan. 16 when council went in-camera for two hours and emerged with a fully-formed motion to direct staff to develop a bylaw for the end of February. There was no forewarning that such a motion was coming, and there were no supporting reports or documents to describe what had changed legally from November.
It was interesting watching council ask questions of staff and deputy CAO Colleen Clack-Bush out of a sense of confusion about what they created: Where was all the public engagement? Why is this bylaw worded like this? Why didn’t we consider some alternative? The answer was, obviously, because you told us to. Council gave staff a directive to come up with something in 11 days and were somehow surprised it wasn’t all things to all people.
And speaking of the people…
It should have been obvious to the mayor that this was a sensitive issue. It should have also been obvious that there was going to be a lot of passion in the gallery and a lot of first time faces who may not understand what he means when he calls for “decorum”. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity to educate and make the council chambers inviting, Guthrie saw it as an opportunity to play the victim.
As delegations began, some people in the gallery snapped, clapped, and made the American Sign Language gesture for “applause.” And when the mayor called for decorum, someone in the room yelled “What do you mean?” That prompted more audible expressions of confusion, and then the mayor moved to have security start throwing people out of the chambers.
It’s worth noting that this was after Guthrie had already twice threatened to shut the gallery down if the people there didn’t exercise decorum, and without ever explaining what that meant, what the expectations are for people in the galley, and why decorum, and not hissing down delegations you don’t like, is good policy making.
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. After taking a break, Guthrie returned to the council chambers and explained all that. Finally. In the end, it was all he needed to do, and the rest of the day proceed with [almost] no further interruption.
It ‘s one of many times lately that Guthrie has had a very fine line to walk, but he hasn’t been walking finely at all.
Announcing his full embrace of Strong Mayor Powers after months of mealy mouth uncertainty about using them was not a great look. Announcing it in front of the business community without giving his council colleagues a head’s up despite seeing them all in a meeting 12 hours prior made it even worse.
And then there’s the issue itself. No matter how good intentioned the bylaw is, it still looks like a group of 13 people who are well-warmed, well-housed, well-fed and well-clothed telling a group of disadvantaged people that they’re too icky, and smelly, and sick, to be seen among good and decent taxpayers. The fact that the policy was developed by senior staffers all on the Sunshine List doesn’t sweeten those negative perceptions either.
And it’s the perception that’s driving this. Yes, we can have sympathy for downtown business owners who feel like they’ve been left at sea to deal with a problem they have a limited capacity to solve themselves. We can also have sympathy with the anonymous person mentioned in Guthrie’s State of the City who makes $70,000 a year but still feels like they might end up homeless.
But who’s showing sympathy to the person making $7 from panhandling so that they can buy poison and hope to feel something other than despair and cold for a couple of hours? Those were the people Guthrie tried to throw out of the chambers at the first opportunity. Those were the people council didn’t listen to because deferral means “pause” not “the end” of a motion that thinks the problem with homelessness is where you see it and not the fact it exists
For the last month, the city has been crowing about its successful Housing Accelerator Funding application. It’s $21 million that won’t actually be spent on housing but will instead initiate policies to get more housing built. Housing, by the way, that will mostly go to market and be unaffordable to anyone presently unable to buy a house in this city.
If the upper levels of government are truly at fault for abandoning cities to fend for themselves to deal with issues that the Canadian Human Rights Commission called this week “a national human rights crisis”, then wouldn’t the responsible thing be to take their money and use to put people in some damn homes now instead of playing the game that we’re a digital porthole and a couple of zoning bylaw changes away from ending the housing crisis?!
Of course that would take real gumption, innovation, and leadership, three qualities that remain eminently lacking at 1 Carden St.
