This article was first published by FlamboroughToday, a Village Media publication.
The City of Hamilton will not sign on to a request for Premier Doug Ford to use the notwithstanding clause to forcibly remove encampments across the city.
At Wednesday’s city council meeting, Ward 5 Coun. Matt Francis raised a motion to join 13 other municipalities in a call to use the notwithstanding clause.
The clause, which is Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, allows provincial leaders the ability to override sections of the Charter for a five-year period.
“The notwithstanding clause means that a piece of legislation can move forward, notwithstanding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In this case specifically, the right to life, liberty and security,” said Ward 13 Coun. Alex Wilson at city council.
On Nov. 7, the mayors of Barrie, Brampton, Brantford, Cambridge, Oakville, Oshawa, Pickering, St. Catharines, Sudbury, Guelph, Chatham-Kent, Clarington and Windsor sent a letter to Premier Ford formally asking the province to take action aimed at disbanding homeless encampments and forcing some of the people living there into involuntary mental health treatment.
Francis asked his fellow councillors to join those other municipalities.
“Our Hamilton taxpayers are being taken advantage of. Over the past few years, we have signalled to all the homeless people throughout the province of Ontario that Hamilton is a place to come and camp,” said Francis.
“We have turned our city into a provincial campground.”
Mayor Andrea Horwath called a point of order after Francis said council was “intent on standing up for drug addicts.”
“The member, in debating his motion, is suggesting we have certain motivations around this table, as to the work that we have tried to do to address the encampment issue,” she said.
Coun. Brad Clark, acting as chair, asked Francis to apologize for assuming fellow councillors have these motivations.
Francis refused to apologize four times, before he was expelled from the city council meeting.
Before voting on the motion, Mayor Horwath reminded councillors that Ford does not need a signed letter in order to use the notwithstanding clause.
“There’s no need for us to ask for it or not ask for it,” Horwath said. “We don’t want them to tell us what to do about bike lanes. Why should they ask us to tell them how to invoke their own powers?”
Councillor, mayor call for better solution
After Francis was removed from council, discussions around the horseshoe centred on the dangers of encampments — overdoses from unsupervised drug use, illegal fires in public parks, and references to recent weapons found at encampments in the city’s east end were raised.
Coun. Tom Jackson said joining in the call to use the notwithstanding clause would allow the municipality to overcome legal barriers that keep the city from removing encampments from the parks.
That legal barrier, Wilson said, is encampment residents' Charter-protected right to life. Forcibly removing the encampments, he said, will take the city back to where it was before the encampment protocol, which allows people to live in tents in public parks in the city.
“Community members were showing up to protest encampment teardowns and removals. Municipal services and staff were being used to move people from park to park to park,” he said, adding that data shows moving homeless residents increases risk of death.
Ward 15 Coun. Ted McMeekin recapped the three historical uses of the notwithstanding clause in Ontario, to make the point that its use goes against his own values as a politician.
“I’m specifically concerned when it involves robbing the most vulnerable among us of their rights. I didn’t sign up for that. That’s not why I’m here,” McMeekin said.
He said the discussion at city hall would have been different if the premier were offering a better solution, like using the coming $200 after-Christmas provincial rebate that will cost the province around $3 billion, as an investment into solving the homelessness crisis.
“We could have used about $18 million of that to do the gated sanctioned communities,” he said, adding that the suggestion from the premier is “clearly not a solution.”
Horwath said that discussions about the city’s spending on the homelessness and housing crisis, which is a major factor in the upcoming Tax-Support Budget for 2025, often comes up in discussions about the encampments.
She said it is clear from many discussions at city hall that the province should be financially responsible for the homelessness crisis, as it is a health-care issue.
“What kind of world is it where they are asking us to give them powers that they already have?” she asked.
The motion was voted down, with nine councillors voting against and six councillors voting in favour.
How they voted
Yes — Ward 6 Coun. Tom Jackson, Ward 7 Coun. Esther Pauls, Ward 8 Coun. John-Paul Danko, Ward 9 Coun. Brad Clark, Ward 10 Coun. Jeff Beattie, Ward 14 Coun. Mike Spadafora
No — Mayor Andrea Horwath, Ward 1 Coun. Maureen Wilson, Ward 2 Coun. Cameron Kroetsch, Ward 3 Coun. Nrinder Nann, Ward 4 Coun. Tammy Hwang, Ward 11 Coun. Mark Tadeson, Ward 12 Coun. Craig Cassar, Ward 13 Coun. Alex Wilson, Ward 15 Coun. Ted McMeekin
Did not vote —Ward 5 Coun. Matt Francis
