On the heels of an Ontario Superior Court docket of Justice resolution in Hamilton, Sarnia council has directed employees to clear all homeless encampments — however solely throughout daytime hours.
Justice James Ramsey dominated final month that the Metropolis of Hamilton didn’t infringe on the Constitution rights of encampment residents when implementing its bylaw that banned tents from parks.
In a 7-1 recorded vote on Monday, Sarnia council endorsed a movement from metropolis/council councillor Invoice Dennis to direct employees to dismantle all encampments instantly — together with the entrenched encampment at Rainbow Park.
Dennis described Ramsey’s ruling as “music to his ears.”
“Based mostly on this new Hamilton ruling, there isn’t a longer the worry of a lawsuit for use as a weapon towards us, or for use as an excuse for inaction,” Dennis stated. “We now have zero excuses to permit the lawlessness to proceed to terrorize neighbours.”
Councillor Anne Marie Gillis defended their preliminary actions to assist people. “We have been seeking to attempt to be a humane, caring group, and we have been making an attempt to be very, very simply in how we introduced instruments ahead, paid for the measures that we paid for, to alleviate among the difficulties that folks have been having. Not solely within the encampment, however outdoors the encampment, and that has labored and we paid most likely one million {dollars} to do it,” stated Gillis. However, she agreed with nearly all of her colleagues that town is now coping with “the worst of the worst.”
“We’re making a prison entity inside the park,” she stated. “That, in my humble opinion, is just not our job. We do not wish to encourage that, we wish to discourage that.”
Councillor Adam Kilner voted towards the movement, noting court docket selections in Kingston and Waterloo have been completely different from Hamilton.
“Are we exposing ourselves as a metropolis to additional authorized challenges?” Kilner requested metropolis employees.
Sarnia solicitor Randi Kalar stated employees can proceed to challenge trespass notices to evict folks from encampments throughout daytime hours.
“The distinction with the Hamilton resolution is the Metropolis of Hamilton didn’t carry out any evictions as night time approached or in a single day, and so the choose didn’t undertake a Constitution [of Rights and Freedoms] evaluation to find out whether or not or not any of these encampment residents’ Constitution rights have been violated,” stated Kalar.
If shelter area turns into unavailable, evictions could also be more durable.
“If there are encampments on municipal property, we could expose ourselves to threat the place we’re evicting folks in a single day. We might nonetheless be able the place we’ve to reveal there’s accessible and accessible shelter area,” she stated.
Kalar famous the Hamilton resolution “closed a spot.”
“With Kingston, the justice in that case didn’t touch upon whether or not or not town may implement its parks bylaw because it associated to daytime tenting.” she stated. “The Hamilton resolution does shut that hole and advises municipalities that they will implement their parks bylaw because it pertains to daytime tenting. We should not have to reveal accessible and accessible shelter area.”
Sarnia’s current trespass discover can be amended to replicate council’s path and eviction notices can be issued to folks residing in encampments.
However, Kalar stated there’ll nonetheless be some authorized necessities.
“We’d like to have the ability to be certain that an individual receives the discover, we have to decide their authorized identify, we have to decide a timeframe to evict. At the moment underneath our encampment protocol the timeframe is 48 hours,” she stated.
As a part of the movement, the County of Lambton can be requested to assessment its shelter system and think about enhancements; like growing capability and lengthening hours.
Metropolis/county councillor Brian White was absent from Monday’s assembly.
