A judge just hallucinated that homelessness is the same as race or sex | National Post - "an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that the Region of Waterloo cannot clear a 30-person tent encampment from a parking lot in downtown Kitchener, even though the region owns the lot. The municipality has been trying to do so as part of its plans to build the Kitchener Central Transit Hub, which will eventually connect local and regional bus and light rail services, along with VIA Rail (the kind of integrated transit infrastructure Canadian cities are constantly told they need more of). People have been living in tents on the site since 2021. The region has spent three years trying to clear them through the courts. It passed a bylaw. When the bylaw was challenged, it amended it. It removed the $5,000 fines for people who refused to leave. It created a transition policy to help residents find alternative housing. It offered individualized housing plans to every resident. None of it was enough. To use its own land, the judge ruled, the region must first provide an alternative legal encampment site or a formal “tenting protocol” with equivalent services. The absurdity of the decision is obvious to any sensible observer, but the case is just the latest in a disturbing trend in how this country is governed. Buried in the 88-page decision is yet another instance of an Ontario court overturning settled law to invent a new constitutional right, and in the process imposing a policy outcome that no elected government has voted for and no majority of Canadians has ever endorsed. The number of cases where courts use the Charter to invent new rights and impose the policy fever dreams of out-of-touch progressive activists has become impossible to ignore. The crux of the decision begins at paragraph 204 of the ruling. There, Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael R. Gibson declares that homelessness should be recognized as an “analogous ground” under Section 15 of the Charter, meaning a protected characteristic alongside race, sex, religion, and disability. Homeless people, Gibson writes, possess a “constructively immutable characteristic” and constitute a “discrete and insular minority.” Faced with the awkward fact that homelessness, unlike race or sex, is not actually permanent, he concedes (he has to) that homelessness is transitory. He then asserts this does not matter, because such characteristics are, “while they last,” beyond an individual’s conscious control. Read that twice. Homelessness is immutable, except that it isn’t, but it should be treated as though it is. The judge has redefined “immutable” to mean its opposite. The reasoning would not survive a first-year constitutional law tutorial, and yet there it sits, in a published Superior Court ruling, as the basis for a substantial expansion of equality rights in Canadian law. This argument has been tried before and lost... If the ruling stands, every municipal bylaw in Canada that differentially affects homeless people (encampment clearances, park rules, public-space regulations, loitering provisions) becomes a potential equality-rights violation. And this is not an isolated mistake. Last summer, a different Ontario Superior Court judge struck down provincial legislation removing bike lanes from three Toronto streets, on the grounds that removing the lanes violated cyclists Section 7 rights to life and security of the person. A de facto constitutional right to bike lanes, found by a single judge, against the explicit will of an elected legislature. The pattern across both rulings is strikingly similar. Identify a sympathetic group. Connect their circumstances to a Charter provision. Then tell elected officials what they may or may not do, or what they must affirmatively provide, regardless of what voters and their representatives have decided. Notice that the Charter’s text is endlessly elastic in the direction of the activist class’s preferred outcomes, and remarkably inflexible in any other direction. What has happened, slowly and then quickly, is that a particular reading of the Charter has captured much of the legal academy and the bench. On this reading, the Charter does not merely constrain government action that violates clear individual rights. It empowers courts to assess the substantive outcomes of any law, identify groups disadvantaged by those outcomes, and order remedies that turn out to look identical to progressive social policy. More bike lanes. More tenting protocols. More positive obligations imposed on public bodies. More constraints on resource development. The Charter’s framers in 1982 did not intend this. The text does not require it. No Canadian government has ever been elected on a platform of delegating social policy to the courts. But this is what we have, because the people who decide what the Charter means have decided it should be so. There is a remedy. Section 33 of the Charter (the notwithstanding clause) was designed for exactly this kind of judicial overreach. Both Section 7 and Section 15 fall within its scope. The Region of Waterloo cannot invoke it on its own; but the Ontario legislature can. Thirteen Ontario mayors have been asking Ford to do precisely that since October 2024, when the mayors of Sudbury, Cambridge, Guelph, and ten other municipalities signed a joint letter requesting that the province invoke Section 33 to allow encampment clearances, following earlier court rulings. Ford declined and tried a softer route: the Safer Municipalities Act and $75.5 million for homelessness prevention. The judiciary responded by going further still, inventing a new analogous ground and demanding tenting protocols as the price of regional governance. The case for Section 33 was strong then. It is overwhelming now. That the notwithstanding clause is widely treated by the legal commentariat as illegitimate to invoke is itself part of the problem. The clause exists for moments like this. Decades of constitutional commentary, much of it produced by the same legal class now driving the expansion of Charter rights from the bench, have insisted that using Section 33 is undemocratic, anti-rights, even authoritarian. The result is a Charter in which one half (the rights provisions, indefinitely expandable by judges) is treated as sacred, whilst the other half (the democratic override) is treated as a constitutional taboo. Nobody voted for the judge who wrote paragraph 204. Nobody can vote him out. But Ontarians did vote for the legislature that can override him. Decisions like this are likely to continue until somebody with political authority decides that the democratic legitimacy of elected legislatures is worth defending against a judiciary that has, quietly and with the full approval of most of the legal class, made itself this country’s most consequential legislature."
Damn automobile lobby making it impossible to build public transit! We need to ban cars!
This is why left wingers hate the notwithstanding clause so much - it (temporarily) blocks legislating from the bench to push the left wing agenda
guyfelicella🇨🇦🍁 on X - "Let me break it down for everyone 👇🏼 Everyone is upset that an Ontario judge said you can’t just keep displacing homeless people. Here’s an idea: stop complaining about homeless people and start demanding governments actually house people. Then maybe the courts wouldn’t have to step in to protect basic human rights. You can’t oppose encampments, oppose supportive housing, oppose shelters, oppose affordable housing, oppose mental health supports and then complain that homelessness still exists. You don’t solve homelessness by pushing people from one sidewalk to another. You solve it by giving people somewhere to go."
Ben Woodfinden on X - "This is a nice strawman. The Region of Waterloo offered every encampment resident an individualized housing plan. It dropped fines. It created a transition policy. The court said none of it mattered. What the judge actually did here, and what you're conspicuously not mentioning, is declare homelessness a constitutionally protected class under s.15 of the Charter, something courts have previously refused to do, including in this very case three years ago. You're happy about it because the judge happens to share your policy preferences. That's all this is. An activist class that can't win these fights democratically cheering when judges do it for them."
Judge rules taxpayers must fund housing where homeless can smoke crack | Toronto Sun - "In effect, Gibson is saying that the people in this encampment cannot be moved until they are provided with housing that they find adequate. The people behind this challenge don’t want to stay in shelters, they don’t want to stay in motels paid for by the local government. They want the region to provide them with housing option where they can continue to smoke crack, smoke meth and consume opioids without judgment. That’s not an exaggeration — it is in the judgment. “Emergency shelters are not always appropriate or available for people who lack capacity, have serious mental health, and/or substance use issues,” Gibson writes. He notes that some people have been barred from shelters due to persistent illegal drug use, which is not allowed in the shelters, but then also says the motels offered by the city are not sufficient. “Motels do not provide the levels of support required for high-needs individuals; behavioural issues frequently lead to eviction and unsupervised drug use can lead to overdose with no one nearby to notice or assist (a risk that may be mitigated by the ‘buddy system’ in the encampment),” he writes. Gibson arrives at his conclusions by interpreting Canada’s Charter, not in the way it is written but rather through the lens of several United Nations declarations and even a non-binding report. Citing the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and their National Protocol for Homeless Encampments in Canada report, Gibson invented a new right to housing and stated the government must provide it. “Adequate alternative housing, with all necessary amenities, must be provided to all residents prior to any eviction,” he wrote. That line effectively turns Canada’s Charter on its head from a document that protects citizens from government overreach, such as the government trampling on your rights, into one where the government is obligated to provide certain services to you at certain levels. This would hand over control of how our country is run from our elected officials to appointed judges, who, as Ford said, answer to no one."
Ford blasts judges, threatens notwithstanding clause over encampments - "Elizabeth MacIsaac, president of the anti-poverty organization Maytree, said it is “deeply disappointing” to hear Ford discussing the notwithstanding clause again. “Sec. 33 wasn’t set up as a ‘get out of jail free’ card. It has a purpose, and its purpose is to protect the most vulnerable, not to enable a government to override the rights of the most vulnerable. I think it’s the wrong tool for what he wants to achieve,” MacIsaac said. “If Premier Ford wants to see encampments gone, there is an answer to that. And it’s not taking away their rights; it is providing the housing needed, the deeply affordable options for housing that would allow people to live with dignity. But this government hasn’t done that.”"
Only groups the left loves have rights. Ordinary people have no rights
Murder, floods, disorder: Granville strip crime and chaos at untenable levels, hospitality industry says - "“What is happening is continual public disorder, open drug use, and mental health episodes that are frankly scary,” Kershaw said from inside the Roxy Cabaret... business owners saying rising crime and disorder are making Granville’s nightlife and tourism district untenable. Kershaw said nearly 31 fires and the water flowing down from units at St. Helen’s Hotel, the SRO above his club, have caused more than 100 floods in his business, while repeated false fire alarms have driven away customers. “The loss of sales due to this disruption, for me personally, is now in the six figures.” “We’re asking the NDP government to move quickly to relocate these residents to supportive housing that properly serves their needs, and allow business owners to restore the entertainment district Vancouver deserves,” Kershaw said. Crime and emergency calls have surged in the area since the SRO conversions, according to Vancouver Police Department data collected by the Hospitality Vancouver Association. Police and fire services responded to roughly 6,641 calls at the three SROs between 2020 and 2025, an increase of more than 800 per cent compared with the year before the conversions, spokesperson Laura Ballance said. “We give you a snapshot of the past 10 days on this street: a daytime murder in the middle of a busy work week, a major fire with a resulting flood, other smaller floods, and a sharp escalation in street disorder,” Ballance said. Vancouver Police Chief Const. Steve Rai said Thursday that the three social housing buildings in question have generated 18 times more police calls per capita than the rest of the city. “Residents in these buildings are 12 to 16 times more likely to experience violent crime,” Rai said. He added that B.C.’s closing of The Luugat hotel was a step in the right direction."
Clearly, all you need to house people and everything will be okay. Greedy business owners need to shut up and not persecute defenceless homeless people/i>
After fatal stabbing, HVA calls Granville Street SROs ‘a failed experiment’ - "Vancouver police are investigating after a man was stabbed and killed on Granville Street on Monday afternoon... members of the Hospitality Vancouver Association (HVA) are expressing concern after the brazen daylight incident. The man was stabbed and killed across from the Luugat single-room occupancy housing (SRO) on Granville Street. “Today, our organization reiterates our ongoing concerns related to the situation on Granville Street, which is dangerous and unsustainable,” the HVA said in a statement. “We recognize and appreciate the efforts of the Vancouver Police Department to keep the area safe but feel that it is increasingly clear that the BC Housing decision to locate over 300 SRO beds into a concentrated two block stretch of Granville Street is a failed experiment.” The HVA says it has been calling for the permanent closure of SROs along Granville Street for years... The HVA said there are two other “highly problematic” SROs located within two blocks of each other on Graville Street that are “a real threat to public safety and need to be closed immediately.” In June, the provincial government announced plans to transition supportive housing out of the Granville Street entertainment district, according to Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim. This announcement came after a fire broke out in the Luugat building on the strip, leaving two people needing treatment for smoke inhalation. The B.C. government bought the building at 1176 Granville in 2020, and controversially converted it to housing as it sought to shelter the city’s homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic quickly. It has since generated thousands of emergency calls, with residents setting fires, pulling fire alarms and setting off the building’s sprinkler systems."
Trust the Experts! Double down on Housing First! Formerly homeless people only set fires, pull fire alarms and set off sprinklers because of discrimination and stigma, so we cannot punish them!
After fatal stabbing, HVA calls Granville Street SROs ‘a failed experiment’ : r/ilovebc - "Less idiots than ideologically homogeneous activist-researchers. When each "study" on this phenomenon qualifies the research conducted and the data presented to conform to the authors' ideological perspective then all credibility should be lost. A major contributor to such junk science that has unilaterally informed our policies created to address the issue has been the proliferation of "trauma-informed principles" from therapy venues to institutions foundational to our society. When activist-researchers rely on the stories of purported oppression and traumatic experiences offered as excuses for addiction and antisocial behaviour by addicts, and when such self-serving diatribes are uplifted to a level of unimpeachable truth based purely on identitarian principles and without further investigation, much-less corroboration, then the data which is presented should be ridiculed -- not implemented. When each study over the past 30 years that is accepted and implemented is produced and influenced by a minority of socialist extremists hiding behind purportedly non-partisan NGOs and other activist organizations -- such as the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, DULF, or VANDU -- then the solutions offered cannot possibly diverge from the praxis of the activist-researchers' chosen ideology. If more socialism for the lumpenproletariat was the answer then the population of addicts in the DTES would not have grown exponentially in the 25 years since the Four Pillars strategy was implemented. If utopian narratives surrounding the nature of addiction were accurate then our "trauma-informed" approach to the antisocial behaviours associated with addiction wouldn't have created a new class of repeat-criminals called prolific offenders. If giving addicts the redistributed wealth of those who actually contribute to society through an ever-expanding suite of entitlements led to positive outcomes then the overdose rate wouldn't have risen 500% since the implementation of the Four Pillars strategy."
"Obviously this is a great comment, I just want to point out that we never really executed on the “four pillars”. To suggest Four Pillars = 500% increase in overdose deaths isn’t completely fair. Harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and enforcement all should have involved housing, access to means in a medical setting, re-socialization, etc. We basically just turned a blind eye to open use of illicitly sold drugs, tested some of the street supply to prevent a few deaths, slapped a sticker on it and called it the Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy. And then we got hostile with our neighbors/local businesses when they complained about the effects of being near SRO/SIS."
Undercover TTC agent : r/askTO - "Saw some uniformed guys the other day, asked everyone for pop except the smelly homeless guy in the back of the car who was having an episode. Gotta love how the TTC is more concnered with collecting their pound of flesh than it is making transit safe for paying riders. This city is a joke."
Undercover TTC agent : r/askTO - "Yet they do nothing about tweakers on the streetcars or subways, needles thrown around the TTC, people jumping onto the tracks causing hour delays, etc etc. the list goes on. But thank goodness they stopped this one dude from not tapping, that’ll surely improve the quality of transit in Toronto."
"Not only are they doing nothing, they are actively encouraging it. I have witnessed TTC employees working at the ticket booths open the gates to let unhoused/ mentally disturbed people in for free. They don’t want to deal with them so they let them into the subway and trap them with us."
Another aspect of anarcho-tyranny. Naturally, at least one person went around lecturing others about having no "empathy"
Anthony Furey: Toronto's radical plan to turn all homeless shelters into drug sites - "The City of Toronto’s shelter system is still guided by radical policies that encourage the city to hire active drug addicts to staff their programs, push for drugs and drug kits to be provided in abstinence-based facilities and even require that all shelters with children residing in them provide drug services... When it comes to hiring drug addicts at facilities, the document says that: “Shelter programs should plan for the intentional integration of people who use drugs into their staff team.” Paid duties can include helping friends shoot up. Drug dealers are drawn to the vicinity of injection sites because that’s where they find their client base. If a shelter has active drug users employed on site, this suggests that even staff will be liaising with dealers. It’s this sort of twisted attitude that got us to the point where a staff member at the Leslieville drug site was criminally charged for helping a drug dealer when a young mother was killed in drug warfare crossfire as opposed to helping the actual victim. They also seem to want to ruin the chances of people to keep clean. “Abstinence-based shelters are an important option for some people in the shelter system with lived and living experience of drug use,” the guide notes. “While these programs may not directly provide the fullest spectrum of harm reduction services, they remain accountable for employing a harm reduction approach, ensuring that their residents who use drugs are enabled to do so in the safest ways possible.” An abstinence-based shelter would be one where people are not supposed to be doing drugs. They are abstaining. So, no, the people in these shelters should not be “enabled” to use them and yet here we have a city guidebook telling them to make it happen. When it comes to shelters designed to house children along with their parents, the guide informs us that “family shelters are required to use a harm reduction approach to drug use. Family shelter operators are tasked with supporting safer drug use practices, while upholding legislative requirements and identifying any substantive risks to children and the family unit.” Right, because advertising a shelter for children and then enabling hard drug use on site is somehow not a risk to those children? Let’s be very clear on one point here: These are not policies just for drug injection sites. These are policies for all the homeless shelters within the City of Toronto. And the document makes no mention of ways to support people in getting off of drugs. If there is a shelter coming to your neighbourhood, in any form, it will not just be a place for people seeking something to eat and refuge from the cold — which is what well-intentioned people of all political leanings typically think of as a shelter. It will actually, if it’s following these guidelines, be a facility staffed by drug addicts who promote open drug use in the presence of children. What’s concerning is that this guidebook is not new. While it is posted as a current resource alongside other 2025 city documents, it was first authored in 2021. In other words, this has been doing the bureaucratic rounds for almost five years and no adult in the room has yet stepped in to have it removed."
‘Black mandated’ homeless shelter on way, city hall confirms - "Toronto officials are taking applications until Friday for city council’s new “Black-mandated” shelter, where everyone from employees to the homeless could be excluded on the basis of race. City Hall has also decreed that experience in running a shelter is not a requirement for those submitting applications... The B3 shelter competition follows a similar process for an Indigenous shelter, which could move to construction as soon as this year."
Left wingers love racial segregation
Northern Ont. man defies eviction threat, vows to remain in self-built dwelling : r/OntarioNews - "He should go be homeless downtown anywhere. Somehow thats better."
Northern Ont. man defies eviction threat, vows to remain in self-built dwelling : r/OntarioNews - "People are missing the real issue. The reason he had to build a dangerous shed to live in is because of a local bylaw preventing him from using an RV. Normally, that would be fine, but there is a housing crisis. There are literal cities of tents. Higher levels of government should step in here and end those bylaws, at least until the crisis is over. An RV is perfectly safe. The municipality should be absolutely ashamed for not letting this man live in an RV on his own land during a crisis."
"The problem is they don't get their cut, the costs for the permits and licenses, inspections and what not is owed to them and they want it. Doesn't matter that Canada is burning to the ground around us as long as they get their cut."
Proof that capitalism has failed!
Jonathan Kay on X - "The media’s love affair with homeless encampments continues. A main reason people set them up is to use drugs (banned in shelters). The camps destroy local civic life, & (as in this case) can be fire hazards. There were just 12 ppl here, all of whom were offered shelter space"
Half of Toronto's and 42% of Ottawa's homeless population consists of asylum seekers, fed funding for asylum seekers housing to fall from 95% in 2025/26 to 0% in 27/28 : r/TorontoRealEstate - "Why do we willingly bankrupt ourselves?"
"It helps destroy the middle class and it gives more power to the elites."
"Best way to keep a populace in line is to make them dependent on the government. Like a quarter of them working for the government."
Clearly, the solution is to virtue signal even harder and encourage the whole Third World to go live there
Longtime tenants no longer feel safe in 55-plus building providing housing to homeless people - "Complaints about drug activity, drinking, thefts and break-ins have prompted a provincial investigation into the safety of a 55-plus social housing complex in Winnipeg's North End. In interviews last week, residents in the Canadian Polish Manor at 300 Selkirk Ave. said the eight-storey rent-geared-to-income building used to be a peaceful and comfortable place to live, but that started changing last summer. That's when new tenants with backgrounds of homelessness and addiction, along with other complex needs, started moving in, says Allison Bailey, 62. "They just brought in anybody, and that's when a lot of the problems really started," said Bailey, who has lived in the building for two years... Richard Stein, 73, who has lived in the building nearly eight years, says in recent months, copper wiring has been stripped from laundry machine power cables and flat-screen televisions in common areas have been stolen. Garbage, discarded needles and human waste have been found in shared spaces... while CBC was in the building speaking with tenants in the lobby, Stein — who has had a tracheostomy, lives with cancer and uses a cane — chased away a man who appeared to be intoxicated, after the man followed someone in through the locked front doors. "This is what we go through 24 f--ing seven," Stein said. "No f--ing security."... Agnes Breton, 73, who has lived in the building 11 years, said tenants have found people sleeping or passed out in laundry rooms. "My daughter wants me to move out so badly," she said. People who live there once enjoyed sitting together outside but no longer feel safe doing so, Breton said. "There's people yelling outside," she said. "The police are here a lot more now because of what's been happening." Resident Freda Campbell, 69, needed help from police after someone recently discharged bear spray in the hallway of her floor... She's now using a security bar in her suite to prevent people from breaking in. And Isabelle Lewis, 74, an avid sewer who's lived in the building for five years, previously used an eighth-floor common area with tables for pool and tennis table to lay out her fabric, but she doesn't feel safe using that space anymore. "I'm afraid," Lewis said. "This is not a safe haven." A Polish restaurant operating out of the building has also had break-ins, with food and cash stolen, said Teresa Szpakowski, who works in the kitchen... Residents were reminded in a recent memo to report any drug-related activity, prostitution, assault, unlawful use of firearms and any other situations that threaten the health, safety or well-being of tenants. Housing advocates have expressed concern that the provincial NDP government's focus on housing people experiencing chronic homelessness has made other low-income Manitobans, including seniors and families, less of a priority."
These seniors are just awful, terrible, heartless people. They need more "empathy".
When you vote NDP, you're just asking for more Needles, Drugs and Poverty
More proof that the solution to homelessness is just to house people! It's so simple and evil conservative governments just want homeless people to die by not doing that
Canada Proud | Facebook - "The Liberals spent $1.2 MILLION on a project to "help" homeless veterans. The actual project? Giving out cameras to homeless people to take pictures while staff at Egale Canada, a Liberal-funded LGBT organization, handed out nearly $1 MILLION to their own staff. The staff promised they would include the homeless veterans' photos in an art exhibit. Housing minister Gregor Robertson approved this disgraceful project. He needs to resign immediately."
If you don't spend more money on homelessness, you're heartless, lack empathy and want homeless people to die
T.D. Leaker on X - "A Canadian university conducted an actuarial study and concluded 60% of new homeless tent owners were displaced due to high housing costs as a direct result of immigration policy and insatiably appetite for low wage earners. The study was buried for fear of being seen as racist - risking funding."
Managing Risky Behaviours and Challenges to Prevent Housing Loss in Permanent Supportive Housing - "Approximately 10-20% of individuals experience difficulties in PSH that can result in eviction, recurrent homelessness, and/or rehospitalization."
Managing high-risk behaviours and challenges to prevent housing loss in permanent supportive housing: a rapid review - " in an examination of over 12,000 supportive housing applicants in Toronto, Canada, 20.3% had a history of suicide attempts, 17.7% were perpetrators or victims of physical assault, 14.7% had engaged in non-suicidal self-injury, 8.0% had fire safety concerns, 7.9% had damaged property, and 5.9% engaged in hoarding behaviours"
Clearly, the way to end homelessness is to just give homeless people houses, which they can burn down and/or destroy, and where they can kill themselves and beat up other people
