“There is a strange discrepancy there, because people living in encampments are protesting in their own way the lack of housing,” says founder of Resilience Montreal.
The city’s mayor said there is a difference between camping in a public space to protest and doing so because you have no roof over your head.
“They are two very different things,” Plante said this week. “The protest (at Victoria Square) is for a specific cause, and they don’t intend to stay there permanently, and they have access to homes. They go home and have a shower. We can’t tolerate allowing people to live in the street without access to toilets and running water.”
Montreal police echoed Plante’s analysis of the matter, telling reporters this week that it balances the right to protest with the use of public space.
“We always have to counter-balance the need to intervene with (the right to) freedom of expression. We are there to ensure the safety of the public,” said Montreal police spokesperson David Shane.
He said even if the encampment breaches a municipal bylaw about camping in a public park, police need to weigh the importance of the right to freedom of expression versus the application of a municipal bylaw.
“What takes precedence? What is more important? The situation is that people want to protest and police are there to enforce bylaws, but we also have a role in ensuring democracy and ensuring the respect of rights and freedoms.”
Plante said people need an outlet to express frustrations, but they also have to do so in a way that is legal and doesn’t spread hate toward other groups.
Constitutional lawyer Julius Grey, who represents the protesters camping out at McGill, said the law allows police to break up one form of encampment while allowing those protesting to remain in place. That’s because the city has to tolerate freedom of expression.
“You don’t have to treat everyone in exactly the same way,” Grey said. “The accessibility of water and toilets is important for hygiene. (Protest) encampments can’t be permanent, but with homeless ones they have nowhere to go, so they may become permanent, and that would effectively turn the city into a campground.”
He added that there is a precedent in place for political encampments dating back to protests against the Vietnam war in the 1970s.
However, advocates for the unhoused take issue with the city’s commitment to breaking up those encampments as soon as they crop up. They say the encampments are a reaction to the fact that there is not enough adequate housing provided by the province to those who are in need.
“There is a strange discrepancy there, because people living in encampments are protesting in their own way the lack of housing,” said David Chapman, the executive director and a founder of Resilience Montreal, which provides day shelter services to those living on the streets.
Chapman argued that if the city wants those camping out to have access to basic necessities of life, maybe it should provide those necessities.
Toronto, for example, provides running water and portable toilets to some encampments that pop up on its territory, but it also works with those living in tents to find them permanent homes. Chapman said he happened upon one such instance in Clarence Park, in the shadow of the CN Tower on a recent visit.
“Toronto is ahead of us,” Chapman said. “Instead of ignoring the problem, they brought a toilet to the encampment, they brought a water and coffee station, generators, a garbage bin and recycling, and they had two intervention workers present to follow up on any needs, and they had a security guard.”
He called on Montreal to change its mentality regarding people living in encampments to help them get the services they need.
“It is possible to face the reality that we have a housing shortage and a shortage of emergency services,” Chapman said. “The reality is, we therefore have encampments and why not treat people in those encampments with a measure of dignity?”
He added that if Montreal was concerned with basic human rights like the freedom of expression, it should also be concerned with the rights of people living on the streets, adding that the reason people camp out is to gather in groups and protect one another.
“It can be a life or death situation for people living in these camps,” he said. “People don’t want to live in tents, especially in the winter, but these encampments do bring a measure of safety, and when you scatter these encampments, you further destabilize the people living there.”
Welcome Hall Mission CEO Sam Watts agreed that the city should be providing some form of services to people living in encampments, but he doesn’t believe the situation should be normalized.
“To just say we don’t tolerate encampments isn’t enough,” Watts said. “The answer to an encampment is never a bulldozer.”
He said the Toronto example is a good one, as it doesn’t view encampments as an end game.
“To simply set up services without being ready to help people get back into housing is a mistake because you begin to make permanent something that should never be,” he said. “That to me is a step that risks creating something that I think we all agree is suboptimal.
“You have to start with making sure that the pathways into housing exist, and that’s not so difficult in the Montreal context. It’s much more difficult in Winnipeg or Ottawa or even Toronto. We have a pretty good housing complement here in Montreal and the ability to fund people with rent supplements to get back to permanent housing, so all it really takes is a bit of a plan.”
For his part, Grey said it could become more difficult legally for the city to crack down on encampments when there aren’t enough places for people to live.
Nearly 20 years ago, a court in Victoria, B.C. ruled that it was unconstitutional to crack down on encampments because there is a constitutional guarantee for life, liberty and the security of the person in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“But apart from that, I think there should be a rule. We should adopt a law saying that all citizens are entitled to a roof over their heads, to basic food and running water,” Grey said. “I think that’s particularly important in a place that has the type of climate that we have.
“I think that in a society with so much luxury and so much money, for there to be a significant stratum of population without access to these things, I think is shameful.”