It’s been a while since I’ve been in the council chambers on the high side of midnight, so forgive me if the exhaustion comes through in these ramblings. If nothing else, at least I had a comfortable place to sleep after an all-day affair at city hall.
The first thing I need to say is that the meeting on the public space use bylaw was not the fuster cluck I thought it was going to be. I don’t know who gets that credit, but maybe it was the fact we effectively had a dress rehearsal for it back in February, we worked out all the kinks and were able to proceed more smoothly, if not more swiftly.
In other words, we lived through the same meeting twice, but with a different ending.
Mayor Cam Guthrie spent much of the month priming the proverbial pump. The week before the Ford government’s announcement about closing safe consumption sites, he said that it was his opinion that they weren’t working and “something’s gotta change”. How he reached this conclusion, he didn’t explain.
Then, earlier this week, Guthrie shared a bizarre social media post where he described a conversation he had with someone living rough in St. George’s Square; he offered to get her help, she offered to get him high. Now I’m not saying that the mayor made up this encounter, but the term “Reefer Madness” came to mind. Guthrie is starring in his own personal version of Dragnet, a strait-laced Joe Friday confronting a counterculture he doesn’t understand but is still desperately afraid of.
Needless to say, the social media post did not reveal anything about who this person is, why they’re living rough, why they’re using (or abusing?) substances, or why this concierge service by the mayor himself wasn’t persuasive enough to turn over a new leaf. If this is what Guthrie does without a comms staffer, then Mark MacKinnon can’t start work fast enough.
And sorry rest of city council, you’re not getting left off the hook.
It was interesting to note that both Ward 2 councillors, Rodrigo Goller and Carly Klassen, were not in the council chambers in-person like they usually are. Doubly interesting since the downtown is their constituency. From behind Webex, they kept their distance from everyone on both sides of the issue, and then together they amended the bylaw to grant St. George’s Square and Market Square a sacred status as “Schedule A” sensitive areas.
It’s good to have friends in high places because Klassen took time to thank all the people who wrote to her in support of the public space use bylaw but wanted to remain anonymous because they were afraid of retaliation. In the council chambers, the ones against the bylaw slightly outnumbered the ones for it, but in order to express their opinions they had to identify themselves in-person and show their face (even if they were masked). No one praised their character.
In the end, nine councillors joined Guthrie to vote in favour of the bylaw. I looked for councillors Gibson, Goller, Klassen, Richardson, Billings, Caron, Downer, O’Rourke and Chew at Thursday’s memorial for Drug Poisoning Awareness Day, but they were conspicuous by their absence.
Now, I have some words about the process, because at any point in the last few months Guthrie could have brought the public space use bylaw back to council. The process hit a wall in late-March when research and outreach ended after a court appeal of a similar bylaw in Kingston fizzled out. If it was still Guthrie’s desire to pursue this, he should have rallied council to give staff new direction.
But this meeting was an exemplar of Guthrie’s atrocious agenda management skills. If it’s his idea, or if it’s an idea he likes, he will move heaven and earth to make it happen, otherwise you’ve got to go through proper channels.
Look to the disgruntlement of the chair of the Accessibility Advisory Committee, which was palpable because her committee took the time, effort and energy to pass their own motion in February asking for some specific engagement with the city. It’s another request from the AAC that seems to have fallen on deaf ears in the mayor’s office, and hardly meeting the standard implied when we say we’re taking a “human rights approach” to these issues.
Now we need to talk about Wellington County. Did it seem odd to you the social services manager was only able to call in briefly on this matter of the provision of social services?
Between this, and the meeting last month on tiny homes, it seems like the County is leaving us out in the wind. I appreciate that they’re fulfilling their mandate as prescribed by provincial legalization, but is that the end of their responsibility? The undercurrent of Wednesday’s meeting, in my view, is that there’s a big trust gap on these matters, largely led by the County’s seeming disinterest for anything beyond their brief.
And then there’s the questions: Are there really enough shelter beds for everyone? If there is, then why aren’t people using them? If there isn’t, why are we being told there are enough beds?
How are we supposed to make practical decisions when they seem to be based on individualistic experiences? For every person that delegated about all the negative experiences they’ve had with unhoused people downtown, there was someone with an opposing opinion. I though we were data driven now.
What the hell was the outcome of that health and housing symposium in the first half of the year? Why has there still been no formal presentation or report from the County? And in light of that, why is action being taken based on recommendations not received by the public? What is this Health and Housing Community Planning Table that the City just gave $450,000 to? Who’s on it? What are they responsible for? Who are they responsible to?
In a way, this is so much bigger than people downtown, but they are the ones upon whom the hammer will fall now, and after that, council has now ensured the hammer will fall on all of us soon because we’re going to court. Are we meant to believe the executive director of the Legal Clinic of Guelph and Wellington County was only at the council meeting to threaten legal action that will never come?
The tents may disappear, but the people won’t and neither will their need, and now we will wait and see what happens on October 1. The bottom line is that if you think this story is over, think again.
