Two Orillia city councilors are among dozens of municipal politicians calling on the province to refrain from using the notwithstanding clause to manage homeless encampments in communities around Ontario.

Councilors Janet-Lynne Durnford and Jay Fallis are among 41 signatories to a letter — with representatives from 23 municipalities across the province — calling for “evidence-based solutions to homelessness” and to respect rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“To me, it’s about us having to treat everybody as a human being, not just those who actually live in homes,” Fallis said Orillia Matters. “Everyone is human, and we must treat each other as we treat ourselves.”

The call comes in response to a letter to Premier Doug Ford, signed by 13 Ontario mayorsincluding Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall, in recent weeks, asking the premier to consider using the notwithstanding clause to deal with the growing issue of homeless encampments in cities around the province.

The notwithstanding clause allows the provincial legislature or parliament to override parts of the statute for up to five years.

“I’m against any action where we’re going to violate people’s human rights,” Durnford said Orillia Matters. “One of the requests in the mayors’ letter is to be able to arrest and jail people for repeat trespassing, but to be clear, often there’s nowhere for people to go, so if the shelters are full and people are homeless, there’s nowhere for them to legally exist as a person without housing, and that is perceived as an act of trespass, and therefore you are just criminalizing homelessness.”

Citing a 2023 court case in the Region of Waterloo, where the region’s request to evict a homeless encampment was denied due to a lack of available shelter, Fallis noted that there must be “an alternative place for (people) to go” if evicted from a camp.

“This would just kill it. It would basically make it so that there is no need for an alternate space,” he said. “As it stands, the system is broken. It’s tragically broken, but this would make it even more broken.”

When it comes to addressing the homelessness crisis, Durnford said the mayors’ call would only succeed in making the problem less visible.

“If you think the problem is that you’re seeing more visible poverty and more people living on the streets — it can solve that problem,” she said. “It doesn’t solve the actual problem, which is that there’s an affordability crisis, there’s a toxic drug crisis, and there’s a housing crisis, and it doesn’t solve those problems. It masks them.”

In addition to using the disregard clause to “move the homeless,” as Premier Ford recently said, Durnford also expressed concern about the possibility of mandatory addiction treatment.

“The other thing that they’re asking for despite the clause is to put people into mandatory addiction treatment, and I think that’s outrageous because right now it’s almost impossible to get access to addiction treatment,” she said.

“If you can get detox, it takes months before you can get into treatment, and there’s no support in the meantime, so we’re basically trapping people in some kind of treatment program because they don’t have access to a service that doesn’t actually exist. “

Concerned that the mayors’ letter would simply “move (the homeless) around,” Fallis encouraged action that addresses “the root cause of what’s happening here.”

“The letter that we signed really speaks to the need for action that is research-based, that really boils down to the fact that we have to provide housing, affordable housing, accessible housing to these individuals,” he said. “We have to provide services like mental health, but also substance abuse treatment, and that’s complicated.”