Although housing and homelessness has been THE issue for the last few years, it feels like they didn’t make a dent in the recently completed provincial election. As the news obsessively tracks the tariff war and Doug Ford’s response to Donald Trump’s latest drama, the struggles of growing unaffordability and homelessness seems to have taken a back seat., So now that the election is over, does anyone in authority still care about these issues?
Back in December, Premier Ford held a media event at Queen’s Park. I...
Although housing and homelessness has been THE issue for the last few years, it feels like they didn’t make a dent in the recently completed provincial election. As the news obsessively tracks the tariff war and Doug Ford’s response to Donald Trump’s latest drama, the struggles of growing unaffordability and homelessness seems to have taken a back seat., So now that the election is over, does anyone in authority still care about these issues?
Back in December, Premier Ford held a media event at Queen’s Park. In the company of several mayors he announced the Ontario Restoring Safety to Parks and Public Spaces Act, a bill that expanded police powers in dealing with encampments and offered stiffer penalties for people who repeatedly break trespass laws and use illegal drugs in public. But just before the election call there was a turnaround, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said that maybe it wasn't needed after all.
Not wanting to take chances, the Ontario Coalition for the Rights of Homeless People’s tried to rally the political parties to all make the same campaign promise: A clear public commitments against criminalizing homelessness. Three of the four major parties signed up in common cause, but guess which one did not. With a new four-year majority for the Ford government secured there are now a lot of questions about what will happen next on the homelessness file.
There many questions to ask, and this week we're asking Diana Chan McNally, who is a community and crisis worker in Toronto and co-ordinator of the Ontario Coalition for the Rights of Homeless People. She will talk about her expectations before the election, how issues of poverty got overshadowed by tariffs, and her concerns about another attempt at criminalizing homelessness. She will also discuss what the action plan is now, and why the next fight with the provincial government will be through municipalities.
So let's talk about where we go no on this week's Guelph Politicast!
You can learn more about The Ontario Coalition for the Rights of Homeless People at their website. You can follow her on social media on Twitter and Blue Sky and you find links to her activism, op-eds and other work at Link Tree. At present there’s no word on when the legislature will return or when and if the government will table the Ontario Restoring Safety to Parks and Public Spaces Act again.
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