TimminsToday received this letter from the Community Legal Clinic of York Region. The City of Timmins says enforcement services follow the municipality's encampment outreach and response protocol that requires staff to engage with people experiencing homelessness to let them know about the regulations in Parkland By-law 2024-8999 and to co-ordinate outreach response to help access services and supports. "Further, individuals who come to a voluntary decision to relocate, are connected with Outreach Services to aid in the removal of their belongings. The City has not created a designated encampment site." The full letter from the legal clinic follows:
It has come to our attention that City of Timmins Bylaw Enforcement staff may intend to carry out the eviction of residents of homeless encampments today.
We also understand that the City has agreed to establish a designated encampment site, though it has not yet set it up (with washroom facilities, water, shade tents, garbage removal, etc.). Once set up this will be a very positive step.
We urge the City not to proceed with these evictions until the City completes the establishment of the designated encampment site.
So far as we can tell there is no urgent reason to carry out these evictions. We wonder if this action is being precipitated by Wednesday’s anti-homeless rally. That would, of course, in no way justify premature unlawful action.
We gather that you may feel that the City can act under the authority of the City’s recently passed Parks Bylaw and protocol. As we have explained in our letter of June 20, last, this is incorrect. In the case law, including the Waterloo and Kingston cases, similar bylaws and protocols existed. The courts nevertheless refused to give permission to dismantle the encampments in question. The bylaw and protocol provide no legal authority which overrides the caselaw as set out in Waterloo and Kingston.
The establishment of a proper designated encampment site may justify removal of encampments elsewhere, provided the site is fully set up and reasonable time is provided to permit encampment residents to move there.
The touchstone for evictions which rely on the existence of designated encampment sites is genuine good faith and reasonable treatment of encampment residents. For example, this dictates that the municipality must first be able to show that the encampment site is set up. In the present case this has not yet occurred. Genuine good faith and reasonable treatment dictate that evictions only begin once the designated encampment site is fully established.
Should this matter be reviewed by a court the first question the judge will ask is why evictions couldn’t await the designated encampment site being set up. We strongly urge the City not to place itself in the position of being held to have acted unlawfully, but rather to prudently await the full establishment of the designated encampment site it has committed to create.
As always we are pleased to discuss this with you or your lawyers.
Jeff Schlemmer
Executive Director
Community Legal Clinic of York Region
Sharon Crowe
Director of Legal Services
Community Legal Clinic of York Region
