Guelph council backs Solve the Crisis campaign, opposes notwithstanding clause

During the last meeting of 2024, Guelph city council passed various motions, including one to support the Ontario Big City Mayor's (OCBM) Solve the Crisis campaign.

The motion calls for more funding and investment from the federal and provincial governments when it comes to the homelessness crisis, as well as ministerial oversight and the creation of a provincial task force.

At Wednesday's meeting, Guelph Mayor Cam Guthrie said that all 29 cities represented in the OCBM caucus, as well as over 200 other municipalities, have already passed this motion of support – all without any changes.

"No one else has ever amended or added or anything else to this. This has been a support motion from OBCM," said Guthrie in council chambers.

However, an amendment proposed by Councillor Erin Caton did suggest replacing the "business community and tourism industry" in the list of provincial task force stakeholders with "people with living experience of homelessness and substance abuse disorders".

While this amendment did not pass in its original form, council compromised by including both groups in the task force, making Guelph the only municipality of over 200 to have altered the motion.

Council opposes the potential use of notwithstanding clause

Caton put three motions before council, the first was a support motion to say that Guelph council opposes the use of the notwithstanding clause to remove encampments as requested by the OBCM caucus.

In council, Caton argued the provincial government's under funding of social services has worsened the homelessness crisis, adding, "We should be defending our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and not giving them [the provincial government] the free pass."

"The use of the notwithstanding clause gives them the ability to not solve the crisis."

Guthrie said that while he does not think that the preemptive application of the notwithstanding clause is needed, he said he does believe "that if an encampment takes over a playground and we can't move it, that we should be able to move it."

Guthrie said the intervention of the provincial government in court cases preventing encampment removals allows the city to enforce its public spaces bylaw.

"That's why I do support, if necessary…the use of the notwithstanding clause," he said.

The motion passed, with Guthrie and councillors Christine Billings and Michele Richardson voting against the motion.

A second motion tabled by Caton opposing the use of force in involuntary treatment of people with substance use disorders or mental illness was withdrawn after councillors expressed concerns about the lack of evidence and medical expertise supporting the motion.

Councillor Cathy Downer said she had seen results from both perspectives on the issue. She said she saw findings that in either case there's still the potential for overdose post treatment. 

"I'm not an expert and I don't know that anybody around this horseshoe is either," said Downer, adding that "we didn't have any medical experts come in to speak to that either today."

Councillor Phil Allt, who seconded the motion, said in an interview with CBC News that he suggested to Caton they remove and delay the presentation of that motion until a time when more evidence can be supplied. 

The third motion brought forward by Caton was to write a letter about Guelph council's opposition to the use of the notwithstanding clause to AMO and OBCM. 

That motion passed unanimously.

Motion for continued support of CTS locations, increased HART Hub funding

Allt introduced motions of his own to council Wednesday, calling on council to urge the provincial government to continue the funding and support of supervised consumption sites past the proposed March 31, 2025 cutoff.

"There was very clear support within the community and those who spoke for the maintenance of safe injection sites," said Allt. 

Allt said the motion passed with overwhelming support, but not the unanimous support the initial bid for supervised consumption sites had two years ago.

"Something had to be done and therefore it was fairly easy for people to vote and just believe that, we've approved it and it will go away," he said.

"This time, we had to have people make a decision based on past results."

Allt said that there was also support for his motion to urge the province to increase funding for Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs.

"But what there was not support for was the HART strategy without safe injection sites," he said.

"It was quite clear that we need a total package of approaches to addressing mental health and addiction issues."