Brandon bylaw changes aimed at offences like loitering, panhanding could target homeless people, critics fear

A new proposed bylaw on "community standards" coming before city council in Brandon, Man., next week has critics worried it could harm unhoused people.

If approved, the amendments to Brandon's compliance bylaw would alter fines for some offences and add some new ones, such as fines targeting loitering or panhandling.

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett says amendments to the bylaw, set to receive third reading Monday, have been in the works since around 2018.

The changes were prompted by concerns members of the public brought to the city and the Brandon Police Service, he said.

"There wasn't an urgency" to the changes initially, he said, which he described as "housekeeping" amendments to the city's bylaw.

"Over time … they started cleaning things up and said, 'OK, well, should we be doing some improvements?'" Fawcett said.

Critics of the bylaw warn it could hurt the city's most vulnerable, saying vague definitions for proposed fineable actions like loitering or panhandling could unfairly impact unhoused people in the province's second-largest city.

Bylaw needs clarity: renewal corporation co-ordinator

Megan McKenzie, the research and project development co-ordinator for the Brandon Neighborhood Renewal Corporation, worries the changes could see people who are chronically homeless fined repeatedly. 

"We need to be really clear about what is loitering, and who are we trying to address with that, and ensuring that people do have spaces," she said.

"The big part of that is making sure they have homes," said McKenzie. Otherwise, "you're essentially criminalizing homelessness without providing the resources for people to have other alternatives."

The number of people without homes in Brandon is increasing dramatically, she said, and the complexity of needs — including those related to mental health and substance use — is increasing in tandem.

From January to September 2019, for example, 104 people accessed the city's only overnight shelter.

From January to May 2023 alone, that number was 270.

She also worries the proposed bylaw could disproportionately persecute Indigenous people, who make up the majority of unhoused people in the city, according to statistics from Brandon's Safe and Warm Shelter.

Brandon University sociology professor Christopher Schneider says the proposed amendments as written should be scrapped, and the people who would be impacted by these proposed changes — including Indigenous and racialized people — should be consulted on any future amendments.

That consultation would help the city better understand the underlying conditions that need to be addressed, and how those issues are giving rise to some social problems in the city. 

"The bylaw … is so vague that basically anything could be interpreted as 'loitering,'" by a responding officer, "and they can remove all of those people and the problem," Schneider said.

That may satisfy business owners who don't want people loitering in front of their shops, he said, "but does not in any concrete way address or serve as a long-term solution to helping those in need."

Wayne Balcaen, who was chief of the Brandon Police Service when the new bylaw was drafted and first presented to council, is also listed as one of its authors.

Balcaen, who is seeking the Progressive Conservative nomination in Brandon West for this year's provincial election, declined to speak with the CBC.

The Brandon Police Service said no one was available to speak when CBC requested comment.

Fawcett says there is some vagueness in the bylaw, "because hard and fixed doesn't necessarily always work." 

The city's goal is to see the bylaws enforced with compassion and to adjust enforcement as needed, he said.

"It just gives … [enforcement officers] an opportunity to talk with people to say, 'You know what, we're not gonna have you do this here,'" Fawcett said.

Ward 4 Coun. Shaun Cameron, who sits on the Brandon Urban Aboriginal Council, says council's goal was to make the bylaw as fair as possible, using a mix of education and enforcement to ensure people feel safe in the city.

"Council and the city staff both view this as a living document, in the sense that we're able to make amendments and edit throughout time," Cameron said.

"We want to view it as something that continues to grow and change."