On the heels of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision in Hamilton, Sarnia council has directed staff to clear all homeless encampments -- but only during daytime hours.
Justice James Ramsey ruled last month that the City of Hamilton did not infringe on the Charter rights of encampment residents when enforcing its bylaw that banned tents from parks.
In a 7-1 recorded vote on Monday, Sarnia council endorsed a motion from city/council councillor Bill Dennis to direct staff to dismantle all encampments immediately -- including the entrenched encampment at Rainbow Park.
Dennis described Ramsey's ruling as "music to his ears."
"Based on this new Hamilton ruling, there is no longer the fear of a lawsuit to be used as a weapon against us, or to be used as an excuse for inaction," Dennis said. "We now have zero excuses to allow the lawlessness to continue to terrorize neighbours."
Councillor Anne Marie Gillis defended their initial actions to help individuals. "We were looking to try to be a humane, caring community, and we were trying to be very, very just in how we brought tools forward, paid for the measures that we paid for, to alleviate some of the difficulties that people were having. Not only in the encampment, but outside the encampment, and that has worked and we paid probably a million dollars to do it," said Gillis. But, she agreed with the majority of her colleagues that the city is now dealing with "the worst of the worst."
"We're creating a criminal entity within the park," she said. "That, in my humble opinion, is not our job. We don't want to encourage that, we want to discourage that."
Councillor Adam Kilner voted against the motion, noting court decisions in Kingston and Waterloo were different from Hamilton.
"Are we exposing ourselves as a city to further legal challenges?" Kilner asked city staff.
Sarnia solicitor Randi Kalar said staff can proceed to issue trespass notices to evict people from encampments during daytime hours.
"The difference with the Hamilton decision is the City of Hamilton did not perform any evictions as night approached or overnight, and so the judge did not undertake a Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] analysis to determine whether or not any of those encampment residents' Charter rights were violated," said Kalar.
If shelter space becomes unavailable, evictions may be harder.
"If there are encampments on municipal property, we may expose ourselves to risk where we are evicting people overnight. We would still be in a position where we have to demonstrate there is available and accessible shelter space," she said.
Kalar noted the Hamilton decision "closed a gap."
"With Kingston, the justice in that case did not comment on whether or not the city could enforce its parks bylaw as it related to daytime camping." she said. "The Hamilton decision does close that gap and advises municipalities that they can enforce their parks bylaw as it relates to daytime camping. We do not have to demonstrate available and accessible shelter space."
Sarnia's existing trespass notice will be amended to reflect council's direction and eviction notices will be issued to people residing in encampments.
But, Kalar said there will still be some legal requirements.
"We need to be able to ensure that a person receives the notice, we need to determine their legal name, we need to determine a timeframe to evict. Currently under our encampment protocol the timeframe is 48 hours," she said.
As part of the motion, the County of Lambton will be asked to review its shelter system and consider improvements; like increasing capacity and extending hours.
City/county councillor Brian White was absent from Monday's meeting.