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The City of Ottawa wants to add its voice to a plea to the federal and provincial governments to do more to help cities grapple with the triple crises of homelessness, mental health and opioid addiction.
“We can spend all the money in the world. We can throw money at shelters. We can throw money at the police. We can throw money at drug (consumption) sites. We need more legislative and jurisdictional tools and we need more hospital investments to be targeted toward this,” said Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stéphanie Plante.
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Council will vote Wednesday on a motion by Plante to support Ontario’s Big City Mayors Caucus’s “Solve the Crisis” campaign, which urges the provincial and federal government to step up and address the gordion knot of mental health, addiction and homelessness.
Drug overdoses claimed more than 3,400 lives in Ontario last year and 234,000 people were homeless. Some 1,400 tent encampments have sprung up in the province, according to the Big City Mayors.
“If you talk to the Royal Ottawa, they’re completely overwhelmed,” Plante said. “If you talk to smaller cities — Cobourg, Kingston, Prescott-Russell — they’re literally telling people ‘Go to Ottawa,’ because they don’t have the resources there to deal with it.”
In addition to “adequate and sustained funding,” the motion calls for the province to strike a task force involving municipalities, health care providers, first responders, the business community and tourism industry to develop a “made in Ontario action plan” to address the issue.
Just how to address the issue is bound to be contentious. A recent story by QP Briefing says the Big City Mayors will debate this week whether to ask for more power to deal with homeless encampments and that the higher levels of government develop a “compassionate, compulsory treatment program” to treat addiction.
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Compulsory treatment is not part of Plante’s motion.
“I think we all know the status quo isn’t working,” she said. “I think the one thing that no one says is that when you talk to people who’ve been to treatment, nobody wakes up one day and says ‘Hey, I’m going to go to treatment. It’s going to be awesome.’ Usually, there’s some precipitating event, like a judge, a doctor, a family member, or a big scare that makes somebody say ‘Whoah. I better go to treatment.’
“I would say there are some people ideologically who see it as something that needs to be compelled. But there’s no treatment for them. I think that something we can all agree we need more of.”
Addiction of any sort causes “chaos” in lives, and that chaos has spilled over into the street and into affluent neighbourhoods beyond the downtown core, she said. That’s what’s brought the issue to the forefront, she said.
“No one was writing about home takeovers in public housing in Lowertown or drug dealers recruiting children at York Street Public School,” she said.
“I refuse to believe there are people walking around Ontario who have not been touched personally or professionally by addiction. It’s a family member. It’s in your neighbourhood. It’s in your workplace. Even (Premier) Doug Ford has dealt with it.”
The Big City Mayors Caucus will debate its Solve the Crisis policy on Thursday.
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