What To Do With Homeless Encampments? Poilievre Announces His Plan To Empower Police To “Shut Down Tent Cities”

There Poilievre Goes Again, Channeling Trump On a Complex Problem That Could  and Should Be Treated With Less Force and  More Humanely 

A News Commentary by Doug Draper

Posted April 23^rd, 2025 on Niagara At Large

At a campaign stop in Hamilton this April 23^rd, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre began his remarks with a boast that he has received endorsements from a number of police associations across Ontario including those in Toronto, Durham, Peel, Barrie, and Sault Ste. Marie.

These  endorsements, Poilievre suggests, are in no small way due to  his pledge to get tougher on crime and to put an end to what he has repeatedly called a ‘lost Liberal decade” of “easy bail and soft-on-crime policies.”

Then Poilievre got right down to some of that tough talk that is sure to please his right-wing base, if not others, on how he will deal with the growing numbers of homeless people across our region and the rest of the country who are huddled down  in encampments –

As an April 23^rd News Release from Poilievre’s Conservative states –

Poilievre announced (this April 23^rd)  that a new Conservative government will ensure that police have the legal power to remove dangerous encampments to end the homelessness and the mental health and addiction crisis that has trapped thousands in dangerous tent cities and make life unsafe for law-abiding Canadians who live near them.

“Parks where children played are now littered with needles. Small businesses are boarded up and whole blocks of storefronts are shuttered because their owners can’t afford to deal with constant break-ins and vandalism,” Pierre Poilievre said. “Public spaces belong to everyone, but law-abiding citizens, especially families and seniors, are being pushed out to accommodate chaos and violence.” …

A Poilievre-led government will do this by reversing the Liberals’ radical pro-drug policies and by:

•   – Amending the Criminal Code to give police the tools to charge individuals when they endanger public safety or discourage the public from using, moving through, or otherwise accessing public spaces by setting up temporary structures, including tents.
•   – Clarifying in law that police can dismantle illegal encampments and ensure individuals living in them who need help are connected with housing, addiction treatment, and mental health services.
•   – Giving judges the power to order people charged for illegally occupying public spaces with a temporary structure and simple possession of illegal drugs to mandatory drug treatment.
•   – Returning to a housing first approach to homelessness, ensuring people get off the streets into a stable place to live with the support they need to rebuild their lives.
• … These encampments are a direct result of radical Liberal policies such as drug decriminalization and unsafe supply. They are extremely dangerous for the people trapped in them, who endure overdoses, assaults, including sexual assaults, human trafficking, and even homicide, as well as the community around them.

Under the Poilievre plan, tent cities will no longer be an option—but recovery will be. Conservatives will give law enforcement the tools they need to help clean up our streets, deal with chronic offenders, and provide truly compassionate recovery and treatment where it is needed. …

Conservatives will allow judges to sentence offenders to mandatory treatment for addiction, and we will fund 50,000 addiction treatment spaces, ensuring that those struggling with substance use get the support they need to recover—because real compassion means helping people get better, not enabling their suffering. …

Okay, now back to Doug Draper at Niagara At Large with a singular question – How much compassion is there in a plan like that?

Now people who cannot afford to put a roof over their heads, including growing numbers of people who have been driven out on the streets because of skyrocketing rents and housing bills,  not only face that burden and all of the hardship and indignities that go along with that. Under a Poilieve government (which this news commentator hopes will never happen) they would also face the possibility of having a police record or worse.

How is so reflexively bringing down the strong arm of the law going to help find a job that pays well enough and help provide housing that is affordable enough for people? I ask again; Where is the ‘compassionate conservatism’ in that, if there ever was such a thing.

And here we go again  with the Trump-like chatter, in this case employed to paint a picture that most, if not all homeless people are mentally ill, are drug addicts, are criminals, or are all three.

And even if some of these folks do suffer from drug addiction or mental illness, and by many accounts, some of them do,  experts in the field of helping vulnerable people in our communities have made the case time and time again that there are other more humane and less forceful ways of addressing that.

So if I were a member of the media scrum following Poilieve’s address on this topic, I would ask him this –

Instead of being so quick to call the cops, why not start by rolling out real plans for guaranteeing everyone a livable wage and for controlling cost costs that have far outpaced what so many people can afford?

In Angus polls and others, Poilievre’s Conservatives go from being well ahead (see the line in blue) to falling behind Carney’s Liberals, shown in red, in a matter of weeks. And  polls continue to show that the Liberals are on track to win a majority on April 28th

Even this late in an election where he began with a strong lead, only to see his poll numbers fall below Mark Carney’s Liberals, Poilievre is still, in the last few desperate days of his campaign, trying to play on people’s fear and anger.

• Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

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