Former
attorney general Michael Bryant is urging Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal
government to right a wrong he “failed” to do as Ontario’s top lawman.
Cri
“
Criminalization
of Homelessness by professional criminals”
‘criminalizes homelessness’
Former
attorney general Michael Bryant is urging Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal
government to right a wrong he “failed” to do as Ontario’s top lawman.
News / Queen's Park:
Gaetz
estimated that it cost Toronto police almost $1 million in time to hand out $4
million in tickets between 2000 and 2010 — 99 per cent of which are never paid
because homeless people cannot afford the fines that range from $60 to $500.
Criminalization of Homelessness by professional criminals! The
mass media in this country are refusing to publish the truth about homeless
people in Canada. Why they are living in the streets of this
nation and whom is the responsible of this catastrophe. The world
have to know that more than fifty percent of homeless people; their lives were
mutilated by the government institutions. “Canada is one of the richest countries in the
world” but lacks public housing to assist homeless people; the annual
statistics are showing that every year hundreds of homeless people are dying in
the streets of this nation. The Canadian regime is guilty by the pain, the
suffering, for the deaths, and by denies a roof which will protect poor people
of the cold winter.
News / Queen's Park Michael Bryant urges repeal of law that ‘criminalizes
homelessness’
Former attorney general Michael Bryant is urging
Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government to right a wrong he “failed” to do
as Ontario’s top lawman.A homeless man rests on a grate near Queen St.
W. and Bay St. earlier this month. . Ontario's former attorney general says the
Safe Streets Act "criminalizes homelessness" by allowing police to
hand out tickets to panhandlers. By:
Robert
Benzie
Queen's Park Bureau Chief, Published on Mon Dec 15 2014 Former
attorney general Michael Bryant is urging Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal
government to right a wrong he “failed” to do as Ontario’s top lawman.
Bryant on Monday implored his fellow Grits to repeal
the Safe Streets Act that police have been using since 2000 to charge
panhandlers and so-called squeegee kids.
“Let’s stop arresting the poor for being poor. It criminalizes
homelessness,” he said at Queen’s
Park,
noting people soliciting money for charities on city sidewalks are rarely
ticketed for doing the essentially same thing. Asked why the Liberal didn’t scrap the law
enacted by former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris during his four
years as attorney general under ex-premier Dalton McGuinty, Bryant did not mince words: “I failed. I am
accountable. I have no excuses.”
He noted that amending the law would be “consistent” with Wynne’s
policies on poverty reduction and helping the mentally ill.
Stephen Gaetz, a York University
professor of education and director of the Canadian Observatory on
Homelessness, said the law is a “waste” of the justice system’s resources.
Gaetz
estimated that it cost Toronto police almost $1 million in time to hand out $4
million in tickets between 2000 and 2010 — 99 per cent of which are never paid
because homeless people cannot afford the fines that range from $60 to $500.
“That
is a waste of money and a waste of services,” he said.
Mary Birdsell, of the Justice for Children and Youth Legal Clinic, said
the Act is “a primitive and degrading response to homelessness.” “It
is mean, it is bullying, and it is beneath us,” she said.
Officials in the office of Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur were not
immediately available for comment.
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