As Toronto’s government ignores broad public warnings that a crisis in the homeless shelter system is endangering lives, the media are helping them get away with it, even as people die. Recent events offer a brief glimpse of the ongoing homelessness disaster and the workings of undemocratic government and media that allow its toll in lives.

February 21: In a public committee room packed with concerned community members there to support them, a dozen representatives from Toronto’s major social agencies as well as homeless clients make urgent deputations before Toronto city councillors.

The deputations present a consensus: the overwhelmed homeless shelter system is full and in crisis, denying people vital services such as food and shelter during the winter.

Everyone working in or using the system knows that people regularly cannot find a bed in the full shelter system, while those “lucky” enough to get in often face dangerous conditions so crowded they fail to meet UN standards for refugee camps. Often there is not enough food.

In light of the recent loss of 300 shelter beds from cuts and closures, the community calls for the City to open new emergency shelters immediately. The city could do so easily âe” it has opened them in the past when forced by public protest.

Deputants specifically warn that more people will “suffer and even perish” unless immediate action is taken.

The councillors’ response is disturbing. Committee chair Joe Mihevc says he will do nothing now, but promises to “think carefully” about what he has heard. Other councillors respond with less, including silence or leaving to get coffee. None address the pleas for immediate action to avoid deaths.

With yet another winter storm bearing down on Toronto, community members leave City Hall frustrated and angry, filing past the conspicuous police presence and out into the ominous cold.

Media choose not to report any of this.

February 28: An apparently homeless aboriginal man is found dead in a parking garage stairwell, his crutches nearby. The temperature that night is -27 Celsius with wind chill.

February 29: The Toronto Star and Globe & Mail both report the manâe(TM)s death in very brief articles not mentioning the ignored deputations or shelter crisis. The Globe article focuses on a police officer’s suggestion that this may simply have been a man on his way home from work, even as the Star reports that “an ambulance supervisor at the scene said the man clearly showed ‘signs of hard living.'”

An emergency protest is organized specifically to respond to the death and ignored deputations.

March 4: Fifty people gather at City Hall to demand that City Council stop ignoring the crisis. Many of us participated in the deputations on February 21. Speakers from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) and Toronto Disaster Relief Committee (TDRC) address the gathering before we move inside.

Interrupting a debate, we enter the pubic council chamber intending to deliver letters urging councillors to act responsibly. Community members âe” including many front line service providers âe” demand to know what councillors will do about the problem.

Rather than engage us, the councillors promptly declare a recess. Most get up and leave as police enter the chamber. Others stay and watch us, but say nothing when asked, “What are we supposed to do as people we know continue to die?” âe” ignored by their “representatives” at city council.

Councillors order us to leave or face arrest. One councillor loudly encourages police to remove us before we “make trouble.” Police shove people out.

The Globe chooses not to report the story. The Star and Toronto Sun manage to report that a protest occurred without mentioning the death or ignored deputations.

March 5: By this point, volunteers investigating the February 28 death of Robert Maurice have stumbled upon several other deaths in the process.

The mortality rate among homeless people is ten times that of the general population, and in Toronto alone people die every week while experiencing homelessness.

Robert had been in and out of shelters and relying on services for homeless people for decades. Recently, he had been sharing a small room in a crowded boarding house little better than an emergency shelter. He still spent a lot of time outdoors, even through the winter, and relied on drop-in centres. The toll on one’s health from such a life is severe.

March 8: The Globe, which never reported the deputations and originally suggested that Robert was an employed man on his way home from work, now tries to debunk the “radical anti-homelessness activists” who say inadequate food and shelter is an urgent problem.

The Globe article claims that Robert’s death is irrelevant to our demands âe” because he “had a bed” and therefore was not technically homeless when he died out in the cold. It claims that even the “outreach workers” disagree with “protesters” âe” omitting that many of the protesters are outreach and other front-line workers. It quotes Mihevc at length: “the radicals” use “the politics of yelling at people and the politics of misinformation,” he says.

The Star, which also never reported the deputations, joins the cynical game with a vague three-sentence editorial blurb denouncing OCAP for “counter-productive protesting” because “their facts were wrong” âe” without naming what facts this refers to.

Still no mention of the ignored deputations in either the Star or the Globe. Still no mention of the community consensus on the crisis. And still no action by City Council.

March 11: About 40 people gather for the monthly homeless memorial at Church of the Holy Trinity. An outreach worker there mentions that he found Robert sleeping outdoors at night this winter.

Robert Maurice is one of four names added to the memorial today âe” just the ones we can confirm. Another is Byron Debassige, a young aboriginal man with schizophrenia who police shot to death while he wielded a knife in a park after stealing food.

We know that governments act for marginalized people only when popular pressure forces them to do so. When the media inhibits this process, it is part of a failure of democracy that âe” in poverty, as in war âe” costs lives.