What is the goal of next week’s intended Christmastime mass roust of downtown Edmonton homeless encampments by city police, and why did they unilaterally spring it on city officials and social agencies while ignoring the city’s encampment response strategy?
The Edmonton Police Service (EPS)’s plan to start Monday morning busting up eight encampments in the city core and dismantling their 134 “structures,” by which the police presumably mean mostly tents, has been temporarily stalled until at least noon by an interim court injunction.
In the meantime, though, nobody seems to know exactly who came up with the idea of spending five days sweeping the streets of homeless people with no place to go during the Christmas season, but the whole thing reeks of UCP-style politics.
Peace on Earth? Good will to men? Not if they’re poor and living on the streets of Edmonton! This sounds more like something out of the pages of The Grapes of Wrath!
And with well over 3,000 homeless people living on the streets of Edmonton and only 1,126 shelter spaces, the result has the potential to cost lives among the city’s most vulnerable citizens.
Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi indicated last night he had been blindsided by the news of the city police force’s plans, which were emailed to Edmonton social services agencies by Staff Sergeant Michael Dreilich on Thursday.
“When I found out last night, I had immediate questions around how vulnerable Edmontonians will be supported,” Sohi said on social media. (Emphasis added.)
“I have been advised that the City of Edmonton is not leading this response and has only been asked to provide cleaning services,” he added weakly.
“The City of Edmonton endeavors to take a balanced approach based on the assessments of risks to individual encampment residents, the community and the public,” the mayor’s statement continued. “Given the number of people potentially impacted in this case, I am worried about how displaced people may take shelter in other spaces that are not safe or appropriate.
“That is why we need permanent solutions, such as investments in affordable housing, permanent supportive housing and improving our social infrastructure through mental health and addictions support,” he added.
At least the initial comments on Mayor Sohi’s Instagram account suggest many of his core supporters are not impressed by this milquetoast approach to the unilateral announcement by the police.
Many police officers, especially beat cops, are also rumoured to be unhappy with the plan. However, Edmonton Police Chief Dale McPhee often appears to work closely with the UCP government and has said in the past of the camps that “you’ve got to take them down and keep them down.”
Public Interest Alberta said in a news release that the plan to drive homeless people from their encampments is an infringement of their Charter rights, will make the situation worse on the ground, and will bring the city’s already strained emergency health system closer to the breaking point.
“We are demanding EPS stand down from its plan and to stop criminalizing homelessness on our streets,” said PIA Executive Director Bradley Lafortune. “There are not enough shelter spaces in our city, and those we do have are not adequate to support people who need safe and secure spaces to survive.”
The CBC reported that late yesterday Court of King’s Bench Justice James Neilson granted what he called an “interim, interim injunction.” The injunction requires Edmonton police to wait until at least noon Monday to begin breaking up the camps. Justice Neilson is expected to have ruled by then on the application by the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights to halt the planned evictions.
According to PIA, “multiple sources within City Hall, service providing organizations, and city administration have independently confirmed that this mass decampment decision has not followed existing process and protocol under the City’s current encampment response strategy.”
Mike Parker, president of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta which represents close to 30,000 health care workers, said “the problem is immediate and severe and will have a direct impact on the members I represent in addictions and mental health, community care, EMS, and professionals across the health system.”
“Our members are on the front line of an already overrun health care system,” Parker explained. “We’re already red-coded over and over again. We’ve got hospitals that are continually nearing 150 per cent capacity with zero capacity in ICU. We can’t displace more people and we can’t put more pressure on the system.”
It will be interesting to see if the emails flying among Edmonton City Council, city administrators and city (?) police can determine who actually pulled the trigger on this plan. There is talk the UCP Government wants to take over the response to urban encampments from the city.
There have also been suggestions this is the first step in the UCP Government’s scheme to implement a coercive and possibly unconstitutional drug “treatment” program advocated under premiers Jason Kenney and Danielle Smith.
“Many of these people live in my area,” said Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood NDP MLA Janis Irwin. “They are our neighbours. They have nowhere to go. There are not enough shelter spaces, and even if there were, many of these people do not feel safe in them. This is cruel. This is not the answer.”
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