TORONTO – Instead of providing vulnerable people with housing, social supports, street outreach, and mental health services, an uncaring Premier Ford will hide behind a handful of Ontario mayors to violate individuals’ human and constitutional rights and disproportionately target already marginalized people, say leaders from the province’s largest union.
“We’ve got Ford, a multimillionaire, and a dozen mayors targeting people who already literally have nothing,” said CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn. “This kind of backward thinking is downright Dickensian. The preamble to Premier Scrooge’s promised new bill might as well begin with ‘Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?’
“Conflating growing homelessness with an ongoing opioid crisis and the fundamental lack of mental health supports is a dangerous, dog-whistle approach. The premier is demonizing poor and working-class people – the same people who’ve been denied support and treatment and who’ve been priced out of housing by the Conservatives’ policies.”
The punish-the-poor initiatives planned by Ford and a tiny minority of Ontario mayors put them at odds with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and big city mayors, who have asked for a “root-cause” strategy from the province.
CUPE Ontario represents 290,000 public sector workers, including tens of thousands who provide daily support and care to persons experiencing homelessness, addiction and mental health issues. These workers have spoken out vehemently about rumoured plans, now confirmed by the Tories, that they’ve chosen to return to old, discredited methods that rely on violating people’s rights instead of offering real solutions.
The union pointed out that every one of Ontario’s 444 municipalities is dealing with a housing crisis. Yet mayors representing less than 3% of those municipalities are being used by the Ford Conservatives as an excuse to bring in bad legislation that tramples fundamental freedoms, but does nothing to resolve the problems at the root of homelessness, addiction and the crisis in mental health.
“The call for ‘something to be done’ is understandable. But these problems didn’t develop overnight. They are decades of Liberal and Conservative government cuts coming home to roost,” said Krista Laing, chair of CUPE Ontario’s Ontario Municipal Workers.
She emphasized that Ontario has the country’s second-biggest wait lists for affordable housing (5% of the population) and of households in core housing needs (14.5% of the population), concluding that “Premier Ford is only proposing his so-called ‘solutions’ because he can’t understand that real people need the real fixes that public services offer, like supportive housing, mental health treatment, and addiction services.
“At the same time, he takes us all for fools. He thinks he can distract us from the last six years of his government’s failures by blaming the poorest people, while he hasn’t put anything close to the amount of money necessary into public services or affordable housing for Ontario’s growing population,” said Laing.
Hahn also called out the Ford Conservatives for ignoring the advice of frontline workers:
“There are better models to follow than those Ford is offering. It’s why we, as a society, implemented models of affordable housing, guaranteed emergency shelter, and social supports like mental health care in the first place. They offer better treatment choices, better results, and protect every individual’s basic rights. This model needs a renewed commitment, and the backing of needs-based funding increases.”
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For more information: Mary Unan, CUPE Communications 647-390-9839 | [email protected]
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