Juno News - Toronto Police finally break up illegal tent cities

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.960 Toronto police are actually enforcing the law. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:01:40.500 If you're like me and you saw the footage of Toronto police yesterday breaking up a tent city and arresting squatters and protesters, it might have seemed a little shocking.

00:01:49.820 In this day and age, we don't often see the police actually doing their work and enforcing the law, especially if it involves the use of force.

00:01:57.800 Well, to help us make sense of this news story, I'm joined by True North contributor, Sue-Ann Levy. Sue-Ann is an expert on this topic. She's been writing about it for a very, very long time, and she has a new piece up at tnc.news. So, Sue-Ann, thank you so much for joining us.

00:02:12.480 Sue-Ann Levy- You're welcome, Candice.

00:02:13.440 so so you know can you walk us through what what happened yesterday because for me i just saw that

00:02:20.160 toronto police were trending on twitter i looked at some of the videos and i saw you know a lot of

00:02:24.400 people on the the left is sort of usual suspects really truly outraged um by what they saw and i

00:02:30.080 think it was perhaps a little out of context because if you didn't know anything about what

00:02:34.400 was going on in these encampments and you just thought you know the toronto police showed up

00:02:37.760 one day and decided to bust all these tents uh it could seem shocking so maybe you can help provide

00:02:42.080 a little bit of context and explain what exactly happened yesterday. What happened yesterday or

00:02:47.200 what's been happening over the last year because these encampments I guess they grew and festered

00:02:54.160 and pardon me for the use of the word fester but they were horrific and

00:03:00.320 few journalists went into these encampments but I spent a lot of time in the last year going into

00:03:05.040 them. They grew and prolificated when COVID started in, I guess, March, April 2020. And

00:03:14.560 all of a sudden, out of nowhere, cropped up this group called the Encampment Support Network. And

00:03:19.200 these people started delivering water, and it started very innocuously. They delivered water

00:03:24.560 to the people living in the encampments. Now, the big ones were in downtown Toronto,

00:03:30.480 one at Trinity Bellwoods Park, huge one at Trinity Bellwoods Park, one at Alexander Park which is

00:03:37.680 the Dundas Bathurst area, Moss Park was another one and Lamport Stadium Park which are the four

00:03:44.080 that are being targeted for finally for being cleaned out. Well the activists from the encampment

00:03:51.680 support network that this group grew just grew by leaps and bounds as the months went on and it

00:03:58.640 became obvious to me um because i spent a considerable time in alexander park trinity

00:04:05.200 bellwoods i was at lamport stadium park uh doing interviews it became obvious to me that their

00:04:11.840 their uh agenda was basically to keep these people in the parks and to enable them in whatever way

00:04:18.240 they could to keep them in the park by providing them with free tents brand new tents with uh of

00:04:25.760 course, water, food. I even heard stories of Uber Eats delivering food to these

00:04:32.240 encampments in Alexander Park, even providing them with ways to keep themselves warm. I'm not

00:04:39.040 sure if they delivered heaters, but they sure helped them. I saw people chopping wood in these

00:04:43.920 parks. And so it grew and the conditions got more and more squalid as the year went on. And

00:04:51.040 And, you know, the city council, the Toronto city council and the mayor enabled these people

00:05:01.800 to stay in the parks, enabled the activists to do what they did and because they screamed

00:05:07.380 loudly and which led us up to the last couple of weeks when the parks were finally cleared.

00:05:12.520 The activists, as I feel, have used the homeless as pawns over the last 20 years that I've been

00:05:20.520 covering this um they were very upset that these parks were being cleared because they didn't have

00:05:26.680 their people in the parks to make a statement and the statement is that they want housing no matter

00:05:33.240 how unaffordable it is these people need a roof over their heads that's basically their agenda

00:05:38.360 so you could imagine candace when the police started coming in and actually doing their jobs 0.57

00:05:42.680 and cleaning out these parks these activists were upset they were upset they didn't have their

00:05:48.280 show pieces to show the world what a terrible job all levels of government have done well it's

00:05:55.960 really interesting i i have a couple questions the first is who's funding these groups how are

00:05:59.560 they paying for these tents this food all this kind of thing um and then the other one was you

00:06:04.680 know yesterday when we saw the police breaking down the tents and and removing the protesters

00:06:09.960 they were sort of creating human shields and the police just seemed like they had had enough you

00:06:13.720 know how did all these people know to be at that park at that time well they're they're very well

00:06:19.800 organized that's the thing and over the year as they've grown if you go on their instagram page

00:06:26.920 they're called um encampment support neck network they have an instagram page and they have a twitter

00:06:33.000 page and they use social media and they do a shout out so yesterday the day before they had a shout

00:06:39.560 out they had a shout out to people to come down and help them be there at 5am meet greeters with

00:06:47.000 yellow ribbons around them to get their marching orders this is what they've done consistently

00:06:52.680 now they um this started in may when the police tried to clean out for the first time

00:06:58.520 lamport stadium park which was what we saw yesterday uh the same park they showed up

00:07:07.320 not in as great numbers but they managed to hold off a bulldozer that was trying to clean up the

00:07:12.520 park back then and very shortly after the homeless returned now i'm sure it was with the help of the

00:07:19.800 activists but the activists are organized uh they have a group of people doctors lawyers academics

00:07:28.040 who support them and they've used the courts to try to hold the city off but this is standard

00:07:35.000 uh sort of their standard mo and this has been used in other cities like seattle i mentioned

00:07:41.160 the column today portland venice beach where the activists it's all the same kind of template

00:07:48.840 you know where they shout and scream use the courts gather prominent people in the um in law

00:07:58.040 and doctors and academics and then of course you've got the media who never go down to the

00:08:04.520 parks i was the only one over the course of the year pretty much never went and saw what the

00:08:09.320 conditions were like and then suddenly show up yesterday and think oh my god horror of horrors

00:08:15.480 you know and and never talk to the people who are affected by the encampments around the parks the

00:08:21.480 neighbors the people who are trying to use the parks over the last year well it's interesting

00:08:27.000 we had another journalist from true north go down to lampard park and was told by a police officer

00:08:32.520 that a very small fraction of the people there yesterday were the actual homeless people living

00:08:36.440 in the tents um that the overwhelming majority like 90 uh were these activists that showed up

00:08:41.640 now you mentioned that the um that the goal was to have affordable housing for these individuals i i

00:08:46.760 was under the impression that the police were offering or the city and the police were offering

00:08:51.480 hotel rooms uh for people who were living in these parks can you can you explain that a little bit

00:08:56.760 that was the great irony over the last uh year pretty much a year because the mayor and council

00:09:03.880 rented these extremely expensive hotel rooms in major hotels including the novitel down on the

00:09:10.280 esplanade people living beside it were horrified because it was a upscale hotel and they rented

00:09:17.240 rooms every homeless person gets their own room three square meals a day two snacks and you know

00:09:24.600 know they have tvs in the room wi-fi that kind of thing and the activists will tell you that it's

00:09:32.760 unsafe there well i can't imagine that it's more unsafe to be in your own hotel room than uh being

00:09:40.280 in an encampment where there was drug dealing rats horrible garbage um fires the number of fires

00:09:49.240 increased by 250% in the last year. I mean, the conditions were just, it was squalor. I mean,

00:09:55.920 I was mortified when I went to Alexander Park a couple of weeks ago and saw what had happened to

00:10:01.420 the park because of these encampments. I've stayed at the Novotel, not that one in Toronto,

00:10:06.400 but I've stayed at the one in Ottawa. It's a very nice hotel. It's very upscale. And so when you went

00:10:10.980 through the names of the parks, we have Trinity Bellwoods, which is in a very upscale, sort of

00:10:15.220 family-friendly part of Toronto. It's in the West End, sort of Queen West. It's a hipster area,

00:10:19.740 but there are a lot of houses around there in Little Italy. And then, you know, same thing with

00:10:24.920 Moss Park over in Regent Park. They tried to gentrify it and have more families there.

00:10:29.180 I used to live very close to Alexandra Park. It's at Bathurst and Dundas. I used to live down at

00:10:34.880 Bathurst and King. And I know I probably wouldn't take my kids to those parks today, but in the past,

00:10:41.040 certainly I've taken my son to Trinity Bellwoods Park before because it's a beautiful park there's

00:10:45.900 a great little playground down there I just don't understand these activists don't they worry about

00:10:51.720 the livability of the city the ability of families and you know parents with young children to be able

00:10:56.780 to enjoy the park as well I can't imagine any parent wanting to take a child to a park where

00:11:01.160 there's a homeless encampment growing bigger and bigger and bigger and taking up more and more

00:11:04.860 of the space uh did you did you ever ask or did you ever sort of see that the the dichotomy between

00:11:10.940 families and these activists oh yeah i heard from a lot of people because they quickly found out that

00:11:16.700 i was really one of the only people in the media writing about it so a lot of people reached out

00:11:21.440 to me and with their frustrations it was affecting businesses down in queen street as well and you

00:11:27.320 know a perfect example is alexander park there is a brand new condo that borders on the south end of

00:11:33.400 the park and there were fires outrageous fires last fall and winter and these people were really

00:11:40.920 worried that the fire was going to extend to their properties they showed me pictures of fire

00:11:46.120 extinguishers by the way the activists gave the tent people fire extinguishers as well there was

00:11:53.720 pictures of they provided me with pictures of fire extinguishers being thrown at windows

00:11:59.480 on their property by drug-addicted uh encampment residents um when i went down to alexander park

00:12:06.840 a couple weeks ago was a beautiful june day there was not a soul in there um in terms of kids uh

00:12:14.840 families uh one person was walking her dog through the park but um from what i understand they're

00:12:20.200 they were afraid to walk their dogs through there uh and no you know i can't blame them because

00:12:26.920 from what i saw um it was a pretty frightening i'm used to it but it was a pretty frightening

00:12:33.800 thing to see what's really sad i i'll say this i grew up in vancouver and we're very used to

00:12:39.160 these homeless encampments but vancouver also has a lot of parks so you know there are certain parks

00:12:43.640 that are occupied by homeless people i would just never go there but you know they have so many

00:12:48.280 parks in vancouver that it sort of makes up for it you can find safe areas where you can take your

00:12:52.840 family uh toronto i would say has a very limited number of parks they already have a problem in

00:12:57.960 that sort of very inner part of the city that there isn't a lot of green space there's not

00:13:01.400 a lot of places to go so it's really sad that these few spaces were overtaken i i know i know

00:13:07.080 you don't have much time and i want to be respectful so i'll just ask one last question to you suanne

00:13:11.240 um what what was the notice like so you know if you were just watching on social media it sort of

00:13:16.520 just seemed like the police just decided to show up one day and bust up these camps but the reality

00:13:21.400 is that they have been posting notice for i believe weeks if not months uh can you can you

00:13:25.640 sort of walk us through the process up until yesterday to to the point where the police

00:13:29.880 finally said enough is enough everybody has to go well they posted notices many many times and

00:13:35.320 the great irony was that they would post these notices and then not act on them so i think the

00:13:40.040 activists felt that you know they could get away with it uh they were taken to court by the activists

00:13:45.480 uh last fall um and the city uh won basically they were the activists tried to get an injunction that

00:13:53.320 the city couldn't clear the parks and the city won or the injunction was not granted so from last

00:13:59.960 fall the city had the right to clear the parks they knew that this was a possibility but they

00:14:05.960 figured if they screamed loud enough they would continue to have their way well for the most

00:14:11.080 recent um i guess fiction they posted trespass notices on june 12th at all four parks and the

00:14:18.520 activists are will freely admit that they say that on their um on their social media channels

00:14:25.000 however i guess they thought that the city would back down yet again and they actually you know

00:14:31.480 got i i guess some reprieve at lamport stadium because when they tried to clear in may

00:14:37.640 they only got the job half done and then more people returned obviously more people returned

00:14:42.600 because they had to clear it again yesterday so you know the city is to blame in large part because

00:14:48.920 they enabled this to happen over the last year to grow to not follow through on their threats

00:14:57.800 and you know and to ignore the people who were suffering from covid and needed a

00:15:03.080 little bit of green space and couldn't access their local park absolutely well so and unfortunately

00:15:09.800 i think that some of these videos are going to lead the defund the police crowd uh to you know

00:15:14.200 to have even more ammo for their fight but you know i i still think it's a good a good day when

00:15:19.800 police are doing their job enforcing the law and you know moving people out so that everyone else

00:15:25.160 in the city can enjoy these spaces that are supposed to be public and supposed to be for

00:15:28.840 everyone thank you so much for joining us and providing so much context to this important

00:15:32.360 story suanne oh you're welcome absolutely thank you so much thank you and thank you

00:15:36.520 for joining us i'm candace malcolm and this is the candace malcolm show

00:16:02.360 You

Juno News - July 22, 2021

Toronto Police finally break up illegal tent cities

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