The Candice Malcolm Show - July 23, 2021


Toronto Police finally break up illegal tent cities

Hosted by
Candice Malcolm
Guests
True North
Mentioned
Alexander Berkman Sue-Ann Levy Sue Ann Dundas Bathurst Queen West Vancouver
Is Canada Guilty of Genocide？ Is Justin Trudeau hinting at another CBC bailout？

Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

178.81

Word count

2,528

Sentence count

151

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, True North contributor Sue-Anne Levy talks about Toronto police breaking up a tent city and arresting squatters and protesters. She talks about the history of the tents and the people living in them, and how they came to be.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.080 Toronto police are actually enforcing the law. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:00:09.540 If you're like me and you saw the footage of Toronto police yesterday breaking up a tent city and arresting squatters and protesters,
00:00:16.880 it might have seemed a little shocking. In this day and age, we don't often see the police actually doing their work
00:00:22.340 and enforcing the law, especially if it involves the use of force.
00:00:26.820 Well, to help us make sense of this news story, I'm joined by True North contributor Sue-Anne Levy.
00:00:32.240 Sue-Anne 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.
00:00:38.940 So Sue-Anne, thank you so much for joining us.
00:00:41.500 You're welcome, Candace.
00:00:43.480 So, you know, can you walk us through what happened yesterday?
00:00:47.500 Because for me, I just saw that Toronto police were trending on Twitter.
00:00:50.680 I looked at some of the videos and I saw, you know, a lot of people on the left, these sort of usual suspects,
00:00:56.360 really, truly outraged by what they saw.
00:00:59.060 And I think it was perhaps a little out of context because if you didn't know anything about what was going on in these encampments
00:01:04.800 and you just thought, you know, the Toronto police showed up one day and decided to bust all these tents,
00:01:08.960 it could seem shocking.
00:01:09.820 So maybe you can help provide a little bit of context and explain what exactly happened yesterday.
00:01:15.300 What happened yesterday or what's been happening over the last year?
00:01:18.000 Because these encampments, I guess they grew and festered.
00:01:23.120 And pardon me for the use of the word festered, but they were horrific.
00:01:28.280 And few journalists went into these encampments, but I spent a lot of time in the last year going into them.
00:01:34.320 They grew and prolificated when COVID started in, I guess, March, April 2020.
00:01:43.040 And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, cropped up this group called the Encampment Support Network.
00:01:48.220 And these people started delivering water and it started very innocuously.
00:01:52.800 They delivered water to the people living in the encampments.
00:01:56.440 Now, the big ones were in downtown Toronto, one at Trinity Bellwoods Park,
00:02:01.280 huge one at Trinity Bellwoods Park, one at Alexander Park, which is the Dundas Bathurst area.
00:02:09.080 Moss Park was another one and Lamport Stadium Park, which are the four that are being targeted for finally for being cleaned out.
00:02:17.680 Well, the activists from the Encampment Support Network, that this group grew,
00:02:23.440 just grew by leaps and bounds as the months went on.
00:02:26.300 And it became obvious to me because I spent considerable time in Alexander Park, Trinity Bellwoods.
00:02:35.080 I was at Lamport Stadium Park doing interviews.
00:02:38.560 It became obvious to me that their agenda was basically to keep these people in the parks
00:02:45.140 and to enable them in whatever way they could to keep them in the park by providing them with free tents,
00:02:51.020 brand new tents with, of course, water, food.
00:02:56.820 I even heard stories of Uber Eats delivering food to these encampments in Alexander Park,
00:03:03.840 even providing them with ways to keep themselves warm.
00:03:07.880 I'm not sure if they delivered heaters, but they sure helped them.
00:03:10.960 I saw people chopping wood in these parks.
00:03:13.420 And so it grew and the conditions got more and more squalid as the year went on.
00:03:20.220 And, you know, the city council, the Toronto City Council and the mayor
00:03:28.300 enabled these people to stay in the parks, enabled the activists to do what they did
00:03:34.680 because they screamed loudly, which led us up to the last couple of weeks when the parks were finally cleared.
00:03:41.220 The activists, as I feel, have used the homeless as pawns over the last 20 years that I've been covering this.
00:03:51.700 They were very upset that these parks were being cleared because they didn't have their people in the parks to make a statement.
00:03:58.840 And the statement is that they want housing.
00:04:01.860 No matter how unaffordable it is, these people need a roof over their heads.
00:04:05.240 That's just basically their agenda.
00:04:06.880 So you can imagine, Candice, when the police started coming in and actually doing their jobs and cleaning out these parks,
00:04:13.340 these activists were upset.
00:04:15.420 They were upset they didn't have their showpieces to show the world what a terrible job all levels of government have done.
00:04:24.500 Well, it's really interesting.
00:04:25.800 I have a couple of questions.
00:04:27.060 The first is who's funding these groups?
00:04:28.500 How are they paying for these tents, this food, all this kind of thing?
00:04:31.740 And then the other one was, you know, yesterday when we saw the police breaking down the tents and removing the protesters,
00:04:38.920 they were sort of creating human shields and the police just seemed like they had had enough.
00:04:42.780 You know, how did all these people know to be at that park at that time?
00:04:47.120 Well, they're very well organized.
00:04:49.600 That's the thing.
00:04:50.880 And over the year as they've grown, if you go on their Instagram page, they're called Encamp and Support Network.
00:04:58.980 They have an Instagram page and they have a Twitter page and they use social media and they do a shout out.
00:05:05.540 So yesterday, the day before, they had a shout out.
00:05:09.080 They had a shout out to people to come down and help them be there at 5 a.m.,
00:05:14.260 meet greeters with yellow ribbons around them to get their marching orders.
00:05:19.860 This is what they've done consistently.
00:05:21.860 Now, this started in May when the police tried to clean out for the first time Lamport Stadium Park,
00:05:28.780 which was what we saw yesterday, the same park.
00:05:34.660 They showed up, not in as great numbers, but they managed to hold off a bulldozer that was trying to clean up the park back then.
00:05:43.340 And very shortly after, the homeless returned.
00:05:46.740 Now, I'm sure it was with the help of the activists, but the activists are organized.
00:05:51.040 They have a group of people, doctors, lawyers, academics who support them, and they've used the courts to try to hold the city off.
00:06:02.200 But this is standard, sort of their standard MO, and this has been used in other cities like Seattle.
00:06:09.480 I mentioned the column today, Portland, Venice Beach, where the activists, it's all the same kind of template, you know,
00:06:18.280 where they shout and scream, use the courts, gather prominent people in law and doctors and academics.
00:06:29.420 And then, of course, you've got the media, who never go down to the parks.
00:06:34.160 I was the only one over the course of the year, pretty much.
00:06:37.120 Never went and saw what the conditions were like.
00:06:39.540 And then suddenly show up yesterday and think, oh, my God, horror of horrors, you know,
00:06:45.020 and never talk to the people who are affected by the encampments around the parks, the neighbors,
00:06:51.460 the people who are trying to use the parks over the last year.
00:06:54.260 Well, it's interesting. We had another journalist from True North go down to Lampard Park and was told by a police officer
00:07:01.340 that a very small fraction of the people there yesterday were the actual homeless people living in the tents,
00:07:06.360 that the overwhelming majority, like 90 percent, were these activists that show up.
00:07:10.760 Now, you mentioned that the goal was to have affordable housing for these individuals.
00:07:15.680 I was under the impression that the police were offering, or the city and the police were offering hotel rooms
00:07:21.380 for people who were living in these parks.
00:07:23.300 Can you can you explain that a little bit?
00:07:25.960 That was the great irony over the last year, pretty much a year, because the mayor and council rented
00:07:33.280 these extremely expensive hotel rooms in major hotels, including the Novotel down on the Esplanade.
00:07:40.620 People living beside it were horrified because it was a upscale hotel and they rented rooms.
00:07:47.300 Every homeless person gets their own room, three square meals a day, two snacks.
00:07:52.060 And, you know, they have TVs in the room, Wi-Fi, that kind of thing.
00:07:57.660 And the activists will tell you that it's unsafe there.
00:08:02.540 Well, I can't imagine that it's more unsafe to be in your own hotel room than being in an encampment
00:08:10.140 where there was drug dealing, rats, horrible garbage, fires.
00:08:17.240 The number of fires increased by 250 percent in the last year.
00:08:21.800 I mean, the conditions were just it was squalor.
00:08:24.700 I mean, I was mortified when I went to Alexander Park a couple of weeks ago and saw what had happened
00:08:30.220 to the park because of these encampments.
00:08:33.440 I've stayed at the Novotel, not that one in Toronto, but I've stayed at the one in Ottawa.
00:08:36.580 And it's a very nice hotel.
00:08:37.600 It's very upscale.
00:08:38.940 And so when you went through the names of the parks, we have Trinity Bellwoods, which is in a very upscale,
00:08:43.960 sort of family friendly part of Toronto.
00:08:45.880 It's in the West End, sort of Queen West.
00:08:48.040 It's a hipster area, but there are a lot of houses around there in Little Italy.
00:08:51.200 And then, you know, same thing with Moss Park over in Regent Park.
00:08:55.940 They tried to gentrify it and have more families there.
00:08:58.540 I used to live very close to Alexandra Park.
00:09:01.680 It's at Bathurst and Dundas.
00:09:03.160 I used to live down at Bathurst and King.
00:09:05.660 And I know I probably wouldn't take my kids to those parks today.
00:09:09.380 But in the past, certainly I've taken my son to Trinity Bellwoods Park before because it's a beautiful park.
00:09:14.780 There's a great little playground down there.
00:09:17.420 I just don't understand these activists.
00:09:19.380 Don't they worry about the livability of the city, the ability of families and, you know,
00:09:24.400 parents with young children to be able to enjoy the park as well?
00:09:26.740 I can't imagine any parent wanting to take a child to a park where there's a homeless encampment
00:09:31.260 growing bigger and bigger and bigger and taking up more and more of the space.
00:09:35.500 Did you ever ask or did you ever sort of see the dichotomy between families and these activists?
00:09:41.880 Oh, yeah.
00:09:42.240 I heard from a lot of people because they quickly found out that I was really one of the only people
00:09:47.160 in the media writing about it.
00:09:48.940 So a lot of people reached out to me and with their frustrations, it was affecting businesses down
00:09:53.900 in Queen Street as well.
00:09:55.780 And, you know, a perfect example was Alexander Park.
00:09:59.000 There is a brand new condo that borders on the south end of the park.
00:10:02.840 And there were fires, outrageous fires last fall and winter.
00:10:08.060 And these people were really worried that the fire was going to extend to their properties.
00:10:13.800 They showed me pictures of fire extinguishers.
00:10:16.180 By the way, the activists gave the tent people fire extinguishers as well.
00:10:21.500 There was pictures of, they provided me with pictures of fire extinguishers being thrown at windows
00:10:28.220 on their property by drug addicted encampment residents.
00:10:33.560 When I went down to Alexander Park a couple of weeks ago, it was a beautiful June day.
00:10:38.680 There was not a soul in there.
00:10:40.020 In terms of kids, families, one person was walking her dog through the park.
00:10:47.860 But from what I understand, they were afraid to walk their dogs through there.
00:10:51.360 And no, you know, I can't blame them because from what I saw, it was pretty frightening.
00:11:00.360 I'm used to it, but it was a pretty frightening thing to see.
00:11:04.340 Well, it's really sad.
00:11:05.400 I'll say this.
00:11:06.160 I grew up in Vancouver and we're very used to these homeless encampments.
00:11:09.600 But Vancouver also has a lot of parks.
00:11:11.320 So, you know, there are certain parks that are occupied by homeless people.
00:11:14.180 I would just never go there.
00:11:15.640 But, you know, they have so many parks in Vancouver that it sort of makes up for it.
00:11:19.400 You can find safe areas where you can take your family.
00:11:22.740 Toronto, I would say, has a very limited number of parks.
00:11:25.780 They already have a problem in that sort of very inner part of the city that there isn't a lot of green space.
00:11:30.260 There's not a lot of places to go.
00:11:31.800 So it's really sad that these few spaces were overtaken.
00:11:35.500 I know you don't have much time and I want to be respectful.
00:11:37.740 So I'll just ask one last question to you, Sue Ann.
00:11:41.040 What was the notice like?
00:11:42.600 So, you know, if you were just watching on social media, it sort of just seemed like the police just decided to show up one day
00:11:48.040 and bust up these camps. 0.76
00:11:49.500 But the reality is that they have been posting notice for, I believe, weeks, if not months.
00:11:54.320 Can you sort of walk us through the process up until yesterday to the point where the police finally said enough is enough.
00:12:00.240 Everybody has to go.
00:12:02.000 Well, they posted notices many, many times.
00:12:04.320 And the great irony was that they would post these notices and then not act on them.
00:12:08.540 So I think the activists felt that, you know, they could get away with it.
00:12:11.940 They were taken to court by the activists last fall.
00:12:17.020 And the city won.
00:12:19.440 Basically, they were the activists tried to get an injunction that the city couldn't clear the parks and the city won or the injunction was not granted.
00:12:27.960 So from last fall, the city had the right to clear the parks.
00:12:31.600 They knew that this was a possibility, but they figured if they screamed loud enough, they would continue to have their way.
00:12:38.580 Well, for the most recent, I guess, eviction, they posted trespass notices on June 12th at all four parks.
00:12:47.400 And the activists will freely admit that.
00:12:50.000 They say that on their social media channels.
00:12:54.120 However, I guess they thought that the city would back down yet again.
00:12:57.360 And they actually, you know, got, I guess, some reprieve at Lamport Stadium because when they tried to clear it in May, they only got the job half done and then more people returned.
00:13:10.180 Obviously, more people returned because they had to clear it again yesterday.
00:13:13.280 So, you know, the city is to blame in large part because they enabled this to happen over the last year to grow, to not follow through on their threats and, you know, and to ignore the people who were suffering from COVID and needed a little bit of green space and couldn't access their local parks.
00:13:35.540 Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Sue Ann, unfortunately, I think that some of these videos are going to lead the defund the police crowd, you know, to have even more ammo for their fight.
00:13:45.760 But, you know, I still think it's a good a good day when police are doing their job enforcing the law and, you know, moving people out so that everyone else in the city can enjoy these spaces that are supposed to be public and supposed to be for everyone.
00:13:58.320 Thank you so much for joining us and providing so much context to this important story, Sue Ann.
00:14:02.240 Oh, you're welcome. Absolutely.
00:14:03.800 Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you for joining us. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.