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“The message we’re sending to the population is that it costs money to sleep outside,” one critic said of the $108.75 event.
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Jul 03, 2022 • 8 hours ago • 7 minutes read • 7 comments Parks Canada announced overnight camping lessons on the Lachine Canal, but the first installment appears to have been cancelled. Photo by Parks Canada
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A training event at the Lachine Canal Camp that drew criticism from groups working with Montreal’s homeless community was canceled at the last minute by Parks Canada.
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The event planned for Saturday was one of many planned over the summer to teach Montrealers the basics of camping at a starting price of $108.75 per tent. Parks Canada did not give a reason for the cancellation and the dates planned for the weekends of July 23 and August 13, 20 and 27 appear to still be taking place.
Camping events are nothing new, but this year they have been criticized for sending a message that inhabiting the city’s public space is a luxury — a luxury that homeless Montrealers can’t afford.
“I really feel like it’s a double standard,” Caroline LeBlanc, a doctoral candidate in public health at the Université de Sherbrooke, told the Montreal Gazette last week. Leblanc’s research focuses on the experiences of people who are not housed. “On the one hand, there are people who can shelter themselves and pay to sleep outside in Montreal, and on the other hand, there are people who have no means and are not allowed to live anywhere.”
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LeBlanc co-signed an op-ed about the camping activity published in Le Devoir on Wednesday, which admitted there was probably no ill intent behind the offer. Parks Canada, for its part, said in a statement that one of its priorities is “to make the enjoyment of outdoor activities more accessible to all Canadians, including youth and racialized communities.”
But for the authors of the article, the events remain questionable, given the constant displacement of unsettled people in the city.
“The message we’re sending to the population is that it costs money to sleep outside,” LeBlanc said.
Homeless Montrealers, unable to turn to shelters for a variety of reasons, are finding it increasingly difficult to exist in a city where they are routinely told to vacate whatever outdoor space they have managed to settle into, whether are alone or with others in places such as fields, parks, alleys and wooded areas.
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Guylain Levasseur and his puppy, Boris, keep cool in the shade of some trees next to the RV where he lives in Montreal on Tuesday, June 28, 2022. Photo by Allen McInnis /Montreal Gazette
“We’ve been kicked out,” said Guillen Levasseur, who lives in a camper because he can’t afford rent. “There’s no point.”
Levasseur uses his mobile home to support the community however he can. Last week, he was helping two brothers whose secluded shelter — nestled between a concrete wall and a chain-link fence near Montreal’s harbor — went up in flames over the weekend as they slept.
A bed frame and mattress are all that remain where homeless brothers Frank and Thomas once lived in this small camp that burned down in what the brothers believe were suspicious circumstances. Photo by Alan McInnis/Montreal Gazette
If their dogs hadn’t woken them up, they wouldn’t have gotten away, they said.
“I woke up and I was covered in fire, I had time to grab my phone and wallet and get out,” said Thomas, who preferred to withhold his last name. “Everything was on fire.”
On Tuesday, covered in third-degree burns, Thomas and his brother, Frank, sat on the stretch between the bike lane and Notre Dame St. E. in Hochelaga, surrounded by their dogs and few remaining possessions. Levasseur, parked on a nearby road, let them sleep in his trailer for a few nights before pitching a tent among the trees.
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Thomas shows the burns he received after his tent caught fire. Thomas claims his dog saved his life by waking him up. Photo by Alan McInnis/Montreal Gazette
Two years ago, the same stretch of land was home to a camp that included more than 120 tents at its peak before it was dismantled by the city due to safety concerns after a fire.
In the time since the camp was dismantled, the city has said it will not tolerate the like. On Wednesday, in response to a reporter’s question about the publication, Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante reiterated the city’s position.
“Obviously it’s Parks Canada’s decision and it’s happening on their land,” Plante said of the camping activity, “but I’ve said it many times: for us and in agreement with the organizations that work with the homeless, the solution is not camps for people, that are experiencing homelessness, and it’s frankly for safety reasons.
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A homeless man folds a tarp in front of his tent at a camp along Notre Dame St. East in Montreal, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020. Photo by John Mahoney/Montreal Gazette files
But Annie Savage, director of the Réseau d’aide aux personnes seules et itinérantes de Montréal (RAPSIM), told the Montreal Gazette on Tuesday that for some homeless Montrealers there is a “total lack of alternatives” to living outdoors.
“There’s an affordability crisis, a housing crisis, there’s also — it’s been a few years since we’ve condemned it, but it’s truer than ever — there’s a lack of space in emergency shelters right now,” she said. “So when the city says ‘encampments are not an acceptable situation, it’s not humane, it’s not a reaction we hope to tolerate as a city,’ that’s not only a position that doesn’t take into account the reality on the ground, because there’s a lack of alternatives… but it’s a position that also puts people at risk.”
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When people are separated and pushed out of public space — like Thomas and Frank, who found peace only in a secluded ditch where they couldn’t be seen by passersby — it poses a real threat to their lives, Savage, LeBlanc and Levasseur said. There is no one around to make sure everything is okay, such as in the event of an overdose – or a fire.
For this reason, they do not agree with the idea of dismantling tent cities for safety reasons.
“If it’s a matter of safety, why don’t we support the people in the camps instead of dismantling them?” LeBlanc said. “They’re able to learn things, they have a lot of strengths.”
While it may seem counterintuitive to support tent cities when the ultimate goal is housing (which involves different levels of government), LeBlanc said he believes the response to homelessness needs to consider different needs.
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“The street population has different needs than someone who is going to live in a shelter,” she said. “We owe it to ourselves, if we’re going to reach housing first and foremost, to make sure these people have access to it.” For those who are not yet there to keep their rhythm, but to ensure that they are safe and to ensure that there is an answer to their needs, despite the fact that they are not currently having a home.
Marie-Josée Houle is Canada’s federal housing lawyer. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia News files
A recent report by federal housing lawyer Marie-José Houllet—the result of an ongoing study to better understand Canada’s housing and homelessness crisis and to develop recommendations—confirms Savage and LeBlanc’s point.
The report identifies the encampments as a developing systemic housing problem exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and says the way members are treated “amounts to unsafe eviction and forced displacement,” forcing them into increasingly unsafe situations. They also face “gross human rights violations” through policing and enforcement measures.
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The report says the unsettled community should be consulted on “the design and implementation of policies, programs and practices” that affect them, but being seen as a nuisance often prevents them from engaging meaningfully.
“We have to understand that people who live on the streets have rights and we have to support them, we have to consult with them, we have to know what their real needs are and we have to put them in place,” said LeBlanc, who was part of the research team behind the report.
She added that the camps allow autonomy, stability and community among the displaced, which is not possible when they are separated and forced to be invisible.
Levasseur agrees. He said that was the case at Camp Notre Dame, where, for example, there was never a shortage of food.
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