With apologies to the late Councillor Pam McConnell, she had a metaphor that went something like this: if you and a group of people are stranded in the sea, you’ve got to “find the island.” As a leader, your goal is to get enough people swimming together in the right direction. You don’t need everyone swimming with you, but you need to have enough to accomplish your goal. It has been abundantly clear over the past three years, as echoed by residents at my town halls, that the Province is not swimming in the same direction as the City of Toronto and subject-matter experts when it comes to dealing with encampments, housing, addictions and mental health.
Instead of focusing on affordable housing, Premier Ford has been in the news again announcing significant changes for things we haven’t asked for nor want. Rather than focusing on building new deeply affordable housing, increasing access to mental health and addictions treatment, and restoring rent control to new buildings that could help keep people housed, Premier Ford is removing speed cameras that save lives and eroding tenant protections. He has thankfully walked back–for now–removing rent control, which would be a disaster in our city where almost 50% of residents are tenants. But the pattern is clear: the province continues to make changes that make us less healthy, less safe and less resilient.
For more than a decade, Toronto has been treading water trying to manage a mental health and addictions crisis that we did not create, and have desperately been advocating for more deeply affordable housing to prevent further pressures on our shelter system. Every member of provincial parliament has to walk or drive by this crisis on their way to Queen’s Park, and yet this government is more concerned with ensuring people who drive over the speed limit are not punished.
I would like us to find the island that recognizes people who are living without housing, with mental health and/or addictions are human beings that deserve dignity and respect. We may not agree with the province on all solutions, but we need the province to have a plan that we can join with to truly address the crises that Toronto Centre residents see every day. Without it, we’re going to be left swimming in circles.
I can tell you about the refreshed Downtown East Action Plan, the new Downtown Community Outreach Response and Engagement (CORE) program and my efforts to advocate for better health and safety outcomes as Chair of the Board of Health. I can describe my work at AMO and Federation of Canadian Municipalities to advocate for more mental health and addiction resources for the downtown. I can recount the many meetings I’ve had with senior City staff to focus on downtown encampments in our parks or to help create new housing for Indigenous men, women and non-binary people, refugees and more.
But the fact of the matter is that the City–and frankly, most large municipalities in Ontario– are hard-pressed to address the current housing, addictions and mental health crisis on our doorstep, let alone the tsunami that will be coming in the next decade, without the Province changing course and swimming with us in the same direction – for a change.
Yours in service,
Chris Moise
City Councillor
Ward 13 - Toronto Centre
