What encampment residents would say to Doug Ford
'We’re not doing this for fun. This is all we actually have.'
“The homeless are not Other. They are Us,” Ontario’s Superior Court declared last month.
In a ruling that had advocates cheering, Justice Michael Gibson affirmed that unhoused people are entitled to the same Charter rights as any other Canadian — and that a bylaw targeting a specific encampment for removal had therefore amounted to anti-homeless discrimination.
That left Doug Ford fuming.
But this isn’t about the premier. Not mostly, anyway. It’s about the people who have nowhere else to go.
On this episode of Sources, Eric Wickham travelled to Kitchener, Ont., to meet residents of the encampment at the centre of the landmark case, and spoke to Ashley Schuitema and Shannon Down, two of the lawyers who persuaded the court to recognize the dignity of their clients.
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