After months of searching, Sarnia City Council finally found the excuse they needed to evict the homeless from Rainbow Park. It didn’t matter that every credible Canadian court decision before this said they couldn’t. It didn’t matter that the legal precedent overwhelmingly supports allowing people to seek shelter in public spaces when no real alternatives exist. It didn't matter that these people clearly had no where else to go. No, all they needed was one judge, in one case, in one city, to say it was okay—and they sprinted with it.
The case? Heegsma v. Hamilton (2024 ONSC 7154). A fringe ruling that directly contradicts nearly every other major decision on homeless encampments in Canada.
And yet, as soon as the ink dried, council jumped at the opportunity to throw people out into the cold.
I’m embarrassed. Not just because of what this council did, but because of the way they did it. The way they talked about it. The way they talked about people. The way that they all pretended to care.
Every Legal Precedent That Says This Is Wrong
The ruling that Sarnia leaned on—the one that lets them evict people during the day even if there aren’t enough shelter beds—goes against an entire body of case law affirming that people have a right to shelter themselves when no better option exists:
- Victoria (City) v. Adams, 2009 BCCA 563 – Established that municipalities cannot ban homeless individuals from erecting temporary shelters overnight if no viable alternative housing is available.
- Waterloo (Regional Municipality) v. Persons Unknown, 2023 ONSC 670 – Found that municipalities must prove they have enough accessible shelter beds before evicting an encampment, extending the Adams decision to Ontario.
- Kingston (City) v. Doe, 2023 ONSC 6662 – Stated that evicting encampments without ensuring actual, accessible shelter options violates the Charter rights to life, liberty, and security of the person (Section 7).
- Black v. Toronto (City), 2020 ONSC 6398 – Ruled that the city's enforcement of bylaws against encampments must be balanced against human rights obligations and cannot simply be about "cleaning up" public spaces.
- Nelson v. British Columbia, 2018 BCSC 941 – Reaffirmed the Adams ruling, stating that arbitrary removal of encampments without offering alternatives is unconstitutional.
- Prince George (City) v. Stewart, 2021 BCSC 2089 – Found that criminalizing public sheltering violated fundamental freedoms, forcing the city to create designated sheltering areas.
- Vancouver (City) v. Shantz, 2015 BCSC 1909 – Stated that homeless individuals cannot be forced to move from public spaces without a real solution in place.
- Ontario Court of Appeal’s review of Toronto Encampments, 2021 ONCA 327 – Suggested that municipalities must avoid criminalizing homelessness under the guise of bylaw enforcement.
- Edmonton Encampment Injunctions, 2023 ABQB 100 – Saw courts issue injunctions against city-led evictions, stating that alternative shelter must be provided before removals occur.
- Heegsma v. Hamilton, 2024 ONSC 7154 – The only case that ruled municipalities could evict encampments during the day without proving sufficient shelter exists, contradicting all the previous rulings.
And yet, Sarnia Council still managed to find the one ruling that let them do what they wanted to do all along. The motion passed 7-1, with only Councillor Adam Kilner voting against.
The Danger of This Kind of Language
This isn’t just about the decision. It’s about the way council talked about the people this affects.
Chrissy McRoberts called the remaining Rainbow Park residents “the worst of the worst.” Anne Marie Gillis followed up by saying leaving them in the park was “creating a criminal entity.”
This is dangerous. When you call human beings the worst, when you reduce them to criminals, you strip them of their humanity. You make it easier to ignore them, to remove them, to act as if they don’t deserve to exist in the same spaces as everyone else.
Tyler Kula’s article in The Observer interviewed Harvey Young, one of the people now facing eviction. He doesn’t consider himself “the worst of the worst.” He and his partner ended up in Rainbow Park after their Petrolia rental was sold out from under them. They had been paying $500 a month for a two-bedroom home, and now they have nowhere to go.
But in the language of some on council, people like Young aren’t people at all. They are simply “the worst.”
The Hypocrisy of Council
Council loves to roll their eyes at Bill Dennis. They love to act like he’s out of control, that he’s embarrassing Sarnia with his outbursts and crude remarks.
But when it comes to voting on actual life-and-death issues, they’re right there with him.
Dennis may yell and swear, but he isn’t the problem. The problem is a council that pretends to be progressive, compassionate, and balanced—until the moment they get an excuse to be just as cruel through legality.
This wasn’t a decision about safety. It wasn’t about fairness. It wasn’t about "following the law." It was about finally finding one judge in one city who would let them do what they always wanted to do.
Every other court in Canada has ruled that you can’t just throw people out when there’s nowhere for them to go. But Sarnia Council? They found one judge who said they could—and that was all they needed.
I shouldn’t have to remind people that a person’s right to shelter shouldn’t depend on a legal loophole. We shouldn’t need a court precedent to tell us that forcing people into the cold is wrong. If we start leaning on fringe rulings just because they let us be cruel, then we’ve already lost something far more important than a legal argument—we’ve lost any sense of basic decency as a city.
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