It’s not personal. That’s what I was told at Niagara Regional Council on January 23, 2025.
$556,794,360 is the 2025 budget line item for Social Services for the Niagara Region. As I said at Council on Thursday, January 23, we are at a tipping point where each decision we make will do one of two things – push people further into poverty with our policies or we can create evidenced-based policies that draw them out of poverty. It really is that simple.
Councillor Diana Huson stated that she doesn’t support use of the notwithstanding clause, then removed the section of the motion opposing the use of this clause. This double-speak is what we have come to expect from many politicians and it is harmful and adds to the obfuscation of our methodology and policies.
To be fair to Councillor Huson, she also stated that she doesn’t “work in this space, so it’s a real learning opportunity" for her. The number of people who are unhoused in Ontario is 80,000 and that number has grown by 25 percent in two years. This is the direction our provincial government is taking us and to again quote Councillor Huson “instead of being in opposition that’s being discussed, we need to be working together on this”.
Well, 20,000 people have become unhoused under policies created by our province, and I will not be working with them to advance this type of agenda.
If you ask me, (and no one did), a landlord's ability to raise rent 17.5 percent in a year is a provincial policy that we should be pushing back on. I can imagine if the Bank of Canada raised their interest rates on mortgages 17.5 percent to increase their profits it would be a much bigger news story and the vulnerability of families with mortgages would be discussed at Council.
Somehow, when it’s the most vulnerable there is less urgency and there is an eagerness to compromise. As non-partisan, local representatives, we should oppose provincial policies that make people vulnerable to loss of housing – and I do.
Social Services, Policing, Housing, Economic Development, Emergency Medical Services are responsibilities of Regional Council and accepting a policy to forcibly remove encampments will draw on these services and increase our budget significantly.
As we like to say at Council, every meeting is a budget meeting, so each decision we come to has an impact on our budget. With this Council, it sometimes feels impossible to create change. It’s a tale as old as time, when politicians make the choice to bolster their own political agenda, rather than do the work we were elected to do by constituents across our region.
People become unhoused because of a government's system failure. People often turn to the homelessness sector because they have difficultly transitioning from child welfare, inadequate discharge planning for people leaving hospitals, corrections and mental health and addictions facilities, and a lack of support for immigrants and refugees. It’s not always substance abuse or mental health – those are just symptoms of our governments under-funding.
Policies that violate a person's human rights is a decision that we should adamantly oppose and on behalf of the 30,000 residents of Niagara who are are struggling with a core housing need, this is personal.
Haley Bateman is a St. Catharines Councillor at Niagara Region