Hamilton council votes to carry out post-encampment protocol plan

Hamilton city councillors voted 13-2 in favour of moving forward with a plan to carry out its post-encampment protocol.

In less than 24 hours, the process to dismantle encampments in parks around The City of Hamilton will begin.

This follows after a vote at a city council meeting Wednesday, which involved a lot of debate on the role Hamilton police will play when it comes to enforcing the bylaw.

The plan will involve dedicated police officers, which will require additional funding.

Hamilton police says if their recommendations are approved, they would be able to provide five officers to enforce the parks by-law.

There was a lot of back-and-forth between the councillors at the meeting regarding the post-encampment protocol.

Debate at the councillor meeting

Councillor Cameron Kroetsch says using police enforcement to remove encampments, and to uphold the municipal parks bylaw is not the way to go.

“The federal housing advocate, who’s an arm of the National Housing Strategy and who has a legislative mandate on the subject, wrote to council today and said this isn’t the way to go,” he said.

“Forcing evictions is not the way to go, and we saw before we had this version of the encampment protocol the kinds of impacts that people suffered.”

While the councillor says Hamilton doesn’t have the resources to provide housing to everyone who needs it, ward 8 councillor John-Paul Danko says we can’t ignore the investments that are being made to address the housing crisis.

“The City of Hamilton is spending about $200 million in the 2025 budget to support housing and homelessness,” he said.

“We are making unprecedented investments in long-term housing and also emergency solutions to address the issues as they are, on the ground.”

Public Works and Healthy and Safe Communities departments have also been directed to change the parks washroom and recreation centre access programs.

All of which will take effect Thursday.

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