Landmark Ontario Court Decision Expands Legal Rights for People Living in Encampments
This landmark decision recognizes the Right to Adequate Housing and Homelessness as a ground to be protected from discrimination under the Charter.
Written by Charles Lesperance | 4 min read
In a landmark decision on the case The Regional Municipality of Waterloo v Persons Unknown and to be Ascertained, Justice Gibson of the Ontario Superior Court has ruled that homelessness is an ‘analogous ground’ under section 15 of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. What this means is that the protections given under s.15 of the Charter from discrimination based on characteristics like race, sex, or religion now apply to homelessness as well.
If this ruling is upheld by other courts, it could mean that police action against people living in encampments and the by-laws that authorize those actions will be more open to legal challenge. Previously, the only way that a person living in an encampment could fight an eviction order by the city was to raise a challenge under s.7 of the Charter. Section 7 only protects people’s right to shelter as a part of their right to “security of the person”, meaning city governments could evict people from encampments so long as they had enough shelter beds to accommodate everyone within their jurisdiction. Now that homelessness has been designated an analogous ground under s.15 it is likely that municipal governments will have to justify that their laws and enforcement actions are not discriminatory.
The decision found that the by-law used by the City of Waterloo to evict people sleeping in encampments (very similar to the same by-law used in Halifax to remove encampments) was discriminatory and infringed on encampment resident’s Charter rights.
The Waterloo ruling means that cities may also have an active obligation to provide support for people experiencing homelessness. Before now, courts would not hold cities accountable for providing insufficient support for people sleeping rough. Depending on how later rulings treat the Waterloo decision, failure to provide enough supports for people experiencing homelessness might now serve as grounds for a discrimination suit.
While it is still too early to say what the impact of the Waterloo ruling will be, it has the potential to be the biggest expansion to the rights of the homeless in decades.