Neighbourhoods and government team up to fight crime

New Ontario legislation seeks to make Hintonburg neighbourhoods like this one a safer place to live. (Tanya Springer/offCentre)

By Jayme Poisson

For almost two decades, Cheryl Parrott has been working to make Hintonburg a safer community. Now she’s taking her fight to the province.

Parrott is pushing for new laws—modelled after legislation in Manitoba and Saskatchewan—that would help reduce crime in Ontario communities.

The move has certainly paid off for the little community association that could.

“We heard of legislation being used in other provinces, and we felt it could really benefit Ottawa’s inner-city, or any neighbourhood for that matter,” said Parrot.

On Wednesday, Parrott will join Ottawa Centre MPP Yasir Naqvi in Toronto when he brings his Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act (also known as SCAN) to a standing committee on private bills at Queen’s Park. Modelled after similar bills in other provinces, the bill targets problem landlords and tenants who use their properties to regularly house illegal activities such as drug dealing, weapons possession, child abuse and running a common bawdy house.

The bill is in its final stages of becoming law in Ontario.

“I give all the credit to the Hintonburg Safety Committee who first approached me when I was campaigning,” Naqvi said by telephone from Toronto. “They suggested the idea.”

Under SCAN, community residents can make complaints about criminal activity at a property. This will then prompt a special public safety investigation to be launched, while keeping the complainant’s identity a secret. If a series of informal compromises cannot be reached between SCAN officials and property owners, the properties will be closed down, and individuals will be banned from the premises.

“We all deserve to live in a safe community. Our children deserve to live in safe communities,” said Naqvi.

In Ottawa, the issue of crack cocaine houses has been front-and-centre in recent years. Dubbed by various media outlets as Canada’s “crack capital,” police and outreach workers have seen surges in the prevalence of drugs in recent years.

Parrott has experienced this problem first-hand. She once lived a block away from a known crack house.

“It’s quite terrifying really. You’re very worried, especially if you have a family or children. You’re terrified that you may be bringing harm upon your loved ones or yourself,” she said. “Crack is a drug that is a stimulant, so it provokes more violence.”

Nancy Worsfold, the executive director of Crime Prevention Ottawa, says she is an avid supporter of the legislation.

“The reality is that the vast majority of people who live in Ottawa are not affected by problem properties. But I think there needs to be some sympathetic understanding for the acute fear and the deterioration of quality of life associated with living in an  apartment building or a city block with a crack house,” she said.

“I worked for many, many years in immigrant services, and I heard people describe what it was like to live in a war zone. And this may sound unbelievable, but that’s what I hear when I hear people talk about living next door to a crack dealer.”

Naqvi is quick to point out that SCAN is in no way replacing the police. Police will still investigate illegal activity, making arrests when necessary, he emphasized. Instead, the legislation is “just another tool in the toolbox,” and concentrates on using civil sanctions to address the effects that drug houses have on local communities.

“Criminal law has been particularly ineffective at dealing with the community effects of these operations,” said Worsfold. “What seems to happen is if a property is being used to sell drugs, the police can charge the current drug dealer, but somebody else inevitably takes over.”

“We have had some crack houses that have been going on for 15 or 18 years,” added Parrott. “The police do respond—they do undercover work, they raid the place. But in habitual problem properties, it seems like there is a regular turnover of people. But the activity always remains the same.”

According to Naqvi, SCAN helps fill an important gap between municipal and federal laws.

“At the municipal level, there are some bylaws that allow for nuisance, noise—those types of infractions,” said Naqvi. “And on the other extreme, we’ve got criminal proceedings. The problem is that there’s nothing in the middle that allows municipalities to stop people from using properties for illegal activities.”

While persistently problematic properties can lead to criminal charges of contempt of court and hefty fines, Naqvi said most cases don’t get that far. Indeed, 90 per cent of complaints in both Manitoba and Alberta were resolved at an informal level using dispute resolution mechanisms, he added.

But reviews of SCAN from other parts of the country haven’t been as rosy. Criticisms levelled against the legislation, particularly in Nova Scotia, argue that innocent people, or those only peripherally caught up in illegal activities such as drug users, have been affected. Many, for example, have been thrown out onto the street. Others argue that scrupulous landlords can take advantage of the legislation to kick out perfectly satisfactory tenants.

Naqvi has heard these criticisms, but disagrees. “In the legislation, there are ample safeguards to make sure an abuse does not take place.”

But as an extra precaution, he will propose an amendment to the legislation at Wednesday’s committee meeting, calling for fines to be levied against those who make frivolous eviction complaints.

Worsfold points out that the legislation specifically addresses such issues. “For example, if there are kids involved, the appropriate services need to be notified and so on,” she said, adding that debate about SCAN will continue at Wednesday’s meeting.

As he takes the bill through to the final stretch, Naqvi feels optimistic and confident that this is a race he will win.

For Parrott, it is another step towards making her beloved Hintonburg a safer place to live.

For more information, read the Bill that introduces SCAN and find out how the act works (Courtesy of the office of Yasir Naqvi/Legislative Assembly of Ontario).