By Diana Chan McNally Contributor Diana Chan McNally is a Maytree Fellow who works with homeless people in Toronto.

It’s been almost one year since Premier Doug Ford mandated that supervised consumption sites — including four in Toronto — shut down. Since then, the premier has closed a fifth site and quietly shut down overdose prevention sites embedded in shelters.

Having worked in harm reduction for over a decade, what’s happening now is exactly what I expected. Just two months after sites were shut down, drop-in centres across Toronto reported a 288 per cent increase in overdoses. Library workers are also seeing more overdoses. So are transit workers.

In Toronto, while TTC safety is improving, the perception is that the TTC is unsafe — with a major focus being on drug use.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Last year, Ford passed Bill 6, which targets homeless people — specifically encampment residents — by making public drug use illegal. Bill 6 conflates public drug use and homelessness as the same issue, punishable with up to six months of jail time, a $10,000 fine, or both.

Someone doesn’t have to be actively using drugs to be subject to this law; a police officer only needs to believe that they might possess or be using drugs to target them. No burden of proof needed.

To be clear, what Ford is proposing isn’t to make drug use illegal on the TTC or any other transit system — it’s already illegal. What he’s proposing is to expand Bill 6’s powers to transit constables to target people believed to be using drugs on public transit — with emphasis on “believe.”

Importantly, transit constables are not police officers. However, Ford wants to give them the powers of police to request ID and order people to leave transit property, as well as the power to detain, charge, or arrest anyone who refuses to comply. Transit constables would also be given the power to seize and destroy personal belongings that they believe contain drugs.

These are considerable powers. Even the Toronto Police Association has opposed them. They also raise the question: what does someone who uses drugs look like?

In its original intention, Bill 6 ties drug use to encampments, making the target demographic abundantly clear: unsheltered people. Although this is still the intention, the target becomes murkier when transposed from a homeless encampment to a public system like the TTC.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW What Ford is doing — intentionally or not — is opening up all transit riders to profiling and enforcement if they look like “drug users,” which could significantly worsen safety for many Torontonians.

For communities that are already at risk of profiling, there’s a heightened potential for discrimination on public transit — an issue that already disproportionately impacts Black and Indigenous riders.

Moreover, there are no safeguards to prevent or address discrimination in Ford’s proposed regulations. If anything, they’re a green light for transit constables to engage in unjustified profiling and enforcement with less oversight and accountability than police.

For people sheltering on transit, removing them doesn’t address the fact that they don’t have housing, or that the drug supply remains incredibly toxic. Instead, it limits a shortening list of spaces they are allowed to exist while offering them no alternatives.

Currently, the City of Toronto deploys outreach and case management support to people who are unsheltered or in crisis on the TTC; this is the correct approach, but Ford’s proposal undermines it.

People have a right to be safe on transit. At the same time, everyone has a right to use transit — including people who use drugs and are homeless people.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW If we want to see less public drug use and people sheltering on transit, we must begin by reopening and expanding supervised consumption sites and by addressing housing unaffordability.

Increasing surveillance and extending police powers doesn’t solve these issues — it merely opens up the broader public to arbitrary punishment, including the potential for jail time and $10,000 fines.

Premier Ford, does that seem safe to you?

Canada reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure the security of its people

Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.

ffs

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This post was quickly taken down on Reddit. I have noticed increased censorship on this topic.

You’re welcome <3

Despite the nature of his death, officials stated that there was no immediate evidence of foul play, according to 11Alive. Investigators have largely pointed toward suicide as the cause of death, a conclusion that has been met with immediate and fierce resistance from social media users.

Authorities say the case remains open as they await the medical examiner’s final autopsy report, but that reassurance has not calmed scepticism online.

A significant portion of the online discourse has focused on the perceived lack of mainstream media coverage during the week Bassinga was missing. Advocates argued that if a white student had disappeared under similar circumstances, the story would have been national news immediately. That perceived silence has deepened public distrust of the institutions tasked with reporting and investigating the case

For many, the death of Kyle Bassinga cannot be viewed in isolation from the long and brutal history of lynching in America. Civil rights organisations have documented thousands of such killings in the 19th and 20th centuries, noting that these acts of terror were used to enforce racial hierarchies and social control.

Lol

Y’all need !knives@sopuli.xyz and a nap lmao

Obligatory !fairvote@lemmy.ca

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Bluesky

Bridgy to Fediverse not yet set up

38.33% of Californians voted for Trump last election. In our most right-wing province of Alberta, 21% of people hold positive views of Trump. Adding a blue state to Canada would bring in millions of far-right voters and move our country significantly right.

Let’s remain friends. :)

Let’s get to #1.

Second Amendment

Sir this is not a Wendys USA

The United States Department of Homeland Security says it wants to buy a building owned by the property arm of Vancouver-based conglomerate Jim Pattison Group to use as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement “processing facility.”

The department sent a letter to the Hanover County planning department in Hanover, Va., last Wednesday, sharing its intent to “purchase, occupy and rehabilitate” the warehouse property.

If it was shared on a world news communtiy, I would agree. But this is a Canadian humour community and The Beaverton is an established satire site here, similar to The Onion.

That being said, a flair would be a good compromise if Lemmy supports it in the future.

Great pic but let’s keep it on-topic for this community please. I’ll keep it up though and you are welcome to tell me if you think otherwise.

I personally interpret it as them stating a fact rather than trying to imply that Biden is somehow as bad as Trump or excuses him.

Biden continued and expanded the horrible border policies of Trump’s first term. Anybody who has been paying attention to the humanitarian crisis on the southern border is well-aware of this.

Obviously Trump’s second term is incomparably worse than Biden’s term. The fact that Biden continued to worsten conditions on the border does not excuse or equate to anything from Trump’s current term.