WHAT WHO WHEN WHERE & WHY ?

Hon. Bill Graham
MPP Toronto Centre-Rosedale

Dear Mr. Graham,

Re: DOWNTOWN CORE OF TORONTO CENTRE-ROSEDALE
CRIME, VIOLENCE AND URBAN BLIGHT

We are calling on you once again to help create a safer and more balanced community in Toronto Centre-Rosedale. Your constituents wrote two OPEN LETTERS to all levels of government, one in December 2002 and then in August 2003 (attached), pleading for measures to reduce risk to people and properties in the Downtown core of your riding. Neither of them has been acknowledged or acted upon.

The vast majority of residents in those facilities are either unemployed, transients, many physically and mentally ill with no option or wish to change their life style. Too often that lifestyle is characterized by theft, assault, drugs, and prostitution, loitering as evidenced by police statistics. High concentrations of residents without disposable income are behind the flight of the retail sector, professional and financial services, and educational institutions. To help this part of the city to establish a socio-economic balance we call for the following measures:

Devolution of present densities of social service facilities

In the name of fair share and in an attempt to revive this part of Downtown, all levels of government must agree on a plan that would include.
• redistribution of some 1500 shelters beds to achieve 500 beds per ward limit
• elimination of beds beyond the approved cap of 80 per shelter
• improved management of existing facilities.

It has been proven that smaller and more manageable centres provide better services to the socially challenged, are less expensive to operate, and pose less risk to the community.

Audit and assessment of SCIPI funding and transfers for social services

Transitional housing funded principally by the federal government must not be a new name for the old concept of shelters. If it is to provide transition, then it must be located away from shelters, group homes and other high risk social services. Existing private sector housing provides faster and more economical way of integration of marginalised or vulnerable groups than publicly owned and operated separate facilities. Sojourn House is the perfect example. We draw your attention to the single unit housing approach - its substandard design, material and construction methods.

The Federal Government must provide checks and balances in the allocation of funds for provincially and municipally operated social services. Such controls are critical in view of financial mismanagement at all levels of government.

Social service facilities must not request and be granted exemption from by-laws that exist to prevent concentration of risk. The Salvation Army, St. Jude, or Sojourn House to name a few recent examples must abide by the laws in place.

Audit and assessment of harm reduction programs

Current programs do not have sufficient controls to reduce risk for addicts, be they alcohol or drug related. Specifically, needle exchanges are but needle and crack pipe supply programs that further advance drug use. Harm Reduction Programs have been in place since 1989, yet no comprehensive assessment including cost and success/failure ratio has been provided.

Addiction treatment programs should be run out of special medical centres securing need assessment and other services, particularly, for the mentally ill. They should be located away from the current concentrations of social service facilities in the Downtown core and its residential, educational and commercial activities. Drug dealing, prostitution, theft, assault, etc.. associated with those operations pose critical risk to the community at large, and particularly to low-income households prevalent in this neighbourhood.

Criminal Justice

Criminal Justice Forum of 2002, was to lead to a review of judicial policies and practices. To date, no tangible improvements have been implemented.
In view of recent findings related to treatment programs for sexual offenders, the ambiguity of the drug laws and the harm reduction programs, the thriving drug industry in Canada, we feel that a major overhaul of the system is needed.

We would appreciate your response to the issues raised in the Open Letter and those above, as we intend to put them forth in the upcoming federal election.

Sincerely

Eva Curlanis-Bart

April 26, 2004

Dear Mayor Miller,

Re: Balanced Communities in Downtown East

We are angered over the City of Toronto’s actions and policies, whether implicit or explicit, which force our communities to absorb an unfair and disproportionate share of all social programs aimed at housing and support services for the vulnerable and disadvantaged.

Your recent decision to second a motion by Councillor Kyle Rae providing municipal legal and planning expertise in opposition to the communities’ appeal of the Committee of Adjustment's approval of variances for 416 Sherbourne Street. entrenches this misguided approach. Further, we view your action as a repudiation of your commitment to "…local decision-making and meaningful community input in the determination of all planning issues."(Filion/Miller, October 3, 2003).

You are well aware of the unprecedented densities of high-risk social service
facilities in Ward 27 and 28. Open Letters addressing the correlation between these
densities and the frequency of crime and violence in East Downtown were sent to you in
December 2002 in your capacity as councillor, and again in August 2003 as a mayoral candidate. A further request to halt the conversion of 416 Sherbourne Street to a-convict group home was sent to you on December 8, 2003 by the Garden District Residents Association on behalf of residents and businesses in the area. Your office neither acknowledged nor acted upon those communications.

We urge you to meet with us at your earliest convenience to facilitate a meaningful dialogue on issues that affect our safety and security, the future of our children and the socio-economic well being of our community. To this end, kindly have your office contact any of the members of our Committee listed below.

Sincerely


ACTION 4 BALANCED COMMUNITIES DOWNTOWN EAST

Contacts:

Joice Guspie 416 961-8879
Rodger McLennan 416 923-8640
Eva Curlanis-Bart 416-367-0027

WHAT'S NEXT? PEDOPHILE PLAYGROUNDS?
By Eva Curlanis-Bart
Published in the March issue of the St Lawrence Bulletin

If Ward 27 Councillor has his way, a government sponsored facility where drug addicts can inject heroine, cocaine, steroids or consume any drug of choice, will open up next to St Michael’s Hospital. Such facilities are euphemistically called "safe injection sites".

It is irrelevant that a broad political, institutional, business and residential support is required when an application for this pilot project is made to the federal government, and that such support is non existent in the Toronto Centre Rosedale riding which comprises Ward 27.

In a May 8, 2003 letter to Health Minister Anne McLellan, riding MP Bill Graham, confirmed that not only there was no support for this project, there was broad-based opposition to it. Many see it as legalized pimping, providing for site operators to live off an illegal and harmful activity of others. As with other high risk and highly controversial facilities unloaded to this part of the city against community will and the laws in place, there is concern that this one will also be imposed without notification or consultation.

The proponents of drug use sites look at the concept as the most humane and efficient way of dealing with drug addiction. Sterile tools and immediate help in case of an overdose are put forth as harm reduction weapons – a defense against disease transmission, infections, even death. As an added bonus, these sites would offer counseling and redirection to programs aimed at abstinence, if chosen.

Opponents see this approach as highly problematic. It makes little sense from a medical point of view, particularly when drug addiction is branded a disease. If it is, then how does a drug use site fit into its protocols of prevention and treatment? Clearly, it does not. We do not give cigarettes to tobacco addicts or estrogen to women with breast cancer to relieve their hot flashes. We isolate the factor behind the disease, and eliminate it. There is help available on the way to abstinence in the form of programs and substances from a wide spectrum of services, both private and public.

Drug use sites pose a serious legal problem. To institute them, current drug laws must be suspended so drug use at those sites would become legal. If the chief argument for this experiment is reduction of harm associated with irresponsible consumption of drugs, and not with the illegal substances themselves, then this suspension should be extended to all responsible drug users, regardless of the location. Otherwise, a two-tier justice system will be created – one tier offering protection to irresponsible users, the other punishing the responsible ones. Further, this approach will condone the purchase of and possession of illegal substances, and the crime and violence they generate.

Last but not least, the social aspect of this experiment. Enormous amounts of taxpayer money are expended on the war on drugs. This money is already wasted by the unwillingness of the legal sector to deal effectively with offences associated with drug use and drug dealing. Selective legalization of drug use will only exacerbate this waste. More importantly, it will put further strain on the safety and security of the neighbourhoods where drugs are purchased and consumed and inflict harm, cost and waste on those communities.

If there is evidence that health risks associated with drug use are primarily generated by inappropriate administration and not the substance itself, than as a society we must decide if continued criminalization of drugs makes health, social and fiscal sense. But this decision must be made within a due and open process and not imposed on the society by special interest groups. Sentimentality and scientism must not replace logic and science, and moral judgement must not be eliminated as if it were a disease.

Edmund Burke, the eminent thinker, made this observation some two hundred years ago: "Men are qualified for civil liberties in the exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their appetites." That maxim applies as much to drug users and their entitlements as it does to politicians and their gluttony for social engineering.

The appetite to establish a Mummy State where one hand slaps and the other strokes must be curtailed, otherwise we will turn into a society of adult children, with highways for drunken drivers, peeping shows for pedophiles and shopping malls for kleptomaniacs. And that is not an option for the majority of Canadians, particularly at a time when all levels of government provide ample proof that they are not to be trusted.