Niki Ottosen, Tammy Cardinal Address Victoria City Council Denouncing Bylaw Sweeps

Tonight’s council session at Victoria city hall became a battleground for the human rights of homeless people, as Niki Ottosen, of the Backpack Project, and Tammy Cardinal, a regularly dispossessed homeless person, called for an immediate suspension of the more draconian provisions pertaining to bylaw sweeps of public spaces such as parks and sidewalks.

Niki came forward to reiterate a call for a motion to automatically suspend bylaw sweeps during and following an extreme weather event, arguing that they unequivocally constitute a human rights infraction as defined under Article 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees “the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof”. This is, by the way, a conversation the city already had many years ago when the BC Supreme Court settled the matter against it in Victoria (city) v. Adams (2009).

She also pleaded for the repeal of recent bylaws meant to facilitate the removal of belongings from public spaces and obfuscating the retrieval process such that unhoused people, with limited means to navigate the system even with the help of advocates, could not recover them. She argued in particular that using fines as deterrence against destitute people who cannot afford them constituted an absurd and cruel barrier perpetuating the cycle of poverty rather than breaking it.

The attendance heartily applauded her address. Mayor Alto, ever the authoritarian killjoy, reminded the crowd of the rule against clapping and cheering, perhaps as a subtle form of retaliation against Niki who once filed a complaint against the city of Victoria denouncing the impounding of property by city officials. She also took the unprecedented step of cutting off the mic when Niki exceeded the meagre 3-minute limit by a few seconds.

Then came Tammy Cardinal’s turn, a desperate Vic West Park resident whose address in contrast went along the lines of the interview she gave for CHEK News last month. She struggled to get the words out between sobs and even had to stop for a few seconds to recompose herself. It is indeed triggering to retell before a room full of strangers and the glare of sociopathic elected officials (to say nothing of the public broadcast) how the constant predation of bylaw officials drove her to attempt suicide.

When the attendance clapped at the end of her turn, not even the mayor dared complain.

These interventions follow allegations that bylaw officers recently swept the Ellice Street encampment clear during an extreme weather event. The encampment, right in front of Rock Bay Landing, would usually comprise roughly twenty structures and constitute the last refuge of about thirty people with nowhere else to go.

The ball is in the city’s camp. Which doesn’t mean we advocates are sitting on our hands waiting for its next move. I myself keep pressuring public officials at the provincial and federal levels to intervene in the matter, calling for a legal challenge of the city’s bylaws. If council will not alter its course out of the goodness of its heart, we activists may resort to more forceful methods. Stay tuned.