A coalition of advocacy organizations is taking a previously proposed Barrie bylaw amendment to the United Nations as an example of a policy that criminalizes homelessness in Canada.
In May and June, the city north of Toronto proposed and then walked back two bylaw amendments that would have made it illegal for people and charitable groups to distribute food, literature, clothes, tents and tarps to unhoused people on public property.
The proposal was sent back to staff for review in June but was discussed again at a community safety committee meeting on Tuesday. A date for another council vote on the bylaw has yet to be set.
After Tuesday’s meeting, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition and Pivot Legal society sent the proposed bylaw amendments to the UN’s rapporteurs on the right to adequate housing and extreme poverty. The intergovernmental agency has put out a call for laws impacting unhoused people for a report on decriminalizing homelessness, with a submission deadline of early October.
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This is very disingenuous. The obvious meaning is that the city is targeting homeless people with laws specifically aimed at making their life harder. Is the city able to literally prosecute and imprison homeless people over these laws? No, but the implication is pretty obvious and one wonders why you are intentionally avoiding it with what amounts to wordplay.
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Why is the word choice more important than the issue? You’ve certainly spent more time worrying over that than the issue of laws being targeted at homeless people.
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Targeting vulnerable populations with laws intended to make their lives specifically worse is obviously bad. You shouldn’t even need a story to understand that that’s bad. So you’re giving off the strong impression that your actual problem here is that anyone is questioning the targeting of homeless people with the law.
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It’s a feeling I have. We are in a lemmy forum and not a moderated debate stage so I’m not sure why you think calling logical fallacy is going to separate me from my intuition.
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I for one am with you on denouncing sensationalism.
The situation is bad enough on its own that such sensationalism is not necessary.