New report calls for systemic change to addressing homelessness, mental health in northern Ontario
CBC
The Ontario government should commit to funding services in "northern service hubs" to reflect the needs of the regional populations they serve, according to a new report on homelessness, mental health and addictions.
The call to recognize northern service hubs in law appears in a 20-page report the Northern Policy Institute (NPI) released Wednesday entitled "More than Just a Number."
It's designed to serve as a lobbying document for municipal leaders to leverage systemic support from senior levels of government that would address what NPI researchers call a "crisis" in the north.
"It's a huge crisis in northern Ontario at the moment and a lot of these things are inter-related," said Holly Parsons, the report's author. "Wraparound supports are essential. When you think about all the connections between these things, I think we're continuing to highlight just how many strategies and different angles need to be taken."
The paper calls for Ontario to amend the Health Protection and Promotion Act, defining a "Northern Service Hub" and then to "mandate the provincial government to provide additional support to these communities through reserve funds or the like."
Parsons wants to see a balance between available resources and need.
Her research found the province has designed a system wherein housing, health, and social services in many northern municipalities serve an unacknowledged population migrating from far beyond their borders. She found those migrants — of which a "significant proportion" are Indigenous — are coming to find underfunded services, service gaps, and ultimately, strained municipally-funded services of last resort.
"Service hubs in northern Ontario face unique challenges in terms of their homeless populations: the in-migration of people from surrounding rural and remote communities to access employment, education, and social and health services that do not exist in their communities," the report reads.
"Removed from their familiar environments and support systems, migrants often find themselves without the financial means to support themselves or return to their communities and, thus, become dependent on emergency shelters and other social services."
The final paper is refined from a draft report CBC obtained in April, which painted a stark convergence of social issues across northern Ontario — one it found municipalities do not have the budget capacity to address alone.
It found five of the 11 northern districts have a higher per-capita homeless rate than Toronto, with two others close behind. Every district has a rising, opioid-related hospitalization rate. And every one of northern Ontario's 163 municipalities is officially considered "an area of high physician need."
Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association president Wendy Landry said regional leaders are already holding discussions to begin defining northern service hubs and build on the report's evidence that shows the cost of extreme poverty.
"Housing, homelessness, mental health and addictions are all part of the rollover to our municipal costs when it comes to policing, emergency services and hospital services. If we're not dealing with the root of the social issues, it's going to continue to cost municipalities money," Landry said.
"Hopefully we have enough information and enough passion behind our advocacy – I know we have an ear – to have influence, so the government sees we're offering solutions to our health and how to address the issues that are just growing bigger."
For years, there has been “glaring inequity” in the way the province has allocated the millions of dollars in its county roads budget, according to Department of Transportation Minister Chuck Chiasson.
Six months after passing a law aimed at making it easier for new grocery stores to open, Manitoba's premier says lower grocery bills could be on the horizon.
Timothy Smith was acting in self-defence when he punched Landon Waddell, and shouldn't be found guilty of manslaughter, his lawyer says.
Thoroughbred horse racing at Vancouver’s Hastings Racecourse is ending after more than a century, with the operator announcing Friday it will no longer run a racing season at the historic facility.
A memorial to remember lives lost to gender-based violence was held in Charlottetown Friday, ahead of the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, which is marked annually on Dec. 6.
A Calgary dentist who defrauded five insurance companies over a decade should spend up to three years in prison, the prosecution argued Friday.
B.C. Conservation Officer Service says it has called off its search for a bear responsible for an attack on a group of school children in Bella Coola, B.C. on Nov. 20.
The union president called it a rally for solidarity as Iqaluit Housing Authority employees gathered Friday while negotiations are ongoing between the Nunavut Employees Union and the employer.
The federal government is stoking Quebec separatism by walking back its climate commitments — including in its recent deal with Alberta — Liberal MP and former cabinet minister Steven Guilbeault says.
Four more Alberta MLAs are facing recall petitions organized by their constituents, including the first NDP representative to be caught in the province's ongoing wave of recall efforts.
Frank Gehry, the Canadian-born renegade architect behind some of the world's most recognizable buildings, has died at 96.
Hundreds of P.E.I. parents can't find child-care spaces, especially for infants. The provincial government says expanding those spots remains a top priority — and it recognizes the concern.
An Alberta judge says a referendum proposal on Alberta separating from Canada goes against Charter and and Treaty rights, in a decision given less than 24 hours after the provincial government introduced legislation that would have ended the court proceeding.