MP Baber calls out Mayor Chow, “outright crazy” shelter plan

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Roman Baber started by saying he came “humbly” and “respectfully.” Later, the Conservative MP let them know what he truly thought.

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“Children will be picking up needles. This is on you. You have not consulted any of us,” the representative for York Centre told City Hall’s planning and housing committee.

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Those words concluded Baber’s brief remarks at the committee, which were repeatedly derailed by Councillor Gord Perks’ insistence there were things the MP could and could not say. Much as other Torontonians hear at City Hall committees these days, Perks, the committee chairman, said certain subjects aren’t up for debate – and if Baber didn’t comply, “I will ask you to leave.”

Baber told Perks, one policy-maker to another, that a discussion about zoning should clearly allow opposing a proposed land use – in this case, a homeless shelter at 1220 Wilson Ave., near Keele St.

The committee didn’t vote Baber’s way. He says the fight’s not done.

“I will do everything possible to get the plans for this shelter terminated or abandoned,” Baber told The Toronto Sun.

“I call on any Toronto city councillor with any decency to please, stand up to this mayor and the destructionist policies that she is unleashing on this city, and protect Downsview residents from the Downsview homeless shelter.”

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That site on Wilson Ave. has received its share of scrutiny, as James Pasternak, the ward’s councillor, has fought very publicly against it. While City Hall’s aggressive rollout of shelters across Toronto appears to be growing into a major political issue, Baber said the Wilson site is “particularly ill-conceived,” sitting between Pierre Laporte Middle School and a daycare centre.

He also worries it’s too close to a shelter near Jane St. — at 1677 Wilson Ave. — which was the scene of a stabbing murder last month. Pasternak told the Sun that operation is “a case study in how a shelter comes off the rails,” lacking in day programming and essential supports.

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Baber acknowledged there is an “unprecedented challenge” – a recent city report said homelessness has doubled since 2021. He said the solution is to find “suitable buildings in employment lands” and retrofit them.

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“It seems, for lack of a better description, outright crazy to me that Toronto city council would agree to place a homeless shelter between a daycare centre and a middle school,” Baber said.

“We now know, regretfully, that Toronto city shelters are handing out drug paraphernalia to their residents,” Baber added. “The Toronto homeless shelters are no longer just homeless shelters. They have turned into satellites for the so-called drug-injection sites.”

(In a statement, the City of Toronto said the new shelters “will not be safe consumption sites or offer safe consumption services,” but will “provide health services” as defined in the city’s shelter standards, which includes giving out “safer drug use equipment.”)

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Recent council debates have touched on an argument that attempts to debate proposed shelter sites politicize the process, as they’re picked by unelected bureaucrats. Baber called that a “complete abdication of responsibility by Toronto city council, which must know that needles from the drug-injection site will end up in the middle school and the daycare next door.”

If city councillors think he won’t fight, they don’t know Baber.

A lawyer by trade, Baber was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Canada as a teen. A couple of decades after, York Centre made him its MPP, in 2018.

When he spoke out against the Ontario PCs’ COVID policies, they booted him from caucus. When, as an Independent MPP, he urged the lockdown lawmakers to try living on what a CERB recipient made, they made a spectacle in the legislature by voting to lower Baber’s salary only. (The move didn’t stick as MPP salaries can’t be changed in that way.)

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Baber’s response? He ran for the federal Conservatives, and won, becoming Toronto’s only current Tory MP.

“I don’t agree with all his messaging, but I will say that he’s fully entitled to speak out. This is the area he represents,” Pasternak said. “Say what you want, homelessness touches on federal jurisdiction.” (Baber said he sees Pasternak as a colleague and a friend.)

Baber’s introduction to Toronto city politics last Tuesday included a short speech, just after his committee clash, at an outdoor press conference that was crashed by left-wing demonstrators and referred to in some news reports as a “protest.”

“You’d think that when you have a CBC, CTV and Global News microphone in your face that you’re not protesting,” Baber said. “Of course, the other folks on the other side of this issue have tried to shut us down, just like Gord Perks tries to shut you down inside City Hall.”

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Baber was just the first of dozens of people who spoke about the shelters issue at Tuesday’s committee meeting. Pasternak was also in attendance.

“I must admit I lost my temper at one point where I accused the chair of muzzling our constituents. I thought the meeting was a fiasco,” Pasternak said.

At one point, committee members Jamaal Myers, Josh Matlow and Brad Bradford pressed Perks on why citizens weren’t allowed to discuss the six sites in question being used as homeless shelters.

“The report mentions shelters multiple times … but the deputants are not allowed to talk about shelters,” Myers said.

Bradford pushed harder.

“I know you want to keep that in a very tight little box today, but that’s probably not why 80 people took their time to be here and provide feedback to this committee today,” Bradford said, to cheers from waiting speakers.

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Baber said he was disappointed the committee voted 4-2 against a motion to quash the zoning change for 1220 Wilson, and was “surprised that Councillor Frances Nunziata specifically, who typically tends to be good on this issue, decided to vote with Gord Perks and Mayor Olivia Chow.”

Pasternak said his preference remains to set up a shelter not at the Wilson site but at the nearby Humber River Hospital. Baber said he’ll continue to lobby against the Wilson plan, and perhaps push for the project to be defunded or for the province to intervene.

“I will not rest,” Baber said, “until I know that the Downsview shelter is no longer in the works.”

jholmes@postmedia.com

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