​Why Is Saskatoon Considering a Crackdown on Panhandlers?

It's a cold day in Saskatoon.

That cursing-aloud-at-fellow-pedestrians-in-shared-concession-that-you-made-a-mistake-leaving-the-house brand of cold that is particular to the Prairies. For a few hours, I've been ducking in and out of businesses downtown in the core of Saskatoon's densest panhandling hub. So far, I've only seen one man at it. A long-haired man in a thin jacket, sitting on a chunk of cardboard. He's accumulated a few bucks of pocket change in a ball cap by his feet. I deliberately keep walking past him, to see if his level of aggressiveness is comparable to that which I've shown random Christmas shoppers passing by. Not once does he so much as lift his head from being burrowed in his jacket.

Perhaps today is a bad acid test. Because Saskatoon has a panhandling problem. They're too aggressive. They operate in packs. They're a threat to public safety.

At least that's the general perception motivating city administration to push for bylaw changes.

Last year, a committee in Saskatoon made up of business improvement agencies and police came up with a report to revise bylaws in order to remedy an alleged panhandling problem. The report, which cites "health and safety" as its top priorities, recommended banning panhandling while "not stationary," and restricting panhandling within 10 meters of any theatre, gallery, venue, parking pay station, and any business licensed to serve alcohol. City bylaws already restrict "coercive" panhandling, as well as panhandling in front of banks, ATMs, bus stops and liquor stores. One doesn't have to be familiar with Saskatoon to accurately assume these restrictions would essentially seal off the majority of downtown. Last week, city administration, pausing only on the stationary and alcohol related stipulations, recommended City Council adopt the revised bylaws.

Encouragingly, new and improved Mayor, Charlie Clark, and Councillor Hilary Gough, were less than impressed with the city's recommendation.

How to enforce these proposed changes remains uncertain, conceivably police officers will be issued a municipal measuring tape in their belt holsters. But, as the majority of panhandlers in the city represent visible minorities, it's clear policing would require a higher degree of racial profiling. "The goal [of the bylaw] speaks to the safety of everyone," Lesley Prefontaine told me, the supervisor for the team of civilian officers who patrol Saskatoon's three BID areas. "It's a personal, perceived type of safety we're considering here."

"Perceived" being the operative word. Although grumblings about panhandlers compromising safety downtown are considerably common, there's been a grand total of zero documented assaults from panhandlers to pedestrians. Changing bylaws to accommodate a "perception" at the expense of an already marginalized group begins to flirt with human rights violations.

"You can't just invoke public safety without evidence of public safety being an issue," Ben Ralston, a lawyer and lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan, told VICE. "The details and the level of evidence matter. It can't just be an assertion based on fear or a stereotype. That's highly problematic, especially from a human rights perspective."

To gather a crude impression of the general attitude, I chatted with roughly twenty businesses located in that central panhandle, assuring everything was totally off the record. Most were all too eager to share their position, the majority honouring the myths and mentality conducive to a robust marketplace. But all stopped short, except for one men's clothing store owner with a blatant centre-of-the-universe disposition, of condemning panhandlers as a legitimate threat to public safety. Nuisance, yes. Dangerous? Well, not exactly.

"People would rather be free of being bothered, and that's what the 'safe streets' bylaw aims to do. But where is the real risk? Is it really about safety?" said Ken Norman, human rights lawyer and Emeritus Professor at the University of Saskatchewan in an interview with VICE.

"It's a cosmetic device to avoid dealing with the hard questions," says Norman. "[The human rights violation] is a question of 'managing' panhandling rather than 'suppressing' it. If they're suppressing, that's a violation of the Charter's right to freedom of expression."

This issue extends far past Saskatoon. Most major cities/areas in North America have come up with some kind of "safe street" bylaws, which are essentially ways of keeping panhandlers at a comfortable distance. San Francisco, for example, prohibits anyone from sitting on the sidewalk from 7AM to 11PM.

Ontario's "Safe Streets Act" enforces aggressive panhandling with tickets, almost all of which are never paid. The Supreme Court in BC is currently engaged ina case in which found community policing targeting and removing individuals from public spaces in downtown Vancouver.

In Canada, the ability to pass these panhandling "managing" bylaws is predicated on a Supreme Court decision in 2006—the last and highest word on the matter, which found ticketing kids under the "Safe Streets Act" for squeegeeing and panhandling to be constitutional.

"The Ontario Court of Appeal essentially gave a boulevard of green lights to this country to address [areas where] people don't want to be bothered and disturbed," says Norman.

"The courts said the bylaw is justifiable because it's not aimed at silencing, it's aimed at keeping the streets safe. Legislation calls "safe streets" as if one were talking about harm here. It's not about harm. It's about people who would really just rather it just go away and avoid the harder questions."

As for the present situation in Saskatoon, the harm squares itself on the panhandlers. "This bylaw is going to get people hurt," Jason Mercredi told me, a support services worker with AIDS Saskatoon who works on the ground level with the panhandling community. "They're going to be pushing them to less travelled areas at night. People assume it's the violence panhandlers doing the public. Studies show it's actually the opposite."

Meanwhile, there's radio silence from these marginalized voices, who the general public seems to deem, at the very least, an inconvenience. The Safe Street Acts fail to address why panhandlers might feel more desperate. It's cosmetic, rather than focusing on the social determinant behind why people are sitting, or God forbid, moving with their hand out.

"Of course we want safe streets. Who wouldn't want that? It's an easy sell to call it a safe street act or bylaw. It's a kind of cover which plays into our perceptions," says Norman.

"We live, thank goodness, in a free society where discomfort doesn't get to be criminalized."

At least for now.