Barrie, Ont., declared a state of emergency last week to address encampments, lawlessness and disorder.Christopher Drost/The Canadian Press
The small B.C. town of Smithers is the latest Canadian community to table extraordinary measures to deal with the chaos and disorder triggered by the fentanyl crisis.
Last week, the northern mountain town of 5,400 announced that it will be hiring a team of private security guards to patrol a homeless encampment and the wider downtown from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays and 24 hours on weekends and holidays.
Smithers Mayor Gladys Atrill said it is a necessary step to try to improve public safety after repeated assaults on business owners and residents, a major fire in the encampment, a spike in retail theft and chaotic and anti-social behaviour downtown.
“Some business owners have been punched repeatedly, verbally assaulted. They’re traumatized. They’re not the same people they used to be. You can’t be.”
Mayor of Barrie, Ont., declares state of emergency to address safety at homeless encampments
Also last week, Barrie, Ont., declared a state of emergency to address the same issues – encampments, lawlessness and disorder.
And in June, the city council in Williams Lake, B.C., moved to declare a state of emergency to address disorder, open drug use, arson and a rash of thefts. Council backed down after B.C.’s Public Safety Minister ordered the immediate deployment to Williams Lake of a nine-person police unit targeting chronic and violent offenders as well as drug dealers.
Declaring an emergency for social problems was once unheard of in Canada. The use of these orders was restricted to natural disasters. Cities say that using them to deal with social disorder amounts to a cry for help from provinces and the federal government to deal with the spiralling mental-health problems and community chaos triggered by the opioid crisis.
Memorial Square in downtown Barrie in October, 2023. Mayor Alex Nuttall says problems began in 2016 with an influx of fentanyl.Christopher Drost/The Canadian Press
Problems in Barrie began with an influx of fentanyl, starting in 2016, says Mayor Alex Nuttall. The effects were immediate and “catastrophic”: Addictions and encampments exploded. E. coli levels spiked – to five times normal levels – with people defecating and urinating into city streams. A double homicide in an encampment this summer was the final straw.
Both victims were dismembered, noted Mr. Nuttall, who signed the declaration of emergency on Sept. 9: “People are fed up. People hit this point where it was like, ‘No, we’re not going to keep going down this road.’”
Natasha Finbow’s home backs onto one of the Barrie parks “now overwhelmed with encampments,” she wrote in an open letter posted to social media.
“There have been constant break-ins, the theft of electricity, screaming and fighting all night long, people using and hiding drugs and needles on my property.”
Worse, she said, her eight-year-old child found a dead person just beyond the limits of their backyard. “All this in front of a children’s playground and right on my property line, what should be my safe place to retire to at the end of a hard day.”
The emergency order allows Barrie to put fire, police, paramedic and social services under the authority of the city’s Chief Administrative Officer. They are streamlining services to get people out of parks.
“We just had 44 individuals who were given trespass orders to remove their tents and of them, 36 took offers of help and support,” said Mr. Nuttall.
Williams Lake has also seen improvements, said Mayor Surinderpal Rathor. The Central Interior community of 11,000 had been planning to bring in an 11 p.m. curfew and was exploring involuntary detention when the province directed an expert task force to enter the city.
“They picked up the heavy-duty drug dealers and the prolific offenders,” said Mr. Rathor. “It’s made a big difference. Are we where we want to be? No. But we have come long way from where we were in June.”
Smithers is hoping the security team – which will cost taxpayers there $400,000 – will bring the town’s small businesses some relief. Downtown business owners lost close to half a million dollars over a six-month period in 2024, according to a city report. Thefts in one small store totalled $50,000 in that period. Most businesses are being targeted multiple times a day, said Ms. Atrill, the mayor.
She is deeply concerned for the future of the northern town.
“This is a problem we have no way out of it. Yes, there is a project in the hopper with BC Housing to provide supportive housing. But the most optimistic open date for that is 2027. That’s two more winters. It just feels really bleak.”
And the individuals living in the encampment need extraordinary help, Ms. Atrill noted. “You can’t just move them.” They won’t be able to function in a shelter or even supportive housing, she adds. “They require complex, long-term care.
“We don’t have a good option here. We’re trying to find a route that’s as economical as possible, that will add some boots on the ground to try to make the downtown a bit safer.”