Whitby needs federal help with asylum seekers, food banks and domestic violence, council says

Whitby’s council has called on the federal government for support with several major issues in town including an influx of asylum seekers, overtaxed food banks and an epidemic of intimate partner violence.

Each issue was presented to council in their own motions in last night’s meeting. The first discussed was the need for federal aid in addressing the country’s ongoing intimate partner violence epidemic.

The motion noted about 40 per cent of women (roughly 6.2 million) and a third of men have experienced intimate partner violence. These rates have only increased in recent years growing nearly 20 per cent between 2014 and 2022.

These rates are much higher in rural communities. A woman in a rural community is 75 per cent more likely than her urban counterparts to experience violence. Additionally, Indigenous women are three times more likely than other ethnic demographics to be attacked by a partner and eight times more likely to be murdered. Reports indicate this epidemic costs our system roughly $7.5 billion a year in associated healthcare expenses

“Whitby calls on the federal government to create a permanent fund, open to local governments and community organizations, for the construction of shelters and transitional housing for women and survivors of intimate partner violence, including housing appropriate for Indigenous, 2SLGBTQIA+ people, and persons with disabilities, with a dedicated rural, remote, and northern (RRN) stream,” the town wrote.

They also asked for “permanent operational funding, open to local governments and community organizations, for shelters, transitional housing, and supportive housing.”

The ask comes following several high-profile incidents of domestic violence in Whitby and Durham Region as a whole including the murders of Jennifer Polak in March and Katrina Zwolinski and her mother Laurie Crew in October.

Secondly, the town called for more aid to help asylum seekers. There has been a large influx of asylum seekers in the GTA over the past few years. As a result, municipalities have been at the forefront of providing services until they’ve been drained of all resources, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area.

The recent arrivals previously left Durham Region and Ajax’s support systems “exhausted” last year creating an “emergency situation,” according to Ajax Mayor Shaun Collier. At the time Collier noted Ajax’s homeless population increased 40 per cent “practically overnight” when those supports evaporated.

Repeated community calls finally led to an $826,000 cash infusion from the province to support these programs in Durham in September 2023. However, “the supports provided to municipalities to receive asylum claimants are often short-term and focused on emergency response and shelter, but do not ensure permanent settlement and housing options for asylum claimants, including a focus on homeless prevention and long-term stability,” Whitby wrote.

The town called for six major new supports including:

• Immediately provide financial support directly to municipalities for the short-term needs of asylum claimants and refugees through top-ups to the Canada Housing Benefit and the Interim Housing Assistance Program (IHAP);
• An ongoing commitment of funding to address estimated annual costs for refugees in 2024, and commit to future funding until the demand for shelter returns to sustainable levels;
• Collaborate with municipal governments to develop a long-term strategy to enhance the capacity of local governments to effectively support asylum claimants and refugees,
• Recognizing that the rise in asylum-seeking populations pursuing refuge in Canada is occurring in the midst of a housing crisis, provide additional funding through National Housing Strategy programs and the Canada Housing Benefit to support asylum claimants in the medium- and long-term;
• That the federal government broaden the eligibility for federally-funded settlement services to include asylum claimants who currently can only access provincially-funded services and also that settlement services be funded to support newcomers with housing searches as at present they mostly limited to orientation, language instruction, and employment; and,
• Extend and make permanent the Rapid Housing Initiative with another intake in 2024/25 to enable municipalities to invest in supportive housing on an urgent basis and relieve pressure on the shelter system, and work with the provinces and territories to ensure that supportive units have wrap-around health and social supports and long-term operating funding.

Finally, Whitby call on the feds for more support with local food banks.

According to Feed the Need in Durham, foodbank use has skyrocketed in recent years. Their latest report says they’ve distributed nearly eight million pounds of food since 2018. In that time visits to the foodbank have increased 50 per cent.

The distributor credits this growth largely to inflation which peaked early last year. At the time food inflation alone reached 11 per cent. These rates have since cooled somewhat but remain around seven per cent.

Whitby as a whole has blamed this growth on “financial and affordability pressures related to soaring mortgage and rent costs, inflated grocery costs, stagnating wages, and limited avenues for social assistance have pushed significantly more people toward food insecurity.”

On the other hand Councillor Steve Yamada, who is running for as Whitby’s Conservative candidate in the next federal election, has blamed the difficulty on the federal carbon tax. Bringing this up in food bank discussions got him ejected from the Durham Regional Council meeting last month.

While he’s right that the carbon tax does inflate grocery bills, they only do so by about .03 percent, according to the Bank of Canada. Furthermore, most Canadians get more back on their tax return than they contribute to carbon taxes.

In order to combat the issues actually significantly contributing to rising costs and therefore food bank usage, Whitby has called on the Feds to “address the food insecurity crisis by providing emergency funding to food banks, food rescue agencies, and farmers markets providing emergency food assistance, and recognize the systemic issues involved in food bank usage, including affordability, inequality, core housing need and insufficient social supports, in order to end food insecurity.”