By Joey Clavette

Over the past ten years, Proshanto Smith, a local panhandler and activist, has racked up a whopping 101 tickets for violating the provincial Safe Streets Act. While panhandling is not expressly illegal under Ontario legislation, the Safe Streets Act’s intention is to regulate it. As a result of this law, Smith says he currently owes $8,540 in tickets, which he hopes to fight with the help of a legal organization known as the Ticket Defense Program (TDP).

The Safe Streets Act of 1999 prohibits “aggressive panhandling,” meaning panhandling in “a manner that is likely to cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety and security.”  Many organizations, including the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) and the Ottawa Panhandlers Union (OPU), of which Smith is a member, have criticized this provision as being too vague. OCAP states on their website that “If some members of the public ‘fear’ others because of their skin colour, the fact they look different, wear different clothes, are visibly poor or are young, it is not incumbent upon government to enact laws or enforcement strategies that target such people.” The Safe Streets Act also prohibits a panhandler from soliciting a captive audience, such as people leaving a bus or using an ATM.

Suzanne Bouclin, TDP coordinator and University of Ottawa law professor, criticized the legislation in the Ottawa Citizen by pointing out that “giving people tickets for engaging in a form of income generation when they clearly require the income is counter-intuitive.” The legislation is also ineffective towards solving the problem of desperate poverty.

The act has been enforced for the past fifteen years; however, statistics show it has not made a noticeable improvement upon the issue of desperate poverty. Between 2012 and 2014 over 5,600 tickets were given to panhandlers. Of the past 3 years, 2013 was the busiest, with police officers issuing more than 2,270 tickets. That is 6.2 tickets a day.

The TDP seeks to provide voluntary legal services to those charged in violation of the act. As the Safe Streets Act is provincial, panhandling is not technically a criminal act and therefore cannot lead to imprisonment. Due to the fact they are not by definition criminal acts, free legal services that are provided in defense of criminal cases are not available to those fighting these tickets, which is where the TDP comes in.

Smith told the Leveller that his “intention is to go through the whole court process for the purpose of challenging the unfair law.” He claims that the law is not only inherently unfair and wrong but the Ottawa Police Service also hands out these infractions fraudulently. “The police will issue me a ticket just for soliciting near a bus stop when the legislation clearly says the purpose of this law is [so] that you do not [solicit] a captive audience,” Smith said.

In order to substantiate his claims, Smith began engaging in what is generally referred to as Copwatch. “We instruct all of our members [of the OPU] to begin to videotape the police from the moment that they are approached,” Smith said. “We observed and videotaped an elderly Inuit lady, engaged in passively shaking her cup and not verbalizing, [being] given a ticket for aggressive solicitation.” Many members of the OPU, which was in large part created as a response to the Safe Streets Act, have had cell phones supplied by the union with the help of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

A common misperception is that a panhandler with a cell phone is not a person in need. Smith responds to this claim by saying, “It’s almost 2016. We are not in the early eighties when it was a billion dollars a minute, folks. So to think that common folks of all classes would not have access to cellphones is ridiculous.” There is a stereotype that those in need should look like they are in need, but this is counterintuitive. “The purpose of the OPU is to be a support group for those who are either on welfare, disability, or otherwise make their money from street performing or begging.”

“My role in the Ottawa Panhandler’s Union is ‘member,’” Smith said. “We are ‘Wobblies,’ otherwise known as [members of] the Industrial Workers of the World. We are fully democratic. There are no leaders as we are an anarcho-syndicalist organization,” meaning decisions are made through leaderless direct democracy.

“We are fighting the Ottawa Police Service and the City Council directly against their breaking of [sic] the Safe Streets Act. Our method is civil disobedience but keep in mind that ultimately our goal is to have a society where panhandling will not be necessary,” Smith concluded.

This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 8 No. 3 (Nov/Dec 2015).