Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall declared a State of Emergency on Tuesday, September 9, 2025 addressing a number of encampments across the city.
Below is Mayor Nuttall’s speech.
“Six years ago, on March 5, 2019, I requested Barrie City Mayor & Council to declare a state of emergency to properly manage the opioid emergency and ancillary impacts of this emergency like homelessness & lawlessness.
I was ignored.
During Covid, the City of Barrie decided it would create a sanctioned encampment at Milligan’s Pond, where those who were homeless were able to erect tents and further create a village. Alongside, the existing encampments along Anne St., there came a mass of people and corresponding tents and structures.
While the sanction ended, the camping did not.
Just over 2 years ago, Barrie City Council tried to bring more effective controls into the community to address rampant homelessness, organized criminal behaviours, drug-use and panhandling. Following activist intervention, Council decided to have faith and provide one more chance to the local social services to get it right. Our faith has not been rewarded, and neither has the Province’s.
The Province of Ontario has responded to my request for more funding.
• 86% increase to Homelessness Prevention Funding
• New Shelter Funding
• Encampment Cleanup Funding
• HART Hub Funding
The total funding described here is in the tens of millions of dollars over the next three years, and will likely surpass over $100 million over our term.
We do not have a funding problem. We have an inability to be effective problem with the money that has been allocated. There are services working with cross-purposes to cleaning up lawlessness.
It takes too long to be accredited and permitted. It takes too long to deliver the services for rehabilitation and shelter that have been promised to us, the people of Barrie.
But we, the City of Barrie do not have control over this emergency.
The federally appointed judges are superseding everyday by-laws, that cities have so cities can create and maintain order.
The Barrie Police Department operates as arms length police service overseeing law enforcement, or the lack thereof, being told by the justice system that it’s a waste of time to enforce drug possession or drug use laws.
This because often those same judges mentioned earlier throw the cases out, and warn the prosecutors to steer away from such charges.
While I support the County’s plan to deliver new space and the HART Hub, they have simply run of time.
The City of Barrie does not have control over this emergency.
Until Now.
Today, I am announcing that I have Declared a State of Emergency in the City of Barrie, as I previously asked the former administration to do.
While we wait for the County’s long-term plan to be implemented, the City of Barrie is immediately instituting the State of Emergency to reclaim our streets, our boulevards, our parks, our squares, our feeling of safety, and our order.
While this order will not appoint federal judges that protect the rights of citizenry to live in a free and lawful society, it will address the problem from the ground up.
Barrie City Council has already done the following:
• (2023)Provided an additional $1.65 million, increasing our funding to support local social service agencies
• (2025)With Police, funded an additional 17 police officers to enforce the law in our city center
• (2023) Ended the Prisoner Drop-Off program in downtown Barrie, that left individuals in our downtown from around the Province of Ontario, when they left incarceration
Today, we are taking further action.
These actions are necessary due to the length of time of lawlessness in our City and due to the increase in severity of lawlessness.
In the last 2 months we have had:
• A double homicide
• Ecoli levels reaching almost 5 x the failure concentration in our streams leading down from the encampment to our beaches
• A major increase in tents along city streets with the closure of the encampment
• Multiple fires being set
• A tent that was right behind me being found with Drug Money, Drugs, multiple cross bows and a pistol
• Assaults
• Rampant drug use
• Overdoses
• Theft
• Exposure to Needles by citizens cleaning the downtown
• Defecation in doorways
• Increased Encampments
• Public Indecency
And with all of this I can honestly say, Barrie might have the problem, but we are not the reason. Well over half of the individuals who are homeless in our City are just not from here.
With this Declaration of Emergency, we will be commencing with the following:
• Immediately test the water of waterways near or abutting encampments to understand how many other waterways are being contaminated with human feces, resulting in incredibly
high e-coli readings.
• Remove Encampments beginning with those that are nearest our most critical infrastructure and public spaces
• Create a position to oversee the implementation of social services and coordination of services between the various government agencies responsible. IE remove any and all silos.
My current Chief of Staff and Office Manager, will assume this position as soon as we have transitioned someone in to her current role.
• Give our City the ability to retain additional staff and contracted services as required
• Request the County to immediately open access to additional shelter throughout the County of Simcoe to allow for space to be available for the people living in these tents
• Provide Barrie staff with the ability to retain space, if the County of Simcoe does not have any accessible
• Provide Barrie staff with the ability to explore infrastructure opportunities with the County of Simcoe or individually, if required
• Request the Province of Ontario provide immediate funding to support this initiative
• Prior to completion of this order, have staff prepare updates to existing by-laws, procedures and policies as required for Council’s consideration to reflect our encampment response measures.
• Commission a report to clearly delineate how we got here, and make recommendations of next steps to end this emergency in Barrie.”
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
