September 9, 2024
Barrie Housing continues to abuse their power by trying to silence me again.
I really can't take this anymore.
I've been in crisis ever since moving into Barrie Housing in 2008 and since Barrie Housing's CEO, Mary-Anne Denny-Lusk arrived in 2017, my life has been unbearable.
The people who run Simcoe County have hired a bunch of mafia "yes men", like Mary-Anne Denny-Lusk, Adele Baxter, Mina Fayez-Bahgat and all the other County-paid staff to "get rid of" Simcoe County's most vulnerable residents.
The Ontario Ministry of Children, Community & Social Services (CCSS), and Employment & Social Development Canada (ESDC) either started this, or they agreed to help when they found out. Only an investigation will reveal the extent of corruption within these governments. Together, they've systematically cut-off and blocked thousands of Simcoe County residents from receiving regular CPP, CPP Disability, the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) benefit, the Old Age Security (OAS) benefit, and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) benefit, all while thousands of jobs are being lost. Our housing providers are illegally evicting Rent-Geared-to-Income (RGI) tenants and since no agencies or organizations have jurisdiction to investigate, all these people continue to get away with murder.
- Leah Dyck
The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario
On July 25, 2024, The HRTO served documents to two respondents:
1. The Barrie Municipal Non Profit Housing Corporation (BMNPHC), The Simcoe County Housing Corporation (SCHC), The City of Barrie, The County of Simcoe.
2. The Ontario Ministry of Children, Community & Social Services.
All parties have responded by the deadline of August. 29, 2024:
On August 30, 2024, The BMNPHC submitted a Form 26: Request for Summary Hearing and are seeking to dismiss this case. I replied later on that day. Here's a slightly condensed version of my response, which is an accumulation of the respondents lies and cover-ups:
Barrie City Council Meeting Clip: August 14, 2024
A frustrated Barrie resident spoke at Barrie's City Council Meeting on August 14, 2024. This video helps to showcase the hopeless struggle that reasonable Barrie residents experience when attempting to communicate with people who completely lack concern for poor people's problems, which is their survival.
Millions Are Being Pumped Into Barrie Housing Projects Despite Claims of Major Crimes & Fraud.
Do governments really just hand over millions without ever confirming with beneficiaries themselves, if they're receiving the benefits?
Earlier this Spring, Barrie received $249M for public housing projects:
Extreme Lengths To Not Share Information
Fresh Food Weekly would like to apply for a grant to fund the creation of refrigerated mailboxes for Barrie's public housing complexes. However, in order to achieve household food security, we need to know the number of bedrooms in a Rent-Geared-to-Income (RGI) household (please also see the 'Feeding Barrie's +30,000 Starving Residents' PDF document at the top of the page):
Section A Report Adoption
The reason they've been stalling and pretending to hand-over the requested information is because they were busy making a new policy to prevent sharing this information, as seen in The City of Barrie Council Meeting held on Aug. 14, 2024 (this is just a clip, for the full-video, visit YouTube):
Value For Money Audit
Barrie's City Council has also requested a Value for Money Audit on Simcoe County's social services:
These are the number of income support beneficiaries in Barrie and Innisfil, provided by The Ontario Ministry of Children, Community & Social Services (CCSS) and by Employment & Social Development Canada via FOI requests. These numbers reveal thousands of residents are being blocked from receiving the GIS, the OAS and regular CPP. You can view the FOI requests and responses below.
During the summer of 2023, 12,000 able-bodied people lost their full-time jobs in Barrie, yet our Government told its disabled to “go get a job”. And the CCSS stopped accepting ODSP applications in Barrie and Innisfil. This information was obtained through FOI requests, which are available below.
The BMNPHC & SCHC's Unknown Rent Calculations
Fresh Food Weekly had to shut down the biweekly meal box program that was feeding hundreds of starving people living on social assistance benefits in Barrie and Innisfil because the BMNPHC decided that disabled and elderly people didn't deserve to have fresh food and toilet paper delivered to them every other week.
Leah Dyck personally raised +$176K in two years and Fresh Food Weekly was doing really well.
Barrie Housing staff hated her for being so good at feeding their hungriest tenants; which were, coincidentally, their poorest tenants who don't pay any rent at all, because of their disabilities.
The following audio recording is a half-hour phone call between Leah Dyck, and Mary-Anne Denny-Lusk, the CEO of the BMNPHC, admitting they "over-charged" Leah's rent by nearly $2,700. They gave back the funds nine months after Leah reached out to four managers asking about the amount of the "over charge" and only after she threatened to tell national news outlets.
The definition of ‘over charge’ is: charge (someone) too high a price for goods or a service.
The definition of ‘stealing’ is: the action or offence of taking another person's property without permission or legal right and without intending to return it; theft.
Here are two threatening letters she received from Barrie Housing’s lawyer, back in October 2022, telling her to stop exposing their abuses, or they’d sue her for defamation. Of course, Leah didn't remove any posts because she doesn’t lie:
Then they never talked to Leah again. On Aug. 6, 2024, Mary-Anne Denny-Lusk retained Riley Brooks again to represent her in this new matter.
Some of “the worst” postings are provided below. Once you read these, you'll realize why The County of Simcoe's public housing department wanted them taken down. We've plainly stated people's living circumstances:
Recipient
Testimonies
These are some of the struggles our program recipients experience from systemic discrimination inflicted by those who manage our horrible existences.
BarrieToday.com was provided with all of this evidence after asking Leah specifically about the Barrie public housing experience, as seen in the ‘Description of Activities’ pdf attachment, but decided to ghost Leah instead of report it. Screenshots of BarrieToday.com trying to cover this up are also provided in the 'Description of Activities' pdf attachment.
On June 21, 2024, BarrieToday.com revised this article so it wouldn't appear that Alex Nuttall ignored Leah's request for help. However, Leah screenshot the original article because she knew BarrieToday.com would try to cover up the truth again. Here's the original version of the article:
Furthermore, here's a copy of the exact version of the Food Systems Planning Office proposal Leah presented to Alex Nuttall in February 2024:
On July 4, 2024, Nikki Cole and Alex Nuttall published an article talking about how wonderful Barrie public housing is:
Toronto's Ombudsman's Have Been Investigating The Toronto Community Housing Corp. For Years
The TCHC was forced to clean-up house and some of their rats made their way into Simcoe County:
This isn't the first investigation conducted by the ombudsman. In 2018, Toronto’s Ombudsman Fiona Crean said of the TCHC: "callous and unfair treatment of” many of its elderly tenants. Fiona also said; “my investigation has found TCHC staff did not change their practices,” she said. “Instead there’s been a pattern of callous and unfair treatment of many seniors, including at least one case in which a tenant died shortly after eviction.” - Source.
In 2020, Ombudsman Susan Opler says complaints from tenants to her office spiked from 184 in 2015 to to 449 in 2019. "Ombudsman Toronto has handled more TCHC cases than cases involving any other city organization," the report states. "Over the past three years, 24 per cent of all cases Ombudsman Toronto handled" were about TCH, the document says. - Source.
In June 2023, the city’s ombudsman Kwame Addo launched an investigation into the TCHC’s process for handling tenant human rights complaints after hearing concerning stories from TCHC tenants.
The investigation revealed that the TCHC shared "incorrect, misleading and inaccessible information" about its human rights complaint handling process on both its website and during communication with tenants. The city’s ombudsman noted that the TCHC’s website listed its human rights office as the primary place for tenants to take their complaints despite the fact that the office had not been active for several years.
“Further, its Human Rights Policy and Human Rights Complaint Procedure were wildly out of date and did not take into account major changes to the Ontario human rights system that went into effect in 2008,” the report read.
“TCHC staff do not have the proper expertise, resources, or training to effectively and proactively address human rights concerns. The cumulative impact of our findings demonstrated that tenants' human rights and dignity have not been priority for TCHC. This is unacceptable.”- article excerpt
As part of the City of Barrie’s effort to tackle the affordable housing crisis, an Affordable Housing Symposium was held on May 4, 2023 at Southshore Community Centre in Barrie, Ont. One of the featured speakers was Mina Fayez-Bahgat.
As recently as Feb. 1, 2022, Mina was the Director of Program Support, Shelter, Support and Housing Administration for the City of Toronto. He wasn't allowed to destroy lives in Toronto anymore so Simcoe County welcomed him here with wide open arms. They knew he'd be a perfect fit for The City of Barrie's political environment.
When this woman saw her tenants struggling, she shut down the best food charity in town. The last thing in the world this woman cares about is helping Barrie's poor people.
None of her tenants are excited about anything. That's why you'll never find an interview with a Barrie Housing RGI tenant saying anything positive about Mary-Anne Denny-Lusk or Barrie Housing.
When I tried to get help, I was silenced and no one listened, or even cared.
I've had my name dragged in the dirt and I've been called a liar.
Every time this City or County moves, they destroy every good thing in their path.
Not anymore!
To those getting-off on destroying innocent lives in Simcoe County...
Your days in command are numbered.
It's been a long time coming.
Cover-Up Culture
In fact, cover-up culture has been a long-reigning phenomena within the social housing sector for generations, as seen in the same city as the Mighty Mike Bloomberg; The New York City Housing Authority.
This issue doesn't only exist in New York and Barrie, Ontario, Canada, though. There have been signs of mass corruption at the institutional level for years. Look at what the Manitoba Public Housing provider did to a tenant who tried to grow vegetables on his subsidized-unit's property:
In fact, New York City's role in destroying lives of the vulnerable, including their accomplice's role; NYCHA, ended up in a lawsuit costing the city and state $4 billion.
Our plea for help.
The House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Public Accounts tasked the AAFC to develop a National Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan, and they specifically included the phrase: “taking into consideration the food security of Canadians”. This led to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada to publish a report called ‘Report 12—Protecting Canada’s Food System’.
The Canadian Government supported the report, and consequently published; ‘Government Response to Recommendation & Status Update’, which confirms their support. It also tasked the AAFC to develop a National Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan. They were also asked to provide a progress report by Dec. 31, 2022, and a final report by Mar. 31, 2023. The final report was supposed to summarize their consultation efforts, and outline a path forward in developing a completed National Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan by 2024.
On May 27, 2021, the AAFC hosted a conference which had 51 government members in attendance, to discuss “Climate adaptation and food security”.
Yet none of them noticed the year-after-year 100 percent increase in monthly visits to all food banks in Canada. Although, in the conference’s stage two dialogue report, they’ve been made well-aware of many issues that need fixing, including the following, which has been copied and pasted from the dialogue report:
"The discussion on gaps, challenges and barriers included:
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Need to invest in emergency preparedness and resilience building with a pan Canadian food system risk tool and/or food system preparedness plan. Requires addressing gaps in information and metrics.
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Invest more on educating students, next generation farmers, retailers, public, etc. on integrated food systems and food security at all levels to inform and prepare people (particularly our younger generation) to address adaptation and food security issues.
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Need greater investment for supporting circular food economy approaches, including education, traditional knowledge and communication.
On Tuesday, March 1, 2022, 15 members of our Government came together to discuss: “OAG Report 12 – Protecting Canada's Food System”.
Yet they all continued to ignore the year-after-year 100 percent increase in monthly visits to all food banks in Canada.
In response to the recommendations of Report 12 - Protecting Canada’s Food System of the Auditor General, the AAFC developed an action plan called: ‘Agriculture & Agri-food Canada (AAFC) Management & Action Plan (MRAP)’.
On May 17, 2022, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts released to the press in a statement that the federal government had not developed a national emergency preparedness and response plan to manage a health crisis that impacted the entire food system and Canadians’ food security. The committee’s audit found that there were deficiencies with data collection and performance measurement, which meant that responsible departments and agencies did not know whether these programs achieved all of their objectives.
Furthermore, the Standing Committee’s Chair, John Williamson, published a report in May 2022, titled, ‘Protecting Canada’s Food System’ and in his opening paragraph, under ‘Introduction’, he blatantly states that the “unemployment and loss of wages during the crisis also led to an increased risk of food insecurity, especially among vulnerable populations.” (Pg. 1)
Furthermore, he went on to explain how sustainable development and gender and diversity outcomes were not always measured (pg. 8), and data and performance measurement problems prevented reliable reporting on outcomes (pg. 15).
People living on social assistance are currently in a state of emergency.
We have no emergency response for low-income vulnerable people.
We need to start getting food into low-income homes immediately.
Canada needs to start looking at food as a form of national security because our ability to feed ourselves constitutes our survival.
People are food insecure because they can’t pay for food. Getting free food into the homes of people with low-incomes is the only way to create household food security if we’re not going to give them jobs that pay them enough to feed themselves.
There needs to be a focus on creating access to food for a growing population group that cannot afford any food at all. We need to know exactly where the poor live; not by county. We need to know by postal code at minimum.
The CCSS has made it incredibly hard, perhaps even impossible to find out where starving people live. This can’t happen anymore. This data needs to become available immediately. More inclusive information-sharing channels are required, and so are enforceable penalties on those who do not share information essential to national security. Contrary to any privacy issue claims and claims about the labour-intense nature of gathering this data, obtaining this data is imperative for the population group’s own security and safety. A concern for this population group’s survival must be demonstrated by someone in authority. It must! Current policies allow ministries to oppress essential data needed to inform actions pertaining to national security.
