While I understand your sentiment, I think it's fair to point out that "interrogation by armed border guards with powers to search, seize, and jail" has always been the case...on both sides of the border (notwithstanding that CBSA guards have only been armed in recent years).
So, they're going to close Cumberland to build a roundabout, and Red River to make it pretty. Any other navigational hassle downtown we should know about? It would be great if the City would post a map of all the summer road construction so people and figure out how to get from one end of town to the other.
Your statement: 'It’s not up to the city to house people."Well, no, not strictly speaking. However, the Ontario Superior Court has stated that evicting homeless people from parks and other municipally-owned lands in cities lacking adequate shelter spaces is a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is why we currently have a bunch of people tenting in our parks...the City cannot legally remove them. The answer, in this case, seems to be, to provide those "adequate shelter spaces"; by making such spaces available, the theory is that the City will then be legally enabled to evict campers from the parks.SO...what's the lesser evil to Thunder Bay taxpayers? Paying for shelter spaces or watching encampments spring up all over the place. It seems we can't have our cake and eat it too.
They've put these up in a couple locations now. Why use a traffic light instead of the pedestrian crossover signals that they've been installing around town for the past several years?
When I was growing up, I remember a new elementary school being built near me in Barrie. When it opened, this brand new school already had four portables on the site. By the time I left Barrie, it was up to six or seven. The new Thunder Bay prison shows the same lack of forethought.