Thomas Gardner treks across a well-worn dirt path running next to an off-ramp from one of Canada’s busiest highways.

He’s carrying a white board with “Anything helps. God bless. Thank you” written in black letters large enough to be visible to the drivers waiting to head south on McCowan Rd., after exiting Hwy. 401.

The hood of his jacket is up to block the wind and in his backpack is a wad of tickets written by a Toronto police officer that include ones written under the Safe Streets Act, a provincial law designed to deter people from aggressively asking for change.

“We are panhandling for $20, $30, to get something to eat and then they hand you $200 worth of tickets,” said Gardner, 42, who was staying at an emergency shelter. In total, he owes more than $6,500. It is a debt he says he’s never fought in court and one he never expects to be able to pay.

“The only crime we committed was being homeless.”

The Safe Streets Act came into force two decades ago. Since then, according to a legal clinic fighting to have the law repealed, it has done little more than lock marginalized people in an onerous cycle of debt that limits their future chances of working and finding housing.

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A Star analysis of close to 31,000 Safe Streets tickets, worth $1.5 million in fines, shows that over a roughly five-and-a-half-year period some individuals were repeatedly fined, with a small group collecting hundreds of charges.

Between Jan. 1, 2013, and May 10, 2018, police issued more than 30,970 Safe Streets tickets citywide, according to Toronto police data the Star obtained through a freedom of information request. The tickets amount to $1,550,100 based on set fine amounts mandated by the province.

Forty-six people were each issued 100 tickets or more. One man, at the top of the list, had been written 467. The Star analysis also showed just 21 per cent of all tickets were for what is defined as soliciting in an “aggressive manner” under the act.

Data provided by the Ministry of the Attorney General shows 95 per cent of Safe Streets charges processed over roughly the same period resulted in automatic convictions without trial because the person did not respond.

Collection agencies contracted by the city, following city council approval, are charged with recovering the amounts owed, which also include their fee, court costs and a victim surcharge fee.

Records provided by the ministry show that between 2013 and 2018, just $38,397 was recovered. Once some fees were stripped away, city staff confirmed, Toronto retained $29,878.

By the end of 2018, the value of compounded fines in default, the ministry said, hit almost $6 million.

The ministry “stands by” the program that it says combats “aggressive solicitation” and prohibits the “dangerous act” of asking people in cars for money.

Toronto police say the ticketing has effectively reduced those behaviours, pointing to a drop in the number of tickets issued.

More than half of the tickets analyzed by the Star — 17,919, or 58 per cent — were written in 2013 and 2014. In 2015, police issued 4,566 tickets, then 4,064 in 2016 and 3,516 in 2017. Between Jan. 1 and May 10 of 2018, just 905 tickets were written, police data shows.

The Fair Change Community Legal Clinic launched a constitutional challenge of the act in Ontario Superior Court two years ago, arguing the law disproportionately targets people with addiction, mental and physical health challenges; violates their freedom of expression and rights to life and security; and severely limits their chances of emotional or financial recovery.

“Taken as a whole, the (act) is discriminatory, cruel, repressive, and violates many of our society’s most fundamental norms regarding justice, fairness, compassion, and decency,” the clinic wrote in a 668-page application record submitted last May.

The ministry has not responded and no future court dates have been set. Court staff, at both sides’ request, have become involved to make sure the complex case stays on track.

“Our government continues to support the Safe Streets Act as a method of combating aggressive solicitation, soliciting in situations where people are not usually free to walk away,” ministry spokesperson Brian Gray told the Star in an email.

Gray also cited “the disposal of objects such as hypodermic syringes and needles without taking reasonable precaution in parks schoolyards and other public spaces” and “the dangerous act of soliciting drivers at intersections.”

The ministry did not respond to questions about whether a cost-benefit analysis of the program has ever been conducted.

This is the second attempt to have the act recognized as unconstitutional and repealed. Peter Rosenthal, one of two lawyers now providing counsel for the legal clinic, tried and failed to have the act repealed more than a decade ago.

Gardner insists he is not aggressive. “I’ve always waited to make sure that the person is calling me over … never knocked on a window, never stuck my sign in the window, stuff like that,” he said.

Where he was panhandling earlier this year is well known to police. The intersection is among the busiest in the city, with 530 tickets written to 35 people, based on the police data the Star analyzed.

Exit ramps to major roadways, intersections near gas stations and areas with high pedestrian traffic were the highest ticketed spots, based on geographic information police provided for 21,000 of the tickets. A third of ticket information did not include geographic information.

Out of 5,081 people ticketed over the five-and-half-year span, 46 individuals had been written more than 100 tickets, including seven people ticketed between 200 and 300 times and three people between 300 and 400 times.

The exact ages of people ticketed were not provided, with police citing privacy concerns. But the tickets were overwhelmingly written to men, and mostly to those in their early 40s to mid-50s.

The data is not a perfect or complete record, police said. Each person was automatically assigned a unique identification number and any irregularities in dates or name spellings could lead to someone being counted as separate people, the Star was told. Much of the 2013 ticket information came from a separate data set.

Gardner said his life took a hard turn after a bad fall on a construction site, working for an employer who did not have proper insurance. He’s been homeless on and off for several years, he told the Star, and his main source of income is Ontario Works. According to 2018 figures on the city’s website, a single person on Ontario Works would be eligible for about $340 a month plus as much as $390 for shelter, such as rental housing.

Panhandling mostly pays for food and clothing, Gardner said.

“Generally, it is a quarter here, a loonie here,” though sometimes he’ll “get lucky” and get a $20 or $50 bill. There is no way he could afford housing, he said, noting that in Toronto, $500 won’t even get you a room.

Lawyer Joanna Nefs, founder and executive director of the Fair Change Community Legal Clinic, wrote in an affidavit submitted as part of its current application that there is little chance anybody issued a Safe Streets Act ticket will pay because the court system is almost set up for those individuals to fail.

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In Toronto, provincial offences tickets are dealt with in three courts. People ticketed must either fill out forms within 15 days stating they intend to fight the ticket, Nefs wrote, or in some cases respond to a summons to court on a specific date and proceed from there.

“In my experience panhandlers with addictions and mental health or intellectual disabilities often have difficulty remembering specific dates, details and events surrounding their ticketing,” Nefs wrote. “They are therefore much less likely to be in a position to successfully challenge their tickets.”

That was the experience of Donald Dunbar, who between 2003 and 2015 was convicted of 350 provincial offences worth $45,000 in fines.

Dunbar cannot read or write and shared his story with clinic lawyers, who compiled and read back the details, before he added his signature, according to details in the affidavit.

“I don’t bother arguing with police about fines because there’s no point. I don’t want to have problems with the police. It just makes my day more difficult,” said Dunbar, a volunteer with the Fred Victor Centre, where staff he calls friends help keep him on track.

“I even try to co-operate with the police at my usual street corners by telling them about people who are texting and driving.”

Dunbar’s story, included in the affidavit, began in Thunder Bay. His mother struggled with alcoholism for as long as he could remember and he knew nothing about his father. He was introduced to drinking and drugs before the age of 10 and dropped out of elementary school. He moved to Toronto in his early 20s and never found housing or a steady job, outside of temporary labour. Panhandling was his way to survive and avoid withdrawal.

Substance abuse resulted in a diagnosis of brain damage, he said, and it is difficult for him to keep track of his tickets and fines. Missing court dates and probation appointments meant being sent to jail an estimated 50 or 60 times, staying between 35 and 40 days each time.

“Jail is scary and lonely and makes it more difficult to live my life,” he said. On release, he would usually resort to asking for money in part to feed his addictions.

The Safe Streets Act was birthed during an age of austerity. After winning the 1995 provincial election, then premier Mike Harris, who had campaigned on a “Common Sense Revolution,” cut welfare rates by 21.6 per cent.

That was part of a string of measures that limited support for people living in poverty and included cuts to government support of social housing.

Those cuts, advocates say, were directly linked to a rise in panhandling and the poster children were “squeegee kids,” youth and adults who would douse the front windows of stopped cars with cleaning solution, then clear it with a gas station-style squeegee stick, before asking for change.

Proponents of the act argued drivers were a captive audience to people offering an unwanted service, one that could end in confrontation.

Mel Lastman, who became Toronto’s mayor in 1998, referred to the window washers as “pests” and said without tough legislation the city risked becoming the “squeegee capital” of the world.

The Safe Streets Act became law in December 1999.

Toronto police spokesperson Allison Sparkes said tickets are written during regular patrols and officers have some discretion.

“Tickets are only issued in response to behaviours that would cause a reasonable person to be concerned for their personal safety. Tickets are not issued randomly,” Sparkes said.

“The Safe Streets Act gives police an option to address or curb behaviours in the moment — which are often by marginalized individuals — by fining the individuals as opposed to arresting them and sending them through a criminal proceeding,” she added.

“Toronto has seen a decline in these behaviours,” including squeegeeing, Sparkes said. “And we would say that enforcement of this law is a factor in that decline and has been a deterrent.”

Gardner told the Star he had no plans to fight the tickets in his bag, but kept them because paper is handy for starting a fire in cold weather. Those tickets show that on Dec. 19, 2018, he was charged under the Highway Traffic Act for being a pedestrian on a highway, and under the Safe Streets Act for soliciting money from somebody in a car.

Less than two months later, after failing to respond, he was fined $205, based on a summary of his charges and fines.

In total, based on a summary of his charges, Gardner has been ordered to pay more than $6,500 and automatically sentenced on more than 25 different dates for close to 50 provincial violations, dating back to the summer of 1998. The bulk of the fines were from the last two years.

Safe Streets Act tickets counted for more than half the amount and most of the rest was related to Highway Traffic Act infractions. Littering earned him a $190 fine, improper lighting on his bike another for $73.50.

Stephen Gaetz, director of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, says the fact that panhandling persists is the result of a failure to deal with the root causes of poverty, including addiction, disability and mental illness.

“It is a tactic that overwhelmingly targets people experiencing homelessness,” said Gaetz, who co-authored the report “Can I See Your ID: The Policing of Youth Homelessness in Toronto,” through the Homeless Hub in 2011.

That study included an analysis of roughly 60,000 Safe Streets tickets issued between 2004 and 2010. The authors found that 80 per cent of those tickets were written for what the law defines as non-aggressive acts of solicitation to a captive audience.

Examples of non-aggressive acts include asking for money from people at a bank machine or waiting for public transit.

The Star’s data showed a similar result, with 21 per cent of tickets written to people for soliciting in an “aggressive manner.” The rest were largely for approaching people in a vehicle on a roadway, at 38 per cent; near a vehicle, at 17 per cent; or near a public transit stop, 10 per cent.

Gaetz said high volumes of tickets written to specific individuals raise the question of what exactly law enforcement expects to accomplish through the program or, once all the individual and public costs are factored in, how it can be defended as an effective deterrent.

What is clear, he said, is the impact those records and outstanding fines can have on a person’s life. If they do find housing, he said, a collection agency will likely be the first knock on the door. That stress further limits the person’s chance of moving beyond the challenges that resulted in being homeless.

“When (people) fall into homelessness, they are going to do different things to survive,” Gaetz said. “Some of those things might not be desirable to people driving off off-ramps, but there you have it.”