One of Canada’s leading authors on homelessness says the prime minister’s plan to end it is an “ambitious goal” that has potential, but won’t actually go all the way.
Prime Minister Mark Carney introduced his government’s second budget last week, which features a big headline promise: end homelessness in 10 years.
Governments sometimes tease big pledges in the run up to tabling a budget. That wasn’t the case with this year’s signature pledge, but there was an Easter egg that could have pointed to this new policy focus.
Earlier this year, Carney told the Globe and Mail that he was reading Encampment by Maggie Helwig, which won this year’s Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing.
Encampment tells the story of Helwig’s activism and effort to keep her Toronto churchyard open to those in need. The award jury called the book “a necessary, on-the-ground view of Canada’s homelessness crisis.”
November’s budget went on to propose a $11.2-billion cash injection to tackle homelessness, one of this year’s largest line items.
Carney is not the first politician in Canada’s history to set this target, but with Canadians facing an escalating affordability and housing availability crisis, the stakes are high.
Helwig gave her assessment of Carney’s plan to CBC’s chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
“I think that the commitments which have been made are serious commitments. They are constructive commitments. They are not at a scale which would end homelessness,” Helwig said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live.
“If we are able to significantly reduce levels of homelessness, especially unsheltered homelessness, that’s a big deal.”
Helwig says Canada faces a very difficult situation with homelessness growing exponentially.
A national homelessness count in 2025 found that more than 65,000 people were homeless on a given night in Canada, a 59 per cent increase over five years. The share of unhoused people living in unsheltered locations, including encampments, had also increased from 23 per cent to 27 per cent.
Helwig’s broad critique of the Liberals’ proposal is that it should not overlook the straightforward need for more basic housing.
“I worry that there’s a bit too much emphasis on mental health and addictions, as if those were the primary drivers of homelessness,” she said.
Helwig says sometimes the issue is just needing a place someone can afford to live, since long-term homelessness itself is “fantastically destructive to people’s mental and physical health.”
Helwig helps move a resident’s belongings as Toronto city workers prepare to clear an unhoused persons encampment at St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Church, in Toronto, on Oct. 16, 2025. (The Canadian Press)
Helwig points to Dunn House in Toronto as an example of a housing program where the focus is not exclusively on mental health and addiction, but which takes a more holistic picture of what people need when coming out of chronic homelessness.
It features direct access to doctors, nurses and a host of other health professionals with the goal of improving their health and alleviating pressure on hospitals.
“No one wants to move into the crazy house for the crazy people, right?” Helwig said, referring to projects that could over-emphasize mental health language.
Helwig says the reality is that some people do need intensive mental health support but it must be provided in a way that does not stigmatize individuals.
The day after making this pledge public, Carney cited Helwig during an announcement in Winnipeg.
While downplaying Barton’s questions about whether she had a direct role in motivating Carney’s new ambition, Helwig said it’s nice to think her book may have contributed to it.
While listening to Carney speak publicly about the goal for the first time, Helwig noted Carney’s use of language emphasizing Canada becoming a community that takes care of each other — a central theme to her book.
She said she’s less concerned about whether the Liberals’ plan will actually end all homelessness, compared to whether it will do good for the people who are sleeping on the streets right now.
“In a situation where we have seen so much stigmatizing language, so much demonizing language, so much emphasis on getting these people somewhere that’s out of sight, to talk about this in terms of community and care, that in itself is actually quite important.”
