Get permit or leave, charity group told
Food Not Bombs has been serving free meals for 19 years
Food Not Bombs Peterborough, a group that has served free meals every Monday evening for 19 years — initially on city hall property, and more recently in Confederation Square across the street — has been told by city-hired security guards it must either get a permit to operate in the square or leave.
But they’re not leaving, and this week they were considering an offer from Mayor Jeff Leal to allow his office’s discretionary fund to cover the cost of a permit and insurance for 2024 — which Leal says would give the city and Food Not Bombs time to work on a more permanent solution.
“Look, this is a very important service that is provided by the Food Not Bombs group,” Leal said in an interview Wednesday.
“(FNB is) providing meals to people that are experiencing homelessness, people that are marginalized, people who are in severe poverty circumstances. We certainly want that (free meal service) to continue,” Leal said.
But Myles Conner, an original FNB volunteer, said Wednesday it’s not clear whether the group will accept the offer.
Food Not Bombs chapters have served free meals in public since the 1980s as a protest against poverty and war, according to their Wikipedia page.
As a rule, they don’t ask permission to feed people.
“No Food Not Bombs (chapter) has ever gotten a permit,” Conner said.
Perhaps now, in what Conner describes as a “litigious culture,” the local group might “acquiesce” to getting a permit.
But Conner — who was speaking on his own behalf, not as group spokesperson — said he’s concerned that taking a free permit “would set a dangerous precedent.”
“It would be like, this is no longer Food Not Bombs,” he said. “This is
This is a very important service that is provided by the Food Not Bombs group.
JEFF LEAL PETERBOROUGH MAYOR
now Shut Up It’s Dinner.”
Food Not Bombs Peterborough was formed in November, 2005. At the time a hot meal service in Peterborough had ceased to exist, Conner said, so FNB was formed.
At first they served food in the lobby of city hall on Monday nights, he recalled. Later they moved, he said, after the fire marshal said the lobby needed to be clear during city council meetings in the upper chambers.
For years there were no rules against pitching tents or serving food in city parks without a permit — not until the Parks & Facilities bylaw was adopted by the previous city council in 2019, in response to people without homes tenting overnight on municipal property.
City spokesperson Brendan Wedley said in an email Wednesday that Food Not Bombs has been operating in contravention of the 2019 bylaw, both because volunteers serve food in the square (first violation), and they do so from a large tent (second violation).
Wedley said permitting allows the city to work with local groups to better ensure food safety, for example, and safety in regard to location of structures and electrical set-ups.
Meanwhile security guards patrol local parks, Wedley said, to “proactively” ensure adherence to the bylaw.
But guards weren’t the first to contact FNB, he said. Someone from the city’s bylaw enforcement department spoke to FNB about it on Feb. 12, Wedley says (though Conner says no one from the group was ever contacted).
Then on March 4, security guards visited the FNB tent in the square to inform volunteers they were in contravention of the bylaw.
On March 11, security guards didn’t visit (Conner said the permit offer was extended by the mayor, that week — Conner had attended the meeting where the offer was made). Then on March 18, guards came and told volunteers they had an hour to leave or police would be called.
While police never arrived, Conner said he’s expecting them on Monday, March 25 — and if it happens, it’s OK.
“It’s actually going to help us, to get a ticket,” Conner said, because then a court could potentially impose an injunction for a review of the city’s bylaw — and possibly order change.
“How am I going have a court review the legality of their bylaw without a ticket?”