Ontario Human Rights Code
Section 2 (2) of the Ontario Human Rights Code states:
"2 (2) Every person who occupies accommodation has a right to freedom from harassment by the landlord or agent of the landlord or by an occupant of the same building because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability or the receipt of public assistance. R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, s. 2 (2); 1999, c. 6, s. 28 (3); 2001, c. 32, s. 27 (1); 2005, c. 5, s. 32 (3); 2012, c. 7, s. 2 (2)."
Harassment by Barrie Housing
In October 2022, Barrie Housing first threatened to take legal action against me regarding my online fundraising activities, which was the publishing of a series of 12 Facebook posts regarding Fresh Food Weekly's beneficiary’s living conditions and circumstances.
On October 5, 2022, Barrie Housing delivered by mail a letter to my residence, in which it stated;
“Our client hereby demands that all posts published by you on all social media platforms be immediately removed… Failing which, if the posts are not permanently deleted on or before October 7, 2022, our client will have no choice but to consider further legal action against you… Not only are the posts published by you untrue, but they are deeply offensive to the employees of our client…”
On October 17, the Barrie Housing delivered another letter by mail to my residence, which included the following statement;
“Your letter indicates that you are fundraising on the backs of these posts, which is troubling.”
Barrie Housing claims that all 12 of my Facebook posts defamed them, even though the personal details such as names and addresses of the people featured in these posts were left anonymous. Despite Barrie Housing not knowing who these posts were about, they claimed they were all false and untrue. Furthermore, only five of these 12 Facebook posts were about Barrie Housing tenants, and of those five posts, only three even mentioned Barrie Housing by name.
Since none of these posts were defamatory, I did not remove them and they're still published on my Facebook's Saved Posts'.
October 5, 2024 was Fresh Food Weekly's first Mega Thanksgiving Meal Box Delivery Day, and that morning I received the first threatening letter from Barrie Housing's lawyer.
I had been promoting this Thanksgiving meal box delivery day for at least a month prior and I think Mary-Anne Denny-Lusk intentionally sent me the letter on this day to stress me out even more than I already was. Furthermore, she told me I had two days to remove all my posts.
She did not want to negotiate. She just threatened to take legal action against me if I didn't comply to her insane demands.
Recipient Testimonies, a.k.a "The Facebook Posts"
For the record, only testimony #3, #5, #8, and #12 were about tenants of Barrie Housing. Additionally, only testimony #3, #5, and #12 even mentioned Barrie Housing. Despite this, Barrie Housing demanded that I remove all 12 testimonies because every single one was defamatory. How would they even know? They didn’t even know who they were about.
To keep the identities of the recipients confidential, I used an image of someone else in these posts. Some pictures are just random professional photos I found online while others were taken from other news articles. It is especially important to keep the identities of program recipients concealed because a lot of these recipients were women from the local women's shelter here in Barrie and have dangerous men looking for them so they can hurt them again. Even if these recipient's lives weren't in danger, though, all of them asked to have their identities kept private.
As I was uploading these stories here, I realized Mary-Anne likely Googled some of these images and realized these pictures weren't of my program's recipients and perhaps that's why she concluded I made them all up. But that's just a guess. Who knows why she's so convinced that they're all lies even though I can easily prove to a judge they're not.
On January 6, 2025, I submitted another Form 10 to the HRTO, in which I revealed the identities of the four Facebook posts about Barrie Housing tenants. Although I've redacted the identities and revealing details about the people featured in these four posts for this published version of the Form 10 attachment, it's still rather interesting, in my opinion:
Ashley Sutherland
Back in late 2018, Barrie Housing employee Ashley Sutherland called me and instructed me not to pay my rent the following month because I didn't owe anymore money in rent. I thought that didn't make any sense, and asked her if she was sure. She insisted I didn't owe more money and proceeded to list off all the payments I had made that year, in chronological order.
A few days later, though, the first of the next month arrived and I received an eviction notice on my door with a $175 eviction notice filing fee. I called Ashley multiple times and left her messages. I also called several other managers and left them messages too. But no one returned any of my calls. This is when I realized that all phone calls with Barrie Housing staff need to be recorded.
I remembered how Barrie Housing handled Ashley's "mistake" back in 2018/19, and I was particularly concerned about the overcharge on my account in 2022. As you'll see in the email I sent to Barrie Housing employee Soula White and Mary-Anne Denny-Lusk on April 25, 2022, I reminded them of Ashley Sutherland's "mistake".
I also brought it up again in the phone call with Mary-Anne on April 26, 2022.
I also brought it up again to Barrie Housing's lawyer in October 2022 when he demanded that I remove all my Facebook posts about my food security program's beneficiaries:
"...One of the barrie housing staff, Ashley, stole $175 from me personally. So yes, BMNPHC steals. I will absolutely not remove any remarks referring to them as thieves because they are thieves. Because of Ashley. The fact that this even happened is infuriating. But what can I do about it? I told so many managers and none of them cared. Ashley still gets to keep working, and still gets to keep making costly mistakes and your client’s piss poor tenants still have to pay for her mistakes..."
During the recorded phone call between myself and Mary-Anne from April 26, 2022, at time stamp 20:07, Mary-Anne stated:
“Oh, so it's, it's an L1 fee, so it's not an eviction notice, it's just a late payment notice. I know that that makes a difference, but yeah, it get automatically gets filed.”
The title on the document I found on my door is: ‘Application to Evict a Tenant for Non-payment of Rent and to Collect Rent the Tenant Owes FORM L1’. This form was filled-out by Lisa Crane-McDonald on February 13, 2019.
A month after I closed down the Fresh Food Weekly food security program, Barrie Housing promoted Ashley Sutherland to manage my building.
Barrie Housing wanted to let me know they own me.
Why else would they have promoted Ashley Sutherland to manage my building when they have +30 staff?