{"id":145146,"date":"2026-07-27T11:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T11:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/145146\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T11:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T11:37:10","slug":"opinion-online-harms-merit-attention-lets-not-overlook-dangers-offline-on-our-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/145146\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Online harms merit attention. Let’s not overlook dangers offline, on our streets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two sets of headlines caught my attention recently.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, the tabling of the 2025\u00a0Montreal Ombudsman report<\/a>\u00a0underscored that the \u201cintensity and complexity of the issues have increased\u201d since the 2021 report outlining the community impacts of the roaming\u00a0crisis in Milton Park<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This contrasted with a second set of stories in the news, as federal politicians \u2014 led by Marc Miller, the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, and Anna Gainey, the Secretary of State for Children and Youth \u2014\u00a0passionately\u00a0made the case<\/a>\u00a0that the safety of children online cannot be an afterthought.<\/p>\n

I stand with their plea that children deserve protection from exploitation, bullying, predatory content, and other online harms. <\/p>\n

Yet watching their speeches unfold, I could not help but think about different groups of children.<\/p>\n

Children like those in Milton Park, the Village, Hochelaga and my own community of St-Henri, who witness a barrage of mental health crises, threats, assaults, public sex acts and criminal activity. Children who walk past open drug use and dysregulated, often violent adults on their way to and from school. Children whose parks and sidewalks have become sites of recurring disorder.<\/p>\n

Not online. In real life.<\/p>\n

In Montreal, like in cities across the country, these realities are not distributed equally. They are concentrated in working-class neighbourhoods \u2014 communities where the visible consequences of our society\u2019s failings in addressing housing needs, addiction treatment and mental health care are increasingly being segregated.<\/p>\n

Recently, a group of residents in my neighbourhood launched a petition asking for immediate concrete steps to protect children and seniors in the few blocks around Maison Beno\u00eet Labre. While that small portion of unhoused folks in significant distress and harming others deserves help that they are not getting, a community should not have to choose between compassion and safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The petition, which has gathered over 2,250 local signatures, asked each level of government to take tangible action to improve the neighbourhood\u2019s rapidly deteriorating safety situation, including following through on the commitment from then Social Services\u00a0Minister Lionel Carmant and the city<\/a>\u00a0to move the site\u2019s day services made nearly two years ago, and prioritizing enforcement against chronic violence, sexual acts and drug trafficking in areas frequented by children.<\/p>\n

Among the municipal, provincial and federal officials sent the petition are both aforementioned members of Parliament whose ridings straddle our neighbourhood \u2014 the very two who stood together to so eloquently and convincingly champion the safety of children.<\/p>\n

\"HCP_Politics_06102026_070-JPG\"Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller speaks at a press conference after tabling the Safe Social Media Act in Ottawa in June, flanked by Liberal MPs Anna Gainey, left, and Rachel Bendayan. Top row, from left: Minister of Health Marjorie Michel, Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree, and Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon. HYUNGCHEOL PARK \/ Postmedia News<\/p>\n

All five borough council members, our MNA, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, and both federal MPs agreed that the situation was concerning. All expressed generalized support for public safety. All expressed concern for vulnerable people. All acknowledged the challenges facing the neighbourhood. Not one endorsed the requests<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our politics seems to have become increasingly comfortable expressing empathetic platitudes while avoiding decisions and action. A Ping-Pong match of responsibility passing from city, to province, to federal officials and back again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We readily recognize harms when they are easy to imagine affecting our own children and those who play and study with our children. Nearly every parent, including our MPs, can picture their child encountering dangers online.<\/p>\n

Far fewer can picture their child stepping around someone consuming crack, methamphetamine or fentanyl outside their school, witnessing a public overdose in a playground, being awoken at night to a screaming fight outside their window, or losing access to community spaces because they are no longer safe.<\/p>\n

The reason many families, including those of most decision makers, never encounter these realities is that they have been geographically segregated. <\/p>\n

Not because these things are rare, but because they are segregated elsewhere. For kids who live elsewhere. For kids who go to public school elsewhere. For kids who don\u2019t have elected officials for parents.<\/p>\n

The reason many families, including those of most decision makers, never encounter these realities is that they have been geographically segregated. This segregation is part of how it is managed. The reason society can continue to duck its responsibility to meet the needs of those in distress is that the consequences are kept from families of means and voices that tend to be heard by those in power.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The same decisions that expose some neighbourhoods to disproportionate burdens allow others to avoid them.\u00a0This concentration creates a troubling form of inequity.<\/p>\n

Some children are expected to bear risks that society would never tolerate if they were spread evenly across all neighbourhoods. Highlighting the gap between what our elected officials would accept for their own children and what they continue to tolerate as good enough for the children of other people.<\/p>\n

We are collectively failing to meet the needs of the unhoused, particularly that subset experiencing severe and persistent mental health and substance abuse crises. But the children of working-class communities should not be expected to absorb the consequences of policy failures so that others do not have to confront them.<\/p>\n

If the safety of children cannot be an afterthought online, it cannot become an afterthought offline either.<\/p>\n

The question is not whether our leaders care. The question is whether they are willing to act when the children affected are someone else\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Until the answer is yes, our empathy will remain geographical.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michael J.\u00a0MacKenzie\u00a0is the Canada Research Chair in child well-being and professor of social work and pediatrics at McGill University.<\/p>\n

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