A petition sponsored by Liberal MP Arielle Kayabaga is calling on Parliament to make it a criminal offence in certain circumstances to record homeless people, those experiencing mental health crises or people impaired by drugs or alcohol in public for the purpose of posting the footage online.Petition E-7621, sponsored by Kayabaga, the MP for London West and deputy government House leader, calls for a new provision in the Criminal Code covering people considered to be in circumstances of “significant vulnerability.” Blacklock's Reporter said the petition was open for signatures as of September.The proposal said existing law allows vulnerable people to be filmed in public and posted on social media without their knowledge or consent, including while they are experiencing a crisis.“This act can increase stigmatization of these groups by showing only snapshots of people suffering or in crisis with no additional context or education,” the petition said.The petition calls on Ottawa to “make it an offence to knowingly record in public” someone the person recording knows is experiencing a prescribed circumstance of significant vulnerability when the purpose is to publish or distribute the recording to the public.Those circumstances would include homelessness, a mental health or other acute psychological crisis, significant impairment caused by alcohol, drugs or another substance, or another situation that substantially increases a person's vulnerability to exploitation or serious harm from public exposure.The petition argues such recordings could expose vulnerable people to further harm and says homeless people and those struggling with mental health issues may lack the resources to pursue legal remedies.It does not cite a specific incident that prompted the proposal.The petition comes after MPs from several parties have publicly complained about homelessness, drug use and disorder in Canadian downtowns.Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski, a physician and former emergency room doctor, told the Commons health committee in 2024 there was a widespread perception among Canadians that downtown areas were becoming “basically out of control.”Powlowski said people were seeing open drug use, overdoses requiring CPR, discarded needles and human waste on streets.“Certainly there is also the perception that around places like safe supply, safe injection sites, that things are worse, that there are people openly stoned in the street,” he testified..Powlowski also described incidents he witnessed in downtown Ottawa, including a colleague being assaulted and another being threatened during a visit to a bar.He recalled another incident in which he was walking on Wellington Street with his 15-year-old son nearby and encountered a person in the street yelling and confronting vehicles.Liberal MP Brendan Hanley, a physician representing Yukon, told the same committee he had encountered similar conditions while walking through downtown Ottawa.Former NDP MP Charlie Angus also described deteriorating conditions in downtown Timmins during a 2024 Commons human resources committee hearing.Angus recalled visiting downtown as a child with his grandmothers but said residents had become reluctant to go there because of what he described as overlapping mental health, opioid addiction and homelessness crises.Former housing minister Nathaniel Erskine-Smith similarly acknowledged complaints about public disorder in 2025, saying Canadians should have access to clean streets and parks.“We all deserve clean streets and parks,” Erskine-Smith said, adding that encampments in parks and people living on main streets were “not an acceptable solution.”Petition E-7621 seeks additional legal protection for people experiencing such circumstances by restricting public recordings intended for publication. As a parliamentary petition, it is a request for government action and does not itself amend the Criminal Code.
