By Trevor Giertuga – Candidate for Mayor
Thunder Bay – Civic Election – Public safety and crime reduction must be a priority for the next Council. People need to feel safe in their homes, their neighbourhoods, at work, and in our downtowns. Our police also need the resources to do their jobs.
I believe everyone has a role to play. The job of the Mayor and Council is not to tell police how to police. Those operational decisions belong with the Chief and the Thunder Bay Police Service. Our job is to make sure theyhave the resources they need and to expect results.
I support adding frontline officers based on the independent staffing review, but it has to be done responsibly. I want more officers available on the street, better response times and a strong focus on violent crime, illegalguns, gangs, and drug trafficking.
I have also been a supporter of neighbourhood policing in the past, and I still believe there is value in having officers visible and connected to the neighbourhoods they serve. Residents and businesses should know the officers working in their areas, and officers benefit from knowing the people, businesses, and problems in those neighbourhoods. I would like to see us move back toward more visible neighbourhood policing as staffing levels allow.
We also must recognize that policing Thunder Bay is different from policing many communities in Southern Ontario. Policing costs in Northern Ontario are approximately 20% higher. Thunder Bay taxpayers should not be expected to keep picking up that additional cost. The provincial government needs to recognize the challenges of policing in the North and provide long-term funding to help us deal with them.
Thunder Bay is also a regional centre. Police information from intelligence-led and drug investigations has shown that 56% of the people arrested in those investigations were living outside the Thunder Bay District. Organized crime and drug trafficking do not stop at municipal boundaries, yet it is our local taxpayers who are paying much of the policing bill. I will push both the provincial and federal governments for more resources to deal with guns, gangs, drugs, and organized crime.
At the same time, we cannot expect police officers to deal with every social problem in our city. Police are spending far too much time responding to mental-health crises, addictions and issues related to homelessness. We need the province to properly fund mental-health care, addiction treatment, detox, supportive housing, and crisis services.
We need to help people who need help, but we also cannot enable unacceptable behaviour. Being homeless or having an addiction is not a crime. But threatening people, committing violence, selling drugs, damaging property, and making public places unsafe cannot be accepted. Helping someone should not mean preventing our police from doing their job.
We also need to deal with repeat violent offenders. I will continue pushing the provincial and federal governments for changes that better protect the public when someone repeatedly commits violent offences or continually breaches their release conditions. Our police can arrest someone, but they don’t control what happens in the courts afterward.
Prevention is important too, especially with young people. I support recreation, community programs and early intervention that can keep young people away from gangs, drugs, and crime. But I also believe we need to look at whether the programs we fund are actually working. If taxpayers are paying for something, we should be able to show what it is accomplishing.
I don’t think it is realistic for any candidate to promise that crime will disappear in four years. What I can promise is that we will measure whether things are getting better.
After four years, residents should look at violent crime, firearms offences, property crime, police response times, repeat calls for service, drug and gang enforcement, the number of frontline officers available and what ishappening in our downtowns and neighbourhoods. Just as importantly, we should be asking residents and businesses whether they actually feel safer.
There will be costs to some of these measures, particularly additional frontline policing. That is also where my Smart Growth plan comes in. If we grow Thunder Bay, attract new investment, build more homes and businesses, and expand our tax base, we create new municipal revenue. That gives us the ability to put more money into priorities such as policing, roads, and infrastructure without continually going back to the existing taxpayer for more money.
Growth and public safety go hand in hand. A growing economy gives us more resources to invest in policing and safer neighbourhoods, and a safer community makes Thunder Bay a better place to invest, build a business, and raise a family.
Before I support new spending, I want to know what it costs, what results we expect and whether the province or federal government should be paying part of the bill. My goal is to fund better services through growth and a stronger tax base, along with our fair share of provincial and federal funding, rather than simply expecting existing homeowners and businesses to pay more.
My approach is pretty simple. Help people who need help. Give people struggling with addictions and mental health issues a real opportunity to get treatment. Invest in our young people before they get involved in crime. Give our police the resources they need and let them do their jobs. And when people come into our community to sell drugs, carry illegal guns or prey on vulnerable people, we need to deal with them firmly.
We can be a caring city without accepting behaviour that makes our community unsafe.
