Why Not Prevention in Public Safety?
We appear to be facing a similarly shortsighted approach today in the context of police and public safety expenditures. There have been a large number of highly publicized incidents in which individuals exhibiting behavioural problems caused by mental illness were confronted by heavily armed police – usually with most regrettable outcomes. Some municipalities have decided that rather than expenditures on policing to respond to problems of the mentally ill, it would make sense to increase expenditures on support programs that might alleviate mental illness and also respond to behavioural issues in a less confrontational manner. To this end, there are discussions about shifting some portion of the police budget to these alternative programs and resources.
It is disheartening to discover that such progressive initiatives by the mayors of Edmonton and Calgary are being summarily rejected by the Alberta Government – although not especially surprising since Jason Kenney seems determined to run the most antediluvian administration in the country. The Alberta Justice Minister, Kaycee Madu, has suggested – in hardly a subtle threat – that if municipalities choose to cut or reallocate police funds, that would suggest that they don’t need provincial grant funding for police. He has also indicated that if cities cut police spending, he would find a way to give that municipal money directly to the police. The provincial response not only impedes efforts to focus on prevention but also underlines how vulnerable municipalities still are when faced with capricious and arbitrary provincial governments. I doubt that the current provincial government knows that Alberta led the way (in the early 1990s) in giving municipal governments natural person powers and spheres of jurisdiction as part of a movement to provide municipalities with greater discretion to respond to the needs of their citizens.
Ontario Matches Alberta for Arbitrariness
It is also noteworthy that Ontario adopted similar legislation a few years later and then went even further in giving additional powers to the City of Toronto in recognition of its size and significance to the province. Yet, in a move at least as arbitrary as that being shown by Alberta politicians, the Ontario government passed legislation in the middle of the 2018 municipal elections cutting in half the size of Toronto’s city council. The legality of that action will be reviewed by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2021 and four former mayors of Toronto – John Sewell, Art Eggleton, Barbara Hall, and David Miller – have filed for intervenor status so that they can join in the city’s fight.
The Ontario government’s cavalier approach to the rights of municipalities was also in evidence quite recently when legislation (Bill 218) – purporting to provide measures to combat the pandemic – prohibited the use of ranked ballots for municipal elections, even though the City of London had already held one election on this basis and other municipalities (including Toronto) were considering this method. According to the province, municipalities should not experiment with changes to voting systems during the pandemic and, in addition, all levels of government have used the “first past the post” method of election since Confederation. And yet, it was the use (or, more accurately, the abuse) of the ranked ballot method that led to the selection of Doug Ford as Conservative leader.
Leadership Can Often be Found at the Municipal Level
The importance of municipalities has never been more obvious than during the pandemic and other crises of recent times. A number of mayors have taken a strong leadership role. John Tory has consistently pushed for stronger COVID controls in Toronto than the provincial government seemed willing to take and Kennedy Stewart, Vancouver’s Mayor, recently got council approval to seek an exemption from the federal government that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use. This action would recognize that substance abuse disorders are a public health issue and that addiction cannot be solved – and is often made worse – by the criminal justice system.
Here again, the focus would be on addressing underlying causes, much like the City Healthy movement of over a century ago. It’s déjà vu all over again, to quote that famous political scientist Yogi Berra!