Mayor Ryan Bater vented at length at Monday’s council meeting about the recent Maclean’s article about crime in North Battleford.
Bater had met the media on Friday to discuss the article, at which time he seemed to welcome the focus on the crime issue so that federal and provincial resources might be aligned with the city’s needs.
But based on his extensive comments at council Monday night, it seemed apparent the Maclean’s piece, whose headline declared North Battleford as “Canada’s most dangerous place,” had gotten under Bater’s skin.
“I found the article, its existence and the tone it sets by the headline, to be unfair to the community,” Bater said.
“It’s fair in that it talks about the work that we’re doing, but it’s unfair in that it only about one aspect of the community.”
In his remarks to council on the subject Monday night, Bater said that on Oct. 16 he said he had received a call from the Maclean’s reporter that an article would be written about the crime rate in North Battleford.
“I’ll admit, I was immediately a little shy about participating because I was familiar with their work with Grande Prairie and Regina and they were very unflattering stories about those two cities,” said Bater.
“I was reluctant to allow that to happen to North Battleford.”
But Bater said they met with Maclean’s reporter Jason Markusoff anyway, seeing an opportunity to “steer the article in a different direction.”
He said a team of city officials including himself, Jim Puffalt, city manager, Herb Sutton, community safety coordinator, and RCMP Insp. John Sutherland met with the Maclean’s reporter. The approach the city officials took was to “demonstrate all of the work taking place at a local level to address community safety.”
“We talked about Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, we talked about Eyes that Care, we talked about the Hub table, we talked about SAGE,” said Bater. They also talked about the community engagement efforts such as the community barbeques and their hot dogs – something referenced in the first paragraph of the Maclean’s article.
When the article came out, he said he found the content of the article to be “fairly consistent with what we talked about.”
However, he found the tone to be “a little condescending, to be honest, bordering on snarky.”
As for the headline, he called it “sensationalized to a great degree.”
Bater also expanded some more on the good things happening in the community that were left out of the Maclean’s article.
There are “many reasons to celebrate being a resident of North Battleford,” said Bater, who pointed to its quality of life, recreation facilities, and hosting of “bigger and better events all the time.” He pointed to the Saskatchewan Winter Games and to an earlier presentation at council by the Twin Rivers Curling Club, which highlighted their success at hosting the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling.
Bater also pointed to economic growth for the city at a time of economic downturn for the rest of the province.
“We’ve had a business open one a week for the last several weeks here,” Bater said.
While he found the focus was unfair, Bater said he was proud of the city “rising to the challenge” in addressing the issue, and reiterated the city’s commitment for the long haul to “stay true” to their community safety strategy.
He also said if there was any good that came out of the article it “shined a light on this challenge” and on the need for provincial and federal government involvement in addressing the issue.
“This article isn’t the first one to be written about this city on this subject; it won’t be the last,” said Bater. “Until we bring our statistics down, these articles are going to continue.”
Editor's Note: See Thursday's Regional Optimist for more on this issue.
