At a press conference for local media on Friday, North Battleford Mayor Ryan Bater, City Manager Jim Puffalt, RCMP Insp. John Sutherland and Community Safety Coordinator Herb Sutton answered questions about a recent Maclean’s article.
The article, written by Jason Markusoff, is called North Battleford’s Longest War, with the subhead, Canada’s most dangerous place, North Battleford, is fighting for its future. It’s available online and was published in the December 2017 issue of Maclean’s. The article elaborates on the crime in the city and efforts to curb it, particularly those efforts by Herb Sutton. The article also mentions North Battleford’s high Crime Severity Index score, and how such per capita measurements might not apply well to cities with relatively low populations, since a small amount of people often cause a lot of the local crime, including people who don’t live in the city. Bater, Sutherland and Sutton were quoted in the article.
Reaction to the article from residents has been mixed, with some praising the article’s detail and ability for out-of-town media to understand the local situation, while others have criticized the article for including little positive about North Battleford.
“We saw this as an opportunity to showcase the work the city is doing to address safety and crime in the city,” Bater said.
Bater said the information was factual and that he didn’t dispute the information presented. But he said the article’s tone featured some editorializing and was “unfair in the sense that it focuses on one aspect of our community.” Bater said North Battleford is a desirable community to live in with a number of attractive features, such as recreation facilities, and has maintained “economic development despite the economic downturn.”
“The frustration is that national magazines tend to focus on the negatives,” Bater said. “While we do have significant challenges in this area, it doesn’t define our community. This isn’t really who we are, it’s a challenge that we’re faced with.”
Bater said messages found in the article don’t help when the city tries to attract investment and new people.
Bater and Sutherland spoke of how social issues, such as poverty and addiction, affect crime.
A concept the RCMP and the city have been working with to try to understand the local crime situation (and which often comes up at city council meetings) is high-risk lifestyle. Sutherland said high-risk lifestyle is from the RCMP’s missing persons policy, but could be applied in reference to other crime.
“High-risk lifestyle means engagement in or the association with others involved in dangerous activity or frequenting or residing in dangerous environments either by personal choice or circumstances,” Sutherland said.
“The circumstances really are part of the key thing here,” Sutherland said. “Not everybody I would suggest gets up in the morning and thinks ‘I like this lifestyle.’ When you’re involved in social, addictions, and mental health issues then certainly that’s where the circumstances come in.”
The HUB program has found that mental health, addiction, and parenting influence crime, suggesting to Sutherland that “there are a lot of people who need services who aren’t getting them.”
A high number of people living high-risk lifestyles isn’t exclusive to the city, but is also found in Northwest Saskatchewan.
“We just happen to be a city in Northwest Saskatchewan where a lot of this plays out, but this is a western Canadian issue and a rural Canadian issue,” Bater said.
Thus the responsibility – and budgetary capabilities to enact change – aren’t strictly the city’s, the argument goes, but also the provincial government’s. Since people from First Nations are often involved with reported crime, the responsibility is the federal government’s as well.
Bater and Puffalt said the city is doing their part. In addition to a strategy, the city has funded initiatives.
“As a municipality we only have so much jurisdiction and so much power over these kinds of things,” Bater said. “I would argue that our city does more than any other city in terms of making investments we need to address these things. We fund programs that are not a civic responsibility, but we do them because they need to be done, and we’re willing to step up to the plate.”
Some of the city’s efforts include Eyes That Care, the HUB program, and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.
Puffalt said the city has seen results, particularly as Saskatchewan’s crime rates have increased at a faster pace since 2014 compared with North Battleford.
“But the reality is, we need provincial and federal levels of government to take notice of this and align their efforts with ours,” Bater said. “This needs to be a partnership.”
Bater also hoped the Maclean’s article would attract provincial and national attention, and attention from politicians. Given that hopefuls are currently vying for the federal Battlefords-Lloydminster seat, the Saskatchewan Party leadership, and the provincial NDP leadership, Bater said now is a good opportunity to see how candidates would address crime in Northwest Saskatchewan.
“Provincial policies and programs directly impact everything we’re talking about. Same with federal policies and programs in Indigenous communities. It’s all interconnected, and if they don’t have a plan to align with us they need to explain why.”
Sutherland said a certain amount of crime in the city remains easily preventable, such as not leaving valuables and keys in vehicles, locking vehicles, and locking garages. Other crime can be explained by high-risk lifestyles.
“Most of the events that happen here are not stranger on stranger,” Sutherland said. “Most of these are people that live in that lifestyle and the interactions are either because of addictions issues, money owed, debt collecting, all those things that come with that lifestyle.”
Bater said preventing crime involves long-term commitment from a number of different levels of leadership.
“Decision-makers like short-term wins. This requires a long-term investment in addressing the causes of the high-risk lifestyle and it’s absolutely generational. Children who are born now become teenagers not for 15-16 years and that’s when you start to see the results. The basic foundation that we have to focus on is families and ensuring that children that are growing up in rural Canada and on the prairies have the adequate supports they need so they don’t end up in those lifestyles.”
