New Mayor, same problems – with more promising solutions

Being some guy who’s easily identified as a “Dipper”, I don’t want to jinx Prince Albert’s new mayor Bill Powalinsky by offering my congratulations or even offering him some help with “advice” as to the stand on issues that he took on his platform (Not that I’m going to shy away from doing so; being annoying is what I do best). But, his election is a sign that maybe, just maybe, former Mayor Dionne’s seeming obsession with attracting businesses to the city when it doesn’t have any idea on how to “house” such entities (and I’m not talking about our housing shortage, but that’s a problem as well) were creating more problems for Prince Albert than solutions.

Due to the Sask Party’s genuflecting to the developer classes of Saskatoon and Regina, Prince Albert is currently ill equipped to fulfill its destiny of being the province’s gateway to the north and profiting from sustainable and environmentally conscientious development of its many riches – and whether or not we want to accept this reality, we aren’t capable of getting on with this task because our local SP MLA’s are always being given token portfolios having no connection to either finance or infrastructural development. 

If you have problems accepting this point, then consider why it is that after 17 years of the Wall – Moe cabal, we now need our first bridge across the river rebuilt, a second one promised two elections ago awaiting the Rapture so it doesn’t have to be built, and the rail structure needing to be torn apart and rebuilt to accommodate high speed, electrified rail service that will (we hope, anyway) become a part of a new low cost public transportation system serving an endless list of communities: Fort McMurray, La Ronge, Flin Flon, Lloydminster, the villages along Highway 902, Estevan, Yorkton, Regina(?), Speedy Creek – even Ottawa or The Big Smoke.

The prevailing opinion in the Sask Party ranks seems to be that the northern provincial border is about 12 km south of Duck Lake, so much of what they plan infrastructurally is all East – West, which hardly accommodates business travelers seeing the north as an investment opportunity. Regina doesn’t need a transportation hub as much as we do, when our rectangular shape only invites construction of a high speed highway extending from the North Dakota border through to Fort Mac via P.A., La Ronge and La Loche to service developmental projects demanding high tech equipment we currently get from the USA and central Canada. Not only does it cut 1,500 km off a round trip for truckers heading to the oil fields via Alberta, but it also means that their return trips don’t have to be deadheaded because they’ll be hauling back our natural resources to be used in manufacturing processes in their city of trip origin – or is the Saskatchewan River going to serve such service?

What really caught my attention from the Powalinsky campaign, however, was his approach to reducing crime; it included tackling recidivism, homelessness, addiction, offering educational opportunity to ease re-entry into society, AND intercommunity cooperation and consultation in implementing his strategies. Prince Albert is not an organizational centre for organized crime, especially of the “white collar” financial variety; ours is more of the mosquito-slapping variety or “minnow underworld” that excessive breeding brings out the Conservatives, resulting in Pierre Poilievre again trying to pitch the failed Harper remedy of “fixing bail procedures and increasing sentencing lengths” that caused recidivist rates to explode, a stance that an exiting Mayor Dionne was only too eager to espouse.

What drives me insane is that our right-wing politicians always manage to trot out “examples” to confound us, especially on social media where too many of us turn to get our daily social “fix”. For instance, would the aggressive sexualized behaviour of former Highway of Tears trucker Kenneth David McKay, who brutally murdered then mutilated Crystal Paskemin’s body, been purged IF the Parole Board had made him serve the FULL 25 years of his MINIMUM sentence instead of allowing him day parole to ply his “needs” upon a Victoria, BC woman? Not really; this clown, whom the RCMP were also investigating for his possible involvement in at least two other murders should never have been released, as he requires the Clifford Olson treatment of psychiatric evaluators attempting to probe his personality to see just what makes him tick. As for returning capital punishment, having gone to the same school as Steven Truscott, my praising former Progressive Conservative PM John Diefenbaker for commuting his sentence to hang should tell you on which side of that story I reside no matter how many individuals maintaining that it should be reintroduced so as to keep the “fear” of death itself uppermost in the minds of people hellbent in murdering someone themselves.

Despite his desire to go against the grain of a society seeking still another way to hate, Mr. Powalinsky’s approach has STILL left out the reality that our Indigenous communities suffer the most from criminal activity, with more having been victims in their lives than perpetrators. This condition stems from the fact that our court system simply refuses to accept that Indigenous methods for dealing with social misbehaviour also work, especially the sentencing circle, given that incarceration merely allows offenders to “do the time” instead of being confronted by the sinister result of their crime. 

Were Mr. Powalinsky seriously determined to involve surrounding communities in such discussions, I foresee major progress being achieved in reducing recidivism rates, and perhaps even reducing the prestige levels gang leaders on reserve obtain by selling themselves as revolutionaries wanting to overcome “colonizer oppression” by joining their so-called “movement”. One idea recently broached to me was for Indigenous leaders to take their concept of being leaders of “nations within a nation” to simply address the dual “citizenship” nature of Indigenous children born in a “foreign” setting called Canada. Thus, should said individual at birth eventually become a pariah to his reserve nation later in life, Chief and Council could simply strike that individual from its membership rolls by “deporting” (i.e.: banishing) them, thus depriving that individual of his heritage, customs and family support, and turning his recruiting messages into one-liners at a comedy bar.

Your ideas are but a beginning, Mayor Powalinsky, but as long as you already know that, I, at least, will be paying attention to their results.

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