It’s election season, and Prince Albert has already seen the benefit of it being the third largest city in the province. Both Scott Moe and NDP Leader Carla Beck made campaign stops to make their opening statements and introduce their local candidates, as well as provide some insight into just which issues they will focus on during the campaign.
However, the first item to be mentioned, that being “crime”, both surprised and annoyed me, if for no other reason than to suggest to Indigenous voters seriously looking to the NDP to try to tone down the levels of racial tension that has been created by former premier Brad Wall, then Premier Moe, it initially sounded as if the NDP was attempting to court those same people that Premiers Moe and Wall could round up by uttering just one dog whistle- “taxpayers”.
It’s not that simple. As West Flat (Prince Albert Northcote) NDP candidate Nicole Rancourt explained it, while doing her door-knocking rounds she has heard more complaints coming from her constituents about “affordability” and “crime” than anything else – and this in an area where most of the voters are either Indigenous or newly arrived immigrants to Canada.
It is absolutely stupid for those who keep on sneering at Indigenous people to think that they’re oblivious to the reality that some of their own people are the ones who’ve created this tension. In the late 1990’s, former AFN Grand Chief Phil Fontaine, with whom I had a conversation on this very matter when teaching in Pukatawagan, MB, attempted to address the increasing problem of gangs and gang recruitment undermining the efforts of Chiefs meeting with federal government officials to bring certain treaty issues to a successful conclusion. The “effectiveness” of those recruiting campaigns relies upon the ability of youth to swallow the B.S. that by becoming a member they are in effect “protecting their own”. The “reality”, however, is that the inevitable victims of their actions are the same “own people” that recruits were told they were trying to protect.
The evolution of these gangs from “hero to zero” is well known in Indigenous communities. More than once while living in Saskatoon, I would be dropping a friend off taking the bus to Prince Albert and stick around until their bus arrived, only to watch individuals waiting for the buses coming from Meadow Lake or La Ronge, upon seeing young and alone Indigenous women coming off these arrivals being approached, greeted, and taken into the cafeteria for a coffee, only to some weeks or months later to find them “working” the streets in “the hood” or walking around stoned, whether on crack, Ritalin, Demerol or morphine, often oblivious to where they even were.
More than once I have listened to a friend of mine and a member of “Idle no More” curse the Chiefs they know (and aren’t afraid to name) who, upon being elected to office, are hopping on the first plane out of Dodge to attend “meetings of national consequence to our people” in Ottawa, never to return until the next election is about to arrive. The result – the gang “issue” – goes unresolved, and with this neglect its leaders become emboldened, increasing the seriousness of their involvement in the drug trade (crystal meth) in particular, turning women into “working girls” or beating those who resist to the point of life-threatening wounds, and “warning” members whom they may have even recruited to the “lifestyle” with death should they ever decide to try and turn their lives around and leave their sickening influence.
The hypocrisy of persons even of authority claiming to be working to try and reduce “crime” defies reality.
We can’t just stop there, though, if we ever intend to reduce crime in our city. Prince Albert Mayor Greg Dionne, for instance, once imperiously told me that “we have the postal codes of persons creating the crimes”, as though it meant something; what’s he doing with it to help those same communities rid themselves of these influences? Your guess is as good as mine, and since there is also a municipal election going on, perhaps we should be asking him that very question.
The Moe government, however, has to take some responsibility for this issue becoming worse, not just because of Wall and Moe’s ignorance and neglect of such affairs, but of the persons in whom they put “in trust” of affairs dealing with law and order:
- Bronwyn Eyre, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, a law school graduate who has never articled nor practiced law
- Prince Albert Northcote MLA Alana Ross, a former frontline healthcare worker whose Cabinet duties are related to her profession, yet appears to be overseeing the complete collapse of mental health consulting services in the city, where most of our psychiatrists and psychologists are coming from practices in Saskatoon where they are already overworked, and
- Soon-to-retire Prince Albert Carleton MLA Joe Hargrave, who when first appointed to Cabinet oversaw the demise of the STC, a passenger carrier that brought family from the north to see their family in incarceration, or the homeless who in approximately 2019 started coming to Prince Albert in anticipation of the Mill reopening, but now stuck in their inability to easily return home, barred from even sleeping along the river or in back alleys and parks
At least two of the local NDP candidates, Mark Thunderchild and Trina Miller, are themselves attempting to bridge this issue by urging the NDP to seek guidance from the leadership of our Indigenous communities to help the government they want to form after Oct. 28 in addressing not just “crime”, but other mutually shared concerns the Moe government has heaped upon the province.
We all know that “reconciliation” with Indigenous matters is currently in “stall” position, and can only be revitalized by the inclusion of reserve and Metis communities in seeking resolution to our current stalemate – in other words, by exercising their Canadian right to vote, given to them by the United Nations Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Band councils are well aware of such need, and therefore must take action to assure such things happening. The problem is, neither the Saskatchewan Party nor its extremist offshoots believe that will happen, so are content to ignore their very existence.
If such contempt doesn’t galvanize Indigenous peoples to vote to defend themselves, what will?
