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Editorial: Provincial support to reduce crime in Thompson welcome, regardless of timing

Since being elected as Manitoba’s government in 2016, the Progressive Conservatives have always done a good job of talking about supporting the north, though their rhetoric has not always been marched by concrete actions taken to support the region’s

Since being elected as Manitoba’s government in 2016, the Progressive Conservatives have always done a good job of talking about supporting the north, though their rhetoric has not always been marched by concrete actions taken to support the region’s economic present and future. Look North could lay the foundation for more prosperous days ahead for Northern Manitoba through its consultations and action plans and economic summits and trips, or it could end up being something more like the ballyhooed Thompson Economic Diversification Working Group (TEDWG) process, which didn’t generate a whole lot of economic diversification but plenty of reports and pie charts and data and meetings and general backslapping among the mainly bureaucratic participants. As was the case with the defunct Thompson Unlimited, the question has to be asked: did spending that money the way it was done do more for Thompson’s economy than if the equivalent amount had been applied to local tax holidays for business startups or simply distributed to residents in the form of locally usable gift certificates that would enable the people who drive the economy – consumers – to vote with their wallets about which types of businesses would thrive or fail based on their own preferences? You could argue that TEDWG represents a better way to spend millions of dollars, but you’d probably find plenty of people willing to go to bat for the opposite proposition.

But apart from the economy, what is one of the biggest issues in Thompson over the past decade or so? Crime. Thanks to Statistics Canada’s crime severity index, which regularly sees Thompson at or near the top, the city has acquired a reputation – in some ways undeserved, in other ways honestly come by – as a dangerous place, a city where high-paying jobs and people with substance abuse problems and ineffective parents and a lack of youth recreational activities have combined to make it likely that you or someone you know has been a part of or knows someone affected by some kind of crime, whether petty or serious. For years, Thompson mayors and councillors appealed to the provincial government for some assistance to deal with this. The NDP helped out by giving community safety officers broader powers, but it was a two-year pilot program and once the two years were up, the new government was in power and they reduced the amount of funding they provided, possibly because they didn’t see it as an effective use of tax dollars or because they worried that if they made it permanent, they would be awash in requests from other Manitoba communities to pay for their own community safety officer programs.

Last week, however, the province revealed that it would be providing $300,000 for the development of a multi-stakeholder public safety strategy for Thompson as well as taking a look at how to reduce the amount of public intoxication that occurs in Thompson and bringing more restorative justice concepts into the criminal justice system here. It wasn’t exactly what local politicians have been asking for for years – they want a Main Street North program based on the Main Street Project in Winnipeg and an actual restorative justice centre, a less-punishment focused jail, in essence – but it was something along the same lines. The PCs seem to prefer investing in the philosophical underpinnings of the economy or criminal justice more than spending on specific programs. This is not necessarily a bad idea. Programs that are intended as a stopgap can often become entrenched parts of the systems they exist within and an ongoing cost to government. So last week’s public safety investments for Thompson are good news.

Why did it take this long for the government to take action? They would probably tell you that it was because they needed to get Manitoba’s fiscal house in order before they could afford to take such steps. Those with a little more cynicism in their outlook might suggest that it is because there is an election coming soon and the PCs want to try to shore up some support in Thompson, which has had a request for money from the Mining Communities Reserve Fund denied by the provincial government and seen the amount of money they can receive for infrastructure projects each year from the province drop from $400,000 to less than three-quarters of that amount.

Regardless of why the public safety funding is forthcoming now, it is forthcoming and that has the potential to be a good thing. Too bad it will likely be years from now before we can ultimately pass judgment on whether it made Thompson’s streets safer or merely generated bunch of high-minded hot air and should have been spent on the city’s safety officers instead.

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