tank: carney, premiers should talk about saskatoon homeless crisis
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an unhoused person takes a nap on a bench under a make-shift shelter on spadina crescent earlier this month.
michelle berg
/
saskatoon starphoenix
prime minister mark carney is holding his first meeting with the premiers in a city where homelessness is dominating the landscape.
carney plans to hold a first ministers meeting for the first time in saskatoon monday, and it offers an ideal opportunity to talk about a big issue that got very little attention during april’s federal election or october’s provincial election.
the gathering of the prime minister and premiers, which happened only once previously in saskatchewan in 1985 in regina, is expected to focus on internal trade, tariffs and pipelines. maybe housing.
but, just this week, we heard more details about the point-in-time homeless count from october in saskatoon. we also heard a public washroom trailer designed to accommodate the city’s vulnerable is stalled due to lack of funding.
as newly chosen mayor cynthia block said on election night last november, homelessness remains the city’s top issue and her main focus. city hall and the saskatoon tribal council held a news conference tuesday to discuss the count.
unfortunately, saskatoon did not elect any liberals in the federal election in april and elected just one saskatchewan party mla in october, so the city lacks a strong voice at either higher level of government.
but the homeless count reveals ample reason why both levels should be more involved in trying to solve this crisis.
few will dispute the scope of the problem in saskatoon has accelerated faster than any city of similar size could reasonably be expected to deal with effectively. and homelessness stems from many factors that city hall has few tools to address, from housing to mental health to addiction.
the most recent homeless count identified 1,499 people, a nearly threefold increase from 550 three years ago and far higher than the 260 recorded during the first such count in 2008.
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according to the city, registering five homeless people per 100,000 residents means saskatoon is struggling with one of canada’s highest unhoused rates.
further, the count revealed a tragic increase in the number of children under 12 without stable shelter from 26 in 2022 to 315.
and, once again, the count showed that homelessness is disproportionately affecting indigenous people, who make up less than 12 per cent of saskatoon’s population, but accounted for 81 per cent of those identified in the homeless count.
remarkably, that’s actually a decrease from the two previous counts, which found in much smaller samples indigenous people making up 90 per cent (2022) and 86 per cent (2018). yet it’s much higher than the 45 per cent indigenous share from 2015.
certainly, the province and the city cannot and should not wash their hands of indigenous people, but carney’s new federal cabinet includes two ministers with the word indigenous in their titles (rebecca alty and mandy gull-masty).
that means the federal government has a role to play here as block, a former federal liberal candidate, has stressed several times.
plus, the homeless count also confirmed what has been revealed in previous editions — that most of those identified are afflicted with a substance abuse problem (82 per cent) and a mental health issue (61 per cent). fifty-seven per cent suffered from an illness or a medical condition.
that suggests some of the issues contributing to homelessness fall under provincial jurisdiction. saskatchewan has appointed a minister of mental health and addictions (lori carr) and a minister of health (jeremy cockrill).
plus, 70 per cent of those identified in the count moved to saskatoon from somewhere else in the province. that further shows the homeless crisis qualifies as more provincial than municipal. another 12 per cent moved here from alberta, a serious irony given the migration of so many to alberta from elsewhere in canada.
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but that further bolsters the case for federal involvement.
yet the point here is not to simply suggest dereliction of duty, but to underline that this massive crisis requires a multi-government approach.
you often hear there are no simple solutions to such a dilemma, but the province could restore direct saskatchewan income support payments to landlords. many believe the inexplicable decision to suspend the direct payment has greatly exacerbated the homeless and addiction crises in saskatoon and elsewhere.
however, all three governments should be asking monday why and how saskatoon has become a national leader in such an unenviable category.
phil tank is the digital opinion editor at the saskatoon starphoenix.
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