tank: mayoral bid's claim that saskatoon is 'broken' now seems prophetic
3 minute read
an unhoused person is covered in a sheet outside of the mustard seed downtown shelter earlier this week.
michelle berg
/
saskatoon starphoenix
a little more than a year ago, two candidates for saskatoon mayor announced their bids on the same june day.
incumbent city councillor cynthia block would win the mayoral race six months later, and former saskatchewan party provincial cabinet minister gord wyant would finish a distant second.
but a central theme of wyant’s campaign resonates today, his claim that saskatoon was “broken.” that might have seemed like a cynical exaggeration during the campaign but it’s difficult to argue a year after wyant launched his bid, as the challenges with which saskatoon is struggling seem overwhelming.
wyant lifted the “broken” slogan from pierre poilievre’s conservative ad blitz that labelled canada the same way after nearly a decade of former prime minister justin trudeau. the strategy helped boost the conservatives into a huge lead in opinion polls, but it failed to sustain them all the way to an election win.
poilievre’s party borrowed the “broken” bit from the brexit campaign in the united kingdom. brexit won the vote, but most in the u.k. now regret leaving the european union.
regardless, wyant’s fatal flaw in adopting the “broken” claim seemed obvious as someone who had just left the provincial government where he had served as a minister, including in the justice portfolio.
when he boasted he would close a provincial homeless shelter next to the fairhaven neighbourhood associated with an increase in crime, the question arose on why he failed to act or speak out while he was in the government that established it.
and yet, while the broken saskatoon slogan may have failed as a campaign tactic for wyant, it now seems worth reconsidering it as an accidental prophecy. saskatoon now does seem broken in a lot of ways.
we knew homelessness was a growing problem during the campaign, but the release of the actual numbers from the point-in-time count shortly after the election surpassed even the most dire projections up to that time. as was revealed last week, saskatoon is struggling with one of canada’s worst homelessness rates.
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you can blame whichever level of government you want, but you would be hard-pressed to argue that the number of people without stable housing is not an issue increasing in severity.
fentanyl and drug toxicity deaths have also taken too many lives in saskatchewan, 1,788 confirmed and suspected over the previous five years. but saskatoon has generally fared far better than regina, likely due to the efforts of the supervised consumption site, prairie harm reduction.
this year, however, saskatoon leads regina with 21 confirmed overdose deaths compared to eight. and those deaths would probably be unimaginably high if not for the heroic efforts of saskatoon firefighters and others.
the fire department alone has responded to double the number of overdoses during the first five months of this year than it did in the same period last year (1,149 to 568). the rise in overdoses has been linked to various substances, often fentanyl, that can require multiple doses of naloxone.
the effects of the homeless and addiction crises have resulted in the closure of the university bridge in january (after an encampment fire) and the closure of two library branches (due to disruptive behaviour and overdoses).
the looming closure of the hudson’s bay store, with broken glass replaced by plywood already, will create further challenges for safety and give people one less reason to head downtown.
bear spray incidents have also increased.
the rise of sandbars in the south saskatchewan river is dampening summer recreational fun, and the threat of another idyllic saskatoon summer ruined by the mars-like atmosphere and air quality warnings we see from wildfires hangs literally in the air.
also, the summer festivals that defined saskatoon prior to the pandemic seem to have disappeared, relocated or downsized.
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saskatoon voters decided quite clearly that wyant was not the right person to become our next mayor, but his ability to predict the future seems pretty unassailable right about now.
phil tank is the digital opinion editor at the saskatoon starphoenix.
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