THUNDER BAY – For local resident, Trudi J. Jones, the heart of a community comes down to how people treat one another, and it’s up everyone to be part of the discussion on how to make the city a safer and better place to live.
“I want to see a community-based solution where everybody participated in making it happen, rather than a top down solution,” she said. “It’s happening.”
Jones was one of more than 100 participants in the first Community Safety and Well-Being Public Forum held Wednesday evening.
The forum is part of new legislation by the Ontario government that became effective last January mandating municipalities to prepare and adopt a community safety and well-being plan that addresses locally identified priority risks to community safety.
Lee-Ann Chevrette, coordinator of the Crime Prevention Council, said the forum on Wednesday was just the kick-off to what will be ongoing public consultations, and having the public’s voice included is pivotal.
“It’s really important because there are many people in our community who are having different experiences,” she said. “We need to talk to folks who have perhaps more challenges to access services and supports and opportunities, who may have lived experience, who are having a different experience.”
“We need to hear from sector experts in different fields, but we need to hear from citizens who go to school, who work in the community, who are raising families here. It’s important to get all that perspective to inform that plan that will improve safety and well-being for everyone.”
The Crime Prevention Council has been working for the past four years at developing and implementing a strategy that focusses on violence against women, support for youth, mental health conditions, and substance misuse conditions.
“People are really fearful in having these conversations, but a lot of what we are seeing are complex social issues that need a collaborative response, so it’s not just a role of police or the justice system to respond,” Chevrette said. “We need to be doing things upstream at the community level and the government level to make sure our community has what it needs to be safe for everyone.”
The idea of a proactive approach was echoed by Thunder Bay Mayor Bill Mauro, who believes community members have a lot of ideas to share when it comes to community safety and well-being.
“I hope that we are going to receive a broad diversity of ideas,” he said. “The opening speaker tonight talked about the crime fighting piece of this. That will obviously be something that will generate attention and ideas. There’s also going to be other parts of it that I think will come forward that aren’t necessarily about fighting crime or the reactive sense, but what other ideas they may have that will make the community safer that are more proactive and less reactive.”
Mauro added that there is no monopoly on good ideas and sometimes you can be a little too close to an issue to see everything or all the good ideas.
“I think members of the public likely to have good thoughts that will inform the plan and help us to go forward,” he said.
“Thunder Bay is not alone in the challenges we are facing. The whole guns and gangs piece is right across many jurisdictions right across the country. We are going to do our part to get better at that. That will require some senior government assistance.”
For Jones, the public forum is the first step in what she hopes will lead to more collaboration and in the end, a safer community.
“It’s important for us to get together to discuss how to make things better,” she said. “The police can’t do it without us, city council can’t do it without us. There has to be people at the planning level and there has to be people at the grassroots level.”
Further public consultations are planned to take place until the end of February. A survey can also be completed online until Feb. 10.
A draft plan will be presented to city council next October with the final Community Safety and Well-Being Plan to be approved in January 2021.
